Vroom Vroom

It’s a mystery to me why I didn’t write anything on here about the last couple of races of the Formula One season last year, where Lewis Hamilton blew an extraordinarily strong chance to win the world title (or McLaren blew it for him, depending how you look at it). But the most recent F1-tagged post here was evidently written just after the Japanese grand prix. In truth, the last three races of 2007 were among only maybe 5 really exciting weekends: for the rest of the year, although the politics and the championship viewed over the course of the season were interesting, the racing really was dull.

What we need in 2008 is for some of the mid-field teams to catch up with McLaren and Ferrari, and actually make it hard to say which teams will be contesting each race win when before everyone turns up. Only 1997 in recent years has provided that, with McLaren, Benetton and at times Jordan looking very strong at some races, in addition to – or even occasionally instead of – the then-current duopoly of Ferrari and Williams.

The signs from testing so far are not good: Ferrari and McLaren appear to remain dominant. Williams have put some decent times in with their new car, but remarks from Mark Webber about “certain teams” flattering to deceive by taking the fuel load out make me wonder: who else could he have in mind? And teams certainly do that kind of thing in testing every now and again: in 2001, Prost claimed to be turning up at the first grand prix with a lightning-quick car, but after two races it was obviously little more than respectable.

Of the other teams, Renault’s new car hasn’t really done enough mileage to give any clear impression – although guessing the season’s form from early tests is a difficult exercise even for teams who have done a lot of laps (although it is certainly fun). Honda’s new car has only done a couple of days’ testing, but has been rooted to the bottom of the field both times: is this just because they have been doing very basic installation work, or could it be they are facing the dreadful possibility of not having made any advance from their terrible 2007 machine? It certainly looks a lot less advanced in terms of the front wing and the aerodynamic bits and bobs than most of the other new cars – most notably, Honda have gone for a high nose without the now-fashionable top wing, rather like the cars from c. 1998.

Other teams looking to make a leap forward also look to be disappointing, Williams aside: the Toyotas have yet to post any fast times, while the new BMW is having balance problems and hasn’t yet gone especially quick. Red Bull seem to be doing OK, but unspectacularly. Of course, the McLaren and the Ferrari were the first new cars launched, so maybe it means nothing that they are currently making the running in testing. But the fact that nobody bar Williams seems, even briefly, to have made any gains on them, bodes ill for the season.

That said, wouldn’t it be nice to see Williams running at the front again, particularly as a privateer team out-classing so many manufacturers? If environmental worries and EU politics really do make the big manufacturers decide they have better things to worry about than F1, Williams are well-placed to be laughing all the way to a new era of dominance.

Carrying a Torch

The new series of Torchwood brought much promise of rectifying the problems of the first series. Instead, fifteen minutes in, we had Captain Jack having a gay snog and a fight in immediate succession, both with the same person and all for no readily apparent reason (a straight snog and a fight would have made no difference, let me emphasise). I switched off and watched the snooker instead.

The opening was reasonable, with some well-played gags during the initial chase sequence. But when the alien’s speech re-introduced us to the characters, we were reminded what a terrible shadow the mis-judged first series of the programme casts: for all that Torchwood are supposed to be a sophisticated and highly capable unit, fighting an alien menace, we spent the whole of the first series being shown how deeply fallible each and every member of the team is, not to mention, in a lot of cases, deeply unlikeable too. Any prospect that that bunch of berking ninnies could save us from the alien hordes is, frankly, laughable; and I have no desire to spend 45 minutes a week in their company.

I will probably give the next episode a try, against my better judgment, but Torchwood would have been done the power of good by a major cast re-tooling between seasons; it’s a shame that we seem to be stuck with the Feckless Five for another thirteen episodes.

Great. And White. And Shark.

Well, the Two Pints special didn’t disappoint! Half an hour of sophisticated, culture-driven wit it wasn’t; some appallingly crude but extremely effective humour, a bucketful of in-jokes and one moment of brilliantly-played drama, all delivered with incredible style, it was.In particular, the writers made use of the live format to get the task to undertake a range of implausibly difficult feats (if you’ve only got one chance to get it right, anyway): downing a pint, catching a peanut in your mouth, tongue-twisters, fire-eating and naked balloon dancing… Somehow, when Dan Paton called this blog “more edifying and cogently argued than almost anything in print,” I’m not sure this was what he had in mind.

Hey, Mr Bartender…

If you have digital TV you’re in for a treat tonight: the new series of Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps kicks off with a live special on BBC3 at 9pm! It’s an unfairly-maligned show, and once you get into the humour and the characters it’s brilliant. That said, it will be a bit different this year, as tonight’s episode is going to write out Ralf Little’s character, Jonny.

