Clandestine Classic XVII - Purple Love Balloon

The seventeenth 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.

You know the trouble with reputations? That good ones are hard to earn and bad ones are hard to lose? Well, that was always Cud's problem in my view. For though I must stop short of calling them "Leeds' finest" (that soubriquet belongs to The Wedding Present), here is a band that emerged at the tail-end of the 80s, became beloved of a certain John Peel, and released a succession of excellent albums in the early nineties. And yet...? Why were they not bigger? Why did Carl Puttnam and his merry band not achieve more?

Part of the problem, I think, is that they became perceived as being a bit jokey - not quite a comedy band but in some ways not too far from it. Having song titles like Only (A Prawn In Whitby) probably didn't help matters much. Nor did songs like today's Clandestine Classic either, from August 1992 the critically overlooked Purple Love Balloon. For a start, there's the euphemistic title and sleeve art, a sleeve which also, lest we forget, included the following instructions for caring for your very own Purple Love Balloon: "Use from early spring to late winter with any suitable equipment. Transplant careully, while under the influence, into package and store at 18-21C (65-70F). Remove any side shoots and use 14 times a day. Feed regularly and provide plenty of liquids especially in hot weather, a dry atmosphere and warm conditions. Can also be used outdoors, in gardens, in parks or in the shelter of a sunny wall. Start using once inflated, fully formed and as soon as it has reached an acceptable size."

So, what do we have, here, really? Post-C86, pre-Britpop, indie-boy guitar-pop, yes? Well, yes, to an extent. But the secret to a lots of Cud's success, such as it was, and certainly to the success of today's Classic, is that these indie boys could get a bit funky. I mean, really, properly. Listen to that bassline. And that jangly guitar motif. These boys could play. Okay, so over all that musical loveliness you've got some bloke intoning in an unrepentant Northern bark (and I like that it's unrepentant) that he wants to take you high, in his purple love balloon. So yes, the lyrics might be described as a bit silly. But then this is Cud, after all...

Rightly or wrongly (which itself sounds like a Cud song title), Purple Love Balloon shifted 50,000 copies and made it to a heady number 27 in the charts. I know, quite an indictment of today's chart and its requisite sales figures, but anyway. You can find Purple Love Balloon on the remastered Asquarius or, better still, on their double-CD anthology Rich and Strange. Or here it is:

And what would a Clandestine Classic post be without a bonus video from YouTube? Well, luckily for us all Cud briefly reconvened in 2008 for a couple of gigs in that there London, so here's a live rendition of Purple Love Balloon. Not sure you should still be wearing those trousers though Carl...

Finally, a blogroll

In case you hadn't noticed, this blog isn't on Blogger or Wordpress or Tumblr or Posterous or any of the others. It's lovingly (sometimes grudgingly) hand-coded by yours truly and, I like to think, all the better for it. And whilst I manage to fashion reasonable approximations of most "proper" blog features, like RSS feeds, commenting, permalinks and so on, the one omission that has always irked me is the absence of a blogroll on here. I read a number of blogs regularly - they're good, and I want to share them with you.

In the past, I've experimented with all manner of third-party solutions to this, mostly Javascripts, but none of them ever did everything I wanted. Specifically, I wanted to: combine posts from multiple blogs into one feed; only pull back the newest post from each of those blogs; display the blog name, post title and beginning of the post; display an icon for each entry in the feed; sort the feed in descending date order; and have the feed "widget" scroll. Not too much to ask, is it? Well obviosuly it was, because no third-party solution I tried could do all of that to my satisfaction (I'm hard to please).

So... I suddenly remembered I'm an IT guy by trade, and made my own solution. First off, I used the quite excellent Yahoo Pipes to combine the 20 feeds I want to share with you, take the latest post from each and sort them appropriately. One of the output options in Pipes is RSS, so I then took that and punted it into Surfing Waves' excellent, free and highly customisable feed widget. This gave me a Javascript that I could embed in my blog and that, after a few tweaks of my own to make the sizing work better, Bob's your uncle. Okay, so the sizing still isn't great in Internet Explorer because IE (up to version 8 at least) isn't properly standards compliant. I guess I could have written some "if this browser then this resizing code else that resizing code" into the Javascript but, to be honest, I don't really have the time. Besides, I was trying to keep the Javascript short and sweet.

I know, unless you're a techie or a web-designer none of the above is very interesting. But I'll tell you what is interesting: all the blogs on the right-hand side of this page, that's what. Go and read them!

