Throw beef curtains wide...soz, couldn't help myself

Please be aware that the usual bigging up of prog metal bans, shite TV rants and other nonsense is being suspended for the duration of this post while I talk about 'man feelings'. Eeerrgghh! Yes, I know, but if we all hold hands we can get through it together, okay?

So then, to the Nottingham Arena last night to watch Elbow. Not been there for a couple of years since I went to see a shirtless James Hetfield of Metallica stomping around the stage with a customised Flying V strapped on shouting "COME ON SING, NOTTING-HAM! LET'S MOTHERFUCKING TEAR THE MOTHERFUCKING ROOF OFF THIS MOTHERFUCKING PLACE!"
Last night couldn't have been more different. First things first though and the evening got off to bad start when I saw a Glaswegian I know who used the medium of Facebook last year to openly criticise me. Don't know what I'd done to upset her but the cheeky cow kissed me and addressed me as 'Big boy' last night. Ugh! So that put me in a bad mood.
Wasn't to last long though. Elbow are one of those bands that get grown men weeping. Don't know why. Look at leader Guy Garvey, a lump of a man in a three piece suit who wouldn't look out of place as a bouncer (also nice to see someone the same shape as me make it as a rock star).  Thing is, he's immediately got everyone on side; women fancy him and men want to be his mate. In between songs his patter is that of a stand-up comic but when the music starts again his voice is like hot butter dripping off a biscuit. He could break a thousand hearts with one song. And he did with me, unlike a lot of the crowd who decided to film it via mobile phones, during Mirrorball (perhaps my favourite Elbow song) I shut my eyes and sang along. Bloody amazing.
I did have my doubts about how Elbow would cope in an arena; needn't have worried. A smaller stage had been set up on the floor with a runway between so that Garvey, and other band members at times, could go into the middle of the crowd. This stage came into its own when a piano doubled as a cocktail cabinet which the band took green drinks out of while a spare was handed to an audience member.
There was also another lovely moment  - similar to the last time I saw them when Garvey directly addressed a couple in the audience the male half of whom was going to ask his girlfriend to marry him during a particular song - where he directly addressed a couple in a block right at the back of the arena. He announced that they were officially the farthest people from the stage and bought them up on a big screen. During the finale of One Day Like This he ran from the stage up to that couple and sang to them. Just lovely.
I'm not known as 'a crier' but I had a massive lump in my throat at the end. That's what you get with Elbow you see: loveliness. You come out feeling so good about yourself and every other human being on the planet. It's left me with a great feeling today. I love Elbow. I love my gig-going mate who always laughs at me throwing in Gregory's Girl quotes randomly. I love that shifty man who was standing a bit too close to my car when we got back to it. I even love that Glaswegian woman. And I love you.

Edit 19/03/11: Elbow once said "we still believe in love so fuck you". Sentiments which I whole-heartedly agree with. BUT I still don't want to go on holiday with you.
It's a beautiful day out there, go on, go outside and pat a random small child on the head. Or summat.

Fed up

Sorry about the break, but I have got a life you know, one where I do a proper job instead of staring into a computer all day.

Anyway, Radio 2. I normally hate those wankers who spraff off about their favourite radio station like they own it - I think I've blogged before about Radio 4 listeners - but what's going off at Radio 2? As it's one of the few channels I can get on my radio at work I tend to listen for most of the day. For a start they put Graham Norton on to 'dep' for Chris Evans. He made a balls up of it, not radio fodder at all. Then they go and announce him as the replacement for Jonathan Ross. Who decided that? A deaf person? And what is this show going to consist of? I think I know: him fawning and giggling all over crusty old actresses from the bloody 1970s no bastard's heard of for years, if at all. Gemma Jones, anyone? No, me neither.

Theses tossers at Radio 2 had already incurred my wrath for cutting Radcliffe and Maconie's ace show from four nights to three - then replaced them on night four with Jo Whiley. I realise La Whiley's too old for Radio 1 now (even though Westwood's well into his 50s), but why knock down a perfectly good show so that she can come on and introduce Paul Weller at the BBC theatre for the umpteenth time? (I don't like Weller either, more of him in a future post)

Then over the past week we've had a brace of announcements. For a kick off that walking car crash that is Richard Madeley has announced that he's in talks with Radio 2 'bosses'. I'm hoping he'll be on one of those Sunday morning shows where he reviews the Sunday newspapers, which'll be okay by me because there's nothing more inclined to get me to turn off the radio than listening to some lazy DJ going through newspapers (unless it's Sarah Kennedy which is always fun-for-all-the-wrong-reasons. Especially as last week she read out an article on 'funny' place names and mentioned a place in America called Spunky Puddle which flew straight over her head. Funny how she didn't mention Shitterton though. Or Racistdrunktelegraphreader-on-the-Wold).

