Damn you Attenborough!!

A little while back I had one of my increasingly frequent "things aren't what they used to be" moans about the sort of stuff that gets commissioned on TV, and the sort of stuff that doesn't get enough exposure. In particular I praised a David Attenborough documentary about Charles Darwin

The BBC are currently showing a new Attenborough-led series - Nature's Great Events.

It's simply superb, but while I will continue to argue that we should have two dozen such series (not to mention the likes of Horizon, Arena, and countless others) for every banal celebrity (or, worse still, wannabe-celebrity but don't wannabe putting any effort in) "reality" show, I occasionally find myself wishing I wasn't watching it.

I've just watched last Sunday's 'episode' - following the trials of a Lion pride awaiting the return of the Wildebeest herds to their particular area of the Serengeti. To suggest that I found it hard to watch at times would be, frankly, an understatement. The soap and celebrity-self-congratulatory-backslapping-show fans can argue all they want about the 'emotion' and 'humanity' of their preferred drivel - but anyone who watched as six-month-old Lion cubs were left for dead by a pride that couldn't afford to wait for them will know that there is simply no comparison.

Of course there will be an element of dramatic licence in the way the story was presented - it wouldn't be possible to show the whole thing in an hour long program, and of course the editing was very carefully done to present a documentary that would illicit just such an emotional response from the viewer. That's what these programs are about though, and they successfully present stories and imagery more powerful than anything that the likes of a Big Brother or an Eastenders will ever do.

I imagine, though, that making such incredible material must come with a price. I may have found it hard to watch at times, but imagine being the cameraman sat for hours filming as a young Lion dies of starvation - just a mile from it's family, and almost within touching distance of you and your Landrover (a Landrover loaded up with food and water).

What must the temptation be like to try and intervene? I'm not suggesting, for one minute, that such film crews are on the same level as - let's say - an air-sea rescue team, but it still must take some special kind of 'guts' to sit and watch events like that unfold without getting involved.

So, BBC, more more more... but be prepared for the fact that I might not watch it!

Hope, Hype, and the Anti-Bush

So, Barack Obama eh?

See, I can be topical - a bit late, but when the subject is as big as this, what's a few weeks.

I worry about the bloke. Does anyone else think that he's already been set up to take a momentous fall?

I can't imagine that there were too many people who were sorry to see Dubya stepping down. A few comics will probably miss the easy target, and even Michael Moore might be able to take a step back and grab a holiday, but for the most part I expect that his departure was not met with wailing and the nashing of teeth.

Enter Barack Obama, the Anti-Bush, the great black hope, the second coming (third, if you count David Icke, although he obviously doesn't think so).

Now he could turn out to be America's answer to John Major or William Hague, and still be a massive improvement on his predecessor, but I can't help thinking that things have gone a bit too far - and the makers of this graphic obviously agree (although, maybe, a little more cynically than I)





Personally I have nothing against the man - and I accept that he's come into the job at the toughest time that I can remember for any US president (not that I've paid that much attention in the past). The war on terror - with its coincidental by-product of oil pipelines... allegedly - and the worldwide economic downturn...

[side note: anyone else notice how, despite confirmation of the UK's 'recession' status, and talk of the worst conditions since the great depression - or even before, it's all of a sudden become nothing more ominous than a "downturn" when the news media mention it?]

...all things considered, Obama is probably facing the toughest 'first day' at work since Vanessa Feltz took on a personal trainer.

But even against, or maybe because of, that backdrop I can't help feeling that a year or two down the line an awful lot of the 'hope' attached to BA Barack(us) will have faded - and the acceptance will be setting in that he's just another politician. Undoubtedly trying to do what he feels is best, but undoubtedly not bringing an era of great change to the world... or even the USA.

Maybe I'll be proved wrong, but somehow I think it unlikely - and when that realisation dawns I expect there to be some very red-faced people out there. Not least the customers of this establishment.

Bear in mind that I took this on a small side-street in Northampton - a part of the UK that, I would expect, will never cross the Obama administration's radar. Despite that, optimism over the coming of the new messiah is obviously riding very high indeed when you can put a notice like this up in the window of your barber-shop.

The Genius is loose, as is one of his screws.

First up let's be clear, I like iTunes a lot. When I got my first iPod (a 60Gb video) I didn’t pay much attention to iTunes, and as such spent more time trying to decide what to listen to, than listening to it. Two things changed that, one was adding an iPod Shuffle to my collection, and the other - because I wanted to get the most out of that little gadget - was learning more about iTunes. More specifically about Smart Playlists.

