Christ Anthony H. Wilson's a cunt....
Happy New Year,
xxxx
'Berta
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
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© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
Friday, 29 December 2006
B-dom, b-dom.....
Christ Anthony H. Wilson's a cunt....
Happy New Year,
xxxx
'Berta
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
Thursday, 21 December 2006
The Dalai Lama...
Myspace gets quite a lot of stick in snootier circles (The Grauniad, Personal Computer Weekly, Housewives' Choice etc..) but I think a lot of this animosity and contempt is ill-deserved, actually. You know, it's not just a paedophile-friendly jizz joint where you can while away weeks on end gawping at scantily-clad goth girls splattered in feck blood, listening to the atrocious SlipKnot cover versions they've posted up that sound like someone vomiting over a Black Sabbath track played backwards (although that is quite a large part of the appeal, obviously. As Stray Photon will concur...) But really, there's a lot of good (i.e. non-pornographic) stuff on there too.
For instance, the other day I came across this nice looking bald chap in his 70s, dressed in orange. He looked kind of cute and had a smile that was sort of, how can I put it? - Serene? Anyways, I thought what the heck? And sent him this message:
I came across your myspace by accident, your Royal Highness - I'd typed in Dial-a-Llama, and you came up.
It's nice to have met you anyway - I really admire what you do.
(I guess I'll just have to do without the Llama....)
Much love, peace and respect to you, sir,
xxxx
'Berta
And I got this reply:
that made me smile. many blessings to you, namaste.
His myspace is here if you want to check him out.
Don't know about you, but I think I'm in there....
xxxx
'Berta
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
For instance, the other day I came across this nice looking bald chap in his 70s, dressed in orange. He looked kind of cute and had a smile that was sort of, how can I put it? - Serene? Anyways, I thought what the heck? And sent him this message:
I came across your myspace by accident, your Royal Highness - I'd typed in Dial-a-Llama, and you came up.
It's nice to have met you anyway - I really admire what you do.
(I guess I'll just have to do without the Llama....)
Much love, peace and respect to you, sir,
xxxx
'Berta
And I got this reply:
that made me smile. many blessings to you, namaste.
His myspace is here if you want to check him out.
Don't know about you, but I think I'm in there....
xxxx
'Berta
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
Subscribe to The Robert Swipe Show
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
Wednesday, 20 December 2006
Camera Obscura...
Hi, you probably don't know me. I'm Bob's half sister Roberta. Or people call me 'Berta for short, especially if they're in a hurry. Anyway, I've been asked to take over Bob's blog as he's been knighted or something and has taken to swanning around with Prince Charles, Stephen Fry and Keith Allen and all those other establishment bods.
Well, truth is, I'm a bit busy myself really, being as I am a global celebrity wannabe and aspiring Glenda Stefanni style pop legend and all. But you know Bob - he can be very persuasive....(and, more to the point, he's bloody loaded - you don't think I'm doing this gratis, do you??) So I thought - what the heck? Why not! Obviously, I won't be quite as prolific as Bob (he didn't have a huge audience of Goth Girls splattered in Feck blood to keep happy, for starters...!!) But I'll do my darnedest to keep the think going in his memory.
And just in case any of you think I will only be using this space as a blatant and gratuitous way of publicising my Myspace space (er hem....it's here if you're interested, btw) I thought I'd direct you to this lot who are also on there and, if you ask me, bloody brilliant stuff!!
Have a listen here.
I'm loving 'If Looks Could Kill' right now...
Right you lot, I'm off.
Speak soon,
xxxx
'Berta
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
Well, truth is, I'm a bit busy myself really, being as I am a global celebrity wannabe and aspiring Glenda Stefanni style pop legend and all. But you know Bob - he can be very persuasive....(and, more to the point, he's bloody loaded - you don't think I'm doing this gratis, do you??) So I thought - what the heck? Why not! Obviously, I won't be quite as prolific as Bob (he didn't have a huge audience of Goth Girls splattered in Feck blood to keep happy, for starters...!!) But I'll do my darnedest to keep the think going in his memory.
And just in case any of you think I will only be using this space as a blatant and gratuitous way of publicising my Myspace space (er hem....it's here if you're interested, btw) I thought I'd direct you to this lot who are also on there and, if you ask me, bloody brilliant stuff!!
Have a listen here.
I'm loving 'If Looks Could Kill' right now...
Right you lot, I'm off.
Speak soon,
xxxx
'Berta
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
Subscribe to The Robert Swipe Show
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
Thursday, 7 December 2006
Honoured...
When I saw the crest on the back of the envelope, I thought at first that it was another demand from the Inheritence Tax bods. As if £50,000 smackers plus wasn't enough, already..
But when I opened it, there was a heavily scented letter (vermouth/curry powder - slight undertone of vomit, or possibly ready-grated supermarket parmesan - I can't be certain). It read:
Dear Mr. Swipe,
I am writing to you on behalf of Her Majesty in connection with this year's New Year's Honours List. I have the pleasure to inform you that you are to be recognised for your services to the world wide web, telecommunications and cheap, soft-porn satires at the expense of insignificant television presenters and dwarf-baiitng by being awarded Membership of the Order of The British Empire. Her Majesty has asked me to communicate her own personal satisfaction at the nomination as she has for some time been a keen reader of your work, despising as she does, "that bloody Kerplunkski woman", as she is wont to refer to a certain television presenter. Her Majesty is a woman of strong opinion, not easily deflected from her prejudices, and is not particularly fond of the Poles as a people, I'm afraid.
Assuming your acceptance of the award, your investiture will take place on 13th March at 3pm. Kneepads will be provided, although you may wish to provide your own condiments, according to taste. I would be grateful if you could confirm to me in writing whether or not you wish to attend. Her Majesty still hasn't forgiven "that scouse wanker" for returning his. "Cold Turkey? My Arse!" is a frequently heard cry around the royal residences whenver the wireless happens to be tuned to counting down of the hit parade. A shame, as the Queen Mother was somewhat of a fan.
RSVP
Hamish MacRae-Canteloupe, Equerry to the Royal Household.
Then this, in a girlish scrawl at the bottom (hearts instead of dots over the 'i's:
...it would have been last year if it hadn't been for that Blumen Hestonthal...
So, what to do??
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
But when I opened it, there was a heavily scented letter (vermouth/curry powder - slight undertone of vomit, or possibly ready-grated supermarket parmesan - I can't be certain). It read:
Dear Mr. Swipe,
I am writing to you on behalf of Her Majesty in connection with this year's New Year's Honours List. I have the pleasure to inform you that you are to be recognised for your services to the world wide web, telecommunications and cheap, soft-porn satires at the expense of insignificant television presenters and dwarf-baiitng by being awarded Membership of the Order of The British Empire. Her Majesty has asked me to communicate her own personal satisfaction at the nomination as she has for some time been a keen reader of your work, despising as she does, "that bloody Kerplunkski woman", as she is wont to refer to a certain television presenter. Her Majesty is a woman of strong opinion, not easily deflected from her prejudices, and is not particularly fond of the Poles as a people, I'm afraid.
Assuming your acceptance of the award, your investiture will take place on 13th March at 3pm. Kneepads will be provided, although you may wish to provide your own condiments, according to taste. I would be grateful if you could confirm to me in writing whether or not you wish to attend. Her Majesty still hasn't forgiven "that scouse wanker" for returning his. "Cold Turkey? My Arse!" is a frequently heard cry around the royal residences whenver the wireless happens to be tuned to counting down of the hit parade. A shame, as the Queen Mother was somewhat of a fan.
RSVP
Hamish MacRae-Canteloupe, Equerry to the Royal Household.
Then this, in a girlish scrawl at the bottom (hearts instead of dots over the 'i's:
...it would have been last year if it hadn't been for that Blumen Hestonthal...
So, what to do??
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
Subscribe to The Robert Swipe Show
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
Honoured...
When I saw the crest on the back of the envelope, I thought at first that it was another demand from the Inheritence Tax bods. As if £50,000 smackers plus wasn't enough, already..
But when I opened it, there was a heavily scented letter (vermouth/curry powder - slight undertone of vomit, or possibly ready-grated supermarket parmesan - I can't be certain). It read:
Dear Mr. Swipe,
I am writing to you on behalf of Her Majesty in connection with this year's New Year's Honours List. I have the pleasure to inform you that you are to be recognised for your services to the world wide web, telecommunications and cheap, soft-porn satires at the expense of insignificant television presenters and dwarf-baiitng by being awarded Membership of the Order of The British Empire. Her Majesty has asked me to communicate her own personal satisfaction at the nomination as she has for some time been a keen reader of your work, despising as she does, "that bloody Kerplunkski woman", as she is wont to refer to a certain television presenter. Her Majesty is a woman of strong opinion, not easily deflected from her prejudices, and is not particularly fond of the Poles as a people, I'm afraid.
Assuming your acceptance of the award, your investiture will take place on 13th March at 3pm. Kneepads will be provided, although you may wish to provide your own condiments, according to taste. I would be grateful if you could confirm to me in writing whether or not you wish to attend. Her Majesty still hasn't forgiven "that scouse wanker" for returning his. "Cold Turkey? My Arse!" is a frequently heard cry around the royal residences whenver the wireless happens to be tuned to counting down of the hit parade. A shame, as the Queen Mother was somewhat of a fan.
RSVP
Hamish MacRae-Canteloupe, Equerry to the Royal Household.
Then this, in a girlish scrawl at the bottom (hearts instead of dots over the 'i's:
...it would have been last year if it hadn't been for that Blumen Hestonthal...
So, what to do??
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
But when I opened it, there was a heavily scented letter (vermouth/curry powder - slight undertone of vomit, or possibly ready-grated supermarket parmesan - I can't be certain). It read:
Dear Mr. Swipe,
I am writing to you on behalf of Her Majesty in connection with this year's New Year's Honours List. I have the pleasure to inform you that you are to be recognised for your services to the world wide web, telecommunications and cheap, soft-porn satires at the expense of insignificant television presenters and dwarf-baiitng by being awarded Membership of the Order of The British Empire. Her Majesty has asked me to communicate her own personal satisfaction at the nomination as she has for some time been a keen reader of your work, despising as she does, "that bloody Kerplunkski woman", as she is wont to refer to a certain television presenter. Her Majesty is a woman of strong opinion, not easily deflected from her prejudices, and is not particularly fond of the Poles as a people, I'm afraid.
Assuming your acceptance of the award, your investiture will take place on 13th March at 3pm. Kneepads will be provided, although you may wish to provide your own condiments, according to taste. I would be grateful if you could confirm to me in writing whether or not you wish to attend. Her Majesty still hasn't forgiven "that scouse wanker" for returning his. "Cold Turkey? My Arse!" is a frequently heard cry around the royal residences whenver the wireless happens to be tuned to counting down of the hit parade. A shame, as the Queen Mother was somewhat of a fan.
RSVP
Hamish MacRae-Canteloupe, Equerry to the Royal Household.
Then this, in a girlish scrawl at the bottom (hearts instead of dots over the 'i's:
...it would have been last year if it hadn't been for that Blumen Hestonthal...
So, what to do??
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
Subscribe to The Robert Swipe Show
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
Tuesday, 5 December 2006
I'm Speechless....
Email from Todd Blogney:
PS r*f*s met bowie last week and he said 'he sooo thinks he's Robert Swipe!!'
My reply:
…he *was* me for a year, wasn’t he?
Todd continued:
No seriously.. r*f*s says he's exactly like you..
My reply:
[...]
I'm sure you can all fill in the punchline....
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
PS r*f*s met bowie last week and he said 'he sooo thinks he's Robert Swipe!!'
My reply:
…he *was* me for a year, wasn’t he?
Todd continued:
No seriously.. r*f*s says he's exactly like you..
My reply:
[...]
I'm sure you can all fill in the punchline....
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
Subscribe to The Robert Swipe Show
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
Monday, 4 December 2006
Christmas #1/Bob's Festive 50...
As PC-gone-made-lunatics at BA attempt to stifle the Christian faith, we here at Swipe Towers enter the season of goodwill to all men (and a couple of tasty birds too) with all barrels loaded. How very dare they rob us of our cribs, gently braised wild fowl and copious amounts of cheap cash and carry absinthe as we charge our glasses in memory of the birthday of the saviour of mankind. Don't these people know the true meaning of Christmas? I mean, when else were we going to watch those endless re-runs of the 1977 Morecambe & Wise Christmas Special? Easter??
But these killjoys will not have it all their own way. And to prove it, The Swipe Show will be beginning our Christmas festivities even earlier than usual. To this end, we'll be launching our traditional Christmas #1 campaign today. Just go here and have a listen to 'Christmas Dinner' by Fuzzy Brown - our tip for the yuletide top spot this year. It's a real belter and its message of religious tolerance (well, apart from the Jews, obviously), the brotherhood of man allied to some splendidly histrionic axe-battering have made it a real firm favourite in our office. Please do all you can to put this record* where it belongs - top of the hit pararde by a bloody mile!
As if that were not enough, voting starts today in our traditional** Festive Fifty*** Chart. That's right, in time honoured John Peel fashion, all you have to do is vote for your three favourite songs that have featured on this year's Bobcasts and we'll then rundown our listeners favourites in a special one off Christmas Day Bobcast! So get sending in those votes, pop-pickers!!
And is if all *that* wasn't enough, here's another chance to read last year's fabulous Swipe Show re-working of It's a Wonderful Life...
God bless us all, everyone!!!!!
*I'm sure it will be released one day....
**We're hoping one day it will become so...
***Only we'll be doing a top ten, not fifty. Do you have any idea how large a file to download that would be??
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
But these killjoys will not have it all their own way. And to prove it, The Swipe Show will be beginning our Christmas festivities even earlier than usual. To this end, we'll be launching our traditional Christmas #1 campaign today. Just go here and have a listen to 'Christmas Dinner' by Fuzzy Brown - our tip for the yuletide top spot this year. It's a real belter and its message of religious tolerance (well, apart from the Jews, obviously), the brotherhood of man allied to some splendidly histrionic axe-battering have made it a real firm favourite in our office. Please do all you can to put this record* where it belongs - top of the hit pararde by a bloody mile!
As if that were not enough, voting starts today in our traditional** Festive Fifty*** Chart. That's right, in time honoured John Peel fashion, all you have to do is vote for your three favourite songs that have featured on this year's Bobcasts and we'll then rundown our listeners favourites in a special one off Christmas Day Bobcast! So get sending in those votes, pop-pickers!!
And is if all *that* wasn't enough, here's another chance to read last year's fabulous Swipe Show re-working of It's a Wonderful Life...
God bless us all, everyone!!!!!
*I'm sure it will be released one day....