And this week we've had to suffer the indignity of Chris Tarrant doing Steve Wright's show. Jesus, I never thought I'd say this but come back Wright, all is forgiven. The fork-throwing funster's interview with Simple Minds' Jim Kerr on an ISDN line was cringeworthy. Get off Tarrant, you're shit. Yeah, you heard, SHIT!

Enough of that, unlike the rest of the UK population between the ages of 35 and 45, I didn't watch that Boy George thing because I hate both Culture Club and so-called New Romantics. If I never hear Karma Chameleon, that Hurt Me thing or that shocking War song again it'll be too soon. I tire of the rose-tinted spectacles everyone of my generation sees the 1980s through. Mind you, I reckon the three greatest albums of the decade were Metallica's Master of Puppets, Slayer's Reign in Blood and Talk Talk's Spirit of Eden. Hardly Pelican West or Deep Sea Skiving, are they? And not a Roland synthesizer in sight.

The drums then. Cor, I had a great time last week. We got into drum fills. I think I'm going to be of the drumming school that twats it as hard as they can because they like to make a noise, a bit like Dave Grohl, not a bespectacled 'thinker' like Bill Bruford. Talking of thoughtful drummers, there was a great one on Young Musician of the Year this week. She played a thing by Frank Zappa, which, as you can imagine, was a little avant garde. She showed amazing restraint, I just like to smack the drums and cymbals. My tutor's asked me to come up with a drum solo ready for next week. Horror of horrors, a drum solo! Not a horror for the bastard playing it though. Tee, and indeed, hee.

I leave you with one of my favourite tracks from my new favourite band. They are *shhh, whisper it * nu-prog. Run for your lives! The drumming on the whole album is immense though, not that anyone reading this will actually play that video of course, but hey-ho, I like it, it's your loss etc...

O baterista

The drums then. Well it all went rather swimmingly, especially as I was having my doubts approaching the rehearsal studio where the lesson took place; it was at some industrial units at a farm just out of town. Very dark and very lonely during the evening.

I introduced myself to the teacher and after we exchanged pleasantries he sat me behind the drums straight away and we were in. I don't like blowing smoke up my own trumpet but he said that he couldn't believe that I'd never played the drums before as I was picking it up straight away and had bags of 'natural rhythm', oo-er. Or do you think that was a ploy to give me confidence and go back? After twenty minutes I was playing a basic rock drum pattern which he said can be heard, most famously, on AC/DC's Back in Black. Which is handy as that's the ringtone on my mobile.
He then stood there and said "We'll have you playing Rush fills in no time." the word 'fills' means nothing to me, it must be something technical, but I smiled to make out I knew what he was on about. In fact, we spent half the lesson talking about which bands we liked in common.

The upshot is that he says I need to practise, practise, practise. So to that end I'm in the process of buying an electronic drum kit. I'd love an acoustic drum kit but space is at a premium and there are other people to consider. If I get good at it I'll have an acoustic kit though. So my teacher is coming with me tomorrow afternoon to demo a drum kit I've seen and tell me if it's any good or not.
I'll bugger off before I turn into a drum bore. Next lesson on Monday. Can't wait.

Genius:

Metal on metal

I watched that Anvil: The Story of Anvil the other night. It's not very good despite all the plaudits it received. What I was expecting was a warm-hearted look back at a band who could have been contenders but never quite made. A film that investigated why they never made it, and their peers like Metallica, Motley Crue and Guns 'n' Roses did.

According to the blurb "Anvil were a major influence on the burgeoning thrash metal scene at the time. Members of Metallica, Anthrax and Slayer pay tribute." No they don't, they just come on at the start of the film and say "Anvil? Oh yeah, I remember them." That's it, not "Anvil? Well without Anvil we wouldn't be where we are today." And do you know why they don't say that? It's because Anvil aren't very good. Their so-called anthem, Metal on Metal, is just pretty average. The rest of the stuff I heard is third rate metal using adolescent sex (or the lack of it) as its subject matter. Look over any rock festival posters from the 1980s and there's Anvil at the bottom of the bill.

