Totally on the Case

This week started with two wildly contrasting but superb gigs.

First: Neko Case at the Bush Hall. Was it every bit as superb as you’d expect? Most certainly. Is the new album likely to be utterly wonderful? Without doubt. Is she playing the UK again in August for those who unwisely missed out this time round? Happily, yes.

Secondly, Totally Acoustic featuring Tim Eveleigh, Bob Fischer and of course MJ Hibbett. Were all the acts fantastic? Unquestionably. Did Mr Fischer bring a Roobarb’s contingent? I really should have guessed it would happen. Is it amusing to be introduced to fully-grown men by their online handles such as FegMANIA, Mr Magister and Bobby FischFace? You betcha. Was drink taken? I’m shocked to report I rather suspect it was.

Four album reviews

I gave up on regular album and live reviews shortly after I started this blog, even though when I ran a separate website I succeeded in listing my listening habits fairly religiously – not least every new album I bought in 2006. As a slight substitute, you can view what I’m listening to on my PC via Last FM in the left-hand sidebar on this blog (though obviously this is a limited view of my listening – most of the time I spend listening to music is while commuting, via my MP3 player – plus it is temperamental and has stopped and started working several times even in the time it has taken me to write this post). So while I don’t pretend this is a promise to return to my obsessive reviewing of a few years ago, I have been taken by a whim to review the few new albums I’ve acquired so far this year.

This is not least because I’m in an unusually serious disagreement with Dan Paton about the M Ward album. To me, it sounds like a logical progression from his last solo outing Post War, away from that record’s predecessor, Transistor Radio. The delicate guitar playing is sidelined still further, and the folksy instrumentals now totally removed. Instead it is a consistent stab at a pop record.

Now, an M Ward pop record is probably never going to be as satisfying as one of his more rootsy albums, but it still functions pretty well. Overall it is characterised by a rather languid feel and some straightforward arrangements. Ward’s tunes are reliably pretty, and his accomplished guitar playing adorns the songs in an unostentatious but well-judged manner – few songs pass without some small delight of a hook or flourish. Synths and strings are smeared across some songs to provide atmospheric effect rather than to provide arrangements on which the listener can focus, and to this end they generally succeed.

At times it heads into soft rock territory: the closing instrumental track is utterly gorgeous, but does hint at Dire Straits (no bad thing in my book). I also have to disagree with Dan about the Lucinda Williams collaboration Oh Lonesome Me – the melody is strong and the slide guitar framing it downright lovely; the sudden unexpected arrival of Williams’ vocals (I bought the MP3 version, so didn’t have advance notice from any inlay) intrigues still further. Overall, I’m not going to argue this is Ward’s best work, which must still surely be Transistor Radio, but I feel it hangs together rather better than Post War, which now seems like a halfway house between the two.

A record I can sum up much more easily is the disappointing debut by Fight Like Apes. Occasionally it hints at the off-the-wall oddball lyrics of McLusky – a band the Apes have covered – but generally ends up as tiresome quirkiness for its own sake. There are a lot of loud guitars and screams, and at its best it undeniably works: Tie Me Up With Jackets was a strong single. But on the whole, I suspect this is a record I would have liked a lot more ten years ago when I had heard a lot less indie music than I have now – to my seventeen-year-old ears, it would probably have sounded inspired.

The remaining two records are both outings on which I have mixed feelings so far. The debut album by Emmy the Great has a lot to recommend it: it is never less than tuneful, and the performances from the musicians, and Emmy’s vocals, are always winning – at first blush the backing sounds ramshackle and clattery, but on reflection is it tightly arranged and played, giving the record a distinctive sound, both acoustic and rich. Lyrically, the record is confessional to the point of being harrowing: as the title suggests, it is a document of a “serious relationship”, now over. The thing I can’t decide is whether I find it so honest as to be uncomfortable, or just self-indulgent emotional wanking; either way, much as I enjoy listening to this record and think it is very good, there is something about it that sits awkwardly with me.

Finally, the new album from Morrissey… I approached it with low expectations, and this was perhaps for the best. I’m enjoying it a lot: it has a loudness, an openness and an energy that makes it much more listenable and immediate than its claustrophobic predecessor Ringleader of the Tormentors (albeit that the dense production on that record was a fascinating listen). But… is it any good? I am not convinced the songs are much of an improvement on Ringleader, which found Moz on rather predictable, limited and repetitive lyrical form. I still maintain his comeback album You Are the Quarry had a greater concentration of high calibre, memorable songs on it than probably any other single Moz record – even the inevitable “filler” tracks seemed a cut above their counterparts on Ringleader. Perhaps I need to give this record some more listens: it is certainly a very confident outing from Morrissey; at the moment, I am not sure whether his confidence is sweeping me up in the record, or whether it is truly justified. I suspect the answer is that it’s somewhere between good and middling – but I can’t tell where yet.

Feedback loop

Occasionally blog posts stick in your mind: as an example, Phil Barron offers a good explanation of how, when you get feedback on a script, the more problems the reader – and this perhaps only applies to producers and other professionals, not local writing groups and the like – lists, the better. If there are only a few problems, they are likely to be big ones: the plot, the characters, the dialogue, the structure. But if there are lots of notes, they are likely to be smaller matters of detail.