**We're hoping one day it will become so...
***Only we'll be doing a top ten, not fifty. Do you have any idea how large a file to download that would be??
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
Subscribe to The Robert Swipe Show
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
Friday, 1 December 2006
Tag Heuer...
This is one of those tag things. I have to tell you 5 things about myself and then tag three other people.*
1. I have a rotten cock.
2. I don't live in Slough.
3. I support Arsenal F.C.
4. On Wednesday night I saw them lose for the first time in 40 years to Fulham F.C.
5. I am *well* ragged off about it.
I nominate Brian Damage, Stewart Lee and Roger de Courcey and Nookie Bare (South West Devon's premier pornographic puppet act!!)
*The Rock Mother made me do it.
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
1. I have a rotten cock.
2. I don't live in Slough.
3. I support Arsenal F.C.
4. On Wednesday night I saw them lose for the first time in 40 years to Fulham F.C.
5. I am *well* ragged off about it.
I nominate Brian Damage, Stewart Lee and Roger de Courcey and Nookie Bare (South West Devon's premier pornographic puppet act!!)
*The Rock Mother made me do it.
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
Subscribe to The Robert Swipe Show
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
Craven Cottage...
Anyone who's never been to a Premiership match in the London area could do a lot worse than take the short stroll along the river Thames from Hammersmith Bridge to the home of Fulham F.C. Don't be put off by the slightly aggressive posturing in the name of their fanzine ("There's only one 'F' in Fulham") - they're like pussycats. No, really - they *are* Indeed, it's more like a night out at the dogs or evening races than the normally adversarial atmosphere at many other football grounds - as if the crowd is amusedly watching the antics of the creatures rushing around before them, mildly interested as to which of them will come out on top. Of course they're partisan and want the team to do well, but they're as likely to indulge in the time-honoured pursuit of barracking their own players (even at two-nil up against the [once] mighty Arsenal, than for the more usual hero-worship and idolatry). Robin van Persie's exceptional long range free kick even brought a generous smattering of appreciative applause from around the ground, even though it brought Arsenal back into a game that had started to look all over, bar the shouting. Of course there were the occasional paedophile chants directed at the dapper-as-ever Arsene Wenger. But you can't expect them to keep *all* the Stamford Bridge lot out, what with the clubs being so close....
In fact, if you're lucky enough to get a seat in the newly refurbed Riverside stand, you can spend the pre-match and half time interludes on the terrace that looks out over the Thames, supping on an exhorbitantly priced (3 nicker for a 330 ml) bottle of Fosters and gorging on a tasty (but miniscule) cheese, onion and mushroom pie with the rest of the Fulham faithful - a charming mix of old time cockernees, French, Japanese and abundant Chiswick, Hammersmith nouveaux riches of admirably mixed gender (admittedly, you'd probably have to be to be able to afford the ticket prices. I paid 50 notes for mine. Mind you, you probably wouldn't have to pay quite so much to watch one of the less attractive sides. Middlesbrough visit soon. Or better still, wait for the local derby with Cheslea. They'll probably be giving them away for that.) The ubuiquitous racism aside ("come on you whites!" What's that all about? Half their players were black!)
All in all, a wonderful evening out, the highlight being the walk back among the happy hordes. Their first victory over Arsenal in 40 years brought about little of the more usual triumphalism and gloating. Rather, a joyful buzz filled the west London night air, as if each of the supporters was emittting a little E.T. like hum of deep satisfaction beneath their overcoats and jumpers. It can't have been all that different from the days when my Dad would accompany a drinking mate of his to the Cottage, returning with a broad grin on his face, brandishing a copy of the print out to the popular terrace chant of the time, the one the then standing terraces sung out to Elkie Brooks' most famous tune: "Earl's a Winger". Halfway across Hammersmith Bridge, back once more in the breast of the London Borough of Richmond-upon-Thames, I looked back east along the river to see the brilliant glare of the floodlights breaking through the silhouettes of the clumps of bare riverbank trees, like a second moon. You really should give it a go some time - especially an evening game.
It's just a shame the Arsenal never turned up.
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
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© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
Wednesday, 29 November 2006
Comment of the Week (Slight Return)...
...
Oh and Happy 63rd Birthday to Stray Photon!!
Keep spraying them there rays, Stray!!
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
Oh and Happy 63rd Birthday to Stray Photon!!
Keep spraying them there rays, Stray!!
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
Subscribe to The Robert Swipe Show
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
Tuesday, 28 November 2006
Monday, 27 November 2006
Comment of the Week...
I know you all tried very hard, but there could only really be one winner from last week's bumper selection.
Tony pretty much summed this place up with his concise, witty and perceptive post from 11/25/2006 10:06:53 PM:
shit
Excellent. A bottle of 'Buie Breezer all over body wash and a Chelsea season ticket goes out to you, Tone.
Keep 'em coming and I'll announce next week's winner in seven day's time - presuming I haven't topped myself by then.
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
Tony pretty much summed this place up with his concise, witty and perceptive post from 11/25/2006 10:06:53 PM:
shit
Excellent. A bottle of 'Buie Breezer all over body wash and a Chelsea season ticket goes out to you, Tone.
Keep 'em coming and I'll announce next week's winner in seven day's time - presuming I haven't topped myself by then.
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
Subscribe to The Robert Swipe Show
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
Friday, 24 November 2006
Airport 06...
Passing through Heathrow this morning I was pleased and alarmed by the sight of the now standardised Union Flag British Airways liveries. Pleased because they seem to have eradicated all those poncey po-mo all-the-flags-of-the-world-but-our-own tailfins - you know, that awful conglomeration of tartans and daft squiggles that adorned the tailfins of the national airline carrier's craft through the late eighties and early nineties. I mean, what's the point? If you exclude Brazil and South Africa, we have by far the nicest flag in the world and one, moreover, that is eminently adaptable to a veritable cornucopia of graphic demands. The flag has been put to a whole host of highly effective uses: guitars, mini Coopers, fridges, Jeri Halliwell - these are just some of the things that have been effortlessly customised by the old red white and blue.
But in typically self-effacing Brit style, we allowed our own virtue to be eclipsed - through pandering to the meally mouthed platitudes of woolly minded liberals - by the second rate "can't offend anyone" political correctness of flag facism. Anything, it seemed - swastika's, hammers and sickles, Yugoslav death squad skull and cross bones, even, God help us, Chelsea FC badges (there was no limit to the sick lengths these bastards were prepared to go to) - was preferable to using our glorious Union Flag.
And then came the alarm: I realised that I sounded exactly like Margaret Cunting Thatcher.
Say what you like about her, but.........[Bob exits, screaming]
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
asfunction:playTune,0
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
But in typically self-effacing Brit style, we allowed our own virtue to be eclipsed - through pandering to the meally mouthed platitudes of woolly minded liberals - by the second rate "can't offend anyone" political correctness of flag facism. Anything, it seemed - swastika's, hammers and sickles, Yugoslav death squad skull and cross bones, even, God help us, Chelsea FC badges (there was no limit to the sick lengths these bastards were prepared to go to) - was preferable to using our glorious Union Flag.
And then came the alarm: I realised that I sounded exactly like Margaret Cunting Thatcher.
Say what you like about her, but.........[Bob exits, screaming]
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
Subscribe to The Robert Swipe Show
asfunction:playTune,0
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
Friday, 17 November 2006
Roberta Sings!!!!
Download an exclusive extract from my Big Sister Roberta's forthcoming R.C. Phone L.P. release, The Madcap in the Attic, HERE....FOR FREE!!!!!
***********UPDATE***************
Anyone who hasn't already really should go over to Istvanski's place and listen to the latest Depcast. It's a Howesy special and I can heartily recommend it. I'm not kidding when I say I haven't laughed so long and so hard in years. And the comedy skits are quite amusing too. Mind you, I'm sure that my fit of hysterics will seem insignificant compared to Istvanski's reaction when he gets the first communication from my legal team....
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
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© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
Thursday, 16 November 2006
Pee Search of the Month...
Regular readers will know that I am a frequent and enthusiastic reader of my own site meter. Indeed, as the quality of the material I post up no doubt demonstrates, it's about the only pleasure left to be had on this sad, withering old blog. Aside from one or two incomprehnsibly loyal readers (for which, cheers Dickster and Istser the Twister the Hasta la...come on, you know the rest by now, surely...), my statistics suggest that a significant percentage of you (c. 88.9%, as it goes) have been directed here via a google search. Of those, a staggering 99.47% have come to us through a google search for the word 'pee'. So in order to welcome these new found, piss-searchers and to make up for the paucity of micturation-related content here, I thought I'd introduce a new feature, just for all you wee-wee fans out there.
Introducing, Pee search of the Month!!!!!!:
Domain Name rr.com ? (Commercial)
IP Address 24.97.35.# (Road Runner Commercial)
ISP ROADRUNNER-COMMERCIAL-NYC
Location Continent : North America
Country : United States (Facts)
State : New York
City : Albany
Lat/Long : 42.6706, -73.7791 (Map)
Language English (United States)
en-us
Operating System Microsoft WinXP
Browser Internet Explorer 6.0
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
Javascript version 1.3
Monitor Resolution : 1024 x 768
Color Depth : 32 bits
Time of Visit Nov 16 2006 3:18:32 pm
Last Page View Nov 16 2006 3:18:32 pm
Visit Length 0 seconds
Page Views 1
Referring URL http://images.google.../images%3Fq%3Dpee%26
Search Engine images.google.com
Search Words pee
Visit Entry Page http://rswipe.blogsp..._rswipe_archive.html
Visit Exit Page http://rswipe.blogsp..._rswipe_archive.html
Out Click
Time Zone UTC-5:00
Visitor's Time Nov 16 2006 3:18:32 pm
Visit Number 64,936
Thank you visitor #64,936 - and God bless all those who piss on you!
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
Introducing, Pee search of the Month!!!!!!:
Domain Name rr.com ? (Commercial)
IP Address 24.97.35.# (Road Runner Commercial)
ISP ROADRUNNER-COMMERCIAL-NYC
Location Continent : North America
Country : United States (Facts)
State : New York
City : Albany
Lat/Long : 42.6706, -73.7791 (Map)
Language English (United States)
en-us
Operating System Microsoft WinXP
Browser Internet Explorer 6.0
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
Javascript version 1.3
Monitor Resolution : 1024 x 768
Color Depth : 32 bits
Time of Visit Nov 16 2006 3:18:32 pm
Last Page View Nov 16 2006 3:18:32 pm
Visit Length 0 seconds
Page Views 1
Referring URL http://images.google.../images%3Fq%3Dpee%26
Search Engine images.google.com
Search Words pee
Visit Entry Page http://rswipe.blogsp..._rswipe_archive.html
Visit Exit Page http://rswipe.blogsp..._rswipe_archive.html
Out Click
Time Zone UTC-5:00
Visitor's Time Nov 16 2006 3:18:32 pm
Visit Number 64,936
Thank you visitor #64,936 - and God bless all those who piss on you!
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
Subscribe to The Robert Swipe Show
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
4' 33"...
I have the score of John Cage's 4' 33" in front of me.
It goes like this, all handwritten in (presumably) Cage's Milliganesque scrawl:
[Title page:]
4' 33"
FOR ANY INSTRUMENT OR COMBINATION OF INSTRUMENTS
[signed] John Cage
COPYRIGHT © 1960 BY HENMAR PRESS INC., 373 PARK AVE. S., N.Y., N.Y.10016
[over...]
NOTE: THE TITLE OF THIS WORK IS THE TOTAL LENGTH IN MINUTES AND SECONDS OF ITS PERFORMANCE. AT WOODSTOCK, N.Y., AUGUST 29, 1952, THE TITLE WAS 4' 33" AND THE THREE PARTS WERE 33", 2'40", AND 1' 20". IT WAS FIRST PERFORMED BY DAVID TUDOR, PIANIST, WHO INDICATED THE BEGINNINGS OF PARTS BY CLOSING, THE ENDINGS BY OPENING, THE KEYBOARD LID. AFTER THE WOODSTOCK PERFORMANCE, A COPY IN PROPORTIONAL NOTATION WAS MADE FOR IRWIN KREMEN. IN IT THE TIMELENGTHS OF THE MOVEMENTS WERE 30", 2' 23" AND 1' 40". HOWEVER, THE WORK MAY BE PERFORMED BY ANY INSTRUMENTALIST(S) AND THE MOVEMENTS MAY LAST ANY LENGTHS OF TIME.
FOR IRWIN KREMEN
[over...]
I
TACET
II
TACET
III
TACET
[over...]
[blank]
[(...)]*
*as Brian would have said....
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
It goes like this, all handwritten in (presumably) Cage's Milliganesque scrawl:
[Title page:]
4' 33"
FOR ANY INSTRUMENT OR COMBINATION OF INSTRUMENTS
[signed] John Cage
COPYRIGHT © 1960 BY HENMAR PRESS INC., 373 PARK AVE. S., N.Y., N.Y.10016
[over...]
NOTE: THE TITLE OF THIS WORK IS THE TOTAL LENGTH IN MINUTES AND SECONDS OF ITS PERFORMANCE. AT WOODSTOCK, N.Y., AUGUST 29, 1952, THE TITLE WAS 4' 33" AND THE THREE PARTS WERE 33", 2'40", AND 1' 20". IT WAS FIRST PERFORMED BY DAVID TUDOR, PIANIST, WHO INDICATED THE BEGINNINGS OF PARTS BY CLOSING, THE ENDINGS BY OPENING, THE KEYBOARD LID. AFTER THE WOODSTOCK PERFORMANCE, A COPY IN PROPORTIONAL NOTATION WAS MADE FOR IRWIN KREMEN. IN IT THE TIMELENGTHS OF THE MOVEMENTS WERE 30", 2' 23" AND 1' 40". HOWEVER, THE WORK MAY BE PERFORMED BY ANY INSTRUMENTALIST(S) AND THE MOVEMENTS MAY LAST ANY LENGTHS OF TIME.
FOR IRWIN KREMEN
[over...]
I
TACET
II
TACET
III
TACET
[over...]
[blank]
[(...)]*
*as Brian would have said....
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
Subscribe to The Robert Swipe Show
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
An Adult-Oriented Rock Singer's Love Song...
After A Subaltern's Love Song.
Joan Armatrading,
Joan Armatrading,
In your velvet jacket
With military braiding.
Singing your mind-numbing
A.O.R.
On your poncey, roundbacked
Ovation guitar.
Joan Armatrading,
Joan Armatrading,
Indifferent to the countries
We are invading.
While sectarian militias
In Basra riot,
You pointlessly sing about
Dropping the pilot.
Joan Armatrading,
Joan Armatrading,
In Baghdad and Kabul
The troops are parading.
