Stars in my eyes

I am genuinely very excited. Why? Because a beautiful remastered print of 2001: A Space Odyssey is doing the rounds, and my local arthouse cinema is showing it on Sunday evening. Complete with an introduction from a film studies prof who's just written a BFI book on the film!

2001 has been one of my favourite films since I first saw it nearly thirty years ago. To my mind it is still one of so very few films that make space travel look like space travel ought to. Quite apart from the beautiful silence (no engines roar as the Discovery glides across our screens), everything looks graceful and that's how I'd want it to be, even if it wasn't. Add the god-like genius of Kubrick to the mix, with his understated direction, beautiful lighting and aseptic set-design, a timeless classical soundtrack, a story that still has the power to both amaze and bewilder, and one of the all-time great movie characters in HAL and you have all the ingredients for what is still regarded as a masterpiece of the genre, more than four decades after its original cinema release. A masterpiece that I've never seen on the big screen: I've owned the film on laser-disc, VHS and two separate DVDs, but I've never had the 2001 cinematic experience until now... so yes - I'm very excited.

And in a pleasing and entirely serendipitous moment of synchronicity, I went out into the back garden last night to watch the Perseids. My God, it's full of stars...

Comment is free

Inspired by the likes of Blogger, I finally have an RSS feed for the comments made on this blog, in addition to the standard feed for my posts. Not that this will much to many people, since so few of you leave comments (hint, hint). But if you ever have, and were wondering what happened to them (and my replies, for that matter), you can now subscribe to the comments RSS feed here. Go on - you know you want to.

This is how my mind works

Last night, whilst cleaning my teeth before falling into bed at the witching hour, I suddenly and for no apparent reason thought about Letraset. Now if you're under 25 there's a very real chance you won't know what that is, so let me explain. These days, with computers, decent cheap printers and 1,001 fonts, it's easy for any Tom, Dick or Harry to knock up a professional-looking piece of print. Desktop publishing, they call it. But back when I was a kid, if you wanted to produce something that looked better than the best your handwriting could be with a felt-tip pen, you (or at least I) used Letraset. The idea was simple - you'd buy sets of letters printed on flimsy plastic sheets and transfer them to paper by rubbing the sheet with a pencil. It was brilliant - not only did the finished product look good, it was also laborious in a very satisfying way. I imagined that the silicon revolution would have done for Letraset in the same way it has for the typewriter (I used to have one of those too - for the very young amongst you, these devices had ribbons, jammed a lot and made everything look like Courier... but now I'm just being facetious). But no - Letraset lives on, against all odds...

But then this is how my mind works... that thought, against all odds, made me think of the Phil Collins song of the same name. Yes, Phil Collins, much derided, memorably duped by Chris Morris ("I'm talking nonce sense"). But Against All Odds is a decent song of its genre, probably a solo career high watermark for Phil. And he was a good drummer for Genesis, especially in the early years when he didn't have to worry about vocal duties - some of his playing on, for example, Watcher Of The Skies sounds very much like the cymbal-clattering of Stewart Copeland in his Police heyday, yet pre-dated Copeland by five or more years. I thought all this and more, just from a random thought about Letraset.

I should have gone to bed at this point, except... that thought, all this and more, made me think of the early recording of the same name by Leeds' finest, the always-excellent Wedding Present (it's on George Best). Which made me think of the time I gave one of my best friends a meat cleaver for a wedding present. Which made me think of Daniel Cleaver in Bridget Jones's Diary. Which made me think of The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾. Which made me think of what the HTML entity name for that three quarters character would be (since you ask, it's ¾). Which made me think of entity-relationship diagrams... relationship history... browser history... eyebrows... Denis Healey... the Healey Frog-Eyed Sprite... Kermit the Frog... Alberto Frog... Alberto Balsam shampoo... balsa wood...

In my defence, it was late and I was tired. But this is how my mind works sometimes. Be grateful you are not me.

Kiva: costs nothing, feels good

I've been meaning to blog about Kiva for ages. This is a website that allows you to repeatedly loan the same $25 (yes, it's all done in American currency, but don't let that put you off) over and over again to small businesses in the developing world.

