Any Other Business: Part LXVI

As the title suggests, so forth.

The Sound of 2001…

I recently rediscovered a cassette tape from the 2004/5 academic year, and what a nostalgic blast it was listening to it. But along with the expected Morrissey, Killers, Franz Ferdinand, U2, Auf Der Maur, and Gwen Stefani tracks there was also a clutch of Smiths songs and Simon & Garfunkel tunes. Because discovering those albums were equally a part of my experience, musically speaking, of that year. Which led me to thinking about 2001, and how my musical memories of that year are largely the latter kind of listening: the Pixies B-Sides being released was really the only ‘new’ music that connected. The rest was finally listening to Bowie’s Scary Monsters and U2’s Rattle and Hum, rediscovering Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense, David Byrne’s Uh-Oh and the Doors’ first album. Because… in a world of Limp Bizkit rollin’ rollin’ rollin’, where the White Stripes and the Strokes were being feted for doing not very much of anything at all, it has to be said that 2001 was a pretty bad year for music. As it was, as has been noted previously hereabouts, also a pretty bad year for film. 2001 – what the hell was that all about? Some sort of psychic collapse or exhaustion from the anticipation of the new millennium?

St Vincent: Fear the Producer

Only three months to go until St Vincent releases a new album! And yet I am not doing the dance of joy, because I fear that bad production may have mangled outstanding songs. Listening to Masseduction and MassEducation in the last few days, along with a YouTube performance of ‘Savior’ and my DVR recordings of her appearances on Later… with Jools Holland with piano and band for ‘Los Ageless’, ‘New York’, ‘Masseduction’, and ‘Slow Fast Disco’, it has become apparent to me that the finest version of all of these twice-recorded tracks are actually the live ones. Annie Clark had produced Masseduction alongside Jack Antonoff, and MassEducation alongside pianist Thomas Bartlett, so I am at a loss as to what exactly went on that allowed drama and emotion to be swamped. But I still remember the dismay and shock I had when, after her appearance on Later… in late 2017, I heard ‘Los Ageless’ on the car radio, and didn’t recognise it till I made out familiar words in the chorus.

Lykke Li: 10 Songs

I’m Good, I’m Gone

Tonight

Little Bit

I Follow Rivers

Get Some

Sadness is a Blessing

No Rest for the Wicked

Just Like a Dream

Heart of Steel

Better Alone

Any Other Business: Part LVI

As the title suggests, so forth.

“The new orders say we’re all to wear masks now. My world is collapsing…”

Status Crimson Tide

Well, today is the first day of Status Crimson Tide. And basically everything is good to go: pubs are open with provisos, churches are open with crowd control, cinemas are open with clearances, barbers are open with bookings, galleries are open with guidance, and countrywide drives can be conducted with caution. There was meant to be Status Captain Scarlet on July 20^th, and then the all clear on August 10^th, but things got …accelerated. It was obvious that public compliance with social distance, especially among young people, wasn’t just fraying but had completely broken down, so the government was just making official what had become obvious. I’m inclined to think that the blame can be laid largely on the government itself. Leo’s little picnic was the kibosh on people inconveniencing themselves for the sake of others when the unelected and in fact rejected Taoiseach would have no such sacrifices for himself. The complete failure of voluntary mask-wearing is a corollary of this decline of moral authority. Leo and Simon Harris did photo-ops of themselves wearing masks and nobody cared. After all they had been disparaging masks for nearly four months. Were they lying then or lying now? So now we have a new law to force mask-wearing on buses, and HSE ads have begun to run on TV extolling the joys of mask-wearing: it’s to protect others from you spreading the disease. NO DUH! That was obvious in March. But from March onwards all the government wanted to talk about was how masks would encourage bad behaviour and the science was uncertain. The science wasn’t uncertain, the bad behaviour argument was idiotic, and the upshot is that masks are unlikely to take off here which will hurt us all in the long run in trying to get back to a functioning society.

Christophe Beck and the Buffy sound

Crashing thru Buffy on E4’s late-night re-runs, almost from the first few minutes of episode of season 2 it was obvious that something had changed, and that change was confirmed when the credits rolled: Christophe Beck had entered the recording studio.  If season 1 was scored in a surprisingly straightforward spooky music for horror set-ups way then season 2 was when Beck, and almost by implication the other composers working around him, realised that this series was not an out and out horror show and should be scored as such. Instead it should be set with an emphasis on melancholy and romance as well as stirring action and jump scares.

