Start the Dance

There's been a lot of talk about The Prodigy this week, for all the wrong reasons. I recall when they first hit and got songs like Charley and Outta Space in the hit parade they were seen as a bit of a joke act (but not a full-on joke like Altern 8). However, they made Music For the Jilted Generation which got nominated for the Mercury Prize and released this as its lead single. I doubt Keith Flint had very little to do with its inception or production but I'll never forget hearing this coming out the PA at Rock City. It made your whole body vibrate.
I'd already been discovering that Marshalls set to 11, a huge kit and a biker boot resting on a monitor didn't necessarily have to equate to HEA-VEE. Getting into stuff like Ministry, Nine Inch Nails and Godflesh along with more traditional bands at the 'alt' end of the rock scene like Helmet, Nottingham's own Fudge Tunnel and Corrosion of Conformity was already turning my head to another form of headbanging.
Hearing No Good (Start the Dance) that night, in its natural setting, a club, meant that I suddenly 'got' rave culture. It still sounds fantastic. And, alarmingly, it's now a quarter of a century old. Oh dear.

A Nipper read

Everyone else has their thoughts about HMV so I thought I'd give mine a go. Look at it as a bit of a companion piece to Friday's post.
HMV doesn't really hold any sort of affection for me; we never had one in my town. The nearest was the Nottingham branch on one of the busiest thoroughfares in the city. It was an enormous shop. A shop I never went into until I was a teenager and old enough to go shopping in Nottingham with my school friends without parental supervision. What I remember most about it then was that the records were displayed with records inside the sleeves. Up until that point the record shops I'd been used to would display the sleeve in the browser where they assistant would pull what you wanted from a shelf behind the counter - which helped combat shoplifting, I guess. Obviously in a store as big as HMV Nottingham and with a huge turnover of stock, they could take the shoplifting hit if it meant staff didn't waste time looking for the record or tape. That, and that alone, was what impressed me most about HMV. I've never felt much affection for the brand, other than all record shops are good. It always seemed a bit staid, they way they stuck with the Nipper logo. Edward Elgar opened their first store. Do you see what I'm getting at? A bit old-fashioned.
Then Richard Branson decided to open a huge, and I mean huge Virgin Megastore in Nottingham (I vaguely remember that it held some sort of record at the time as being the biggest record shop in the UK outside of London). Now say what you like about Branson ("Pol Pot with a beard" being my favourite, courtesy of Andy Partridge) but Branson knew how to do a big record shop. Inside there were two floors purely of music and music related stuff like VHS videos, t-shirts, posters etc. There was also somewhere where you could buy a coffee (years before Starbucks), a hairdresser (!) and an in-store DJ in a proper DJ booth. And his brand was associated with loads of cool bands. I know it's a bit daft to get nostalgic about a massive record shop but believe me, it was like stepping on to another planet.

Fast forward more than 25 years to just over a month ago. I was in Birmingham doing a spot of Christmas shopping when I decided to have a browse around HMV in the Bull Ring. Oh dear. It was dreadful. The shop didn't know what it wanted to be. Was it a music store? Somewhere to buy computer games? A bookshop? An electronics store? It was suffering an identity crisis. To make matters worse the whole thing just looked a mess. As soon as you walked in there were pyramids of awful American comedy boxsets stacked on the floor which you had to negotiate. I mean, does anyone really need every episode of The Big Bang Theory?
There were schoolkids taking up a huge amount of room while they played Xbox games which were being demoed in-store.
There were pyramids of iPod docks and other audio equipment stacked on the floor. One brand of which bore Bob Marley's face. Now I don't know much about Bob but I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have wanted his fizzogg and name to be used for marketing electrical goods. And why this thing about headphones in HMV by brands you've never heard of. Skullcandy anyone? Beats by Dr Dre? No? Okay. I already own some decent headphones, they were made by a little known Dutch electrical company which goes by the name of Philips. Ever heard of them? And I got them from a shop called Currys, which is where a lot of people go for electrical goods.
The music section just seemed secondary. All the top-selling chart stuff was at the front of the store while anything else was chucked in at the back seemingly as an afterthought. And I've been in multifloor branches of HMV where you had to go upstairs for music. I think they'd lost sight of their core business - don't forget that CDs still make up 70% of music sales.
It was one of the most miserable retail experiences I've had for a very long time.

So while I'm truly sorry for all those people facing an uncertain future over their job and hate to see more record shops go to the wall, I can't help thinking that HMV had it coming to them. Your business is selling music, so sell music and don't alienate your loyal customers who like to buy CDs. Perhaps they should have taken a leaf from one of their subsidiaries, Fopp. Now they're proper big record shops.

I'm Jimmy Sirrel of Meadow Lane and The Gorbals

I went with my girlfriend and her dad to the Nottingham Playhouse on Saturday to watch a play about Notts County. Quite odd for a fan of Nottingham Forest* and two fans of Chelsea FC to go and watch a play about Notts County, do you think? Well, not really. Diary of a Football Nobody is a play by William Ivory (commissioned to celebrate 150 years of Notts County not wining anything) which is based on the book Steak...Diana Ross by former County midfielder David McVay and it's about much more than Notts County.
David isn't your average footballer, he left school with three A Levels and likes to listen to Nick Drake LPs when he's alone in his bedroom. That's when he's not alone in his bedroom 'having a wank' because as McVay points out "having a wank's a bit like scoring a goal - there's no such thing as a bad one". McVay wrestles with why he chose a football career over going to university. It's clearly something his grandfather can't understand. We know this because three generations of McVay's family live in the same council house in the Clifton area of Nottingham, which isn't a situation you'd imagine one of today's dynamic young players having to contemplate. But however much of a tortured young man McVay is he still falls into the same trappings of being a professional footballer as most others, like drinking copious amounts of Shipstone's bitter on nights off and 'backscuttling' anything that moves down some of Nottingham city centre's darkest alleys. In stark contrast to today, some of the players - including McVay - have to supplememt their income by selling eggs around Nottingham suburbs. Which includes 'backscuttling' a housewife who doesn't have the funds to pay. Can you imagine Frank Lampard selling eggs? No, thought not (although I can imagine Wayne Rooney doing it).