Now, giving feedback is difficult. In the professional world, producers have a licence to be harsh towards scripts: it is, after all, a business transaction and it may well be that they have bought the thing already. Though that doesn’t mean they are always horrible. But if you’re giving feedback as a favour, it’s more difficult: part of the course I went on last year was about how to give – and receive – feedback.

So, “Dos and don’ts” include:

• try to give brief comments and avoid getting bogged down in particular details
• always start with a positive comment – it’s hard enough having work assessed without being presented with a solid wall of problems
• identify problems, but don’t try and re-write it – it’s not your script.

But there is no right and wrong to giving feedback… as I have discovered. I finally put my full-length script in for feedback at my local writing group, and a few of us met in the pub to discuss it on Monday evening. One chap who couldn’t make it very kindly went to the trouble of sending me and others feedback on our scripts by email. The bloke in question is a nice guy, whose comments are usually fair, well-reasoned, and hard to disagree with.

Trouble is, he seems to have been given lessons on how to give feedback by Pol Pot: what I got was a list of about five serious problems with my script, and nothing else. Now, I can see where he is coming from on all the points, and several of them are neatly aligned with some niggling doubts I have had; and I’m grateful that he has taken the trouble to read what is, after all, a pretty long script. But, well… ouch, y’know?

That said, as I wandered up to Acton High Street, I reflected that it smarted a bit but was probably very useful and necessary advice. Mentally I began sketching out some possible rewrites… Except everyone else at the meeting disagreed with almost every point, and felt the script worked pretty well. So – confusion ahoy!

But this did make me reflect on different approaches to feedback, both giving and taking. The only time I’ve received feedback from an experienced professional, it was extremely helpful in pointing me in the right direction, while being so courteous as to be almost over-generous – but certainly extremely heartening.

By contrast, Steven Moffat once observed that Russell T Davies will be totally blunt about identifying problems with a script: he’ll tell you what he likes, but if something doesn’t work he’ll just say “that doesn’t work” and leave you to deal with it. It’s a characteristic Davies himself ponders in his frequently self-lacerating book of correspondence, The Writer’s Tale: in a passage that particularly stuck in my mind he recounted how, as producer on Children’s Ward, he announced that a particular child actor would have to be replaced, and was perplexed that the rest of the crew seemed to treat it as a big deal that needed to be handled sensitively.

Adrian Mead’s excellent book on screenwriting advises that feedback is essential, but also has a section headed “Why advice and criticism are bad”. Mead recommends the writer seek questions, but not comments: you are, after all, trying to write your own script, not a script by committee, and most people you get feedback from are no more qualified than you. Good points all – though even the inexpert reader may have the advantage of being less close to the subject.

Mead’s advice was reinforced via the wonderful medium of Twitter. Having received my splendidly confusing feedback, I wrote a tweet to that effect. Almost immediately Lucy Vee very kindly tweeted back that I should concentrate on what I want to do with the script, and pay more attention to the readers who had found positive things in it. So that’s the plan: it’s still going to be a heavy rewrite to bring the length back down (accidentally 25% too long – strange mistake, lesson learnt) and address the things that need addressing… but hopefully keep the good stuff and not tearing it all up needlessly.

Nostalgia’s not what it used to be

Every so often I put a post on here that may well be of literally no interest to anyone but me. Be warned: this is one.

Fact: after Google, the second-most used search device on the internet is YouTube. Partly, no doubt because it’s so addictive: I find it hard to go on there and look up just one video. Among its many possible functions, perhaps the greatest is to re-visit your past: for those of us who were smal children in the 1980s (or earlier) the likes of old kids TV shows often maintain a rarity value – footage from the time can be hard to find any other way, and the amount on YouTube can still be small, but is growing.

But this isn’t just about old telly. Unlike for those raised in the 1970s, we have a possible archive of camcorder footage out there. In fact – my God! – it’s just crossed my mind to go and look for old primary school plays. I’m not sure I dare…  Hang on.

Phew!

Right, yes, camcorder footage: specifically, from places you were taken on days out! Almost certainly there will be a few places you went to regularly, or semi-regularly, right? Well, here’s one I went to as a small child. (don’t worry – it’s not all pink)

Dinting Railway Centre – now long-since closed, which makes the nostalgia trip even more complete: I can’t have been since I was, at the absolute oldest, eight years old. The above clips must have been shot when I was three, so it’s maybe a bit unlikely to see myself among them. But the one below is from a couple of years later:

No sign of me or my brother, but there’s all sorts of things I like about that one in particular. Firstly, the miniature railway – my God, I remember that! And it did seem frighteningly fast when you were sat on one of those little trains, I can tell you.

This was shot on a completely typical day: I remember the two engines Tiny and Nunlow. I went in the cab of Tiny, which was exciting – it was small enough not to be terrifying to a tiny child. But Nunlow was my favourite because it was green.

I also like how the restoration of the locomotive Bahamas has clearly progressed very slowly since the previous clip: it mostly seems to be sitting in much the same set of bits, in much the same place as two years previously.