We're also told, according to the DVD box, to expect a "warm-hearted film about friendship." That's not really possible when Anvil's main man, Lips, is such an annoying prick given to moments of violence towards tight-fisted club promoters and even his own drummer, the man he was supposed to have made this pact with when he was fourteen that they'd "carry on rocking together forever." The drummer's name, by the way, is Robb Reiner, just one consonant too many away from sharing the same name as the director of This is Spinal Tap. Which is quite apt as Anvil's career trajectory mirrors that of Spinal Tap, especially the closing scenes of a rapturous return to Japan. The Japanese have a thing for a sub genre of heavy metal that I like to call 'Shit Metal.'

So the blurb's all wrong and what you get is a slightly depressing film about Lips cajoling Robb to go out on tour/make demos/try and get funding to make a new album in the UK. Fortunately for Lips - if not for the listening public - his older, and much more successful sister, stumps up the $12,000 to enable the band to record their new record in the Kent countryside. What follows are scenes of Lips chucking his toys out of his pram while sacking Robb. Robb returns to the fold about half an hour later when Lips has calmed down a bit. We then have to endure Lips hawking his record around major record labels without success. Lips gets upset.

Fortunately for Lips some bright spark invented the internet and you can buy it off him direct. Result! Not.

The saddest scenes though are near the beginning when a dodgy East European promoter books them on a European tour. It's very nearly heartbreaking to watch Lips approach metal luminaries like Michael Schenker, Carmine Appice and Tommy Aldridge at a Swedish metal festival to be met with blank 'who is this guy?' looks.

Robb emerges as kind of likable. You can tell he thinks they're flogging a dead horse but doesn't want to let his mate down. Surely there must have come a point in the past twenty years where he thought to himself 'enough is enough.' They both have day jobs, by the way - Lips delivers school dinners in a van.

No doubt Anvil will find short term gain from making the film, but they're still only making bottom of the bill at this summer's heavy rock festivals. More for curiosity value at a man who plays a guitar solo with a vibrator. Yes, really.

Anyroad, I went to see one of my favourite metal bands of the moment last night. The Amazon review for their new album contains this: "Fourth album from the successful American progressive metallers and follow up to their 2006 major label debut 'Blood Mountain'. That album, while their most successful, drew criticism from some fans for its seeming lack of focus. This album seeks to remedy that issue by having a unified concept in which an astral traveller wanders the spirit realm, exploring themes from quantum physics to Czarist Russia, and musically is as complex, brutal and enthralling as their earlier work." Which is pretty much what I want from heavy metal, not a turd with a Flying V and a dildo.

Enter Metallica

This blog post was supposed to be about the joys of shopping in Fopp (the complete Day Today and Badlands DVDs and Nirvana's In Utero, and got change out of £15!), the horrors of dining in a restaurant alone (something I'm going to have to get used to) and the excellence of Waterstone's staying open till 7pm (I expanded my 'graphic novel' library). And also about the sinking feeling when you realise you've gone out without putting your watch on, I feel naked without a watch.

I wasn't going to mention why I was wondering the streets of Nottingham alone. I was there to see Metallica and I know that absolutely nobody who reads this would be interested in that, but sod it, if you don't like it, look away now.

Metallica are one of only two bands who I genuinely get excited about just before they hit the stage (the others being Rush, yeah, I know, I know...). It's been a long time since I last saw them, and I was so excited I thought I was going to wee myself.

Bloody hell, it was good. In fact I'd go as far as to say it's the best concert I've ever been to. The stage was 'in the round' (one big stage in the middle of the floor), that was a fantastic idea. The drum kit started off facing away from me and I found it intensely fascinating to watch a drummer from the back. Playing the drums - especially a double bass kit - obviously isn't as easy as it appears. During the set the drum kit gradually revolved to face different parts of the audience. There were eight microphones dotted around the stage so James Hetfield come move around during the course of a song and still keep singing. The band aren't even constrained by effects pedals - the roadies do all that for them.

There are other benefits to a 'round' stage. For a start the band have nowhere to hide, you get to look at your band member of choice whenever you like, even if they've got their back to you. You can also see them when they go offstage for a break during a short solo spot and see what they get up to (even if it is only changing a shirt, having a drink and talking to the instrument techs). Also with a 'round' stage, nobody in the crowd's ever all that far from the stage, especially in a relatively 'small' arena like Nottingham's. There's also the small matter of the band having to walk through the audience to get to the stage. Can you imagine U2 doing that?

Metallica have got a ton of stick over the past ten years over downloading and not being very nice to their fans (I'd like to say here that they were very misunderstood, and I'm not a Lars Ulrich apologist by any means). But I've been looking at their website this morning and I can't think of a better artist website. There's online Twitter-style tour updates, pictures from last night (the picture at the top of this post was taken last night), tour video reports, and by the weekend there'll be a recording of last night's show to be in my iPod. That's a proper recording, not a crappy bootleg.

