Songs for Julian

Assange and his friends are so self-righteous that I'm driven to make fun of him. So here are a few Swedish songs for him:

Abba, 'Why Did It Have To Be Me?':



Abba, 'Under Attack':



Abba, 'So Long':



Abba, 'The King Has Lost His Crown':



Abba, 'Free As A Bumble Bee':



Abba, 'Disillusion:



There are plenty of other Abba tracks which sound appropriate. But I'll finish with a Blur song, 'Pressure on Julian':

Mortality suddenly becomes real

This song is 18 years old.



Half my life ago.
The year my fresher students were born.

And I remember thinking (and still do) that it's not a patch on the preceding album, Modern Life is Rubbish. I always thought that Blur's melancholic songs were their strong point. I think that means I'm old.

I was working in a horrible family fun pub that summer, for £1.50 per hour. The chefs would grill the plates so that we waiters would burn our hands. When the salad was sent back because it had live maggots in it, a friend and I were made to go through the industrial bin in which it came, picking out the larvae before continuing to serve it. Persuading drunk, aggressive parents not to carry their glasses into the urine-soaked ball pool was a particular pleasure.

Music played in one corner of the pub. There was one cassette tape on a loop for the whole three months. It had two songs one it which weren't SWV, Phil Collins and assorted tripe: Oasis's 'Cigarettes and Alcohol' and 'Girls And Boys'. Trying to find myself in that corner when those songs were played was my only ambition every day.

Compared to all the other thousands of songs I own, they're not that special - but for the relief and joy they gave me in that grim, disgusting place, I'll always love them.

Is Modern Life Rubbish?

Apart from a few odd bits and pieces, we come next to Blur, about whom I have very mixed feelings. I've got almost everything they've done on vinyl, and have gradually acquired some on CD: Leisure, Modern Life is Rubbish and Think Tank.

In general, my thoughts on Blur are these: wonderful at writing heartbreaking songs of loss, dislocation and loneliness, far too keen on making knees-up-chirpy stuff, tailed off badly, band consists of people I'd definitely not get on with, though Alex James would probably be amusing for half an hour. They also made beautiful vinyl singles - great artwork.

More musically, I'd score the music thus:
Leisure - bandwagon-jumping baggy fun ('She's So High', 'There's No Other Way') mixed with melancholy loveliness ('Bad Day', 'Sing'). Better than everyone thinks but didn't imply longevity.





Modern Life is Rubbish - written in response to record company pressure and from distaste at the way everyone rushed for grunge (like The Auteurs' 'American Guitars'). Despite its suspiciously reactionary title and artwork, it's a masterpiece - witty, thoughtful lyrics, tunes to swoon to, sums up urban life in early 90s Britain, brought back the suit-jacket-with-Doctor Martens look I've clung to ever since. Every track a gem. This is by far my favourite Blur album, and one of the best of the 90s.





Parklife. The album which made them famous. I didn't buy it because I came to hate 'Girls and Boys' and mockney bollocks 'Parklife' so much. The former is a great track - about but also partaking in the kind of national summer holiday Britpop seemed to usher in - but it became so ubiquitous, and was treated as a celebration of hedonism, which it only partly was. It does contain three of the greatest tracks of the 90s, 'To The End' (my 7" comes with Françoise Hardy joining the band to do it in French), 'This is a Low' and 'End of a Century' - other tracks are stunning but my taste runs to these downbeat songs. In the middle of the self-regarding Britpop scene which the band largely embraced boozily and happily, Blur also prefigured its end, as did Pulp. Looking back, I got this LP badly wrong. They were on my wavelength - but I didn't notice.





Then came The Great Escape. I bought it, played it once or twice and put it away for a decade: its' cheeky chappy hedonism (particularly 'Country House') seemed mechanical and tired. That said, my unreleased promo 12" of 'The Universal' is much loved and I adore 'Yuko and Hiro'. Returning to it after several years, I really appreciate the undertone of desperation and despair in these suburban tales.

I was much happier with Blur, the eponymous album that embraced Graham Coxon's love of loud, brash guitars and American lo-fi: the sound of a band trying to break away from their self-imposed straitjacket. You'll know, of course, 'Song 2', and 'Beetlebum', which charts the decline of Albarn's relationship with Justine of Elastica, just then beginning a heroin addiction. After the clever-clever albums before, some pop with a heavy dose of joyous rock was just what we needed.

After that came 13, another downbeat slab of loveliness, fuelled by the cracks in the band's previous gang mentality. Drink, drugs, fame, sex, changing musical tastes and the musician's life made the band a much more fragile entity - from this melange of stress came deceptively simple tracks like 'Coffee and TV' and the miserable beauty of 'Tender' and 'No Distance Left to Run', which marks the end of the Albarn/Frischmann relationship. It's a comedown album, just like Pulp's This Is Hardcore - a relieved and depressed farewell to the excesses of the 90s.