Plus there’s the obvious things: hairstyles, fashions… Watching this, you almost expect Anneka Rice to come into land in a helicopter. But it all seems very fresh and immediate because it was shot on videotape: both clips must have been shot on what was expensive kit at the time.

Rather sadly, Dinting Railway Centre – though my brother and I always called it simply “Dinting” without realising Dinting is an actual place in its own right – is now derelict, as you might be able to tell from Google maps:

The smudgy triangle at the bottom is where the platforms used to be, that you see the trains trundling in and out of. The white-roofed building on the right is the shed Bahamas was being restored outside, and seems to be the only building still standing. The larger shed has been completely demolished – I suspect the track-bed that can still just about be seen running past the Bahamas shed runs into where it used to stand. The miniature railway was in the area north of the Bahamas shed, which was on raised ground, now apparently completely overgrown. The railway tracks you can still see are the normal rail network, and still in use – services run along them into Manchester Piccadilly.

But what the hell, let’s finish with some old kids’ TV. Many of the old Broom Cupboard links no longer exist: they were considered to be between-programmes continuity, and so were not recorded by the BBC (the same goes for the daytime magazine slot Pebble Mill).

Here’s Debbie Flint filling in for Philip Schofield: I have no memory of Debbie Flint at all, but I do remember the time before Neighbours was on immediately after CBBC, of which this is an example.

Blimey – Jossy’s Giants, eh? Not actually filmed in Newcastle, but in Stalybridge – only about five miles away from Dinting, as it happens. Plus you can still see from this Blue Peter were doing reports on film, not videotape. Makes it seem ancient, doesn’t it? Mind you, at 23 years, I suppose it is.

I think Debbie Flint was mentioned in the Tribe of Toffs song John Kettley is a Weatherman. As was Simon Parkin – remember him?

OK. Enough now.

Testing, testing

It’s always a bit of a mug’s game to try to make predictions about F1 form from early pre-season tests, but it’s an interesting time all the same. Two things are worth commenting on: one is the variety in the design of the new cars, which have found many different paths for trying to optimise the new regulations – in the season it will likely make the field spread large and the racing dull, but in the pre-season it offers an interesting spectacle; the second is the apparent slow pace of the Renault.

It has been at the bottom of the timesheets throughout this week’s Valencia tests, and GrandPrix.com has reported that a large test team went out a few weeks back doing straight-line aero assessments. It’s a rather slab-like car, and very early indications are that it will not allow Fernando Alonso to mount a title challenge this year. Then again, Honda found some pace just before the start of last season after looking dog-slow – their woes only really began when they got left behind in the development race. So the early indications could be wrong for Renault; all we know at the moment is that they’re not good.

Sweet release

Here’s an updated version of that list of albums I’m looking forward to. No release dates or anything yet for Pipettes, Jarvis, Handsome Family or McKeown.

• Emmy the Great – 9th Feb (“First Love”)
• Morrissey – 16th Feb (“Years of Refusal”)
• AC Newman – 16th Feb (“Get Guilty”) [Edited, previously showed US release date]
• M Ward – 16th Feb (“Hold Time”)
• Howling Bells – 2nd Mar (“Radio Wars”)
• Neko Case – 3rd Mar [North American release date?] (“Middle Cyclone”)
• Noisettes – 30th Mar (“Wild Young Hearts”)
• Doves  – 30th Mar (“Kingdom of Rust”)
• Immaculate Machine – 21st Apr[North American release date], (”High on Jackson Hill”)
• Camera Obscura  – 21st April (“My Modelling Career”)
• MJ Hibbett and the Validators – 11th May (“Regardez, Ecoutez et Repetez”)
• Junior Boys  – 11th May (“Begone Dull Care”) [24th Mar Canadian release]

From the old version of the list, I have acquired only the Fight Like Apes album, which is a cross between the Chalets and McLusky – unfortunately, like the former band, they promise a bit more than they deliver if you ask me.

All aboard the Common Sense Bus!

Try it.

Snow joke! “Snow joke”, y’see – “it’s no j-” oh, please yourself

I suppose I was naive to expect the trains would still be running to Heathrow. And I suppose I should have checked before I left the house.

The picture above shows what should have been the first clue: it was taken on a level crossing on the North London line round the corner from where I live: very plainly, no trains had passed over those rails since the snow started to fall. That said, the bridge across the tracks carries the District and Piccadilly lines, and trains were running across it, albeit slowly (squint at the pic, you’ll see one).

But not as far as Heathrow, it seemed. So having trudged up the hill to Acton Town – and I mean trudged, through virgin snow at least some of the way, which was satisfying – I had to trudge back down it again to work from home.

But this is not one of those articles that says “why can’t we cope with a bit of snow! Berlin and Paris manage it! It’s like a Third World nation!” Look, you stupid man who has had a BBC camera thrust in your face, the reason we can’t cope with this sort of weather is that we hardly ever get it and investing in the infrastructure to cope with the kind of bad weather you get for two days a year just isn’t worth it. And I’m quite sure if you put snow in Berlin that was the worst in twenty years, they’d struggle too. So enough of the Daily Mail whingeing already.