While you wail your songs for
Middleclass simpletons
And cohabitate with
Valerie Singleton(s)
Joan Armatrading,
Joan Armatrading,
Geo-political conflict
Evading
You sing not a word of
Iraqi invasion -
You're not in love...
....but you're open to persuasion.
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
Subscribe to The Robert Swipe Show
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
Wednesday, 15 November 2006
Rip it Up and Carry on From Where We Left Off Yesterday (Second Edition)...
As the over-long, ill-informed, over-opinionated pop-crit seems to be drying up all but the hardiest of my commentes, I'll keep on with this thread in the hope of wearing down what remains of the resistance...they can only hold out for so long...
Some excellent sections towards the end of the book - on Scritti Politti and the whole Frankie/ZTT phenomenon, of which more later. There's also a lovely passing note on John Peel and the cassette-only labels that sprang up around the DIY ethos his show fostered and showcased. Most notable of these - "the Rough Trade" of Indie Cassette labels - was the gloriously named Fuck Off Records, home of bands such as Danny & the Dressmakers (whose songs included "Come on Baby Lite my Shite" and "Going Down the Sperm Bank Four Quid a Wank"...) The pre-eminent example of this so-bad-it's-good genre has to be a C60 length tape by the Teen Vampires "which consisted of an argument between singer and bassist" released despite/because of it was, according to label owner Kif, "the worst tape I've ever heard"...If anyone has a copy, please do the decent thing....
The Scritti Politti sections are interesting, tracing Green Gartside's transformation from Gramsci-spewing anarcho-squat-guru to bland purveyor of lite-skanking, radio friendly pap (apologies to Betty - I'm in unforgiving mood today, even though I've had that bladdy "The 'sweetest' girl" song going through my bladdy head all day...) There's a highly amusing couple of paragraphs in which Reynolds paraphrases the novel-length essay Gartside wrote for his fellow band members explaining, with full reference to Marcusse, Derrida et al and deploying a whole host of other French intellectuals' theses and theorems, strategems and ruses etc., his decision to turn the group into highly commercialised major label chart fodder a million miles away from the idealistic earlier DIY collective. Well, it made me laugh. The results - a succession of increasingly banal efforts at what Reynolds describes as "the new pop", only devoid of the wit, melodic power and pop historical nous of rivals ABC - finally secured a hit with 'Wood Beez' (which always sounded like some new-fangled furniture polish to me...) before Green and the assemblage of session musicians and drum machines that then passed for Scritti Politti were eventually consigned to languish in their rightful "where are they now?" file by a grateful record buying public....well, you play with fire, you get burned....
ABC emerge from the book as one of many acts worthy of re-evaluation (I rather draw the line at Gazza Numan, mind...). Reynolds astutely pinpoints the humanizing detail of Martin Fry's pock-marked skin still visible behind the pancake make up. Similarly, his voice was just the right side of ordinary to debunk his larger than life, boys' own hero persona. The gold lame was great though, wasn't it? In fact, Reynolds seems to write most insightfully about the more accessible bands and those who, to varying degrees, broke out of the post-punk underground to achieve a broader appeal. Human League offshoots Heaven 17 are a case in point, Reynolds pinning down the ironies of the group's ambivalent attitude towards their only slightly parodic corporate-style image (they were, indeed, less a group that a production company and had a dozen album per year licensing deal inked before they'd even started working on any material, such was the efficiency of their negotiating skill and organisational acumen). As an aside, I recall seeing Glenn Gregory and Ian Craig Marsh (or was it Martyn Ware?) frequently in leafy Twickenham in the early eighties. So they must have been coining it. A far cry from the firebrand socialist environment they grew up in. "We don't need this fascist groove thang" was brilliant though, wasn't it?
It was ABC though who inadvertently brought together one of the most unlikely combinations ever to (dis)grace the pop firmament. Paul Morley and Trevor Horn met on the set of an ABC video shoot. Morley, a fierce proponent of the lush new pop embodied by the Sheffield group had already given Horn's work with Dollar a much-needed (if not actually sought) credibility boost via the NME. This heightened profile had in turn brought the ex-Buggle to the attention of the band as a producer who might be capable of providing the lushness and power they felt their songs deserved but had so far been unable to achieve in the studio. Despite having initially repelled Horn (unsurprising, as the Dollar-worshipping NME writer had tried to kiss him...) it was Morley to whom the producer turned to provide McLarenesque propagandist skills when Horn formed his own ZTT label.
Surprisingly, Morley's ideas actually sound very good on paper - to paraphrase hugely, what would pop sound like if it had been conceived of as a continuation of European Futurist and Modernist art movements, free from the taint of American rock 'n' roll? Indeed, the idea sounds so compelling that you wish the records themselves had actually conformed more to that description. As it is, Reynolds description of the Frankie sound as punk as if it had been based around Donna Summer's I feel Love rather than US garagebands, more accurately factors in the fact that there was a significant debt owed to (primarily black American) disco music. And as you read on you start to recall Wilde's famous maxim about those who can doing, those who can't become NME journalists and as such should never, ever be allowed anywhere near a recording studio or A&R department. Perhaps the logical endpoint of all the modernist speculations that the rest of the book charts, the series of singles released by Frankie in 1983-4 was the sound and spectacle of the theorist and the anal-retentive technician untrammelled and unleashed. As Reynolds suggests, not so much the end of post-punk as a portent of the manipulated and manufactured hype-up horrors of the boy bands who followed.
In the end, you almost feel for the Frankies. Their desperate lust for fame leading them to jump at ZTT's astonishingly regressive advance and royalties deal (for the publishing, a four (!?) figure advance and 5% (!!??) between the group - that on a series of records that sold several million copies in total. I'm sure Larry Parnes got Johnny Gentle a better whack than that, in real terms...Shame on you Paul Morley!) Then, once in the studio, "The Lads" who had provided the musical accompaniment for singing stars Holly Johnson and Paul Rutherford found themselves edged out of the recording process in favour of, at one time or another, the Blockheads, a panoply of samplers and sequencers, Anne Dudley and....basically, anyone who wasn't them. The sole contribution of Frankie as a collective is the (presumably heavily treated) sound of their jizz-fizz-apeing dive into a swimming pool. It is, of course, the record's high point.
The ebbing away of Frankie-mania after an unsuccessful attempt to woo the more hype-resistant American audience is a fitting end point for the book. Reynolds draws subtle parallels between the heaps of discarded Frankie merchandise, hollow and empty keepsakes when placed aside the still desirable punk memorabilia. "Ever have the feeling you've been cheated?", he asks, echoing Lydon's famous Pistols valediction, suggesting that both their band and their fans had been victims of a scam. Fortunately, schadenfreude awaited the ZZT mob. Refusing to take part in a Morley-proposed "Great Frankie Says Swindle" movie, despite the lure of a Martin Amis screenplay and Nic Roeg as director, the band insisted on recording as themselves on the follow up to Welcome to the Pleasuredome, Liverpool. Their hamfisted attempts at equalling the massive Horn/session players generated sound of the first album proved costly. 750,000 of ZZT's greedily accrued ackers went down the swanny as the album sold a dozen or so copies to the planet's last remaining Frankie completists. And Morley washed up having to sit next to Germaine Greer. That's karma for you...
The concluding after-chapter puts what came before in better context - the drabness and secondhand nature of much of the later 80s and 90s scenes (Prince and The Smiths being, as Reynolds and I concur, rare and much loved exceptions) does help strengthen his claims for the post-punk era. It might have made a better introduction, in fact. Reynolds holds up for particular scorn the claim made by Primal Scream's (in my view vastly over-appreciated) Robbie Gillespie, that rock music is a library from which artists are free to pick and choose at will. We might admire sonnets written in a different era, says Reynolds, but who writes them today? It's a fine line, I suppose, between being in thrall to one's inspirations and fuelled by them. Reynolds rather blots his copybook by not laying into Frank Ferdinand for being precisely the kind of copyists he lambasts elsewhere....but he was bound to be tired after all that typing and listening to art school wank (not to mention grammar school wank) for the last 5 years.
But seriously, I enjoyed the book much more than I thought I would - although I have to admit skipping the sections on stuff like Throbbing Gristle and industrial music. TG seemed old hat and pointlessly peripheral at the time and having been forced to 'study' them at art school (and, yes, it really *is* all wank, for those who haven't had the dubious privilege...) I rather think I've made my contribution. Although I suppose they *did* call for the canonization of Brian Jones...Reynolds is ultimately unsure as to whether the time he's spent obsessively following the twists and turns of the music that's arrived in the wake of punk might have been spent doing something more worthwhile. I guess we could all say the same though.
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
Some excellent sections towards the end of the book - on Scritti Politti and the whole Frankie/ZTT phenomenon, of which more later. There's also a lovely passing note on John Peel and the cassette-only labels that sprang up around the DIY ethos his show fostered and showcased. Most notable of these - "the Rough Trade" of Indie Cassette labels - was the gloriously named Fuck Off Records, home of bands such as Danny & the Dressmakers (whose songs included "Come on Baby Lite my Shite" and "Going Down the Sperm Bank Four Quid a Wank"...) The pre-eminent example of this so-bad-it's-good genre has to be a C60 length tape by the Teen Vampires "which consisted of an argument between singer and bassist" released despite/because of it was, according to label owner Kif, "the worst tape I've ever heard"...If anyone has a copy, please do the decent thing....
The Scritti Politti sections are interesting, tracing Green Gartside's transformation from Gramsci-spewing anarcho-squat-guru to bland purveyor of lite-skanking, radio friendly pap (apologies to Betty - I'm in unforgiving mood today, even though I've had that bladdy "The 'sweetest' girl" song going through my bladdy head all day...) There's a highly amusing couple of paragraphs in which Reynolds paraphrases the novel-length essay Gartside wrote for his fellow band members explaining, with full reference to Marcusse, Derrida et al and deploying a whole host of other French intellectuals' theses and theorems, strategems and ruses etc., his decision to turn the group into highly commercialised major label chart fodder a million miles away from the idealistic earlier DIY collective. Well, it made me laugh. The results - a succession of increasingly banal efforts at what Reynolds describes as "the new pop", only devoid of the wit, melodic power and pop historical nous of rivals ABC - finally secured a hit with 'Wood Beez' (which always sounded like some new-fangled furniture polish to me...) before Green and the assemblage of session musicians and drum machines that then passed for Scritti Politti were eventually consigned to languish in their rightful "where are they now?" file by a grateful record buying public....well, you play with fire, you get burned....
ABC emerge from the book as one of many acts worthy of re-evaluation (I rather draw the line at Gazza Numan, mind...). Reynolds astutely pinpoints the humanizing detail of Martin Fry's pock-marked skin still visible behind the pancake make up. Similarly, his voice was just the right side of ordinary to debunk his larger than life, boys' own hero persona. The gold lame was great though, wasn't it? In fact, Reynolds seems to write most insightfully about the more accessible bands and those who, to varying degrees, broke out of the post-punk underground to achieve a broader appeal. Human League offshoots Heaven 17 are a case in point, Reynolds pinning down the ironies of the group's ambivalent attitude towards their only slightly parodic corporate-style image (they were, indeed, less a group that a production company and had a dozen album per year licensing deal inked before they'd even started working on any material, such was the efficiency of their negotiating skill and organisational acumen). As an aside, I recall seeing Glenn Gregory and Ian Craig Marsh (or was it Martyn Ware?) frequently in leafy Twickenham in the early eighties. So they must have been coining it. A far cry from the firebrand socialist environment they grew up in. "We don't need this fascist groove thang" was brilliant though, wasn't it?
It was ABC though who inadvertently brought together one of the most unlikely combinations ever to (dis)grace the pop firmament. Paul Morley and Trevor Horn met on the set of an ABC video shoot. Morley, a fierce proponent of the lush new pop embodied by the Sheffield group had already given Horn's work with Dollar a much-needed (if not actually sought) credibility boost via the NME. This heightened profile had in turn brought the ex-Buggle to the attention of the band as a producer who might be capable of providing the lushness and power they felt their songs deserved but had so far been unable to achieve in the studio. Despite having initially repelled Horn (unsurprising, as the Dollar-worshipping NME writer had tried to kiss him...) it was Morley to whom the producer turned to provide McLarenesque propagandist skills when Horn formed his own ZTT label.
Surprisingly, Morley's ideas actually sound very good on paper - to paraphrase hugely, what would pop sound like if it had been conceived of as a continuation of European Futurist and Modernist art movements, free from the taint of American rock 'n' roll? Indeed, the idea sounds so compelling that you wish the records themselves had actually conformed more to that description. As it is, Reynolds description of the Frankie sound as punk as if it had been based around Donna Summer's I feel Love rather than US garagebands, more accurately factors in the fact that there was a significant debt owed to (primarily black American) disco music. And as you read on you start to recall Wilde's famous maxim about those who can doing, those who can't become NME journalists and as such should never, ever be allowed anywhere near a recording studio or A&R department. Perhaps the logical endpoint of all the modernist speculations that the rest of the book charts, the series of singles released by Frankie in 1983-4 was the sound and spectacle of the theorist and the anal-retentive technician untrammelled and unleashed. As Reynolds suggests, not so much the end of post-punk as a portent of the manipulated and manufactured hype-up horrors of the boy bands who followed.
In the end, you almost feel for the Frankies. Their desperate lust for fame leading them to jump at ZTT's astonishingly regressive advance and royalties deal (for the publishing, a four (!?) figure advance and 5% (!!??) between the group - that on a series of records that sold several million copies in total. I'm sure Larry Parnes got Johnny Gentle a better whack than that, in real terms...Shame on you Paul Morley!) Then, once in the studio, "The Lads" who had provided the musical accompaniment for singing stars Holly Johnson and Paul Rutherford found themselves edged out of the recording process in favour of, at one time or another, the Blockheads, a panoply of samplers and sequencers, Anne Dudley and....basically, anyone who wasn't them. The sole contribution of Frankie as a collective is the (presumably heavily treated) sound of their jizz-fizz-apeing dive into a swimming pool. It is, of course, the record's high point.
The ebbing away of Frankie-mania after an unsuccessful attempt to woo the more hype-resistant American audience is a fitting end point for the book. Reynolds draws subtle parallels between the heaps of discarded Frankie merchandise, hollow and empty keepsakes when placed aside the still desirable punk memorabilia. "Ever have the feeling you've been cheated?", he asks, echoing Lydon's famous Pistols valediction, suggesting that both their band and their fans had been victims of a scam. Fortunately, schadenfreude awaited the ZZT mob. Refusing to take part in a Morley-proposed "Great Frankie Says Swindle" movie, despite the lure of a Martin Amis screenplay and Nic Roeg as director, the band insisted on recording as themselves on the follow up to Welcome to the Pleasuredome, Liverpool. Their hamfisted attempts at equalling the massive Horn/session players generated sound of the first album proved costly. 750,000 of ZZT's greedily accrued ackers went down the swanny as the album sold a dozen or so copies to the planet's last remaining Frankie completists. And Morley washed up having to sit next to Germaine Greer. That's karma for you...