The final studio album was Think Tank. To be honest, I've hardly listened to it. I'd moved on and the band were clearly in a mess: Graham departed acrimonously and made several interesting lo-fi folk/punk albums, they were all messing about in other ways (Gorillaz was taking Albarn's attention, Alex was making cheese, Dave was getting into politics) and I just didn't have the energy to invest in the comedown of a band whose time was clearly over. It's not very good, basically.

Since then, they've reunited for some triumphant gigs, but thankfully aren't making more music. I've a huge amount of respect and affection for Blur, though not for the individuals making up the band, but their time has passed and they've left several magnificent memorials. I'd also recommend Graham's solo stuff. As to Alex's Me Me Me and Fat Les comedy projects, and Gorillaz, they're OK if you like that sort of thing. Which I don't.

A miseryguts writes…

Happy Monday you lot! There used to be a tradition called St. Monday in Northern cities, including Stoke. A heavy weekend required a day off - a religious festival. In industries with highly specialised skills such as pottery, enough individuals absent meant that a whole crew couldn't do any work - so men took turns a few times a year. This is how I feel today, except that I'm at work and absolutely nobody else is other than the cleaners, who are always very cheery.

It's hot, sticky and horrible, yet I've already seen one student (advice: don't nick your resit from the internet and characters with speaking parts usually aren't dead in Renaissance literature). I've got to write a conference paper for Wednesday ('O. M. Edwards, Travel Writing and Definitions of Welshness' or something similar and the beer festival is still weighing heavily on my guts.

We all had a good time, without getting hammered. Except for Mr. Radford Sallow, who arrived many hours late and proceeded to catch up in spectacular fashion. Poor old man isn't used to drinking. He took the pledge in 1934…

Many of you seem horrified that I'm indifferent to Michael Jackson's oeuvre. Sorry, I just didn't listen to much pop at that formative age. My parents didn't believe in radios in every room, and they listened to mainstream classical, bits of folk, and a lot of religious music. Dad's concession to Irish culture was a U2 cassette and one by the Dubliners, and Mum played a lot more music than she listens to.

If it's any consolation, I watched Blur's performance at Glastonbury last night. All the presenters were talking about it being a seminal, wondrous, amazing set. I didn't. I thought they were quite good. Maybe I'm just getting grumpy. Wonder how the Nightingales went down? The BBC didn't see fit to broadcast any of their set.

On arrival at university I owned a cassette of Automatic for the People given to me by a schoolmate. A few days later I walked into the fabulous Recordiau Cob Records in Bangor and opened up a financial vein which flowed freely for many years to com. I bought two interesting looking records: Gorky's Zygotic Mynci's Patio and Tindersticks Kathleen/ E-Type Joe, both on 10" vinyl - not bad for a random pick. Henceforth, I'd go in on Thursday and pore over the list of next week's releases, making a list. On Monday, I'd collect several groaning plastic bags, to which the helpful gimps behind the counter would add 'some things we thought you'd like'. Years later, I realised that this meant 'our own records because nobody else will buy them [hello, Ectogram] and anything we've ordered in and realised won't sell'. Add to this the stuff I bought because I trusted the record label and all the secondhand bits, and you get the beginnings of my 30,000 collection, surprisingly little of which I now regret. Except for Cast's album: played once, put away for ever. I had to sell some once - 250 7" singles to Norman's Records simply to survive one summer. very depressingly. The collection is now like a smile with several teeth missing.

Foxy

After making a cameo appearance at the staff pissup (particularly bad free buffet at the Hogshead - insulting considering we spend a good deal of our time and salaries there), I accompanied Emma to Fleet Foxes, last year's critical hit, performing in Wolverhampton as a warm-up for Glastonbury.

Zoot Horn has already compared them to Crosby Stills Nash and Young - I can see why, but I thought of FF as much more similar to a gentler 70s folk band, America, a rather wet but commercially successful lot who were actually only half American. Fleet Foxes are part of this 70s revival going on in indie at the moment - beards compulsory, close harmony singing, mostly songs about love.

The problem with this sort of stuff is that part of the attraction is the musical skill - craft rather than excitement. It runs the risk that band and audience want to hear the album exactly as it is on vinyl, admiring the harmonies and fretwork. However, it wasn't like that last night. These hirsute, portly chaps wandered on and introduced themselves as Blur, and kept up a fairly witty stream of banter for the whole evening, taking potshots at the Killers, and generally having fun. Two thumbs up! Incidentally, they asked from the stage whether the rumours that Jackson was dead were true, but nobody paid much attention. So when people ask where I was when I heard, I'll be able to say that I was listening to some decent music.