It really couldn't be simpler - you credit your account with the $25 (and given that the pound is at a six-month high against the dollar, this only equates to about £16), then browse through the ad's to find a small business somewhere in the world that's struggling to get going. You lend them your $25. Note that this may form part of a larger fundraising target for the business, and they won't start paying you back until all the money has been raised. But as and when they get up and running, they do pay you back... and when your account balance is back up to $25 you can lend it out again. Brilliant, isn't it?

I suppose technically it doesn't cost absolutely nothing - I could get all economicsy, and say that there is the opportunity cost of not using the money for something else. Or you could put your £16 in the building society and get 16p interest on it in a year... but that would, of course, make you a miserable git. I've been Kiva-ing for just over two years and, in that time, have lent the same $25 to a Samoan farmer, a Ghanaian fruit and veg seller and a Philippino laundry collective. The latter is 95% repaid now, and when the other 5% arrives I'll be lending to someone else.

So, let's recap: a Kiva micro-loan helps someone less privileged than you, is ridiculously easy to do and costs nothing, unless you are an unbelievably miserable git. So go on, why not give Kiva a try? Trust me, it feels good...

Clandestine Classic VI - Freeze The Atlantic

The sixth post in an occasional series that is intended to highlight songs that you might not have heard that I think are excellent - clandestine classics, if you will. Maybe they'll be by bands you've never heard of. Maybe they'll be by more familiar artists, but tracks that were squirelled away on b-sides, unpopular albums, radio sessions or music magazine cover-mounted CDs. Time will, undoubtedly, tell.

Today, a single from Derby's favourite sons, Cable. And not only that, a single that was used in an advert! Despite my previous posts rants on this subject (this and this, for starters), the ad status isn't enough to stop this from being a clandestine classic. But I digress. What can I tell you about Cable? Not too much, actually. All I know about them, aside from this record, has been gleaned straight from their Wikipedia entry and the rather excellent fan site, Sub-lingual, both of which you can read for yourselves with no help from me, if you're interested.

But what about the record? Well, Freeze The Atlantic was released in 1997, having been snagged from the album When Animals Attack by the marketing men at Sprite. Yes, this loping, fuzzy-guitar-driven indie groove was used to flog cans of anaemic citrus toss. And, as far as I know, the band let this happen for free, in the hope that the attendant publicity and chart sales would be worth it in terms of long-term success. Really. To their enduring credit, the band were aware enough to acknowledge that this might not work out for them - the B-side of the eventual single release was called The [We Did The Music For The Sprite Ad] Blues. Oh, and they held fire on releasing the single until after the advert had stopped doing the rounds on TV. Not much after, but after nonetheless - this seems pretty classy to me. But there I go, digressing again...

Has the song aged well? You decide. The "soundalike" references always cited for Cable are Sonic Youth and Fugazi but when I hear this I always imagine some kind of Pixies/Beta Band hybrid, and that can only be a good thing, right? As for the rest of their output, I cannot say - this is, and is likely to remain, the only Cable record I will ever own. And you can own it too - you can still pick up a copy of When Animals Attack, whilst the more unscrupulous amongst you may be interesting in this. And if neither of those floats your boat, there's always YouTube...

Latitude problem

The Latitude Festival started last night. I've been for the last few years and utterly loved it but, for personal reasons that I won't elaborate on here, I won't be going this year. Sniff. Shame because I can't think of a better festival, or at least not one that is better suited to me. Oh well. So instead of listening to Florence and the Machine, Belle and Sebastian, The Coral, Paul Heaton, The National, Corinne Bailey Rae, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Kristin Hersh or any of the other bands I would have been looking forward to... instead of listening to Bret Easton Ellis, Wendy Cope, Peter Hook being interviewed by Keith Allen, the debate on identity featuring Billy Bragg and Mark Thomas... instead of laughing with Emo Philips and Mark Watson... instead of all these things I would have liked to have seen, and all the other interesting stuff you inevitably stumble upon at Latitude, I will be pulling down a ceiling and learning, the sharp way, how to plaster.

Life changes, doesn't it?

Separated at birth?