The concluding after-chapter puts what came before in better context - the drabness and secondhand nature of much of the later 80s and 90s scenes (Prince and The Smiths being, as Reynolds and I concur, rare and much loved exceptions) does help strengthen his claims for the post-punk era. It might have made a better introduction, in fact. Reynolds holds up for particular scorn the claim made by Primal Scream's (in my view vastly over-appreciated) Robbie Gillespie, that rock music is a library from which artists are free to pick and choose at will. We might admire sonnets written in a different era, says Reynolds, but who writes them today? It's a fine line, I suppose, between being in thrall to one's inspirations and fuelled by them. Reynolds rather blots his copybook by not laying into Frank Ferdinand for being precisely the kind of copyists he lambasts elsewhere....but he was bound to be tired after all that typing and listening to art school wank (not to mention grammar school wank) for the last 5 years.
But seriously, I enjoyed the book much more than I thought I would - although I have to admit skipping the sections on stuff like Throbbing Gristle and industrial music. TG seemed old hat and pointlessly peripheral at the time and having been forced to 'study' them at art school (and, yes, it really *is* all wank, for those who haven't had the dubious privilege...) I rather think I've made my contribution. Although I suppose they *did* call for the canonization of Brian Jones...Reynolds is ultimately unsure as to whether the time he's spent obsessively following the twists and turns of the music that's arrived in the wake of punk might have been spent doing something more worthwhile. I guess we could all say the same though.
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
Subscribe to The Robert Swipe Show
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
Tuesday, 14 November 2006
Rip it Up and Carry on From Where We Left Off Yesterday...
Still reading Simon Reynolds' Rip it Up and Start Again. Excellent chapters on the Sheffield scene and Gang of Four/Mekons/Delta 5 Leeds University scene. Reynolds observes that in highly militant lefty Sheffield (they flew a red flag above the Town Hall there for many years), rebellion actually consisted for many of *avoiding* the Clash-style urban guerilla chic that the southern softies went in for. Hence the rise of the Human League (named after a team in some daft sci-fi computer game - Oakey was well into his Dick. Philip K, that is...) et al., for whom apeing the glammy glitz of Bowie and Ferry was a far more seditious act. Indeed, my pet faves Roxy Music were enormously big in the city of steel; the leading lights of Cabaret Voltaire allegedly cornering Eno in the bogs at a lecture he was giving nearby and foisting one of their Dada-inspired home recordings onto him.
Reynolds astutely points out that the scene in Sheffield was as vibrant as it was partly because of the old Labour Council's policies - 5p to ride anywhere on the local buses, ample rehearsal/performance space opened up under its auspices for the local bands to get stoned and run riot and so on. One such was The Meatwhistle club which offered a valuable early plaform to most of the city's emerging talents sounds a most unlikely utopia: communal meals, illicit drug-taking and weekly open spots, all hosted by the city council with benign indifference. Indeed, the pre-punk scene in the city sounds anarchically akin to the Dadaist nightclub that gave CV their name. And it's here that you again begin to wish that Reynolds had structured the book slightly differently and maybe looked at his material more thematically. It's hard to credit such an atmosphere of municipal tolerance and lackadaisical nurturing in today's world of corporate blanding out and tendering out.
Interesting too to read Reynolds' assessment of the ideologically driven Gang of Four - "emasculated cock rock" (...and he's a fan too, by the way) Again, the band's worthy aspiration to eschew the sexist language of rock and desire to deconstruct romantic attachment - previously the chief subject matter of the pop song - remind one of the reason so may of these bands didn't make it into the Swipe record collection at the time. You sense that even Reynolds wants to say what one feels oneself about bands who set out to move so far from the dominant form as to be almost unrecognisable as pop music: go and right a bloody essay and let us get on with enjoying the music. And this is perhaps central to my fogeyish feeling that he's perhaps overstating the gloriousness of these years.
Reading Reynolds questioning the repressed nature of lead Gangster Andy Gill and pinpointing the conflicts between the GofF's undoubted manliness and their uneasy acceptance of the constraints of political correctness, you began to realise what was missing. Hard for a right-on, manifesto clenching collective of musoes to tackle the many complexities of the thorny subject of sexual uncertainty in an age when the whole issue of gender was highly politicised. True. But the same subject matter provides just one strand to the career of a pop genius like Morrissey. And this is probably going to lose me most of my readership, but you do start to realise that that horrible old Martin Amis/Eric Morley word is the only one that does justice to what is lacking in so many of the acts Reynolds is presenting as being the saviours of popular music: talent.
I was thinking about the long history of the popular form. If you'll excuse a brief digression into the mists of time, its chief narrative seems to me to be the secularisation of spiritual music. Soul music is gospel style applied to the pleasures and pains of prosaic urban life. The Blues descended from African spiritual music, those West African tribal incantations fusing with the missionary inculcated Christian hymns to form the field spirituals of the slave diaspora. The same transformation is evident in white country music - just listen to Hank Williams or Johnny Cash to hear the honky tonkification of white church music. The two strands fuse in Presley - that glorious plasticised angel's voice of his. In his best work, he's perched atop the apex where the secular and spritual meet and the joy of listening to him is in the tremulous uncertainty as to which way down the mountain he'll slide; the sublime or the ridiculous. And that's what records embody for me - the most materialistic device you could conceive of; uniform, mass produced and utterly worthless, only when it's done right, they're charged with such spirit, such beauty that you wonder at how the plastic could ever have contained it. That's, to be pretentious and music criticy for a second, the uber narrative here: the erosion of the spiritual by the mechanical. You can hear it playing out in the work of all the best artists: Presley, Cash, Beatles, Bowie, Ferry, Lydon, Morrissey all embrace that central contradiction and work with it. It's all very well to say you want to break with the past, but if you do, you are leaving behind one hell of a story.
And I guess that's my quibble with much of the stuff Reynolds is writing about. It's too clever by half, doesn't know it's history and ultimately just ain't up to the job because it wants to stop doing what you most need it to do. There's something ineffable about the best music, so you have to admire anyone who tries to pin it down with words,and Reynolds writes with a nerdy passion shared by all the best writers about pop. But if the answer is, in the end, a feeling, then I'll stick with Al Green's voice catching on the phlegm in his throat as he sings "How can you mend a broken heart?" Or Scotty Moore hamfistedly scuffing the beginning of the second solo on 'Hound Dog' and coming up with something unrepeatably brilliant. Sometimes that's all you need to know. And maybe this is why Reynolds wondered so intensely if he'd been wasting his time with music all these years. Maybe he had. Or just listening to the wrong stuff, perhaps.
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
Reynolds astutely points out that the scene in Sheffield was as vibrant as it was partly because of the old Labour Council's policies - 5p to ride anywhere on the local buses, ample rehearsal/performance space opened up under its auspices for the local bands to get stoned and run riot and so on. One such was The Meatwhistle club which offered a valuable early plaform to most of the city's emerging talents sounds a most unlikely utopia: communal meals, illicit drug-taking and weekly open spots, all hosted by the city council with benign indifference. Indeed, the pre-punk scene in the city sounds anarchically akin to the Dadaist nightclub that gave CV their name. And it's here that you again begin to wish that Reynolds had structured the book slightly differently and maybe looked at his material more thematically. It's hard to credit such an atmosphere of municipal tolerance and lackadaisical nurturing in today's world of corporate blanding out and tendering out.
Interesting too to read Reynolds' assessment of the ideologically driven Gang of Four - "emasculated cock rock" (...and he's a fan too, by the way) Again, the band's worthy aspiration to eschew the sexist language of rock and desire to deconstruct romantic attachment - previously the chief subject matter of the pop song - remind one of the reason so may of these bands didn't make it into the Swipe record collection at the time. You sense that even Reynolds wants to say what one feels oneself about bands who set out to move so far from the dominant form as to be almost unrecognisable as pop music: go and right a bloody essay and let us get on with enjoying the music. And this is perhaps central to my fogeyish feeling that he's perhaps overstating the gloriousness of these years.
Reading Reynolds questioning the repressed nature of lead Gangster Andy Gill and pinpointing the conflicts between the GofF's undoubted manliness and their uneasy acceptance of the constraints of political correctness, you began to realise what was missing. Hard for a right-on, manifesto clenching collective of musoes to tackle the many complexities of the thorny subject of sexual uncertainty in an age when the whole issue of gender was highly politicised. True. But the same subject matter provides just one strand to the career of a pop genius like Morrissey. And this is probably going to lose me most of my readership, but you do start to realise that that horrible old Martin Amis/Eric Morley word is the only one that does justice to what is lacking in so many of the acts Reynolds is presenting as being the saviours of popular music: talent.
I was thinking about the long history of the popular form. If you'll excuse a brief digression into the mists of time, its chief narrative seems to me to be the secularisation of spiritual music. Soul music is gospel style applied to the pleasures and pains of prosaic urban life. The Blues descended from African spiritual music, those West African tribal incantations fusing with the missionary inculcated Christian hymns to form the field spirituals of the slave diaspora. The same transformation is evident in white country music - just listen to Hank Williams or Johnny Cash to hear the honky tonkification of white church music. The two strands fuse in Presley - that glorious plasticised angel's voice of his. In his best work, he's perched atop the apex where the secular and spritual meet and the joy of listening to him is in the tremulous uncertainty as to which way down the mountain he'll slide; the sublime or the ridiculous. And that's what records embody for me - the most materialistic device you could conceive of; uniform, mass produced and utterly worthless, only when it's done right, they're charged with such spirit, such beauty that you wonder at how the plastic could ever have contained it. That's, to be pretentious and music criticy for a second, the uber narrative here: the erosion of the spiritual by the mechanical. You can hear it playing out in the work of all the best artists: Presley, Cash, Beatles, Bowie, Ferry, Lydon, Morrissey all embrace that central contradiction and work with it. It's all very well to say you want to break with the past, but if you do, you are leaving behind one hell of a story.
And I guess that's my quibble with much of the stuff Reynolds is writing about. It's too clever by half, doesn't know it's history and ultimately just ain't up to the job because it wants to stop doing what you most need it to do. There's something ineffable about the best music, so you have to admire anyone who tries to pin it down with words,and Reynolds writes with a nerdy passion shared by all the best writers about pop. But if the answer is, in the end, a feeling, then I'll stick with Al Green's voice catching on the phlegm in his throat as he sings "How can you mend a broken heart?" Or Scotty Moore hamfistedly scuffing the beginning of the second solo on 'Hound Dog' and coming up with something unrepeatably brilliant. Sometimes that's all you need to know. And maybe this is why Reynolds wondered so intensely if he'd been wasting his time with music all these years. Maybe he had. Or just listening to the wrong stuff, perhaps.
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
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Monday, 13 November 2006
Rip it Up and Start Again...
Been reading Simon "Shirty Gertie from Number 30." Reynolds' overview of the post-punk scene.* Yeah, it's alright - much less theoretical than I'd expected and in a disarming introduction he admits that, like me, he pretty much missed out on the punk scene at the time, finding his fanaticism for pop music stirred more by the diverse explosion of music that followed in the aftermath of the Pistols' demise. The book is, he admits, an attempt to return to the source of a lifetime devoted to the study of pop, one brought about by the familiar bout of soul-searching that I'm sure many of my readers have gone through, mid-life. Rip it Up and Start again: or, why have I wasted my life on a whole bunch of plastic?? might have made a nice subtitle now I think of it.
However, such subjectivity is both blessing and curse - especially if you were expecting (as I was) an overview of the period (1978-84) that could compare with the scope achieved by Dave Marsh, for instance, in his excellent "my favourite 1000 records of all time" exercise, The Heart and Soul of Rock & Pop. Because it seems to be based on a very personal view, Rip it Up does read very well and Reynolds communicates with the vigour and eagerness of a fan (the section on Gary Numan, for one, provoking a pleasant pang of nostalgia in this reader). It's not remotely dry, which I'd assumed it would be, and - based on my so far having read only the sections based on stuff I know myself - he does actually appear to have listened to many of the records. Indeed, even a cursory scan of the contents makes it hard to argue with his assertion that the years 1978-84 represent something of a golden era for adventurous popular music. Only Reynolds goes so far as to suggest that it rivals (and possibly even eclipses) the era between 1965-67 commonly regarded as the high watermark of ambitious pop music. And it's here that the subjective nature of Reynolds' approach begins to undermine his thesis.
Before the first chapter proper, one is already scratching one's head as Reynolds describes the "failure" of punk in the eyes of the post-punk movement. Failure to do what, exactly? Flipping back a few pages to see exactly what I'd missed, I realise that there's no real delineation of what the punk movement was in the first place - this, we are told is a subject fully covered elsewhere (Jon Savage's England's Dreaming probably representing the key text. Must read that one day, but Greil Marcus is so good on the Pistols in Lipstick Traces that I so far haven't felt the loss). Punk, we're told, was stylistically purely and simply a return to rock and roll basics, a movement aimed at overthrowing the hegemony of the major labels and returning ver music to ver kids, innit. But were there *really* any such clearly defined ojectives mapped out to the extent that one could sensibly construct an analysis of how successfully punk had performed in realising them?
Whilst this quibble might seem nitpicking (and it certainly doesn't undermine Reynolds' argument that what followed punk is perhaps far more worthy of consideration than the initial ground levelling of the initial '76/'77 explosion) the lack of an objective framework to support his assertion that the period was to all intents and purposes the finest era in the history of pop music becomes harder to swallow. Mightn't anyone make the same case for their own era of choice or, as in Reynolds case) that when they felt closest to the music as it came out, by the simple expedient of writing several hundred pages approving every other record that came out during whichever points on the calendar? OK, not exactly simple, but eminently do-able, given the time and inclination. There are also omissions - quite serious in my view - that, whilst they don't undermine his basic tenet (indeed, their inclusion could only have strengthened it) they reveal the way that Reynolds has rather skewed the picture being painted to suit his own ends, rather than allowing the evidence to shine through.