In fact, last night I attempted to go and watch the recording session for one of the other episodes of this run, and joined the obligatory enormous and badly-stewarded queue… only for them to shut the doors when we were about twenty people away from the front. As this may well be the last series of the programme, this is of course stupendously annoying. Still, I’m determined to get into TV Centre for a look at it before it is knocked down – I’ve got a few more years yet to do it.

…and of course, Sylvie

First gigs of the year tend to be a bit unusual, or at least in some way rum. One year my first gig of the year was the inspired soukous of Kanda Bongo Man, quite unlike anything else I’d been to before, or have seen since. This year and last year the first gig of the year was one of my favourites, but marred by a trendy West End audience who had no particular interest in watching the people on-stage. In 2007 it was The Crimea; this year it was Sylvie Lewis, who turned in a delightful and at times brave set.

Full marks to her for telling the audience to shut up: I have some sympathy, in principle, with the view that if you’ve paid to get in, it’s up to you whether you pay attention to the band or not, and down to them to insure they capture your attention, and it is unreasonable of them to ask the audience to shut up if they have filed to do so. But in practice there are problems with this: firstly, talking during someone’s set, particularly if it’s quiet, will spoil it for people who are actually trying to pay attention – and irrespective of how much you have paid to gain entry to a venue, you have not purchased the right to spoil things for other people. And secondly, if, as in The Fly where we saw Sylvie, there are separate venue and bar parts to the place, between which people can move freely, it’s perfectly reasonable to expect people not watching the band to conduct their conversations in the bar. As it was, Sylvie managed to get the bastards to shut up for about 30 seconds, which wasn’t bad going.

Jon Richardson

For the thick end of twelve months now, my Sunday mornings have been soundtracked by the excellent presenter pairing of Russell Howard and Jon Richardson on 6Music. It seems there is some confusion over the future of the show – possibly Russell will no longer feature, and possibly not entirely of his own choosing. A rather muddled link at the end of last Sunday’s show has left everyone a bit confused.

Still, they will be gigging and collaborating on further projects apparently, plus Jon seems likely to be continuing with the show irrespective of what Russell does, so all is far from lost. There is even talk of a film… If anything, I would particularly like to see Richardson translate his fertile material on the minutiae of modern living into a TV series: with himself as the central character trying to come to terms with the sheer idiocy of other people, it would have the potential to turn him into something close to a latter-day Tony Hanckock. Have a look at his recent sketches for BBC3’s (otherwise mostly abysmal) Comedy Shuffle to see what I mean…

Ha Ha Thataway!

I’ve changed the template for the blog – I hope you like it (but I don’t care). Amusingly, the new one is from a family of templates called “Thisaway”, which has meant I now can’t remove from my head the theme tune to Paul Daniels’ 1980s kids’ show Wizbit. Of which, apparently, a CGI remake is on the cards. So it’s ironic the Paul Daniels too is a blogger – indeed, he’s the author of the most mean-spirited and self-absorbed blog I’ve ever read. My, Oh My!

Plus Moz Que Le Moz

Dan Paton pointed out to me recently what a waste of time the tracklisting for the new Morrissey best-of release is: it’s made up of his recent singles, a couple of new tracks to tempt fans into double-dipping on songs they already own, and a scant handful of older numbers. No effort has been made to provide any sort of balanced overview of Moz’s solo career, which now spans twenty years and has, at its peaks, produced songs every bit as good as his work with The Smiths (and lots and lots of tracks not as good as The Smiths, it must be admitted).

I wasn’t surprised at this: Morrissey compilations have always tended to be a bit over-heavy on recent stuff without giving full coverage to less well-known tracks or an overview of his work, depending whether we’re talking about one of his many best-ofs or one of his many “As and Bs” efforts: World of Morrissey is probably the worst offender, but the live album Bethoven Was Deaf is incredibly heavy on the then-recent Your Arsenal album tracks, and even Smiths compilations like The World Won’t Listen were a bit guilty of flogging old singles to death.

I commented to Dan that I would probably derive more enjoyment from putting together my own “Best of” compilation than listening to the official one. So this afternoon I decided to do exactly that, following the standard rules for making compilations (an artform somewhat dying out now that nobody uses tapes, but still applicable to CDs): tracks are limited to what will fit on a single CD; opening and closing tracks must not be opening and closing tracks in their original album contexts; every “proper” studio album must be represented by at least one track; and no two tracks from the same album may be adjacent to one another on the compilation. Within these constraints, the compilation should function as a collection that works and flows in its own right.