They went over time because the crowd kept calling them back. They got fined. They didn't care. I went hoarse from shouting. I want to go and see them again soon.

I'm not an advocate of male crying, but even I was filling up at the end. After seeing Some Kind of Monster - although a fascinating document on human relationships - I thought I'd never see them again as it's heartbreaking to see one of your favourite bands on the verge of splitting.

They've come back stronger and better than ever. Even grizzly metal bands have the power to make a grown man cry.

Finally, I notice in August they're playing a racecourse in Ireland called 'Fairyhouse'. Is there a more un-metal name for a venue?

Don't want to bang on about Twitter, but...

...now I'm on the horns of a dilemma. Christine Bleakley v Charlie Brooker. They both enrich my life but one's pro-Twitter and the other one's anti. Can I just read Twitter without actually saying anything myself? Because I'd quite like to 'follow' Brooker.



Anyway, this popped up on my iPod today during a shuffle. I hadn't heard it in ages and it was most welcome. Especially as Metallica use it as their intro music and I'm going to see them the week after next. It makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up because normally when I hear it I know I'm going to feel the full force of James Hetfield's wrath in a few minutes. It has everything I love about Ennio Morricone's spaghetti western music: Twanging electric guitars, squealing trumpets, a wailing bint, a clanging bell and a huge choir. Pretty good visuals too, courtesy of Sergio Leone and Eli Wallach.

2008 and all that

That's 2008 then. The Bright Ambassador highlights:

• Guitar Hero 3 - how to kill weekend afternoons during a crap summer


• Dexter


• Nottingham Forest's promotion


• Mad Men


• Metallica back on form


• Charlie Brooker's print and TV tribute to Oliver Postgate


• Fleet Foxes


• The sitcom Pulling - deliciously filthy


• Word magazine's Prog edition


• Danny Baker back on 606


• Rebecca Romero


• Son of Rambow


• The rise of Christine Bleakley


• Dead Set


• Jez using a £20 note as a masturbatory visual aid on Peep Show


• The Ting Tings


• Seeing Peep Show's Isy Suttie in the flesh (pictured)


• Elbow finally getting the recognition they deserve


• Kristen Schaal in The Flight of the Conchords


• Armstrong and Miller's Timeghost podcast


• Terry Wogan leaving Eurovision - how about him leaving Radio 2?


• Watson and Oliver at Edinburgh
  

What didn't float my boat:

• Sam Allardyce not coming to Nottingham Forest


• Graham Norton joining Eurovision


• The way newspapers, especially The Sun and Daily Mail, use the slightest thing as a stick with which to beat the BBC. I'm surprised I haven't seen a headline along the lines of 'Man's disgust at getting papercut from the 1985 edition of Radio 1's Which Way Now? pack. Fat cat Beeb bosses laugh themselves unconscious at the news during the Christmas party WE paid for'.


• The film PS I Love You


• The Ting Tings


• Nottingham Forest playing like a steaming pile of poo from August onwards


• Ashes to Ashes (the telly show, not the Bowie song)


• Dirty Sexy Money - the biggest waste of talent since ELP


• The upward curve of Frankie Boyle's career


• Hole in the Wall

What to look forward to in 2009:

• Guitar Hero: Metallica Edition


• Seeing Metallica in February for the first time in sixteen years


• Anything else Metallica-related

That's me done for this year. Happy Christmas - whether you like it or not. As Geddy Lee says, with alarming regularity immediately pre-interval, I'm 'going to take a break for some brain surgery.' Things are out of my control a little work-wise in the new year, so whether I'll be back sooner rather than later is yet to be seen.

To quote Derek Batey, be good to each other. Ta-ra.

To the BBC: An apology

Re: the post earlier this week about the Reading festival.

I've just been flicking through the EPG on my generic hard-drive video recorder, and noticed that there's a Culture Show special on Metallica on Sunday night.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.....repeat to fade..............

Not very metal

I notice that the editor of zeitgeist was on duty at the BBC's coverage of the Reading* festival this past weekend. Why is is that there was blanket coverage of the event on Friday and Saturday nights but only two and a bit hours on Sunday? Do you think that could have anything to do with the Metallica being the headline act?


