Entry 16: Apocalypse Please

You could be forgiven for thinking there was in fact no recession in this country at all. Despite what limp wristed rags like the Daily Mail might tell you, there are no bread lines or mass poverty, nor deep rooted social unrest or raging class warfare. When you think of apocalyptic nuts-in-a-vice financial meltdown, you cast your mind back to 1931 and the Great Depression. Wall Street crashed harder than Billy Joel in a people mover. Poor old Ramsay MacDonald was tearing his beard hair out trying to keep the country in the black, whilst irate Northern workmen marched the Jarrow Crusade to Westminster, only to be turned around again (probably after depositing a hurtful note) and sent home. The North got it right in the face whereas large areas of the South West did a good job of dodging the debt. There was desperate poverty, widespread frustration and general despondency and misery. It was times of some boom, a lot of bust; Orwell’s The Road To Wigan Pier up against Henry Ford’s Model A. Grim, grim, grim.

And, as of late 2007, we find ourselves in a global economic crisis of humongous magnitude. And yet if you take a gander down any high street or waltz through any university campus in the country you won’t see children in rags playing with mud clods or toothless old women gnawing on crusts of bread. No no. Instead you will see bars and nightclubs crammed to capacity, intellectual types tapping pretentiously at twinkling computer screens in coffee shops, housewives relaxing at home with 17,000 episodes of Cash In The Attic recorded on their Sky Plus box. No, this recession is kinda funny. It seems most people are willing to concede the small things to keep the luxuries. Video Games are actually booming, outselling Hollywood and the private press; in a recession. People will live off of bent tins of beans as long as they can maintain a slew of consumer electronics, and year on year sees yet more techy crap coming out, usually with an Apple logo on it, reaching a sort of peak in idiocy with the glowing tea tray that is the Ipad. It doesn’t look like a recession. But, if you look really closely, beneath the veneer of luxury over necessity, there are the tell tale signs. In fact they are everywhere. Turn on the TV and you have to endure endless adverts pleading with you to claim your mis-sold Payment Protection Insurance, or PPI, attempting to tempt the proletariat by using big words like ‘legislation’(even if any ‘compensation culture’  has levelled off since the late 1990s; thanks Advanced Legal Research and Law Reform). Similarly Price Comparison sites come in droves, offering a chance to shave a few quid off the bills. Slots for Cash 4 Gold or Gold 4 Us or Give Us Your Broken Necklaces You Sonsofbitches fill every ad break going. 

The same thing is going on in the high street. In nearly every city centre you can find them, explosions of pawn shops or exchange joints; dingy sweat holes jammed full of anything you can imagine, from Nintendo to cameras, chess boards and golf drivers. And while it is sort of amusing to poke among all that jumble, it is nonetheless the result of a squeezed lower class coughing up their earthly goods to try and make ends meet. And sometimes it’s painful how much these items probably meant. Just poke through and you will find movie memorabilia, watches engraved for loved ones , hard back books with the spines lovingly cracked. It is sort of horrible, if you think about it. Then again places like CEX or Cash Converters are just offering a service, and the money generated may even be vital to some. But there will always be something unsightly, sort of upsetting about those places.  And then there are the personal finance joints; both in the city centre and on the internet. Cheery adverts for Wonga.com mask the insurmountable APR rates, tied up in the small print scroll at the bottom of the screen. The desperation is there, it’s just hidden behind a set of vaguely off-putting adverts featuring geriatric puppets with perpetual sex drives.  I’m sure that’s just how it was in the thirties. 

And if you want to be reminded further of the stormy financial outlook(why?), just try and get a job. Yeah, like me.  I tried to get a job for something like 3 months, applying for pretty much everything across two cities. I received a rejection email from Tesco telling me that my application to work at the chicken counter was not successful, due to a lacking on my part of the “particular skills required”. I am hardly Donald Trump, but I thought that an LLB Law Degree might sufficiently enable me to ram a spit up a chickens arse.  Still, I am disadvantaged having to stay at home in the North East, where a whopping 1 in 5 young people are unemployed. The North-South divide has never seemed to actually mean anything beyond the cultural, until now. And it is sad, to see rates of pay and employment possibilities at such odds in the North to the South. It makes you feel you were treated a little unfairly.