If you use iTunes, and you're not one of those folks who listens only to entire albums, then you need to learn a little about Smart Playlists. A little Googling led me to Andy Budd's superb setup. A slightly modified version of that, and a couple of nights spent tagging and rating my library, and I now effectively have a set of self-updating 'radio stations' on my PC and iPods.

Much like this feature, which has been around for ages, I have also been late in switching on to another little widget - albeit a more recent one. The iTunes 'Genius'.

Here's what Apple have to say about it:

"The new Genius feature in iTunes 8 creates the perfect playlist. Just select a song, click the Genius button, and iTunes generates a playlist of songs from your library that go great with it. You decide how many songs appear in your Genius playlist — 25, 50, or 100. Refresh your Genius playlist to get new results. Or save your Genius playlist so you always have it."

So what we’re looking at is essentially a little techy widget that creates mix tapes for you? Cool! I grew up (musically speaking) in the 80’s and 90’s – the golden era of mix tapes – this was made for me!

So I decided to fire it up and give it a go. It took a little while to set up, probably mainly due to the size of my library (around 7,000 tracks, and I've only got up to 'I' in terms of uploading my CD collection), but I watched some TV and came back to find it ready to roll.

My first instinct with things like this is to try and 'break' them, to go as left-field as I can to see how well they cope. Because I'd been listening to his stuff recently, I 'seeded' Genius with Tim Minchin's "Ten foot cock and a few hundred virgins" - a snappy little ditty on the issue of double standards in various religious texts.

[side note: Open-minded adults only! If you've got a minute or two give it a watch - it's not as subversive as it sounds, and it really is clever, but you'll need a sense of humour - you have been warned!]

I guess I really wasn't all that surprised to be told that Genius didn't have anything for me on that one, even though I have the rest of the same CD - along with Eddie Izzard, Bill Hicks, Derek & Clive, and a bunch of similar bits in my collection. The majority of folks will be using iTunes for 'proper' music won't they?

So I decided to let the Genius warm up a little, and went mainstream. "Invisible Sun" by The Police. I was fiddling around on a couple of websites and before I knew it I was listening to U2, Bowie, and then a Sting solo track - all pretty good so far - but then something strange happened...

It took a second, and then the riff hit home - "Living After Midnight" by Judas Priest. Hmmm, interesting. A couple more decent suggestions followed, REM and The Clash, before things went off at a tangent again - Kiss with "Shout It Out Loud"

Maybe Genius is just being like Empire Records' Eddie - trying to widen my horizons a little – but I can’t help thinking that Apple have some tweaking to do. I really don’t mind the odd diversion from the main road, but – having played around a bit – I can see all sorts of fun and games on the horizon for some users.

A quiet night in snuggled up with your new girlfriend (or boyfriend, ladies – or maybe girlfriend, your prerogative and all that). Point the Genius toward Dusty Springfield’s “Son of a Preacher Man” and sit back to enjoy the moment. The Foundations follow (“Build Me Up, Buttercup”), then Sheryl Crow… OK I don’t have that much old stuff, so it’s already stretching things a little, but I imagine your crafty ‘yawn-stretch-and-put-your-arm-around-his/her-shoulder’ move is going to come to a screeching halt when Guns ‘n’ Roses start to tell you how they “..used to love her, but [they] had to kill her”

Maybe you want to convince your Mum that your musical tendencies aren’t that bad really, and that she’d quite like some of your stuff. Maybe you make her a mix-CD seeded from one of those nice acoustic tracks off the second CD of ‘In Your Honour’ by the Foo Fighters. I expect she’d be quite happy driving the Mondeo down to Tesco’s for the weekly shop, listening to Radiohead and The Killers, but when the Deftones hit “Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away)” kicks in she’d better not be in the process of trying to manoeuvre into their tight parking spots. (OK, so it’s far from the nastiest Deftones track, but still…)

Of course it seems that there’ll be one situation that you shouldn’t have problems with. Seed Genius with something like Soilwork, and it’s ‘metal’ all the way. Bloodsimple, Lamb of God, Arch Enemy, God Forbid…

I have no idea how Genius works, but it seems to have a tendency toward the… alternative, shall we say. Works for me, but I suspect it could take a bit of tweaking before it really hits its full potential.

Mr Darcy, Arnie or Alien?