'Tis the season... the footy season

The start of the new Premier League season is (riots permitting) just days away, so surely there's never been a better time to sign up to play the free, official Premier League fantasy football game for 2011/12? To enter, simply register for free here. Et voila!

Here's my team, Jack Of Ball Trades, as it is for the start of the season... wonder how many of these players I'll still have come May?

"In the absence of human touch"

Yes, I know that the embedded video without context is a heinous blog crime. I know. But since wanton criminality seems to be the order of the day just now, bollocks to it. After all, this song has plenty of context in my head, and that's all this blog is ever really about, isn't it? Me, me, me.

The 15 Movie Questions Meme

Shamelessly pinched from the always-excellent Too Much Apple Pie, who in turn pinched it from Rol at Sunset Over Slawit, who in turn got it from Sunday Stealing, and so the list goes on. I try to maintain a healthy meme-aversion but since this is all about films, I'll let this one slide. Ask me these questions again in a week's time and you'll get several different answers, undoubtedly, but for now here goes.

1. Movie you love with a passion.

   Easy. The Graduate. Made before I was born, this still speaks to me about how I felt about my life when I was a graduate. Except, you know, I didn't sleep with a family friend's wife and then run off with the daughter.

2. Movie you vow to never watch.

   Not so easy. I usually vow never to watch a film again, having suffered it once. But just on principle, I intend never to watch anything with Transformers in the title.

3. Movie that literally left you speechless.

   Lars von Trier's Antichrist. And no, it wasn't that self-mutilation scene that tipped this film over the edge for me but the opening two minutes. I can't think of anything I've found as hard to watch. So speechless, but not in a good way.

4. Movie you always recommend.

   Most films by Stanley Kubrick, but most of all 2001: A Space Odyssey. I've banged on enough about this in the past so I'll just say that it makes space travel look how I want it to be, and has a breadth and scale that is unsurpassed even now, more than 40 years later.

5. Actor/actress you always watch, no matter how crappy the movie.

   Not that he's made too many crappy ones, but Robert De Niro. People rightly talk about Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, both astounding, but God, have you seen Cape Fear too? The guy is bloody amazing.

6. Actor/actress you don’t get the appeal for.

   I don't really understand why teenage girls the world over get their collective knickers in a knot over Daniel Radcliffe but I guess that's because I'm neither teenage nor a girl.

7. Actor/actress, living or dead, you’d love to meet.

   I'm not sure it's such a great idea to meet your heroes - how can they do anything other than disappoint? So I won't say Dustin Hoffman or Robert De Niro or anyone else who I might feel let down by, but instead Tim Robbins. I think he'd be interesting to talk to without even discussing his many excellent films.

8. Sexiest actor/actress you’ve seen. (Picture required!)

   Well, I couldn't choose so here's two and you can decide for yourself!
      

9. Dream cast.

   Well, obviously Dustin Hoffman, Robert De Niro, Natalie Portman and Audrey Tautou, for starters. Now I just need to work on a pitch to bring them together...

10. Favorite actor pairing.

    John Gordon Sinclair and Clare Grogan in Gregory's Girl. If you were a secondary school boy in the 80s, you know why.

11. Favorite movie setting.

    I'm with Rol on this one. The Overlook Hotel, the setting for King and Kubrick's spectacular collision.

12. Favorite decade for movies.

    I'm guessing this will be an unpopular choice but the 70s. Lots of gritty movies like Midnight Cowboy and Marathon Man, some great pre-Lucas sci-fi like Logan's Run and Westworld, the rise of Spielberg (Jaws, Duel, Close Encounters)... what's not to love?

13. Chick flick or action movie?

    Action movie if I'm on my todd, chick flick if watching with my significant other. I'm no fool.

14. Hero, villain or anti-hero?

    Sometimes hero, occasionally villain but mostly anti-hero.

15. Black and white or color?

    Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.

Daisy, Daisy...

I've just finished reading The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I know, how have I managed to get through 40 years of life without reading the great American novel? Well, I think part of the reason why is exactly that - at some level, part of me thought "why should I read this just because it's supposed to be so good?" But a friend of mine, whose opinion on all things literary I greatly respect, often cites Gatsby to demonstrate techniques of characterisation, pacing, plot development, and so on. So I finally gave it a go. And you know what? It is good. A genuinely evocative period piece, with compelling characters. So there. I've given my verdict on an accepted classic. Next week I'll deliver my views on Shakespeare (not bad - could do with more quotable lines).