Can it get worse? It probably won’t get much better any time soon. After the Double Dip, which I will not pretend to know anything about (Think it was one of the less successful Mr Whippy variants, or maybe a progressive grunge band), things seemed to have levelled off somewhat. Note that ‘levelled off’ is a phrase that seldom provokes unbridled elation. We are firmly in the 21^st century’s retelling of the Great Depression, except with poncey gadgets in the place of mining families crowded grimly around a single boiling kettle. What can you do to keep ahead? The worst thing about a global depression is that the answer is well beyond the whim of the individual. You are left feeling powerless, and wronged. You find yourself letching off your parents out of necessity over compulsion, doubt your own abilities and prospects, and worry for the future and your own happiness. But it is not all bad.  There is an end, just dimly in sight. And who knows, maybe this pressure will go on to make you far more effective and adaptable than those softies who flew the nest in the boom years of the early noughties. And Mum and Dad don’t mind, really. Just don’t stay out after bed time.

Entry 15: The Greatest Show On Earth

There are times in your life when you have to accept that something you said you didn’t like, you now in fact, do like. Case in point, the London Olympics. In the months preceding the games, I had nothing good to say about it. It was a pathetic exercise in monarchical power and patriotic zeal, a colossal chunk of money flung in the face of a weary public to pretend the capital and its bankers hadn’t screwed everyone over.  It was a vain attempt to make Britain look financially stable and capable when it so evidently wasn't. That is what it was to me. And yet, now that it is all over and done with, I have to say, I was wrong, and the things I thought proved to be untrue. The Olympics is not without it’s problems, conceptually and practically, but I have to say, I cannot remember the last time I was left feeling so contented to be British. And so I had to say I was wrong. Though if you are listening, Coldplay, I will never, ever, come to the same conclusion in a sentence about you. You guys suck the big hairy meatball.

I mean I must say on the first day of the Olympics I was in no great mood to change my tune. The first thing I saw was that there was another godforsaken flotilla involved to promote the Olympics on its first day. What is it with Londoners and flotillas? And who else even calls it a flotilla? As poetic as the Thames is, it is hardly a thing of beauty, with that off-putting greenish hue, and seeing some crumby old boats slip over its scummy depths stirs as much glee in me as a problematic contraction of gonorrhoea. Still thankfully this didn’t last long, and as the day dragged on, we got ever closer to the much hyped opening ceremony. And what a show it was. I was a bit apprehensive at first. I am a big fan of Danny Boyle but he seemed a strange choice to handle an event with such gravity as the opening ceremony; it’s the sort of task that even Emperor Nero would have gotten all flustered over. But Boyle did such an incredible job. From the VT feeds that brought together the history of the Thames that opened the event, I knew it would be something special.   

The arena floor had been made into an idyllic rural scene, with cheery village folk swinging ribbons round a pole and skipping rope and other such lovely things. It looked sort of like The Shire, or, interchangeably, Lamberhurst (except not everybody at the ceremony was white and old).  This gave way to the industrial and agricultural revolutions, with Kenneth Branagh strutting about in a suit and top hat, puffing on an unlit cigar (no smoking in a public venue sir, even if it is open top) with a troupe of blue blood industrialist types following after him. The grass and wood gave way to chrome and steel, with smoking chimneys rising out of the stadium floor. This led onto the Suffragettes, along with references to the world wars (very vague ones mind, we don’t want to make the German contingent squirm unnecessarily do we). This was followed by Beatlemania, the industrial north, steel mills, recession, immigration, leading onto a celebration of British storytelling, music and dance. Boyle also did an admirable job of glazing over the fairly sizeable period in British history made up of imperialist warmongering, empire building, greed, and slave trading, which made up a decent portion of the last two hundred years. Nice one Danny boy. Speaking of greed and villainy, it was unclear whether Brannagh was meant to be the baddy of the piece or not. He certainly looked like a dickhead. He kept pulling on his lapels and smirking knowingly as the various scenes unfolded, apparently the conniving and calculating visionary mastering the construction of the industrial age and the birth of consumerism. Yet he never got his comeuppance. I can’t help but feel that is a rather wry nod to the rich guys who get away with it, which, as recent years of feckless bankers and cheating politicians have shown, is no less true now than it was in the age of the top hat and cane. Or maybe it was just Kenneth Brannagh.