It’s lunchtime in the Solomon office, and I’m pretty much struck dumb.

I like films, as anyone who has seen my DVD collection will testify – I really really like films. Then again, with what TV offers up most of the time, can you really blame me?

My tastes range from the mainstream to the downright obscure, across the dramatic and comedic. From fantasy and sci-fi worlds to plain old real-world Mother Earth.

In case I’m not being clear, I’ve seen – and will continue to see – a lot of films. This means two things.

Firstly I am almost always eagerly awaiting the arrival of at least one film, and like to keep an eye on what’s around the corner. Right now I’m particularly excited by the imminent arrival (at last!) of Watchmen. I’m also waiting less than patiently for Tarantino’s ‘Inglourious Basterds’, Clint Eastwood’s ‘Gran Torino’, and ‘Transformers 2 : Revenge of the Fallen’ (pure no-brainer cheese, but the trailer looks so very cool).

The second facet of my love is the fact that I’ve seen some truly bizarre offerings hit the screen. Vampires living in a desert town, wearing high-factor sun-block and drinking synthetic blood; An ageing Elvis Presley - who swapped lives with an Elvis impersonator to escape the limelight – living in a Texas retirement home and battling an ancient Egyptian mummy; and even Mark Wahlberg leading a bunch of survivors as they try to escape homicidal plant-life (blatantly the most ridiculous, and worst acted of the three – sorry Mark, I do rate you generally but that was just awful)

Those all pale into insignificance though. I’ve just checked my email, there’s a friend who regularly drops me messages about stuff he’s spotted – because he knows I’ll be interested. As a result I’ve gone scurrying around the web with my jaw to the floor. It surely must be a wind-up, right? Apparently not, not according to Empire, and The Guardian, and numerous other sources.


So I guess that just leaves the question of whether Mr Darcy will do an Arnie and kick Georgian xenomorph butt, earn their respect and survive like Danny Glover did, or take a beating like the acid-blooded Aliens.

Pride and Predator? You really couldn’t make it up!

I Need Something....

Well the cat’s out of the bag, so to speak, and something I’ve been getting excited about for a while now is official. But first a bit of background.

“I see Starz, and the moon is Big and Black, well there's a full Sheer Heart Attack
but the cheapest trick of all is when I hear that London Call
I need something and I need it fast, I need Jason Scorching past
I need to feel they feel the same, 'cos when they almost know my name it's like 29 x the pain”

‘29 x The Pain’ by The Wildhearts.



I remember hearing those lyrics back in 1993, or ’94 - some time around then, and a quick shiver going down my spine because I realised that someone else had been listening to the same band as me… and as far as I knew up to then no-one listened to them. That band was Jason & The Scorchers.

Now clearly that was a ridiculous thought, and there were hundreds of people across the UK, Europe and in the States who were fans - and bigger fans than I was, and probably ever will be – but I didn’t know that. This was long before I had net access, and having basically ‘grown up’ (musically speaking) on Kerrang! The Scorchers had never touched my radar often, and were unlikely ever to do so.

In fact it was a chance viewing on an old BBC2 ‘youth culture’ show called No Limits that led to my introduction to The Scorchers. Back in 1986 I was spending most of my time and money on bands like Van Halen, Iron Maiden, and Cinderella – but watching No Limits one evening I caught a video clip of some strange outfit who were playing my type of guitars, but with a country twang.

I’ve since, incorrectly as it turned out, credited a school friend with passing me a copy of the album from which the single came – Still Standing. Having found out that this wasn’t the case, and also recognising the artwork when I recently picked up said album on CD, I now realise that I'd actually tracked it down and bought it myself – on good ol’ vinyl. Unfortunately, to my shame, that also means that it went the way of the second-hand record shop at some point – in one of the many clear-outs I had, largely due to lack of space and lack of finances.

The album was (and still is) a long time favourite of mine, but unbeknown to me it was one of 11 or 12 EPs and LPs put out by The Scorchers over a sixteen year on-and-off career. Not only that, but almost to a man, it is regarded as one of their weakest offerings by almsot everyone who knows the band's work – having come at a time when they were under pressure to tap into the growing rock scene.

It’s a cliché, but it’s true – they were seen as too rock for country, and too country for rock.

I liked it though, no – I loved it, but my background and social circle was solidly in the ‘metal’ camp. Without the internet to surf and find out more, I spent years with Still Standing as my only knowledge of the band – that, and the knowledge that Ginger was a fan too.