For instance, the index cites 5 references to Blondie, all of them turn out to be no more than passing. Perhaps, as original denizens of the CBGB/Max's Kansas City NYC scene they, like the Ramones, are considered beyond Reynolds' remit (although Talking Heads, who emerged from the same scene and are considered - quite rightly - to be deserving of a lengthy and detailed analysis). But given that the B52s, for instance, warrant a significant chunk of a chapter devoted to New York proto-disco, the decision starts to look a bit barmy - especially given the global success Blondie achieved with records that were, in my view, as exciting, ethereal and innovative as any of the outright pop music Reynolds writes about in the second section of the book. Odd then that records as sublime (and more pertinently, innovative, influential and germaine to Reynolds' argument) as 'Heart of Glass' and 'Rapture' don't warrant even a passing mention. Especially strange given his approval elsewhere of groups like the Pop Group and PiL incorporating dance and disco elements in their music.
So, as you read one whistlestop career precis after another - Magazine, have several high foreheaded members, boldly reintroduce prog keyboards but then Devoto overdoes the pancake on TOTP and scares off most of Western Europe....Talking Heads make some of the finest music ever made, Tina Weymouth invents slap bass and has a groovy Jean Seberg rug re-think, they initially all get on with with Brian Eno before David & Brian gett too pally and piss off the the other three and they don't use him as a producer any more.... and so on - without ever feeling that the thesis outlined in the introduction bears all that much relation to the words on the page. There's a huge wealth of excellent pop trivia - e.g. art poseur in extremis David Sylvian's dad was a municipal ratcatcher.... - and some great quotes "it's like seeing a vision of 1980": Bowie taliking about the Human League.......in 1979.
But, good and (broadly speaking) thorough as it is, I was expecting a bit more analysis and rigour. For instance, Thatcherism and The Bomb feature, but as in Simon Goddard's The Songs That Saved Your Life, they seem marginal diversions from the authors' own myth-spinning when in fact they were the central facts of the period as it was lived in - and it's a shocking distortion - especially from a supposed 'Marxist theorist' to downplay this. Indeed, there's maybe an argument that an analysis of the context of the period being discussed might have made for a more useful introduction to the pop music material, encomappsing as Reynolds suggests it did, the death of the old progressive liberalism and the rise of a new and virulent conservatism that we are still living with the effects of today. And, as I recall, the best music of the era struck a chord precisely because of it's relevance to those issues - The Smiths' 'Stretch out and Wait', The Jam's 'Going Underground', Kate Bush's 'Breathing' - those last 2 examples both number one singles, incidentally. Arguably, there's a better book than this and Goddard's Smiths effort, perhaps, in examining what the artists of the time missed - namely, the wholesale retrenchment of the post war social progress model. For me, only the Smiths music from that era seems to articulate the sense of loss. And in any case, if punk did 'fail' and we ended up with with Sham '69 and the Cockney Rejects, surely the same could be argued about post-punk because it led to U2, Simple Minds and.....apologies to more sensitive and easily nauseated readers, Frank Ferdinand.
Quibbles aside, I'd recommend a look at the Reynolds book but, being an old fogey, would push younger readers in the direction of the rock writing of Charles Shaar Murray, Nick Kent, Ian "Macca" MacDonald and Greil Marcus, all of whom do either the subjective/passionate or the analytical/boffin brainbox bit a bit more convincingly.
In other rock-related news, my Christmas list has been sorted, what with the announcement of a new 3 CD, 95-page booklet Tom Waits release. And finally: I fell asleep in the middle of the Pete Doherty Arena documentary. As is so often the case, the best bit was Eno's opening theme music.
Oh, and Paul Morley is a pretentious twat.
*see earlier post where he hissy fitted at our dear friend Timster over a trifling criticism of the American edition of the book.
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
However, such subjectivity is both blessing and curse - especially if you were expecting (as I was) an overview of the period (1978-84) that could compare with the scope achieved by Dave Marsh, for instance, in his excellent "my favourite 1000 records of all time" exercise, The Heart and Soul of Rock & Pop. Because it seems to be based on a very personal view, Rip it Up does read very well and Reynolds communicates with the vigour and eagerness of a fan (the section on Gary Numan, for one, provoking a pleasant pang of nostalgia in this reader). It's not remotely dry, which I'd assumed it would be, and - based on my so far having read only the sections based on stuff I know myself - he does actually appear to have listened to many of the records. Indeed, even a cursory scan of the contents makes it hard to argue with his assertion that the years 1978-84 represent something of a golden era for adventurous popular music. Only Reynolds goes so far as to suggest that it rivals (and possibly even eclipses) the era between 1965-67 commonly regarded as the high watermark of ambitious pop music. And it's here that the subjective nature of Reynolds' approach begins to undermine his thesis.
Before the first chapter proper, one is already scratching one's head as Reynolds describes the "failure" of punk in the eyes of the post-punk movement. Failure to do what, exactly? Flipping back a few pages to see exactly what I'd missed, I realise that there's no real delineation of what the punk movement was in the first place - this, we are told is a subject fully covered elsewhere (Jon Savage's England's Dreaming probably representing the key text. Must read that one day, but Greil Marcus is so good on the Pistols in Lipstick Traces that I so far haven't felt the loss). Punk, we're told, was stylistically purely and simply a return to rock and roll basics, a movement aimed at overthrowing the hegemony of the major labels and returning ver music to ver kids, innit. But were there *really* any such clearly defined ojectives mapped out to the extent that one could sensibly construct an analysis of how successfully punk had performed in realising them?
Whilst this quibble might seem nitpicking (and it certainly doesn't undermine Reynolds' argument that what followed punk is perhaps far more worthy of consideration than the initial ground levelling of the initial '76/'77 explosion) the lack of an objective framework to support his assertion that the period was to all intents and purposes the finest era in the history of pop music becomes harder to swallow. Mightn't anyone make the same case for their own era of choice or, as in Reynolds case) that when they felt closest to the music as it came out, by the simple expedient of writing several hundred pages approving every other record that came out during whichever points on the calendar? OK, not exactly simple, but eminently do-able, given the time and inclination. There are also omissions - quite serious in my view - that, whilst they don't undermine his basic tenet (indeed, their inclusion could only have strengthened it) they reveal the way that Reynolds has rather skewed the picture being painted to suit his own ends, rather than allowing the evidence to shine through.
For instance, the index cites 5 references to Blondie, all of them turn out to be no more than passing. Perhaps, as original denizens of the CBGB/Max's Kansas City NYC scene they, like the Ramones, are considered beyond Reynolds' remit (although Talking Heads, who emerged from the same scene and are considered - quite rightly - to be deserving of a lengthy and detailed analysis). But given that the B52s, for instance, warrant a significant chunk of a chapter devoted to New York proto-disco, the decision starts to look a bit barmy - especially given the global success Blondie achieved with records that were, in my view, as exciting, ethereal and innovative as any of the outright pop music Reynolds writes about in the second section of the book. Odd then that records as sublime (and more pertinently, innovative, influential and germaine to Reynolds' argument) as 'Heart of Glass' and 'Rapture' don't warrant even a passing mention. Especially strange given his approval elsewhere of groups like the Pop Group and PiL incorporating dance and disco elements in their music.
So, as you read one whistlestop career precis after another - Magazine, have several high foreheaded members, boldly reintroduce prog keyboards but then Devoto overdoes the pancake on TOTP and scares off most of Western Europe....Talking Heads make some of the finest music ever made, Tina Weymouth invents slap bass and has a groovy Jean Seberg rug re-think, they initially all get on with with Brian Eno before David & Brian gett too pally and piss off the the other three and they don't use him as a producer any more.... and so on - without ever feeling that the thesis outlined in the introduction bears all that much relation to the words on the page. There's a huge wealth of excellent pop trivia - e.g. art poseur in extremis David Sylvian's dad was a municipal ratcatcher.... - and some great quotes "it's like seeing a vision of 1980": Bowie taliking about the Human League.......in 1979.
But, good and (broadly speaking) thorough as it is, I was expecting a bit more analysis and rigour. For instance, Thatcherism and The Bomb feature, but as in Simon Goddard's The Songs That Saved Your Life, they seem marginal diversions from the authors' own myth-spinning when in fact they were the central facts of the period as it was lived in - and it's a shocking distortion - especially from a supposed 'Marxist theorist' to downplay this. Indeed, there's maybe an argument that an analysis of the context of the period being discussed might have made for a more useful introduction to the pop music material, encomappsing as Reynolds suggests it did, the death of the old progressive liberalism and the rise of a new and virulent conservatism that we are still living with the effects of today. And, as I recall, the best music of the era struck a chord precisely because of it's relevance to those issues - The Smiths' 'Stretch out and Wait', The Jam's 'Going Underground', Kate Bush's 'Breathing' - those last 2 examples both number one singles, incidentally. Arguably, there's a better book than this and Goddard's Smiths effort, perhaps, in examining what the artists of the time missed - namely, the wholesale retrenchment of the post war social progress model. For me, only the Smiths music from that era seems to articulate the sense of loss. And in any case, if punk did 'fail' and we ended up with with Sham '69 and the Cockney Rejects, surely the same could be argued about post-punk because it led to U2, Simple Minds and.....apologies to more sensitive and easily nauseated readers, Frank Ferdinand.
Quibbles aside, I'd recommend a look at the Reynolds book but, being an old fogey, would push younger readers in the direction of the rock writing of Charles Shaar Murray, Nick Kent, Ian "Macca" MacDonald and Greil Marcus, all of whom do either the subjective/passionate or the analytical/boffin brainbox bit a bit more convincingly.
In other rock-related news, my Christmas list has been sorted, what with the announcement of a new 3 CD, 95-page booklet Tom Waits release. And finally: I fell asleep in the middle of the Pete Doherty Arena documentary. As is so often the case, the best bit was Eno's opening theme music.
Oh, and Paul Morley is a pretentious twat.
*see earlier post where he hissy fitted at our dear friend Timster over a trifling criticism of the American edition of the book.
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
Subscribe to The Robert Swipe Show
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
Thursday, 9 November 2006
God is in the I-Pod (Part 587)...
I'm re-reading The People's Music for the umpteenth time on the way into work, light as sharp and crystal clear as Ian MacDonald's prose streaming in from the slow rising sun. His examination of the legacy of Nick Drake is a highly revealing masterpiece of proselytsising for a much-loved artist. Drake's transient and delicate songs obviously spoke very profoundly to the sensitive and depressive MacDonald (he eventually took his own life too, so it's quite haunting to read his descriptions of the troubled singer-songwriter's depression and untimely death). In attempting to understand Drake's enormous popularity to a nineties audience, MacDonald beautifully describes the magical, transcendental feeling he himself has for nature when he is working in his countryside home. It's a similar gulf, he argues, between such contemplative calm and the hustle and bustle of contemporary life (with its "loud, shiny, mechanised musical ethos of shallow excitement; glamour and clamour") as it is from our materialistic, rational culture and that which produced Drake's quiet, spiritual muse.
The essay that gives the volume its title posits the familiar old fogey's refrain: pop music has been in serial decline since its 1965-67 heyday. It's a boring and elitist position, I know, but you can't shrug off someone with MacDonald's breadth of subject knowledge. His logic is simple - as in other fields of creative endeavour, it's become easier and easier for anyone, regardless of talent, to make popular music and to be heard. This has inevitably led to a diminution in the quality of what has been produced. MacDonald highlights several factors for this decline. The general slide in standards since the war (and, tellingly, The Bomb) has largely been brought about by the crumbling of the rigid old order of deference. In a more visual culture, people no longer listen as intently as they did. The sixties was an optimistic era in which artists were always looking futureward, demanding new sounds, new techniques, whereas at the time of MacDonald's writing, the popular culture was in the clutches of a cabal of list-making, backward looking children of the 70s intent upon justifying their own youth by constantly rehashing their "so bad it's good" nostalgia. Oh, and punk and sequencers have played their part too.
It's hard to disagree with the thrust of MacDonald's assessment. He cites the biography test: the big names of jazz, for example, whose lives and work warrant hefty biographical tomes rolls off like a rote-learned litany - Armstrong, Ellington, Parker, Davis, Coltrane...and so on. Who might we add from today? Wynton Marsalis? The field of pop would suffer similarly, the argument goes - and, apologies to Tim, but will the life and works of Thom Yorke or Frank Ferdinand engross in the same way that those of (off the top of head) Iggy Pop, Bryan Ferry, David Bowie, John Lennon, Brian Wilson, Janis Joplin, Pete Townshend (and many, many more) do? Individualism has never been more prized in our culture, MacDonald goes on, and yet, perversely, with less to kick out against, that sense of individualism is shallower than it was in the era when to follow one's own path was more of a threat to the prevailing social order, and thus less encouraged. As our individual development encounters fewer barriers, we find ourselves more readily - but this ease comes at a cost; with fewer character building hurdles placed in our way, we inevitably develop less character. Or so the logic goes. The depth of our culture suffers accordingly. The weight of previous achievement stifles the new and there are fewer artists commanding enough to punch with the weight of a Dylan or a Lennon; because, quite simply, they just don't make 'em like that anymore...
Reading this, I start thinking about transcendence and time and my own songwriting, which has always owed a massive debt to what came before. MacDonald highlights Bowie and Ferry's ability to create futurism from an ironic nostalgia and I start thinking wouldn't it be great if you could write a sci-fi country & western song? And then I realise that Bowie's already done it. And in the split second it takes me to recall the title, the clip clop, click guitars of the opening of 'Drive in Saturday' come up on my shuffle-set i-Pod, as if summoned up telekinetically from another realm.
Spooky, huh?
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
The essay that gives the volume its title posits the familiar old fogey's refrain: pop music has been in serial decline since its 1965-67 heyday. It's a boring and elitist position, I know, but you can't shrug off someone with MacDonald's breadth of subject knowledge. His logic is simple - as in other fields of creative endeavour, it's become easier and easier for anyone, regardless of talent, to make popular music and to be heard. This has inevitably led to a diminution in the quality of what has been produced. MacDonald highlights several factors for this decline. The general slide in standards since the war (and, tellingly, The Bomb) has largely been brought about by the crumbling of the rigid old order of deference. In a more visual culture, people no longer listen as intently as they did. The sixties was an optimistic era in which artists were always looking futureward, demanding new sounds, new techniques, whereas at the time of MacDonald's writing, the popular culture was in the clutches of a cabal of list-making, backward looking children of the 70s intent upon justifying their own youth by constantly rehashing their "so bad it's good" nostalgia. Oh, and punk and sequencers have played their part too.