When the BBC covers Glastonbury they usually show about an hour of the headlining act. Why not the same with Metallica than? Is it because somewhere in the BBC's music department they don't like heavy metal? They showed just four songs from Metallica's set; the same amount as they showed for the lead 'singer' of the Arctic Monkeys' hobby band. Of course the Last Shadow Puppets are big news in the NME, aren't they? How silly of me. I don't suppose the fact that Metallica have sold over fifty million albums and sell out stadiums wherever they go had any bearing on the decision to only show four songs, instead of an hour's worth of material.


It's always the same with these music snobs though. If you watch any BBC music documentary, the general consensus is that the period 1970-1976 was ruled by prog rock bands with their slow and ponderous workouts. That's usually accompanied by tired stock footage of Genesis-era Peter Gabriel doing a jig in a pixie's hat, Keith Emerson shoving daggers into a Hammond organ and Roger Waters knocking seven shades of shit out of a gong. If it was such a bad period for music, how come those bands sold so many records? Then, of course, you're told this tale of how punk blew everything away. Which is funny, because in 1977 - supposedly punk's year zero - Yes, ELP and Pink Floyd all released massive-selling albums.


I'm not under any illusions here; a lot of prog rock was dross (and here I'm looking at ELP and anything Yes did between 1973 and 1976), but some of it was good, in some cases very good. I love punk, but I think these documentary makers have re-written musical history to suit their own tastes. What are they going to do now that even Johnny Lydon has come out of the closet about his admiration for Van Der Graaf Generator?


One good thing about the BBC's coverage of Reading though was Zane Lowe, a man I'd never really had much time for until this weekend. His enthusiasm and fondness for Metallica was enough to even make the most ardent metal hater soften their stance.
If it was Laverne, Jupitus or Whiley on presenting duties you could guarantee there'd be lots of devil's horn gestures towards the camera while gently mocking it. I've still not forgiven Jupitus for an awful 'ironic' interview he did, on his 6Music breakfast show, with Rush when they were on their 2004 UK tour. Wanker.


What is worrying though is the amount of crap British bands there are out there. I'm mean you The Wombats, Babyshambles, The Subways, The Enemy, Dirty Pretty Things, Foals etc. Only two really stood out for me: Anglo-Australian drum 'n' bass 'n' metal outfit Pendulum (who are what The Prodigy would have been if they hadn't let that Keith Flint idiot write songs) and The Cribs (even though the guitarist comes over as a dick). Where are the next Led Zeppelin or Iron Maiden going to come from?

*I used to go out with a girl who once informed me that she'd received a prospectus from *Reeding* university. I stopped laughing about six hours later. I got dumped about two days later. Ho-hum.

Jo Whiley's a tit

I went on holiday a couple of weeks ago, before I went I thought I'd by myself a magazine. Perusing the shelves of a motorway services branch of WH Smith the cover of the current Q caught my eye. I think I must have bought every copy of that magazine between 1988 and 1998, but haven't had it for years what with all their 'list' issues. I only really bought it this time because Metallica were on the cover, and there was a great bit about The Raconteurs inside. Anyway, in the back they have a feature called The Ten Commandments - I don't think I need to explain the gist of this regular feature - and this month it was Jo Whiley. She gets my back up at the best of times, but she's just made it even worse. Get this:
Educate your children "I've shaped my 16 year-old daughter pretty well. There was a brief Spice Girls phase, but I soon crushed that out of her. It was the Arctic Monkeys, I think, that first turned her on to 'good' music. I'm grateful to them for that"

I hate parents who do that. One of the things behind me getting into more alternative types of music at an impressionable age was to piss my parents off, along with growing my hair and a beard and smoking jazz fags. The stuff I was bringing into the house was so much at odds with what everyone else was listening to that it might as well have been coming from another planet. Any record with one of those little Parental Advisory stickers on it was usually taken straight to the till at R&K Records. Even Ice T's Original Gangster album.
What gives Whiley the right to dictate to her daughter what she does and what she doesn't listen to? If she likes the Spice Girls so what? A lot of kids of her generation did. No doubt the child was listening to My Bloody Valentine in the womb.
Which is something you see an awful lot of in Rush fans.
"Er, yeah, when we went for the first scan we had Cygnus X-1* playing. Then when we went for the second scan Xanadu** was playing. At the birth we made sure as soon as the head popped out By-Tor and the Snow Dog*** was cued up on the stereo"

The thing is, with so many kids these days listening to their parents copies of Led Zeppelin 4 and Combat Rock the only way to rebel these days is to fill your iPod with music that's deeply unfashionable. I feel the ELP, Toyah and Celine Dion revival is just around the corner.

*10+ minute song about a doomed spacecraft.
**12+minute song based on the poem by Coleridge.
***10+ minute song about a battle between a dog and a fucking robot.