Fast forward to 2005, I’m standing in the kitchen of my then-girlfriend’s house talking to her, when I hear the familiar twang of Jason’s voice from upstairs. I ask the obvious question, to which she replies:

“Yeah, that’ll be Paul, my lodger…”

Needless to say, when we were introduced, the first question I asked was about the music I’d heard. It turned out that not only was Paul a fan, owning all of the aforementioned releases of which I’d been ignorant for so long, but he also had worked for a record label – in Holland – that had released the Scorchers material in Europe. Not only that, but he also happened to design and manage the website of one Jason Ringenberg – the Jason of scorching ‘fame’.

Coincidence is a great thing sometimes, and that set of circumstances put me on a path which has seen me not only meet Jason, not only have him play my favourite Scorchers track (Shotgun Blues) acoustically at Summer Sundae 2005 – and dedicate it to me, but also come to be able to call him a friend.

In the past two years I’ve travelled to Nashville to see The Scorchers play a benefit show for their drummer the Exit/In. I've shared a barbecue with Jason and his family watching fireflies, and sat in Warner Hodges' lounge and discussed ideas that led to him teaming up with Ginger for a brief UK Scorchers 'tribute' tour. I’ve gained my first photo credit in the form of a couple of pictures in Jason’s press kit, I’ve witnessed their first UK date in over a decade – a semi-secret warm-up show in my home town...



...and I’ve even promoted a gig by Jason’s “twin brother” – Farmer Jason – at the cricket club in Kibworth (kind of surreal, but so much fun!).



With all of that, what have I got left to be excited about? The news that The Scorchers are heading into the studio again. For the first time in my life I am able to wait in full knowledge and anticipation of a new Jason & The Scorchers album. The problem is I don’t want to wait…

I need something, and I need it fast!!!

No apology needed Jezza! and as for offensive, I just don't see it

Why in the name of all that is good was Jeremy Clarkson today forced into making an apology for merely stating his opinion?

...and make no mistake about it, in my mind he was forced - after all why else would a man who has made a career from being outspoken and controversial do just that?

I find it ridiculous, but not nearly as ridiculous as the comments from Steve Winyard, from the RNIB who went as far as to accuse Clarkson of offending blind and visually impaired people. Now THAT is ridiculous and, in fact, offensive!

For those that don't know, and can't be bothered to read the BBC article, this is th short version. Discussing the Australian Prime Minister's comments about the world financial situation, Jezza suggested that it was good to see a man who looked genuinely concerner rather than our "One-eyed Scottish Idiot" who keeps making out that he has the solution and that everything's under control (or words to that effect)

Let's check:

One-eyed? Yep, both literally and, one might argue (depending on your view of Brown) metaphorically

Scottish? Yep

Idiot? Possibly, and certainly a valid statement of personal opinion.

What I don't see is any suggestion that any one chaacteristic is inherently linked to another. No matter how hard you try to convince me, Mr Winyard, you just won't do it.

I might refer to you as an RNIB-employed Male Buffoon - am I suggesting that all of your colleagues are therefore buffoons? No, of course not.

I currently have a standing order donating a monthly amount to 'Guide Dogs for the Blind' - not directly connected to the RNIB, thankfully, otherwise I might be tempted to fire up my internet banking and cancel it.

Idiot!

TV, it's not what it used to be!

OK so I'm maybe being a little harsh, given the variety of channels now available I'm not going to be entirely on target with my "rant" - but then again it's my blog, and that's my prerogative. As Bobby Brown might say.

I remember, as a kid (cue "When I were a lad" style ramblings), when we had just three channels to choose from, the regular Sunday evening ritual of a bath followed by 'The World About Us' - a fantastic natural history series on BBC2. Others followed, including David Attenborough's magnificent 'Life on Earth'

I've just discovered that Life on Earth is 30 years old - has it realy been that long? Anyway, back to the point. I found that out watching the fantastic Attenborough documentary on Charles Darwin's theories.

Without going into too much detail (I could rant all day about this). Why is it - at least on the major terrestrial channels - that such brilliant programming seemingly comes along only a handful of times a year, yet we suffer an apparently unending stream of bilious shite like; Big Brother, Strictly Come Dancing, and God only knows how many other Celebrity (or Wannabe) 'reality' shows?

The mind boggles, if only it coud be put down to evolution - rather than being a prime example of the opposite effect!