It's hard to disagree with the thrust of MacDonald's assessment. He cites the biography test: the big names of jazz, for example, whose lives and work warrant hefty biographical tomes rolls off like a rote-learned litany - Armstrong, Ellington, Parker, Davis, Coltrane...and so on. Who might we add from today? Wynton Marsalis? The field of pop would suffer similarly, the argument goes - and, apologies to Tim, but will the life and works of Thom Yorke or Frank Ferdinand engross in the same way that those of (off the top of head) Iggy Pop, Bryan Ferry, David Bowie, John Lennon, Brian Wilson, Janis Joplin, Pete Townshend (and many, many more) do? Individualism has never been more prized in our culture, MacDonald goes on, and yet, perversely, with less to kick out against, that sense of individualism is shallower than it was in the era when to follow one's own path was more of a threat to the prevailing social order, and thus less encouraged. As our individual development encounters fewer barriers, we find ourselves more readily - but this ease comes at a cost; with fewer character building hurdles placed in our way, we inevitably develop less character. Or so the logic goes. The depth of our culture suffers accordingly. The weight of previous achievement stifles the new and there are fewer artists commanding enough to punch with the weight of a Dylan or a Lennon; because, quite simply, they just don't make 'em like that anymore...
Reading this, I start thinking about transcendence and time and my own songwriting, which has always owed a massive debt to what came before. MacDonald highlights Bowie and Ferry's ability to create futurism from an ironic nostalgia and I start thinking wouldn't it be great if you could write a sci-fi country & western song? And then I realise that Bowie's already done it. And in the split second it takes me to recall the title, the clip clop, click guitars of the opening of 'Drive in Saturday' come up on my shuffle-set i-Pod, as if summoned up telekinetically from another realm.
Spooky, huh?
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
Subscribe to The Robert Swipe Show
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
Tuesday, 7 November 2006
Gimme Shelter...
I finally get round to re-watching Gimme Shelter, the Maysles Brothers document of the Stones 1969 US tour. It's a downbeat companion to the bros' 1964 film of the Beatles first visit, the two films forming bittersweet bookends to that brief golden epoch of British influence on global popular culture. It's an astonishing piece of verite and one which anyone wishing to make documentaries regardless of the subject matter ought to be compelled to watch before emabarking on their prospective careers. It sets a tough benchmark. For those who don't know the story, the Stones agreed to play a free concert just outside San Fransisco. 200,000 or so young people made a beeline to the Altamont Speedway to see the Stones, the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and The Burritos perform in a spirit of love and peace. Bad acid, bad vibes and the violent crowd control methods deployed by the Hells Angels chapter who had been charged with providing "security" for the acts, ended in a frenzy of violence during which a gun wielding youth, Meredith Hunter, was stabbed by one of the Angels as the Stones played 'Sympathy for the Devil'.
The film cleverly cuts between footage of the Stones tour leading up to that awful climactic denouement with that of the downcast group reviewing the events in the cutting room over the 8 weeks it took to painstakingly put the film together. If ever a film were made in the cutting room, this is it - not just because the marathon splicing job so evidently succeeded in draining every drop of resonance and power from the filmstock, but because the nightmarish aftermath of the horrific events is played out there on the drawn and stunned faces of the Stones themselves. Jagger appears to have grown up overnight - visibly shaken and self-recriminating, he's a far cry from the cock-sure, Uncle Sam-hatted dandy of the film's early concert footage. It's sobering and telling to see him mutter "rubbish" at his own press conference banalities in the cold light of having witnessed (instigated, even) the sorry unfolding of the Altamont tragedy. There was an alleged contract put out on him after he disputed the Hells' Angels' account of the story. He looks what he was, in over his head.
But, as so often on stage and record, it's Charlie Watts, a young William Hartnel playing a Sioux Indian, who is the unacknowledged star of the show. His grave face, an irked near smile of disbelief playing about his lips as one of the Hells Angels explains the carnage as part of a radio phone played back in the cutting room. People high on drugs got too close to their motorbikes. "Well done", Watts deadpans after the biker's lurid account of the revenge meted out. It's the most moving part of the film. Watts is such a mensch.
The climax at Altamont is hideously riveting. The air of menace is tangible even before the Angels arrive - Jagger is punched in the face but seems so medicated that it barely registers. There's an end of the vacation atmosphere that anyone who loves the Sixties and all the progressive aspirations it represents will probably find very sad. Jagger's cries of "sisters and brothers" and "cool it people" squirt from the stage like a bottle of Evian trying to douse a forest fire as the Angels wade into the night-darkened crowd. He seems like an ineffectual master presented with an unruly classroom. Even Richards' more strident petulance - if you cats don't pack it in, we ain't playing - cuts little ice. We watch the horrible slaying of Hunter in slo-mo and share the Stones' shock at the cold facts as they register them once more. He had a gun. And then they stabbed him. He had a gun. And then they stabbed him.
As Ian MacDonald points out in The People's Music, in a way, the Stones had it coming. Their set - 'Sympathy', 'Midnight Rambler', 'Street Fighting Man'et al - "had exacerbation built into it". The irony of the Stones desultory vamp through the "plain nasty" "misogyny" of 'Under my Thumb' suggests to MacDonald the playing out of a long accruing bad karma. The first time I watched the movie, the most poignant moment was the footage at the end of the disconsolate festival goers mooching away from the event as if they're walking out of the glow of the Sixties into the cold reality of the Seventies. It's still effective. But this time around I was less sad for them than relieved.
There's excellent and more pleasant footage elsewhere though - most notably of the Stones listening to playbacks during the sublime session at the legendary Muscle Shoals studio. Keith Richards is caught lying prone, completely transported as he mouths along to the words of 'Wild Horses'. There's more poignancy as the band amble like Beatle cartoons into a Holiday Inn after the Muscle Shoals sessions. They look a band on a high, filled with the buzz of the music and being in a band and being on tour, Jagger and Richards as solid as a rock. So young, and oblivious to what fate had in wait just around the corner.
Article about the film here...
Right, next up: rewatching Godard's Sympathy for the Devil. I got the freebie DVD from the Times the weekend we moved house - still unwatched....
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
The film cleverly cuts between footage of the Stones tour leading up to that awful climactic denouement with that of the downcast group reviewing the events in the cutting room over the 8 weeks it took to painstakingly put the film together. If ever a film were made in the cutting room, this is it - not just because the marathon splicing job so evidently succeeded in draining every drop of resonance and power from the filmstock, but because the nightmarish aftermath of the horrific events is played out there on the drawn and stunned faces of the Stones themselves. Jagger appears to have grown up overnight - visibly shaken and self-recriminating, he's a far cry from the cock-sure, Uncle Sam-hatted dandy of the film's early concert footage. It's sobering and telling to see him mutter "rubbish" at his own press conference banalities in the cold light of having witnessed (instigated, even) the sorry unfolding of the Altamont tragedy. There was an alleged contract put out on him after he disputed the Hells' Angels' account of the story. He looks what he was, in over his head.
But, as so often on stage and record, it's Charlie Watts, a young William Hartnel playing a Sioux Indian, who is the unacknowledged star of the show. His grave face, an irked near smile of disbelief playing about his lips as one of the Hells Angels explains the carnage as part of a radio phone played back in the cutting room. People high on drugs got too close to their motorbikes. "Well done", Watts deadpans after the biker's lurid account of the revenge meted out. It's the most moving part of the film. Watts is such a mensch.
The climax at Altamont is hideously riveting. The air of menace is tangible even before the Angels arrive - Jagger is punched in the face but seems so medicated that it barely registers. There's an end of the vacation atmosphere that anyone who loves the Sixties and all the progressive aspirations it represents will probably find very sad. Jagger's cries of "sisters and brothers" and "cool it people" squirt from the stage like a bottle of Evian trying to douse a forest fire as the Angels wade into the night-darkened crowd. He seems like an ineffectual master presented with an unruly classroom. Even Richards' more strident petulance - if you cats don't pack it in, we ain't playing - cuts little ice. We watch the horrible slaying of Hunter in slo-mo and share the Stones' shock at the cold facts as they register them once more. He had a gun. And then they stabbed him. He had a gun. And then they stabbed him.
As Ian MacDonald points out in The People's Music, in a way, the Stones had it coming. Their set - 'Sympathy', 'Midnight Rambler', 'Street Fighting Man'et al - "had exacerbation built into it". The irony of the Stones desultory vamp through the "plain nasty" "misogyny" of 'Under my Thumb' suggests to MacDonald the playing out of a long accruing bad karma. The first time I watched the movie, the most poignant moment was the footage at the end of the disconsolate festival goers mooching away from the event as if they're walking out of the glow of the Sixties into the cold reality of the Seventies. It's still effective. But this time around I was less sad for them than relieved.
There's excellent and more pleasant footage elsewhere though - most notably of the Stones listening to playbacks during the sublime session at the legendary Muscle Shoals studio. Keith Richards is caught lying prone, completely transported as he mouths along to the words of 'Wild Horses'. There's more poignancy as the band amble like Beatle cartoons into a Holiday Inn after the Muscle Shoals sessions. They look a band on a high, filled with the buzz of the music and being in a band and being on tour, Jagger and Richards as solid as a rock. So young, and oblivious to what fate had in wait just around the corner.
Article about the film here...
Right, next up: rewatching Godard's Sympathy for the Devil. I got the freebie DVD from the Times the weekend we moved house - still unwatched....
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
Subscribe to The Robert Swipe Show
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
Monday, 6 November 2006
Six Words I Never Thought I'd Hear Myself Say...
...to my mate Des, whilst enduring the Arsenal's pitiful capitulation to West Ham yesterday:
"Buy the new Amy Winehouse album!"
And not because she looked as sassy as a Ronette fresh from a mussed-hair bedroom-romp on the Jools Holland show either (although she did, and I suppose it does no harm...) No, it's an excellent LP. I had to revise my opinion of La Winehouse (on first coming across her, I thought someone had rather carelessly missed the first 'h' out of her name) considerably, assuming that the massive hype generated by her first LP and her having been to one of those awful pop college places all but guaranteed her 15 minutes of fame would quickly fade back to rightful obscurity and Tesco night shifts once she stood exposed as the talentless fraudster I suspected her to be. Well, stap me vitals with a chrome pitchfork if I haven't had to eat shovels full of humble pie and recant copiously and publicly now that her true pop genius (and, to quote Brian Epstein) not unconsiderable personal charms have been revealed. It all started when I heard the first few seconds of Back to Black's opener, the retro-soul stomper, 'Rehab'. "Ah", I sighed, "an instant classic. Someone with an enormous depth of talent is behind this. What an excellent record... I know my onions etc. etc." Of course, there was no turning back when the culprit was revealed as none other than my erstwhile pop nemesis. I know when I'm beaten...
Anyroad, it really is a cracking album. Someone (and I suspect it is AW herself -that's Amy Winehouse, not Arsene "gerroff Pardew" Wenger, btw....) has been listening to an awful lot of very fine records. The opener namechecks Ray Charles and Donny Hathaway for a kick off, whilst every succeeding track bears echoes of at least one classic. In a fine example, the title track starts like The Supremes' 'Baby Love' and fades out like a gloomily appropriate Shadow Morton production. I heard echoes of Billy Stewart's 'I do Love You', and Brook Benton's 'A Rainy Night in Georgia' too, but with the possible exception of the track which utilises the backing track of 'Ain't no Mountain High Enough' wholesale, every reference and sly nod is made for dramatic effect rather than to tick a box. The beautifully understated 'Love is a Losing Game', brilliantly uses a glass vocal booth effect reminiscent of Dusty in Memphis to lend Winehouse's mournful lead a nose-pressed-up-against-the-shop-window little girl lost fragility that notches the track up from the realm of the stately to that of the sublime.
But for all that, it's no pointless re-hash the classics exercise, there's substance here - much of it provided by the subject matter - Winehouse's struggle with alcohol dependency and candidly detailed amorata. But it's the voice that's really grown up. There's an assurance to many of her performances and a freedom from the usual, as Elvis Costello once described them, soul cliches of much contemporary R&B vocal styling. Indeed for someone like me, an old fogey who equates those two letters more with Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin than Usher and Christine Aquillera et al., it's a treat to hear such 'old-fashioned' production techniques and song structures put to such expressive use. There's a lack of fuss here that suggests that she may even go on to become more yet than the very good, very cool stylist she already is. Even those Billie Hollidayisms she hasn't been able to shed have a loving exactitude that is forgiveable given the focus she shows elsewhere. "What kind of fuckery is this?" Amy asks. I dunno love, but it sure sounds good.
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
"Buy the new Amy Winehouse album!"
And not because she looked as sassy as a Ronette fresh from a mussed-hair bedroom-romp on the Jools Holland show either (although she did, and I suppose it does no harm...) No, it's an excellent LP. I had to revise my opinion of La Winehouse (on first coming across her, I thought someone had rather carelessly missed the first 'h' out of her name) considerably, assuming that the massive hype generated by her first LP and her having been to one of those awful pop college places all but guaranteed her 15 minutes of fame would quickly fade back to rightful obscurity and Tesco night shifts once she stood exposed as the talentless fraudster I suspected her to be. Well, stap me vitals with a chrome pitchfork if I haven't had to eat shovels full of humble pie and recant copiously and publicly now that her true pop genius (and, to quote Brian Epstein) not unconsiderable personal charms have been revealed. It all started when I heard the first few seconds of Back to Black's opener, the retro-soul stomper, 'Rehab'. "Ah", I sighed, "an instant classic. Someone with an enormous depth of talent is behind this. What an excellent record... I know my onions etc. etc." Of course, there was no turning back when the culprit was revealed as none other than my erstwhile pop nemesis. I know when I'm beaten...
Anyroad, it really is a cracking album. Someone (and I suspect it is AW herself -that's Amy Winehouse, not Arsene "gerroff Pardew" Wenger, btw....) has been listening to an awful lot of very fine records. The opener namechecks Ray Charles and Donny Hathaway for a kick off, whilst every succeeding track bears echoes of at least one classic. In a fine example, the title track starts like The Supremes' 'Baby Love' and fades out like a gloomily appropriate Shadow Morton production. I heard echoes of Billy Stewart's 'I do Love You', and Brook Benton's 'A Rainy Night in Georgia' too, but with the possible exception of the track which utilises the backing track of 'Ain't no Mountain High Enough' wholesale, every reference and sly nod is made for dramatic effect rather than to tick a box. The beautifully understated 'Love is a Losing Game', brilliantly uses a glass vocal booth effect reminiscent of Dusty in Memphis to lend Winehouse's mournful lead a nose-pressed-up-against-the-shop-window little girl lost fragility that notches the track up from the realm of the stately to that of the sublime.
But for all that, it's no pointless re-hash the classics exercise, there's substance here - much of it provided by the subject matter - Winehouse's struggle with alcohol dependency and candidly detailed amorata. But it's the voice that's really grown up. There's an assurance to many of her performances and a freedom from the usual, as Elvis Costello once described them, soul cliches of much contemporary R&B vocal styling. Indeed for someone like me, an old fogey who equates those two letters more with Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin than Usher and Christine Aquillera et al., it's a treat to hear such 'old-fashioned' production techniques and song structures put to such expressive use. There's a lack of fuss here that suggests that she may even go on to become more yet than the very good, very cool stylist she already is. Even those Billie Hollidayisms she hasn't been able to shed have a loving exactitude that is forgiveable given the focus she shows elsewhere. "What kind of fuckery is this?" Amy asks. I dunno love, but it sure sounds good.