The lights and sound, dancing and singing were just excellent. Furthermore Boyle’s decisions on the focal points of the ceremony were well chosen. I thought the ode to the NHS, surely one of the greatest achievements of the last sixty years, was a smart choice. The interpretive dance was a bit wild at times, going a bit Lloyd-Webber when it would be better to stay a bit more Hans Zimmer, but the breakdown and sudden return to silence, during the piece dedicated to the 7/7 bombings, was actually very tasteful. The people chosen to represent the country were equally appropriate. Having Mike Oldfield play much of his Tubular Bells and also Portsmouth, with him making a live appearance, really added to the night, while having Sir Tim Berners-Lee, a man so often overlooked despite his enormous contribution to the human race, along for the proceedings was a masterstroke, and his message, ‘This is for everyone’ projected around the stadium, was actually quite poignant and moving. 

The Queen’s cameo with Daniel Craig was brilliant, and I was surprised and impressed that Queenie did the piece in person (not the actual skydiving, although, maybe on a windy day, that wouldn’t be such a bad idea...).  The parade of nations dragged on, but that’s because there are so many bloody countries in the games these days, which, surely, is a good thing. Besides it proved a good time to get a cuppa and take a slash. The presenting of the flags on the grassy hill proved very effective, though it was a shame there was no wind, so they all hung flaccid as you like. Musically I don’t think Arctic Monkeys were a very good choice, their blaring of the frenzied and featureless You Look Good On The Dancefloor seeming somewhat at odds with the theme of the night, though their ode to the Beatles with a cover of Come Together was alright, and you can’t really lose when the doves of peace are riding in luminous bicycles round the stadium while you play. They could have had my Uncle David lighting farts and it would still be moving. Or Cheryl Cole. Well,  maybe not that last one. Letting Paul McCartney close was a fairly uninspired choice, but come on, few people symbolise the British people more than Macca does. And who doesn’t love singing along to Hey Jude? The firework display is an opening ceremony standard so was hardly a surprise, but it made you ohh and ahhh at the appropriate times. I think due to the massive speculation as to which lucky sole would light the Olympic flame, the fact that not one, but six people I don’t know lit it was sort of anti-climatic, in the same way allowing the Chuckle Brothers to light it would have been anti-climatic. I suppose it is fitting because it was like the old athletes handing to the new, or something. Either way the actual flame itself, The Cauldron, was incredible, the way it swung up to unite the urns of each country was a really creative and heartfelt twist on the standard lighting of the flame (without any crispy fried doves; always a plus). 

