Any Other Business: Part XLVI

As the title suggests, so forth.

Just in the nick of time!

I almost didn’t notice it but the Horror Channel are re-running The Time Tunnel from the very beginning in their Sci-Fi Zone. I for one shall be tuning in at 12pm tomorrow for a triple bill. Irwin Allen’s 1960s shows were re-run in the late 1980s and early 1990s on Channel 4 and Sky One and I have very fond memories of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Land of the Giants, and The Time Tunnel. Having been highly impressed in the last few years by re-runs of The Avengers, The Man From UNCLE, and The Invaders I’ll be interested to see how this stands up. In particular when I was originally watching the show I was totally unaware that Lee Meriwether, who played scientist Dr Ann MacGregor, was Catwoman in the 1966 Batman movie. And if you think a triple-bill on a Saturday afternoon is overdoing it then I merely say you can’t excuse yourself on the basis that you possibly have anything else to do at this particular moment in time.

Who fears to take The Strokes Test?

Back in January Stephen Errity sent me on Evan Rytlewski’s provocative tweet (https://twitter.com/Evanryt/status/1215008355149856768) about what he called The Strokes Test: Would people still care about this band if their best album did not exist?  It is meant to knock out The Strokes but it also gravely endangers Nirvana, because of their tragically truncated discography. Pixies survive the test because if you get into an argument over whether Surfer Rosa or Doolittle should go then you are still left with either Surfer Rosa or Dootlittle to place beside Bossa Nova and Trompe le Monde. Talking Heads survive the test in style because if you get into a spat over Fear of Music, Remain in Light, Speaking in Tongues, or Little Creatures as their best album you are still left with three great albums and several more to boot. A similar embarrassment of riches occurs for the Beatles, the Doors, Led Zeppelin, U2 and REM. But, and here’s a nagging thought, what about the Beach Boys? Absent Pet Sounds from their discography and what remains? And once you dwell on that you realise you could say the same for Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Kinks and the Who. Any band with a number of great songs that never truly perfected the art of making essential albums is imperilled by the test.

And normal service has been resumed…

We are a week into the social distancing shuttering of the country and yet the government won’t admit what we all know – a more perfect lockdown is coming. The universities have abandoned the 2019/20 academic year; it’s over, classes, exams, something something online, don’t bother coming back to campus, have a good summer, see you in the autumn, maybe. The schools patently will be told to stay out until the Easter holidays begin, and then, sure why not take off all of April, and well, you know, May is kind of freewheeling into the end of the year anyway so who really needs it. Yet officially everything is still just on the mother of all pauses until March 29th. Are we supposed to take that seriously? Are we meant to believe all pubs and cinemas, cafes and theatres will re-open on that day and we all breathe a sigh of relief that we shut down that pesky coronavirus good? How does it help to keep the citizens of the country engaged in an idiotic guessing game? When will the actual status red lockdown begin? March 30th? April 1st? What is the point of Leo Varadkar embarrassing himself and us by going on national television on St Patrick’s Day to plagiarise Winston Churchill? You do not become a statesman for our time by appropriating a resonant phrase from a statesman from another state at another time anymore than I would become Dan Rather by ending all these posts with the single word – Courage. Yet Varadkar decided to tell us what we already knew about the coronavirus, fail to elaborate on economic aids for people thrown out of work, and did not announce a lockdown – which one would have thought the only reason for such a state of the nation address. Instead he told us the Emergency was ‘likely’ to continue past March 29th. Good to know.

Courage!

Arcade Fire & Pixies at Marlay Park

Arcade Fire arrived at Marlay Park on the back of triumphantly headlining Glastonbury, with super-support from Pixies touring their first new album in 23 years.