The performances here are comically brilliant. Perry Fitzpatrick is outstanding as McVay, Eric Richard is superb as the incomprehensible Glaswegian nutcase manager Jimmy Sirrel (he attempts to see off some Manchester United fans trying to invade the County dressing room with a corn scalpel). Those two are the only actors with only one part to play. The rest of the cast play multiple parts including an excellent Rupert Hill playing Don Masson (when every English league team had an armoury of Scottish enforcers to pick from) and Sophia Di Martino who also has to play supporting roles of various County players.

The scenery is cleverly done with projections in a Roy of the Rovers comic style providing the atmosphere. Something which comes to the fore whenever we're confronted with the unseen but not unfelt presence of giant County centre half Brian Stubbs who makes his non-entrance with a giant shadow and with the opening riff of Deep Purple's Smoke on the Water playing.
So, not just for County fans. It's a play about life, family and where you're from. And I'm proud to say I'm from Notts. Diary of a Football Nobody deserves to be up there with the greatest works of art about football like Gregory's Girl, Fever Pitch, The Damned United novel and Another Sunday and Sweet FA. Which are, of course, about football but much more besides. And anyway, who wouldn't love a play that opens with a photo montage of Nottingham in the 70s with Yours is No Disgrace by Yes playing over the top? Heaven for me, that.

*Notts County fans are like Scotland fans: it sticks in their craw that the hate they feel for their biggest rivals isn't reciprocated. Forest view their biggest rivals as Derby County closely followed by Leicester City and any team from Sheffield. Notts County are generally viewed by Forest fans as a team your old men support. They're the Dad's Army of football fans, and the team will forever be the bridesmaid of Nottingham football. I work with County fans and one always has to shout "Goo-in dahn!" whenever he sees me along with a finger pointing down gesture, no matter how many games Forest have gone unbeaten. The County fans attitude to Forest is summed up in one of the best lines of the play, after a local derby played at Forest's City Ground in March 1974: "And we do 'em, nil-nil!"

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.

Love in a time of bubble perms*

With all this talk about Wayne Rooney and prostitutes, I think it's time to hark back to a much simpler time. A time when footballists weren't on mega wages and they had to find much simpler pleasures. A time when football philandering was seen as something quite quaint.
I give you, as an example, Nottingham Forest legend Mr Peter Shilton. To furnish those of you who may be unfamiliar with the fact, here's something pasted from The Observer website:

"Shilton was arrested for drink-driving after being found at 5am in a country lane with a woman called Tina in his car. When Tina's husband Colin arrived he said the pair were partially clothed. Shilton hurriedly drove away and crashed into a lamppost. He admitted 'taking a lady for a meal' and was fined £350 and banned from driving for 15 months. He then had to endure countless terrace chants of 'Shilton, Shilton, where's your wife?'"

Now isn't that just a gorgeous little tale of love in the 70s and early 80s? Shilts was obviously missing something from his marriage so he took 'a lady for a meal', did you get that? A 'lady'. His respect for women knows no bounds. And he's put his hand in his pocket and treated her to a slap-up dinner. What a gent.

Now, Shilts obviously couldn't be seen to be booking into a hotel in Nottingham with which to entertain her. No, no, he's too much of a face in the city and his cover would be blown. So Pete has a Jaguar. A Jaguar has nice reclining leather seats. Throw the guy a bone here, he's trying his best. Now, when Colin arrived, down this lane round the back of Nottingham racecourse, near Holme Pierrepont National Watersports Centre, the couple were partially clothed. Isn't that just a beautiful image? Shilts's little white bum flashing up and down? This was an age before sex became exotic and women started demanding mutual enjoyment. Bloody women. I think the term that could be used here is 'having it off'. This is the time before 'dogging' had been invented so Shilts doesn't hang around, no sir! He's off and crashes into a lamppost, probably with his Farah's Action Slacks and nylon Y-fronts still around his ankles. This is thirty years ago, so there's no Mr Loophole to get him off the charge. Pete takes his punishment like a man and takes his ban and his dreaded returns to the City Ground with Southampton like a man.
Come on, ladies, could you resist a man with a bubble perm, large hair and some blingy medals in the cabinet? Course you can't.

So there's a lesson for today's footballers: you don't have to spend thousands on hookers and Marlboros, just treat a lady with a little respect and she'll deal out what you want in the back of a flashy car round the back of Nottingham racecourse, near Holme Pierrepont National Watersports Centre.

*I love the way the names Colin and Tina are involved in this story. They're names that are so 'of-the-time', do you not think?**

**I know these little footers can be annoying, but you try reading Stewart Lee's new book. They're on every page and go on and on and on and on.... But I kinda like 'em.

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?

Hug a Hoody

What a waste of money. Celebrating a common criminal. Again. This is the same bloke who's responsible for the Nottingham Eye, which would be quite a good idea if there was actually anything of interest to look at from the top.

And who's going to want to eat a crap meal in Robin Hood's bollocks? Not I, everything'll taste salty. Here's a hint for Mr Mellors: restaurants in tall buildings don't generally work. See the Post Office Tower and St. John's Beacon in Liverpool.

Why doesn't this bloke put his money into something useful, like Nottingham Forest's proposed new 45,000 seat stadium? Which may look just as daft when they're playing fourth division football. Hey ho...