Jools and the Jazz Trance

Well, now. So Jools Holland was allowed to present Later…with Jools Holland solo again as I had wished for before Christmas, and it only took a global pandemic to stop the middle-management meddling… It was nice, if curious, to have a featured guest interviewed and curate archive performances interspersed with the odd musical guest in the curious Zoom fashion of the times. And damn if Jools didn’t regale Gregory Porter, to Porter’s obvious delight, with the tale of the jazz trance mentioned hereabouts last year. It was a 2010 live episode of Later…with Jools Holland and Jools was trying in his inimitably (and endearing) ramshackle way to keep the show on track for time given that Newsnight was prepping to air live too once his show stopped. And standing waiting in the shadows was a large choir ready to join Elbow, but unfortunately he’d put on the McCoy Tyner Trio just before, and all four of them had gone into a proper eyes closed working out their harmonies by feel jazz trance. The camera captured a nervous looking Jools, baffled at how to get them to stop as he couldn’t make eye contact with any of the players: a moment of panic that reduced Dad and I to helpless laughter. At last one musician opened his eyes and Jools was able to flag him down. He stopped, and Jools initiated a round of applause. Only for McCoy Tyner to misinterpret this, in his jazz trance, as a groovy audience’s enthusiasm, and so into another chorus, only for Jools to foil him by asserting his authority as MC to insist that this had now gone on long enough and it was time for Elbow to get a look in.

St Vincent: one more tune

I didn’t want to put a cover version into the selection of 10 of her best songs the other day, but you should check out St Vincent’s performance of ‘Lithium’ with the surviving members of Nirvana, Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic, at their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014 because what a cover version it is.

St Vincent: 10 Songs

Paris is Burning

Cruel

Cheerleader

Year of the Tiger

I Should Watch TV

Prince Johnny

Digital Witness

Huey Newton

New York

Los Ageless

Any Other Business: Part XXXIX

As the title suggests, so forth.

What Fool Rejigged Jools?

The compulsion to set your stamp on things by making unnecessary, costly and hugely counterproductive changes must be one of the most exasperating habits of incoming management. The inimitable Jools Holland is now to have co-hosts foisted upon him every week, after 27 years of hosting Later… by himself. Why? And why on earth the hideous redesign of the set? You could argue it is a return to the aesthetic of the early days of the show c.1994. Except, that the show moved away from that for a reason, and also that it never looked like this new abomination. The lights were so glaring during Amyl and the Sniffers last night that they reminded me of a cinema which has forgotten to dim the house lights before the film started. For the love of God, after Christmas can we please ditch the co-hosts and turn off some of the damn lights.

Any Other Business: Part VII

What is one to do with thoughts that are far too long for Twitter but not  nearly long enough for a proper blog post? Why round them up and turn them into  a seventh portmanteau post on television of course!

Hannibal

Sky Living is trailing the hell out of its new show Hannibal; starting May 7^th, in case  you didn’t know. The cast is certainly imposing: Morpheus Laurence Fishburne as an  FBI director who convinces his top profiler Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) to consult  with a brilliant psychiatrist Dr Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen), and, once introduced,  together they fight crime. But the premise of the show feels more than a bit  familiar. Future deadly nemeses, one a storied super-villain of sorts, are the  best of friends in the undocumented years before they come into celebrated and  chronicled conflict. It’s Smallville,  basically…

Confuse a Jools

This is the first season of Later…with Jools Holland in its new studio  in Maidstone, Kent. And it appears that the shift of location from central  London has addled proceedings considerably. The old title sequence with its  delightful ‘Jools no longer on the Tube’ in-joke has regrettably had to be  ditched owing to no longer making a lick of sense; being as it was Jools’ adventures using bus, tube and taxi to make it to the studio in time when his  own car breaks down. But now the new title sequence takes a virtual tour of the  studio naming the bands featured in the episode and to hell with the traditional  group riff played by all the musicians as the camera circles the room with the  names of the bands popping up. Except now the group riff is played at the end, after the biggest act’s  showstopped…

Herb Shriner 1 – Craig  Doyle 0

DVD as a format throws up some gloriously random things as extras, none more  so than an episode of a 1950s TV show on which Orson Welles appears for a few  minutes as a feature on a 5 disc set of Welles films. The 2^nd ever  episode of The Herb Shriner Show from  1956 is the episode in question. What’s startling, especially after watching Conan, is just how early in the game the  format was nailed. Shriner begins with a monologue making fun of the  presidential race between Eisenhower and Stevenson, and mocks Elvis, and even,  very Conan, self-deprecatingly joshes his own show. Add a comedy cheerleading  musical number, a sketch about small-town life in Indiana, and a celebrity guest  (Welles, who’s there to recite some Carl Sandburg poetry and trade barbed  Mid-Western insults with Shriner) and you have a show. American television  networks nailed this format a few years after their creation, yet Craig Doyle  faffs about on RTE about apparently clueless. Here’s a helpful tip: never tape  the show live! Record it in the afternoon, before anyone in the audience gets  drunk, so that they don’t heckle the guests or the host.