Here’s what I came up with:

1. Irish Blood, English Heart
2. The Boy Racer
3. Piccadilly Palare
4. Lifeguard Sleeping, Girl Drowning
5. Interesting Drug
6. You Have Killed Me
7. Suedehead
8. Sing Your Life
9. Late Night, Maudlin Street
10. First of the Gang to Die
11. Jack the Ripper
12. Satan Rejected My Soul
13. Everyday Is Like Sunday
14. Speedway
15. Alsatian Cousin
16. You’re The One For Me, Fatty
17. Break Up The Family
18. November Spawned A Monster
19. The World Is Full of Crashing Bores
20. The National Front Disco

As you’ll see, I didn’t try to be wilfully obscure, but have tried to mix in a few of the highest quality album tracks among the best singles. As you’ll also be able to infer, I’m very fond of Viva Hate (well, the first three quarters of it, barring the lyric to Bengali in Platforms), the subsequent early-90s singles and You Are The Quarry. I would ideally have liked to include the final track from Southpaw Grammar, which starts off as one of the better mid-90s standard Moz efforts and then degenerates into an eery post-rock instrumental, to tremendous effect; unfortunately it’s ten minutes long, so it wouldn’t fit without having to leave off some even more essential selections. Like Kill Uncle, Maladjusted and Ringleader of the Tormentors, therefore, Southpaw Grammar is represented by only one track. I’m just about willing to give Moz the benefit of the doubt on The National Front Disco as a character piece rather than a racist rant, and I certainly think it works as a closing track.

But I don’t hold the crapness of the official tracklisting against Moz: he has always been (a) prone to regarding his most recent work as his best and ignoring other stuff, and (b) a contrary sod. And I’m still looking forward to seeing him at the Roundhouse at the end of the month, though I hope he doesn’t stick to such narrow parts of his back catalogue for his sets.

Hilton magnate "embarrassed" by his grand-daughter’s behaviour

I’m sure I’m not alone in finding this richly amusing.

The Ten Years Later Affair

The Victoria Line is a marvel of 1960s engineering. The trains – get this! – drive themselves automatically! All the driver does is close the doors. It’s due for some big changes in 2008, not least the introduction of the first of the new trains that will replace the original 1960s units that still currently run on it.

The Victoria Line also provided me with the best laugh – so far – of 2008. I was en route back from a thoroughly enjoyable short-notice New Year’s Eve gathering in Brixton, and there was a band of people holding the doors open, waiting for their friends to make it on to the train. The door mechanism on the Victoria Line trains has always struck me as a bit vicious, and as one of these twats stepped into the doorway to check on the progress of others still on the platform, he and his mate momentarily neglected to ensure there was anyone else holding the doors open: they crashed shut on to either side of his head with impeccable comic timing. Couldn’t have happened to a more deserving fella.

This 2008 business is, more generally, a big deal as far as I’m concerned. It is of course too early to say whether 2008 will be in any meaningful sense a big year for me or not – 2007 promised more than it delivered in several respects – but the very fact that it is 2008 is freaking me out.

The main reason for this is that it’s ten years since 1998. Now, this isn’t much of a revelation, I’m aware, but 1998 was a pretty significant year for me and the idea that it was all ten years ago takes some getting used to. I was 16 in 1998, so it’s no surprise it was one of those years that seems to assume importance in hindsight, but nevertheless it did: I moved into the sixth form, and made choices, and developed interests, that have shaped my life and career ever since – in particular, without having developed my interests in history and politics I would have ended up in a totally different place.

It was also in 1998 that I developed my taste in music properly beyond the mainstream and started attending gigs – a bit late to have been doing this, perhaps! But much of my present record collection owes its presence on my shelves directly or indirectly to the paths I stumbled down ten years ago, as I began listening to John Peel and buying music fanzines for the first time. As an aside, I was dead impressed to learn last night that my friend Luke had attended Kenickie’s last ever gig, on October 15th 1998 – as my first ever proper gig had been their Manchester show on the previous Friday, there will likely be more posts on this subject later in the year! But a Kenickie reunion for 2008…? Come on ladies, you know it makes sense!

There have been significant things happen since, of course, but the significance of 1998 is such that, if anyone who knows me now (I’m in touch with almost nobody I knew prior to ‘98) could travel back in time to the start of that year, they might struggle to recognise me. Does it all seem like ten years ago? Frighteningly – but also for the good, in many ways – in some respects it does.