Pixies’ new album Indie Cindy, culled from various EPs over the last while, is very reminiscent of 1990’s Bossanova; with elements of 1991’s Trompe le Monde. Their deafeningly loud 22 song set included new songs ‘Bagboy’, ‘Magdalena 318’, ‘Indie Cindy’, and ‘Greens and Blues’ interspersed with the old classics, and the old songs fitted in perfectly. The latest Kim Deal substitute was adept as a bassist but less so vocally in a Doolittle and Surfer Rosa heavy-set, but Dave Lovering and Joey Santiago were obviously having fun. Lovering in particular hammed up his rendition of ‘La La Love You’, even though the crowd started applauding before he’d actually finished… And therein lay the explanation for Frank Black’s distant mood. This was far from the adulatory reception Pixies received when supporting Red Hot Chili Peppers in 2004. A blisteringly raucous finale saw Pixies run together ‘Rock Music’, ‘Isla de Encanta’, and ‘Tame’, before ‘Debaser’ was abandoned because Black’s guitar had broken and he chose to take it as a sign. Truthfully the sign had come earlier when the moshpit went crazy for ‘Here Comes Your Man’ – this nearly 50 minutes in, and after ‘Wave of Mutilation’, ‘Gouge Away’, ‘Velouria’, and ‘Nimrod’s Son’ had been played without any such reaction. When the crowd at the front then went wild again a few songs later for ‘Where is My Mind?’ you could almost see Fassbender’s despairing lines as cult musician Frank run across Black’s face: “They do not know and love us? They do not know us…” This was a crowd of face-painted teenagers there for Arcade Fire, and all the Pixies they knew was thru Fight Club’s finale and their only song approved for daytime radio. This cast a slight pall over the end of the set, and, almost as if the gods had been angered, the sunny weather was replaced by a cold wind.Win Butler seemed ashamed on his fans’ behalf, and later played the intro of ‘Where is My Mind?’ while stressing the seminal nature of Pixies – ‘you really ought to know who they are’ was the clear subtext…

The stage at Marlay has changed position a lot over the years and now the audience looks past it to the mountains, the perfect backdrop really for a band with a song called ‘Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)’. Arcade Fire took to the stage at 8:30 in order to play for over two hours, although they first had to boot off their bobble-head band which had started playing ‘Where the Streets Have No Name’. Impressively the costumes used at Glastonbury were discarded for all new outfits, with Win Butler sporting a white suit with red birds adorning the jacket. After staggeringly tossing aside the totemic ‘Rebellion (Lies)’ as the second song sandwiched between two new tracks, they settled comfortably into The Suburbs; with ‘Rococo’, ‘Month of May’, ‘The Suburbs’, and ‘Ready to Start’ in succession. After some moody Funeral hits the already energised crowd were set dancing with ‘Intervention’, ‘We Exist’, ‘No Cars Go’, ‘Haiti’, ‘Reflektor’ and ‘It’s Never Over (Oh Orpheus)’ one after another. And it was very noticeable just how much dancing there was going on in the crowd. Some of this may be because the gig didn’t sell out (Recession, y’all), so people had space to really go for it; but most of it was surely because of the sheer energy of the small army of musicians bouncing around and effortlessly switching instruments onstage. And offstage, with dancers throwing shapes on a platform in the crowd for ‘We Exist’, and Regine Chassagne being menaced by dancing skeletons for ‘Oh Orpheus’ on the same platform. And then the band left to allow a bobble-head Pope to rip up a photo of Miley Cyrus while standing beside a TV-screen-head man playing Sinead O’Connor’s ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’. Arcade Fire returned, heralded by their mirror-ball man speaking Irish, for an encore of ‘Afterlife’, ‘Neighbourhood #3 (Power Out)’, ‘Here Comes the Night Time’, and ‘Wake Up’. And after exploding a vast shower of confetti over the crowd there really could be no second encore after that closer… It was a really good gig, but I wasn’t as blown away by it as other people were because I don’t think Reflektor stands up to their previous work. I’ve been listening to Neon Bible and really enjoying it recently, and it has almost completely fallen out of their set-list. They played 7 songs from Reflektor, and I think by their next tour only ‘Reflektor’, ‘Afterlife’, ‘It’s Never Over (Oh Orpheus)’ will still be played. But that’s three new songs U2 would kill for.

I seem to be cursed to see huge bands when they’re touring weak albums, but this will still surely be a strong contender for feel-good gig of the summer.

4/5