So the Games got off to the best possible start, and, I thought, while the ceremony was great, the games themselves could never reach the high mark that the ceremony had set. But unbelievably I was wrong. I found myself day after day popping the TV on and seeing what was going on in the capital. A large part of the Games appeal for me had to be the BBCs coverage itself, which, compared to the patchwork efforts of NBC in the states, was concise and thorough. Gary Lineker  and Sue Barker, both household names, presented with a professional ease that is ideal for a task as mammoth as presenting the games, and the inclusion of John Inverdale, who I hadn’t seen present before, was a good choice; he could be succinct, hearty and breezy in his congratulations and interviews with Team GB,  but he also brought a sort of deadpan wit to proceedings, of the sort sorely missing in sports commentary. A turn from the ubiquitous Matt Baker helped round off the cast. But this would have been nothing if it weren’t for the undoubtedly incredible performances by the members of Team GB. So many heroes have been born from the games, Mo Farrah, Jessica Ennis, Ben Ainslie, to name really only  a few of the many, many new faces thrust into the Olympic limelight. Even the made men, such as Bradley Wiggins or Chris Hoy winning their gold medals was fantastic, and it was especially nice to see Andy Murray win gold, something that clearly meant a lot to him.  Maybe now he can lighten the hell up. And then there was the maelstrom of activity, not all of it very savoury, surrounding young diver Tom Daley. I mean yeah, hubba hubba, Tom Daley is a total dreamboat, not going to question that. But the scale of Daleymania proved a little troubling to say the least, with everyone and their dad falling over one another to detail what graphic act they would unleash upon the poor chap. Olympic ogling is virtually an Olympic sport in itself but when it verges on obsession it gets a bit much. Still, I don’t think any person in the country wasn’t a little guilty in the creeping department. 

For me, the biggest difference between the Olympic Games and other national events like say, the Royal Wedding of the Queens Jubilee, was that you really clicked with the competitors. You really empathised with them as they so clearly struggled and toiled to compete, and when they won, you couldn’t help but be happy for them, because unlike some millionaire blue blood, most of Team GB were just normal people, and seeing them triumph against the best the world had to offer was genuinely a great feeling. Where the royal festivities alienated those of us who don’t live in castles, the games actually did bring people together and we came to see a bit of ourselves in the athletes, who reacted to their sensational wins with such modesty and humour that you felt glad to hold them up to the world like that, a feeling some people would describe as pride in being British. What resulted was one of the best medal hauls in British memory, with the tiny speck of the British Isles finishing third behind the super powers of sport, China and the USA. Though you couldn’t help feel the top two weren’t quite appreciating their success, and there was a definite political edge to their game which was a bit sour to me. Still, it’s the Americans. They used to be like that with the USSR, it seems they just need someone to square up to on an international stage or else it’s just no fun for them. But as for the Chinese, things were a bit darker. The kind of commitment to winning gold for them is something akin to the determination of the imperialist Japanese to protect their emperor from American invasion in 1945. You can’t help but wonder what grizzly threats were made out to the Chinese team should they not win a gold. I dare say Li Yangfeng will be shovelling gravel in some shady work camp for failing to bring a gold back east in the Women’s discus. Still. With the two week stint of sports and competition over, there was only time for a final hurrah at the Olympic stadium.

And what a hurrah it was. A retina searing celebration of British music, from One Direction to Ray Davies, from the Spice Girls to Muse and Madness. It was not without a little weirdness; the Pet Shop Boys in black latex KKK ensemble was pretty trippy, as was Timothy Spall standing in a plastic Big Ben, blasting out Shakespeare, but dressed up as Winnie Churchill. Yeah, you know what people say of the eccentricity of the British. Emeli Sande did overstay her welcome a little, and indeed seemed to be a little off key, but Elbow's swelling anthem One Day Like This fit well with the celebratory feel of the event. It was also really good to see Geroge Michael back after his terrible illness, belting out Freedom like it was 1997. The fashion industry got a well deserved nod, though the influence that Tinie Tempah and Taio Cuz have had on music over the past fifty years is, well, debatable. It is the only gig I have ever seen where the crowd response to the legendary Brian Many was matched only by The Spice Girls. Something interesting that happened before the show was even over, was that Elbow, Kate Bush and Emeli Sande, all made appearances in the ITunes Top 20 chart, which was nice to see too.Though admittedly it did start to drag towards the end, and I for one was totally kosher with not having to hear the Greek national anthem, or know anything about the Rio Olympics, or see that many feather girls in one sitting.But beyond the music, it was a pleasant sight seeing so many people enjoying themselves. There is nothing like seeing several hundred athletes losing their shit to We Will Rock You.One noted it felt like it had been 'a friendly Games'; with as much style as there was substance, far removed from the Corporate pomp of the Beijing festivities. London went beyond light and magic. It had heart.