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
Subscribe to The Robert Swipe Show
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
Friday, 3 November 2006
Thursday, 2 November 2006
No Country For Old Men...
Just finished Cormac McCarthy's neo-Western thriller No Country for Old Men. There's no doubting the brilliance of the writing - although the clipped, transparent Hemingway-esque prose is almost laconic to the point of satire, and the carnage meted out by and pursuing the book's remorseless, chain-killing anti-hero, Chigurh (pron. Sugar) is at times a little OTT. Yet the novel offers a fascinating insight into the mindset of the deep South; one that, though many of us couldn't be more at odds with it, we can't in the current climate ignore and may (however reluctantly) need at least to understand.
There's good stuff here, if 'liberal with a small L' readers can get beyond some of their more knee-jerk reactions to the core redneck values - hippies, folks with green hair and bones through their noses and abortion don't seem to go down too good with the good ol' boys and, when not anxiously waiting for their husbands to return from work, the women folk tend to be rustling up something tasty on the range that will probably go uneaten when their husband retaurns home late. But then, just as you're starting to picture Dubya, cowboy booted feet up on the porch, grinning as he mouths the words of McCarthy's short, unfussy sentences that his index finger is skimming along, you're pulled up sharp. There's a beautiful meditation on inter-generational decline that Macca just allows to hang there, like an unpleasant smell that someone, at some point is going to have to do something about cleaning up. Contemplating the alarming number of children in the US being brought up by their grandparents because their parents don't want to bring them up, Sherrif Bell asks, what will happen to those children's kids' offspring if neither they nor their own parents want to bring *them* up themselves.
The narrative is gripping and McCarthy evokes the John Ford scenery of the West beautifully. But it's the closing section, a sort of exended mediattion on the decline of the old West, that's most satisfying (and pertinent). This country can kill you in a heartbeat, but we still love it, McCarthy suggests at one point and it's as if his religious faith and patriotism have fused and both are being tested to the hilt by the country and its violent history and present. And does this ring any bells:
His eyes looked old. He said: People will tell you it was Vietnam brought this country to its knees. But I never believed that. It was already in bad shape. Vietnam was just the icin on the cake.. We didn't have nothin to give em to take over there. If we'd sent em without rifles I don't know as they'd of been all that worse off. You cant go to war without God. I dont know what is goin to happen when the next one comes. I surely dont
We're just beginning to find out, I fear.
There's a not-too glowing review (and in places inaccurate) here that underscores the book's more reactionary aspects
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
There's good stuff here, if 'liberal with a small L' readers can get beyond some of their more knee-jerk reactions to the core redneck values - hippies, folks with green hair and bones through their noses and abortion don't seem to go down too good with the good ol' boys and, when not anxiously waiting for their husbands to return from work, the women folk tend to be rustling up something tasty on the range that will probably go uneaten when their husband retaurns home late. But then, just as you're starting to picture Dubya, cowboy booted feet up on the porch, grinning as he mouths the words of McCarthy's short, unfussy sentences that his index finger is skimming along, you're pulled up sharp. There's a beautiful meditation on inter-generational decline that Macca just allows to hang there, like an unpleasant smell that someone, at some point is going to have to do something about cleaning up. Contemplating the alarming number of children in the US being brought up by their grandparents because their parents don't want to bring them up, Sherrif Bell asks, what will happen to those children's kids' offspring if neither they nor their own parents want to bring *them* up themselves.
The narrative is gripping and McCarthy evokes the John Ford scenery of the West beautifully. But it's the closing section, a sort of exended mediattion on the decline of the old West, that's most satisfying (and pertinent). This country can kill you in a heartbeat, but we still love it, McCarthy suggests at one point and it's as if his religious faith and patriotism have fused and both are being tested to the hilt by the country and its violent history and present. And does this ring any bells:
His eyes looked old. He said: People will tell you it was Vietnam brought this country to its knees. But I never believed that. It was already in bad shape. Vietnam was just the icin on the cake.. We didn't have nothin to give em to take over there. If we'd sent em without rifles I don't know as they'd of been all that worse off. You cant go to war without God. I dont know what is goin to happen when the next one comes. I surely dont
We're just beginning to find out, I fear.
There's a not-too glowing review (and in places inaccurate) here that underscores the book's more reactionary aspects
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
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Subscribe to The Robert Swipe Show
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
Wednesday, 1 November 2006
Happy 64th Birthday Todd Blogney!!!!...
Yes, veteran jazzer and Japan's foremost Cuttlefish de-fibulerater, Todd Blogney reaches a landmark birthday and to celebrate, we here at the The Robert Swipe Show pay tribute to Isleworth's premier Jew's harp virtuoso. From the age of 7, when he borrowed his first harp, Todd has been wowing audiences across the TW7 postal district with his heady brew of jazz/afro/limbo/square dance fusion. Who can forget the haunting melody of Why Can't I lick it? Who hasn't swooned to the throbbing, sensuous rhythms of Indigo Banana Blues? Who on earth writes this stuff? And is he paying us?? And would you believe that Todd still has the *very same* harp to this day. The Jew he borrowed it from is understandably miffed...
So, Many Happy Returns Toddster - don't be partying *toooooo* hard tonight!!
And whilst we're in the celebratory mood, raise a glass or too of stout to the blogosphere's most delectable left-on-the-shelfer, the incomparable Spinsterella, who has just posted up her 200th tale of unrequited love and doomed to singleness (come on, who are we kidding? She's well out of the weekly round of badminton tournaments and strip tupperware evenings with the PTA Dinner & Dance Social committee...) Thanks Spinny for ....gee shucks.....[Bob wipes a tiny tear of 'buie from the end of his purple nose...] well, for just being *you*. It may be a lonely life but, as the song says, "please don't ever change" - or at least, if you do, make sure to have the fondling and lovey-doveyness committed to video so that those of us who have followed your career for so long can have something to remember you by [and probably get a few quid for down the market after we've burned a copy of it....].
Here's to the next 200 posts! And if it wasn't for the fact that my other half is a regular reader of this column, I'd be the first to offer to take you away from the drab spinster life of loneliness and unfulfilledness. Nothing would give me more pleasure than to make you lonely and unfullfilled in a co-habiting relationship based on your indulging in a backbreaking round of domestic servitude before having to fend off my buie-fuelled drunken sexual advances and commands to do unspeakable things with a Cauldron vegetarian sausage and sachet of Neskwik...
Well done everyone!!!
envoi: I was hoping to do a Spinny picture post along the following lines, but Blogger was being an arse....
Prospective catches for The Spinster:
Roy...
[picture of Roy Wood]
....*would*
Ronnie...
[picture of Ronnie Wood]
....*would*
Victoria...
[picture of Victoria Wood]
....*ahem* we'll draw a discreet veil over this, shall we?
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
So, Many Happy Returns Toddster - don't be partying *toooooo* hard tonight!!
And whilst we're in the celebratory mood, raise a glass or too of stout to the blogosphere's most delectable left-on-the-shelfer, the incomparable Spinsterella, who has just posted up her 200th tale of unrequited love and doomed to singleness (come on, who are we kidding? She's well out of the weekly round of badminton tournaments and strip tupperware evenings with the PTA Dinner & Dance Social committee...) Thanks Spinny for ....gee shucks.....[Bob wipes a tiny tear of 'buie from the end of his purple nose...] well, for just being *you*. It may be a lonely life but, as the song says, "please don't ever change" - or at least, if you do, make sure to have the fondling and lovey-doveyness committed to video so that those of us who have followed your career for so long can have something to remember you by [and probably get a few quid for down the market after we've burned a copy of it....].
Here's to the next 200 posts! And if it wasn't for the fact that my other half is a regular reader of this column, I'd be the first to offer to take you away from the drab spinster life of loneliness and unfulfilledness. Nothing would give me more pleasure than to make you lonely and unfullfilled in a co-habiting relationship based on your indulging in a backbreaking round of domestic servitude before having to fend off my buie-fuelled drunken sexual advances and commands to do unspeakable things with a Cauldron vegetarian sausage and sachet of Neskwik...
Well done everyone!!!
envoi: I was hoping to do a Spinny picture post along the following lines, but Blogger was being an arse....
Prospective catches for The Spinster:
Roy...
[picture of Roy Wood]
....*would*
Ronnie...
[picture of Ronnie Wood]
....*would*
Victoria...
[picture of Victoria Wood]
....*ahem* we'll draw a discreet veil over this, shall we?
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
Subscribe to The Robert Swipe Show
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
Tuesday, 31 October 2006
Twickenham Green...
Passing the site of the summer's impromptu floral tributes to Amelie, the wind picks up with an invigorating rush. Unburnished copper leaves scuttle across the road, brittle and sheenless commuters late for a train, or scurrying from the rain that will soon drench them to mulch. Perpendicular contrails slash the clear blue sky, shooting stars frozen on still frame. I recall the face of the kitsch Christ on a card of remembrance for the family, tacky and touching at the same time - a quiet sob hurled out in space from unknown to unknowns. The shock and sadness ongoing.
The Light of the World.
As a young child I played football here with my father, Dad a reluctant but patiently indulgent goalie as I played out the matches in my head, with team-mates unseen, sliding in to tackles with invisible adversaries to achieve the desired muddied shorts and socks effect. Lost in my own little world, innocent and safe.
Further on I pass the Red Lion pub, once a sorry dive inhabited by quiet old men, idling over their Ben Truemans. Now it's home to Filthy's rock club - a carefully manicured dive contrived to bombard the young with speed metal and fleece them for weak lager served in a plastic beaker. Pictures of Pete and Dud, Sammy D. Jr. and a collection of actual guitars are pinned to the walls - selling them a scene, off the peg. Happy now? Poor, poor 'yoof'. Poor, poor youth. There's a poster in the window for Rick Buckler's band - The Gift. Yes, that's The Gift as in the Jam LP of the same name, just subtly hammering home the pedigree, the name that's being traded on. The glories now long gone. The past casts long shadows. And I consider now what once seemed unthinkable - the thought of one day dying alone and unknown.
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
The Light of the World.
As a young child I played football here with my father, Dad a reluctant but patiently indulgent goalie as I played out the matches in my head, with team-mates unseen, sliding in to tackles with invisible adversaries to achieve the desired muddied shorts and socks effect. Lost in my own little world, innocent and safe.
Further on I pass the Red Lion pub, once a sorry dive inhabited by quiet old men, idling over their Ben Truemans. Now it's home to Filthy's rock club - a carefully manicured dive contrived to bombard the young with speed metal and fleece them for weak lager served in a plastic beaker. Pictures of Pete and Dud, Sammy D. Jr. and a collection of actual guitars are pinned to the walls - selling them a scene, off the peg. Happy now? Poor, poor 'yoof'. Poor, poor youth. There's a poster in the window for Rick Buckler's band - The Gift. Yes, that's The Gift as in the Jam LP of the same name, just subtly hammering home the pedigree, the name that's being traded on. The glories now long gone. The past casts long shadows. And I consider now what once seemed unthinkable - the thought of one day dying alone and unknown.
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
Subscribe to The Robert Swipe Show
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
Monday, 30 October 2006
By Popular Demand: The Return of the Much-Loved Staple the Artichoke to Samantha Morton Game!!!!!...
Regular readers will recall with fondness the hours of harmless fun this whimsical parlour game has provided them over the years. So, by popular demand, here's a welcome return of everyone's favourite vegetable/versatile actress recently acclaimed for her compelling portrayal of the Moors Murderer Myra Hindley match-up game:
Playing Staple the Artichoke to the Samantha Morton couldn't be simpler: just staple one of the artichokes onto Samantha to comic effect and see if your effort agrees with that of our celebrity panel - Roger de Courcey & Nookie Bear, Judith Chalmers, Newt Gingrich and The Brotherhood of Man. A fortnight's luxury squatting outside Heather Mills McCartney to our 416 lucky winners...
As usual we'll be posting up the most hilarious entries over the next few days....
Good luck - and mind out for those spikes!!
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
Playing Staple the Artichoke to the Samantha Morton couldn't be simpler: just staple one of the artichokes onto Samantha to comic effect and see if your effort agrees with that of our celebrity panel - Roger de Courcey & Nookie Bear, Judith Chalmers, Newt Gingrich and The Brotherhood of Man. A fortnight's luxury squatting outside Heather Mills McCartney to our 416 lucky winners...
As usual we'll be posting up the most hilarious entries over the next few days....
Good luck - and mind out for those spikes!!
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
Subscribe to The Robert Swipe Show
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
By Popular Demand! The Return of the Ever-Popular Pin the Marrow on the Sophie Ellis Bextor Game!!!...
Regular readers will recall with fondness the hours of harmless fun this whimsical parlour game has provided them over the years. So, by popular demand, here's a welcome return of everyone's favourite vegetable/rhomboid-faced singer and daughter of the sauciest ever Blue Peter presenter match-up game:
Playing Pin the Marrow on the Sophie Ellis-Bextor couldn't be simpler: just insert one of the marrows into Sophie to comic effect and see if your effort agrees with that of our celebrity panel - Derek Underwood, Norman St. John Stevas, Bishop Desmond Tutu and Clannad. A fortnight's luxury accomodation in Jordan's Smeg oven to our 119 lucky winners...
As usual we'll be posting up the most hilarious entries over the next few days....
Good luck - and mind those seeds!!
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
Playing Pin the Marrow on the Sophie Ellis-Bextor couldn't be simpler: just insert one of the marrows into Sophie to comic effect and see if your effort agrees with that of our celebrity panel - Derek Underwood, Norman St. John Stevas, Bishop Desmond Tutu and Clannad. A fortnight's luxury accomodation in Jordan's Smeg oven to our 119 lucky winners...
As usual we'll be posting up the most hilarious entries over the next few days....
Good luck - and mind those seeds!!
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
Subscribe to The Robert Swipe Show
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
By Popular Demand: The Return of Pin the Marrow on the Vorderman!!!...
Regular readers will recall with fondness the hours of harmless fun this whimsical parlour game has provided them over the years. So, by popular demand, here's a welcome return of everyone's favourite vegetable/Numbers & words quiz presenter match-up game:
Playing Pin the Marrow on the Vorderman couldn't be simpler: just insert one of the marrows into Carol Vorderman to comic effect and see if your effort agrees with that of our celebrity panel - Buster Mottram, Lily Savage, Patricia Hewitt and Englebert Humperdinck. A fortnight's luxury cruise around Cardigan Bay to our 134 lucky winners...