All in all, it was very impressive, were it not for Student Grant behind me, talking about himself throughout, punctuated by the occasional whoop as if to prove that he was listening to the band, and attempting to pogo most inappropriately. I decided not to have a word. As the only person in the room not wearing a checked shirt, I already felt rather exposed.

Oddly enough, having seen Fleet Foxes, I met an actual fox on the way home, sitting in a driveway as I walked past. It was only a cub, and seemed completely unbothered by me - it just sat there watching as I came within a few feet of the little fella.

Final thought: watch out for The Nightingales on Glastonbury coverage tomorrow. They're on at 11 on the Peel Stage, as befits Peel's favourite band. Making a special appearance on accordion is Helen Apperley - what a professional debut!

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Oh no, he's droning on again

Here goes with the kind of post that you all ignore. Would it help if I added something sarcastic about Manchester United, or referred to Betty Boo?

You all know that I'm a massive fan of Pharyngula, an American science professor who has a neat sideline in speaking up for scientific endeavour in the face of religion, quackery and media stupidity.

A couple of days ago he gave the graduation speech at Keck School of Medicine. He made some comments that teachers, students and everybody else should take seriously in a climate where being an expert is increasingly being associated with arrogance and contempt:

… the responsibility of the public intellectual is what I want to say a few words about to you. You are about to receive a diploma that gives you the potential to be one of us, too.

A public intellectual is the modern equivalent of the court jester -- the wise fool who could say anything to the king, because no one would ever take him seriously as a rival for the throne. If the concept is too medieval for you, look at 21st century America, where the best news commentary on television is offered by a couple of comedians on a small cable network. It's the same principle: people on the edge of the herd, whether it's the mass media or the general electorate, are unconstrained by the group norms and are given greater freedom to speak out and express themselves. The weirdos, by their very nature, have more latitude, and we also institutionalize the principle in ideas like academic freedom.

Did I just call you all weirdos? I'm sorry, yes I did. You're all receiving advanced degrees from USC, and that automatically makes you all a bunch of nerds. You should be proud.

You are also the lucky few, the ones with talent and discipline and the fortunate opportunity to pursue science and medicine, and you have acquired another kind of debt: you have been granted this privilege, and now you owe society repayment. We need you to make the world a better place. To quote a comic book character, with great power comes great responsibility.

Power? That diploma may not give you political power, or the ability to beat up criminals, and it may not even guarantee you a job, sorry to say, but it does represent something significant: it's intellectual capital. You will have acquired some small measure of authority and credibility with that acknowledgment of your accomplishments, and I'm here to tell you to spend it.

There's lots more, about the graduate's duty to communicate and to criticise error. Don't just become pliable work units. Become troublemakers, agitators - at work, or in the public sphere. I know it's easy for me to say this in my job (which isn't quite as cushy or secure as you may think), but we'd live in a better society if we didn't let the shysters, conmen and bullshitters set the tone in politics, the media and pretty much every other sphere of our lives. You do have the skills and intelligence to object now and then - you just need the courage. One of the few things I'm proudest of is ticking off a copper for bullying some skate kids at the railway station. It was a small thing (though scary) but it reminded me, her, and them, that we're citizens with a role to play in each others' lives.

I do wonder, sometimes, what my job is. There's a debate in my office at the moment about the nature of professionalism. We agree that it's about defending the public good - in terms of educational motives - rather than just taking your money and doing whatever our bosses say - which at the moment means dumbing down and being 'market-oriented'. The intrinsic value of education is under attack - one of our incoming deans openly rejected the idea that small subjects should be taught. Brilliant. What a philistine.

Not many people may need to speak a particular language or understand a particular culture, but they'll come in useful at some point, and surely there's something valuable about just caring about things, however 'obscure'. If more people understood Afghan culture, or about financial planning, or the sociology of MPs, perhaps this country would be in a better state.

OK, rant over. Back to pop culture. I'm listening to Modern Life Is Rubbish. It's so elegiac.

The Horrors - an apology

This is for Cynical Ben, who must have the day off, as he's commenting every ten minutes.

Yes, The Horrors' first album was excremental. The new one, however, is rather good. Somehow, they've managed to escape the 'trendy band on pushy record label' pressure to churn out more chart-friendly pap. Perhaps we're seeing a return to giving bands a second chance rather than dumping them for not producing a clone of Album No. 1. Remember: Blur were bloody lucky to get a second crack after the fun-but-derivative Leisure - then we'd never have had Modern Life is Rubbish.