 The 2012 Olympics in London was more than a contest, and it was more than a sports event. It is easy to nitpick. Some say hosting an Olympic games in such splendour is simply inappropriate in times of such dire recession. Conceptually the Olympics can be seen as merely celebrating the exasperation of basic motor functions; a collection of dry and meaningless little mini-games.  Leering old dickhead Morrisey even chimed in saying that the games were reminiscent of Germany in 1939; what he describes as 'blustering jingoism'.  But this can only be described as a pathetic and rather mean spirited attempt to stay relevant. In fact, this comes after Moe complained on stage in Manchester that his music wasn’t included in the opening ceremony. Sounds like someone’s a bit huffy to me. Admittedly these are not great times for Britain, and yes London as a capital does seem to drift and drift, financially and socially, from the rest of the country, which remains severely harassed by tight spending cuts.  But the Olympic Games seemed to bring the whole country together in a way I’ve never known. The Olympic torch had traced every inch of the country, from the farthest parameter to the most central of metropolises. It was like the North/South divide was obliterated, and for a short time, the nation stood as one, witnessing young British men and women, from London, from Yorkshire, from Scotland and Hexam, standing up to represent the UK on an international stage. It was not just London’s games; in a way it belonged to every person from every corner of the country. Team GB outperformed any expectations, and on other fronts, men like Michael Phelps, Usain Bolt and David Rudisha cemented themselves as sporting legends. It was this shared emotion that made the games what it was. Because it is not, as Morrissey suggests, a celebration of one country besting its rivals. It is a celebration of unity, from borough to borough, country to country, hemisphere to hemisphere. It is a celebration of the quirks and drama of the human condition. It was the Olympic spirit, more tangible than ever. I enjoyed the Olympics in its entirety. And Christ, I never thought I'd say that.

Entry 14: Album Review: Lady Gaga / Born This Way

There are two things you take for granted with pop sensation Stephani Germanotta; firstly that wherever you go, whoever you meet, Lady Gaga will be a big deal, and secondly, that a sizeable chunk of the people you meet will hate her music with an infernal, burning passion. Gaga seems to have a notable polarising affect, which isn’t surprising really; the girl is hardly subtle.  So with latest and greatest effort, Born This Way now more than a year old, it is time to strip away the pomp and the fervour and get down to the nitty-gritty.

As a preliminary point, what for the love of god is that album cover?  Why, for the physical manifestation of the sound of this new album, this towering glittering blockbuster pop album, choose that? Just as Gaga yearns to be treated as a serious artist, she splats this on her new album and thinks ‘that will impress those shits over at Rolling Stone’. It is just Lady Gaga, pretending to be a motorbike. I mean she has a whole freaking design team, the Haus of Gaga, to design cool stage performances and artwork and press releases and such shit. So what happened here? Is she trying to subliminally persuade Harley-Davidson enthusiasts to buy her new album? I reckon it’s sizeable enough as it is, to be honest.  What will her next album cover be? Maybe she will want to try and get entomologists on side; could just be her in an elaborate woodlouse outfit. Or maybe she wants Urologists to like her; now that would be an album cover. 