As usual we'll be posting up the most hilarious entries over the next few days....
Good luck!!
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
Playing Pin the Marrow on the Vorderman couldn't be simpler: just insert one of the marrows into Carol Vorderman to comic effect and see if your effort agrees with that of our celebrity panel - Buster Mottram, Lily Savage, Patricia Hewitt and Englebert Humperdinck. A fortnight's luxury cruise around Cardigan Bay to our 134 lucky winners...
As usual we'll be posting up the most hilarious entries over the next few days....
Good luck!!
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
Subscribe to The Robert Swipe Show
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
Friday, 27 October 2006
Longford...
We've been rather spoilt for excellent terrestrial TV of late, what with the superior Jane Eyre adaptation, the fantastic Prime Suspect: last orders at the bar please*, not to mention the continuing brilliance of Extras and Curb. But last night's Channel 4 recreation of Lord Longford's much-derided relationship with and campaign on behalf of moors murderer Myra Hindley possibly topped even that impressive list.
It's rare enough to see prime-time TV that raises questions worth answering - namely, in a nominally Christian society, what are the limits forgiveness? Are some acts beyond redemption? and so on - let alone being able to do so with as light a touch and without ever appearing to be didactic or moralising. The performances of Jim Broadbent - an uncanny doppelgager for ("Fur-wank") Longford - and Samantha Morton - compelling and just subtly ambiguous enough as Hindley to garner sufficient sympathy for the drama to work. Andy Serkis was equally convincing as a more diabolically portrayed Ian Brady.
The film may well have attracted a lot of more opprobrium (see March BBC item linked at the title) by refusing to completely demonise Hindley in the tabloid fashion we're familiar with. Instead, it sought to view her as Longford, a devout Christian committed to the redemptive possibilities of his faith had, and this brave move worked. Indeed, Graham Greene came to mind as Longford's obdurate belief that human justice, inconsequential as it is sat next to that of divine origin, was not sufficiently equipped to judge
*Please, please, please ITV - give us Prime Suspect: oh alright, just one more for the road.....
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
It's rare enough to see prime-time TV that raises questions worth answering - namely, in a nominally Christian society, what are the limits forgiveness? Are some acts beyond redemption? and so on - let alone being able to do so with as light a touch and without ever appearing to be didactic or moralising. The performances of Jim Broadbent - an uncanny doppelgager for ("Fur-wank") Longford - and Samantha Morton - compelling and just subtly ambiguous enough as Hindley to garner sufficient sympathy for the drama to work. Andy Serkis was equally convincing as a more diabolically portrayed Ian Brady.
The film may well have attracted a lot of more opprobrium (see March BBC item linked at the title) by refusing to completely demonise Hindley in the tabloid fashion we're familiar with. Instead, it sought to view her as Longford, a devout Christian committed to the redemptive possibilities of his faith had, and this brave move worked. Indeed, Graham Greene came to mind as Longford's obdurate belief that human justice, inconsequential as it is sat next to that of divine origin, was not sufficiently equipped to judge
*Please, please, please ITV - give us Prime Suspect: oh alright, just one more for the road.....
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
Subscribe to The Robert Swipe Show
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
Longford...
We've been rather spoilt for excellent terrestrial TV of late, what with the Beeb's recent superior Jane Eyre adaptation, the fantastic Prime Suspect 26: last orders at the bar please*, not to mention the continuing brilliance of Extras and Curb. But last night's Channel 4 recreation of Lord Longford's much-derided relationship with and campaign on behalf of moors murderer Myra Hindley possibly topped even that impressive list.
It's rare enough to see prime-time TV that raises questions worth answering - namely, in a nominally Christian society, what are the limits forgiveness? Do some acts put the perpetrator beyond redemption? and so on - let alone being able to do so with as light a touch and without ever appearing to be didactic or moralising. The performances of Jim Broadbent - an uncanny doppelgager for ("Fur-wank")** Longford - and Samantha Morton - compelling and just subtly ambiguous enough as Hindley to problematise the surprising degree of sympathy for the character her performance otherwise elicited. Andy Serkis was equally convincing as a more robustly diabolical Ian Brady.
The film may well have attracted a lot of more opprobrium (see March BBC item linked at the title) by refusing to completely demonise Hindley in the tabloid fashion we're familiar with. Instead, it sought to view her as Longford, a devout Christian committed to the redemptive possibilities of his faith, had and this brave move worked brilliantly. Longford's obdurate desire to see the best and not the worst was tested to the limit - first by the hatred and anger generated by his prison visitee, then by Hindley herself as she undermined his Lordship's years of patient work to win her a probation hearing. You could have been excused the belief that someone had unearthed a hitherto unknown dramatisation of the story by Graham Greene. Indeed, the evil conjured up by Brady & Hindley made Greene's own evil incarnation in Brighton Rock, Pinky Brown, seem tame.
Longford presents a chilling thesis: without faith in a redemptive, Christian God, life is absurd and meaningless. Forgiveness is the cornerstone of that faith and yet how to forgive Hindley and Brady - assuming even that we could/should. The Moors Murderers Hindley's personal betrayal of Longford represents the
*Please, please, please ITV - give us Prime Suspect: oh alright, just one more for the road.....
**"Who's this speech impedimented tosser??" asked a clearly worse for wear and tear S. when Broadbent uttered his first line...(that grammatical lapse is most out of character, btw.)
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
It's rare enough to see prime-time TV that raises questions worth answering - namely, in a nominally Christian society, what are the limits forgiveness? Do some acts put the perpetrator beyond redemption? and so on - let alone being able to do so with as light a touch and without ever appearing to be didactic or moralising. The performances of Jim Broadbent - an uncanny doppelgager for ("Fur-wank")** Longford - and Samantha Morton - compelling and just subtly ambiguous enough as Hindley to problematise the surprising degree of sympathy for the character her performance otherwise elicited. Andy Serkis was equally convincing as a more robustly diabolical Ian Brady.
The film may well have attracted a lot of more opprobrium (see March BBC item linked at the title) by refusing to completely demonise Hindley in the tabloid fashion we're familiar with. Instead, it sought to view her as Longford, a devout Christian committed to the redemptive possibilities of his faith, had and this brave move worked brilliantly. Longford's obdurate desire to see the best and not the worst was tested to the limit - first by the hatred and anger generated by his prison visitee, then by Hindley herself as she undermined his Lordship's years of patient work to win her a probation hearing. You could have been excused the belief that someone had unearthed a hitherto unknown dramatisation of the story by Graham Greene. Indeed, the evil conjured up by Brady & Hindley made Greene's own evil incarnation in Brighton Rock, Pinky Brown, seem tame.
Longford presents a chilling thesis: without faith in a redemptive, Christian God, life is absurd and meaningless. Forgiveness is the cornerstone of that faith and yet how to forgive Hindley and Brady - assuming even that we could/should. The Moors Murderers Hindley's personal betrayal of Longford represents the
*Please, please, please ITV - give us Prime Suspect: oh alright, just one more for the road.....
**"Who's this speech impedimented tosser??" asked a clearly worse for wear and tear S. when Broadbent uttered his first line...(that grammatical lapse is most out of character, btw.)
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
Subscribe to The Robert Swipe Show
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
Longford...
We've been rather spoilt for excellent terrestrial TV of late, what with the superior Jane Eyre adaptation, the fantastic Prime Suspect: last orders at the bar please*, not to mention the continuing brilliance of Extras and Curb. But last night's Channel 4 recreation of Lord Longford's much-derided relationship with and campaign on behalf of moors murderer Myra Hindley possibly topped even that impressive list.
It's rare enough to see prime-time TV that raises questions worth answering - namely, in a nominally Christian society, what are the limits forgiveness? Are some acts beyond redemption? and so on - let alone being able to do so with as light a touch and without ever appearing to be didactic or moralising. The performances of Jim Broadbent - an uncanny doppelgager for ("Fur-wank") Longford - and Samantha Morton - compelling and just subtly ambiguous enough as Hindley to garner sufficient sympathy for the drama to work. Andy Serkis was equally convincing as a more diabolically portrayed Ian Brady.
The film may well have attracted a lot of more opprobrium (see March BBC item linked at the title) by refusing to completely demonise Hindley in the tabloid fashion we're familiar with. Instead, it sought to view her as Longford, a devout Christian committed to the redemptive possibilities of his faith had, and this brave move worked. Indeed, Graham Greene came to mind as Longford's obdurate belief that human justice, inconsequential as it is sat next to that of divine origin, was not sufficiently equipped to judge
*Please, please, please ITV - give us Prime Suspect: oh alright, just one more for the road.....
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© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
It's rare enough to see prime-time TV that raises questions worth answering - namely, in a nominally Christian society, what are the limits forgiveness? Are some acts beyond redemption? and so on - let alone being able to do so with as light a touch and without ever appearing to be didactic or moralising. The performances of Jim Broadbent - an uncanny doppelgager for ("Fur-wank") Longford - and Samantha Morton - compelling and just subtly ambiguous enough as Hindley to garner sufficient sympathy for the drama to work. Andy Serkis was equally convincing as a more diabolically portrayed Ian Brady.
The film may well have attracted a lot of more opprobrium (see March BBC item linked at the title) by refusing to completely demonise Hindley in the tabloid fashion we're familiar with. Instead, it sought to view her as Longford, a devout Christian committed to the redemptive possibilities of his faith had, and this brave move worked. Indeed, Graham Greene came to mind as Longford's obdurate belief that human justice, inconsequential as it is sat next to that of divine origin, was not sufficiently equipped to judge
*Please, please, please ITV - give us Prime Suspect: oh alright, just one more for the road.....
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
Subscribe to The Robert Swipe Show
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
Let's Hear It For Rush Limbaugh!!!...
About time that someone stood up and told it like it was. Right-wing American broadcaster Rush Limbaugh has delivered a blow for freedom of expression and performed a great service to us all by fearlessly mocking Democratic candidate and former movie star Michael J. Fox's Parkinson disease (clip here)
Honestly, what's the world coming to if you can't take the piss out of a crip when all your other arguments are demonstrably pathetic and patently wrong?
Really - it's political correctness gone mad!
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click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
Honestly, what's the world coming to if you can't take the piss out of a crip when all your other arguments are demonstrably pathetic and patently wrong?
Really - it's political correctness gone mad!
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
Subscribe to The Robert Swipe Show
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
Thursday, 26 October 2006
Kate Silverton Appeal/Desperate Attempt To Get More Hits From Pervs...
Seasoned Swipe readers (OK, Spinny and Ro-Mo) will remember a time, sadly long gone, when there was occasionally the odd post up here that could almost be described as amusing. I'm referring of course to the now legendary (well, as close as this blog will ever come to that, anyroad) Kate Silverton is Turning into Ollie Beak post from several decades ago. Not only is that piece the single most amusing thing we've ever managed to come up with (...I know...) it's also proved our most popular, turning up as it does with alarming frequency on google searches along the lines of KATE+SILVERTON+TITCLAMP+BESTIAL+BEAK-JOB and similar.
Obviously we will never scale such heights again, but I thought it might be fun (well, you know what I mean - less painful than yesterday's post) to show you some of the searches that we come up on - they invariably concern Kate and a variety of sexual peccadilloes and scanty costumes etc.
Here are some of my favourites:
# 1
# 2
# 3
# 4
Or this just in - I'm sensing the hand of the Dickster here - least, I *hope* it's his hand....
Those of you who've enjoyed this might want to check out the site meter box - that's not rude, it really *is* just, like, a box - at the bottom (...steady....) of the page. You won't find anything interesting there, obviously, but if enough of you do have a look then it won't do my hit counter any harm as you'll have to scroll through several pages to get there. We're closing in on 100,000 page views and I'm sure once we pass that there'll be even more perv hits than ever to keep things ticking over. I just wish a few of you filthy-minded bastards would actually read the fucking thing every now and then.
Regarding the Appeal: am I the only person who would pay money to see Kate's legs in all their glory?? Come on Beeb - bugger Children in Need: what about us bloody adults, eh???
********UPDATE*************
Tim's current post quotes closet Swipe fan and Shadow Morton afficianado Stewart Lee as describing blogs as consisting of "pornography and descriptions of going to the shops".
Well Stew, you're probably wondering where the usual description of me going to the shops is, having had your daily dose of porn (see above). Obviously, I have to be a bit careful here as, unlike the hard-working funnyman, I quite literally *do* have more money than sense and I'm a bit wary of scaring off my chavvy readers with bragging accounts of my latest Elton-esque spree. You know, I don't want people to run away with the idea that just because I *can* quite easily afford to buy expensive, non-essential items such as crowns, leisure centres, vintage motorcycles, tickets to The Arsenal, unlimited call girl facilities etc. on a weekly basis, that I actually *do* this. I tend to only go up the Arsenal a couple of times a month. And once you've bought one leisure centre...
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
Obviously we will never scale such heights again, but I thought it might be fun (well, you know what I mean - less painful than yesterday's post) to show you some of the searches that we come up on - they invariably concern Kate and a variety of sexual peccadilloes and scanty costumes etc.
Here are some of my favourites:
# 1
# 2
# 3
# 4
Or this just in - I'm sensing the hand of the Dickster here - least, I *hope* it's his hand....
Those of you who've enjoyed this might want to check out the site meter box - that's not rude, it really *is* just, like, a box - at the bottom (...steady....) of the page. You won't find anything interesting there, obviously, but if enough of you do have a look then it won't do my hit counter any harm as you'll have to scroll through several pages to get there. We're closing in on 100,000 page views and I'm sure once we pass that there'll be even more perv hits than ever to keep things ticking over. I just wish a few of you filthy-minded bastards would actually read the fucking thing every now and then.
Regarding the Appeal: am I the only person who would pay money to see Kate's legs in all their glory?? Come on Beeb - bugger Children in Need: what about us bloody adults, eh???
********UPDATE*************
Tim's current post quotes closet Swipe fan and Shadow Morton afficianado Stewart Lee as describing blogs as consisting of "pornography and descriptions of going to the shops".
Well Stew, you're probably wondering where the usual description of me going to the shops is, having had your daily dose of porn (see above). Obviously, I have to be a bit careful here as, unlike the hard-working funnyman, I quite literally *do* have more money than sense and I'm a bit wary of scaring off my chavvy readers with bragging accounts of my latest Elton-esque spree. You know, I don't want people to run away with the idea that just because I *can* quite easily afford to buy expensive, non-essential items such as crowns, leisure centres, vintage motorcycles, tickets to The Arsenal, unlimited call girl facilities etc. on a weekly basis, that I actually *do* this. I tend to only go up the Arsenal a couple of times a month. And once you've bought one leisure centre...
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
Subscribe to The Robert Swipe Show
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
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