I had the good fortune to see Anvil! The Story of Anvil on the uniformly excellent BBC Four recently. It's often described as a real-life Spinal Tap, and I get the comparison but it's much more than that: it's a conflict between hope and experience that leaves you rooting for two friends who have never given up on their dream, even when that dream has never been so far away. Good stuff, and an engaging way to spend 90 minutes of your time. Steve "Lips" Kudlow (left), the Anvil frontman, embodies tragedy and comedy in equal measure.

Then, at the weekend, I watched the World Cup final, and the footballing gods were appeased by a victory for Spanish skill over Dutch defiance (and by defiance I mean harsh, sometimes brutal, tackling). Hooray for me, because I had Spain in the sweepstake at work and so now am quids-in. But during the game I noticed Spanish defensive stalwart Carles Puyol (right), and couldn't help but wonder: have he and and Lips ever been seen together? Or even in different places at the same time? Does the Catalan Cavalier secretly front an obscure and largely unsuccessful Canadian metal band?

Answers on a postcard to the usual address.

News in briefs

One of the best things about going to get a takeaway is that, whilst waiting for my duck in black bean sauce to be cooked, I have a few minutes free to catch up on the world of the tabloid press. Yes, I'll pass the time by reading a dog-eared copy of, invariably, The Sun. Now my newspaper of choice these days is usually The Guardian or, occasionally, the FT Weekend, but every now and then it's good to remind yourself just what gets reported in this section of the media, and how.

You'll be relieved to learn that red-blooded males can get an editorial-style comment on the news of the day from Page 3 - the traditional "Sam, 19, from Essex" has been replaced by a little sidebar entitled "News In Briefs" in which a viewpoint is attributed, presumably by a ghost-writing Murdoch hack, to the super-soaraway-stunna. I'm sure the humour does not go over the head of the average Sun reader at all... and even if it does, who cares, they are, in context, genuinely quite funny. Here are some examples from three takeaway trips earlier in the year.

19th February: poor Amy is worried about spiralling public debt.
20th April: Sam notes Biblical proportions of the Icelandic ash cloud.
26th May: Hollie reassures us all about budget cuts.

One

Clandestine Classic V - Cuban Slide

The fifth post in an occasional series that is intended to highlight songs that you might not have heard that I think are excellent - clandestine classics, if you will. Maybe they'll be by bands you've never heard of. Maybe they'll be by more familiar artists, but tracks that were squirelled away on b-sides, unpopular albums, radio sessions or music magazine cover-mounted CDs. Time will, undoubtedly, tell.

Today, a b-side from everyone's favourite 70s Anglo-US hybrid, The Pretenders. Formed in 1978 and and fronted by Chrissie Hynde, The Pretenders have weathered a lot of storms but are still going strong - they were excellent at Latitude last year and their last album, Break Up The Concrete, garnered excellent reviews (including this one, oddly, from genre-fiction master Stephen King) - their best effort for 20 years, some were saying. Back in the late 70s and early 80s, my older brother was a big Blondie fan, for musical and (I suspect) hormonal reasons. Then, as now, I much preferred brunettes, and so it was Hynde who drew my attention.

What's the first record you bought? I mean, actually properly bought, by which I mean you went to the record shop (without your parents), rifled through the racks, selected a record and paid for it with your own money. In other words, you have to discount records that were given to you, or that were bought for you. My subconscious mind is probably forgetting something by Abba for the purposes of making me feel cooler than I actually am, but I think the first record I actually properly bought for myself was Talk Of The Town by The Pretenders, a song I still love today, with its meandering guitar line and the variety of expression in Chrissie's voice. It's one of The Pretenders' best known songs - hardly clandestine. But its b-side is a hidden gem. Cuban Slide is, as I think Hynde once described it, the Pretenders' Bo Diddley number, with an elementary riff that nevertheless burrows its way into your musical soul. And its refrain, with the line "I want to dance, but my feet won't let me" would come to resonate with me more and more as life moved on, through teenage parties, nights clubbing, wedding reception discos, 40th birthday bashes...

For your shopping pleasure, you can pick up Cuban Slide on the remastered and repackaged Best Of album (which, from the looks of it, comes bundled with the new album too - what a bargain!) Naughty downloading boys and girls may prefer this file. And whilst I couldn't find the studio version on there, YouTube does at least offer up a live rendition of Cuban Slide... and here it is.