This album is a mixed bag really. Though it has since become an anthem for the disenfranchised, Born This Way, the chart topping title track, is, well, a bit off. Musically it is sort of fun, and while the lyrics are sheer horseshit (‘Don’t be a drag, just be a queen’ says Gaga; how about ‘Don’t be shit, just write something decent’ instead?), the beat is irresistible and the industrial synth twinkling is a nice touch. But this song is so unbelievably derivative, it borders on self-parody.  Gaga’s little list she delves into near the end of the song (‘Whether you're broke or evergreen/ You're black, white, beige, chola descent/ You're Lebanese, you're orient) apes Madonna’s style in Vogue so shamelessly its jaw-dropping (‘Greta Garbo, and Monroe/ Deitrich and DiMaggio/ Marlon Brando, Jimmy Dean/ On the cover of a magazine’). Although, giving Gaga her due, sounding like Vogue might not be such a bad thing; Vogue is surely one of the greatest pop songs ever written. But then there is the message of Born This Way, one aimed squarely at the gay community, gays even get an explicit mention. Oh Gaga you shouldn’t have! (No really, you shouldn’t have bothered). She advocates loving your own body and being comfortable in your own skin with your own beliefs. But, can she really say the same? I feel if she was chuffed with how she looked she wouldn’t need tacky OTT outfits or a new gimmick every seven seconds to distract us. If she looked in the mirror and thought ‘yeah, that will do’, she wouldn’t need a dress made up of choice cuts of beef would she? Besides, no amount of mutton can hide that massive conk. Its fine, I am sure she needs it to break hard skinned fruit or something. Totally legit.

Album opener Marry The Night is quite nice, fairly stock dance stuff, but things get really interesting as we get into the last minute; there is a brief reprieve from all the pumping bass, and then an exhilarating, inspired crackle of synth and a persistent drum beat, that is sheer glam-stomp splendour.  However, Highway Unicorn and Government Hooker (despite its fairly risqué premise) are sheer filler; droning, uninspired and sounding like misguided B-sides. Then Americano is almost painful, Gaga’s voice is so terrible here, stripped of all its emotion, it is done partly in Spanish (and is none the better for it),  and she winds up sounding like Pavarotti choking on a custard cream.  The crackling guitar of Electric Chapel is appreciated, but little else in that song can inspires much thought or feeling. Schiβse is the ultimate depth of depravity of the set; total and utter crap, she sounds like Rammstein on a bad day; though they have a lot of them. The opening bass crackles of Judas are awesome, punchy and weighty, they open the song expertly but what follows is more unsightly vocals, and her crowing before each chorus (‘n’awwww ooohh aaaahhh n’aaaawww ohhh aaahh’) is totally obnoxious and off-putting. The song is just wasted after such a good start. Plus my friend brought to my attention that her pronunciation of ‘Judas’ sounds terribly close to ‘tuna—tuna-ah-ah’, which makes it nigh on impossible to not just imagine Lady Gaga singing the piece with cans of John West cascading everywhere. Still, say what you want of Gaga, but Edge of Glory, the album’s last hurrah, is just perfect pop; catchy, cleverly written, and musically inventive. That sax solo (provided by E-Street Band saxophonist, Clarence Clemons no less) is inspired, and the song  is definitely an album highlight.  It’s just such a shame the rest of the album can’t match this sort of calibre.

Born This Way is far more explicit than The Fame, but then it is less musically inventive. Personally there is no matching the spiky, contrived gem that is Paparazzi, or the cool hip-hop attitude of Beautiful Dirty Rich, and no song on this album, bar Edge of Glory, can match them. The message is much clearer; freedom of thought and autonomy and sexual exploration and such. But musically it is streets behind The Fame. Even in terms of straight up disco hits, there is nothing that can compare to Just Dance or Alejandro.  And on a more far-reaching note, Lady Gaga is sort of, well, getting old. The whole ‘look at me-look at me’ gimmicks she pulls at every public event she attends is churlish and is rapidly losing any sort of interest or originality. I mean if your music is 80s dance pop, a size 10 meat dress wont change that. Lady Gaga is here to stay, Born This Way proves this, despite the hit-and-miss affair that it is. But she needs to get personal. All this smoke and mirros is all good and all, and it is something an act like Thirty Seconds to Mars can do very well, but you need some heart behind the music, or else it is just bright flashing lights and silly outfits. Germanotta has definite talent, if you don’t believe me, then go listen to The Fame, or watch her play piano; she’s mind-blowing . But she needs to start putting herself out there a bit. All this gimmicky crap is starting to run thin.And can that woman stop falling off pianos? How many times? Start wearing flats Gaga or you're going to wind up with a busted lip.