The thing is, to me the most intriguing of all the characters in Gatsby isn't the eponymous anti-hero, nor is it Mr Carraway, the narrator, but Daisy Buchanan, a character I've just read described on one website as a "manipulative jazz-age socialite", an epithet that seems about right to me. And I've also just read that in the forthcoming Baz Luhrmann adaptation, Daisy will be played by Carey Mulligan (left). And this is where my problem lies. Don't get me wrong, I think Mulligan is great, and especially terrific in An Education. But I don't look at her and think she's right for Daisy. The two just don't go together in my head. But then looking down the proposed cast list, I don't envisage Leonardo DiCaprio as Gatsby either, and I certainly can't reconcile the idea of Isla Fisher as Myrtle Wilson. In fact, the only bit of casting that feels right is Tobey Maguire as Nick Carraway. Beyond that though, my biggest problem is Carey as Daisy - she just seems too sweet, too nice to be able to convey that manipulative, exploitative streak that Daisy shows increasingly as the story progresses. I guess Miss Mulligan will just have to act her socks off.

The trouble is, I then tried to think who I would cast as Daisy. And you know what - I couldn't decide. The nearest I could come up with that started to feel right was Maggie Gyllenhaal (right), and even then, well, I couldn't really see Daisy in her. So what do you think? Any suggestions?

Two

Clandestine Classic XVI - The Brink

The sixteenth 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.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the sort of music I buy these days, especially in comparison to what I bought, say, fifteen or twenty years ago. The most obvious difference is that I buy a lot less now, partly becuase I (hope I) am more discerning but mostly because I just don't have the same disposable income - life has put paid to that. But this train of thought led me to think what the outstanding albums of the 21st Century have been so far, for me at least. Don't worry, I'm working up a list for that as a future blog post. In the meantime, today's Clandestine Classic comes from an album that will be on that list - but for now, what better way to celebrate American Independence Day than with the singularly British sound of I Am Kloot and The Brink, from their 2010 masterpeice Sky At Night.

I could have picked just about any of the ten tracks on this album - it really is that good - but I've gone for The Brink for the way it invades my mind: I hear it, and then for hours, days or sometimes weeks after this most croon-worthy of melodies will wrap itself round whatever part of my cerebral cortex processes sound, and squeeze...

What's the song about? Well, singer Johnny Bramwell often introduces this song by describing it as concerning "romance, drinking and despair", a combination that we surely have all been able to relate to at some point in our lives. Further, in the preamble to this live acoustic rendition, Johnny explains that he wrote the song after watching Edith Piaf biopic La Vie En Rose, so maybe that adds a layer of understanding to the mood of the song. He certainly seems to recommend the film ("it's brilliant").

Over and above the song's beautiful orchestration and the simple yet effective guitar playing, the other secret (so many secrets!) to this track's success is Bramwell's vocal delivery. His is a voice that sounds permanently on the edge of cracking, yet never does. It soars to enviable heights, yet all the while remains a voice that has lived, and is lived in: the years Johnny spent busking on the streets of Paris are evident. And most precious of all, it has that rarest of commodities - it is genuinely distinctive. I find it hard to think of anyone who sounds like him, and that can only be a good thing, right?

I Am Kloot have been plugging away for years, but it's not until some of fellow Mancs Elbow got involved with the production of Sky At Night that they've been able to add a smattering of commercial success to the critical acclaim they've long received. About time too, I reckon. As seems to always be the case, YouTube provides a raft of live acoustic performances, of which the aforementioned is probably the best. For once I couldn't find a dubious copy of The Brink to point you towards but do you know what, that's to your advantage because what you really want is to buy the whole album, you won't regret it. Oh, and if you're going to this year's Latitude Festival, well, firstly you're very lucky (and I'm very jealous) but secondly be sure to catch I Am Kloot whilst you're there. To get you in the mood, here's a straight studio rendition of today's Clandestine Classic, The Brink, for your listening pleasure.

It seems hard to believe now but...

...this time last week I was in the Pyrénées with three mates, enjoying a walking holiday, away from the stresses and other attendant pains of work. In fact, at exactly this time last week we were a couple of hours into climbing up a mountain called Pimené, which we topped out (2,801 metres) at around lunchtime. It was a pretty hard walk in places, on a very hot day (and check out the steep, zig-zagging sections of our route), but entirely worth it. Yes, even the last stretch when the path just sort of stopped and you had to climb, almost on all fours, up a steep ridge lined with razor-sharp rocks and with a sheer fall on either side.

For the latter stages of the ascent, we were joined by a few griffon vultures (gyps fulvus, if that's your thing) who circled above in the forlorn hope that we would perhaps fall off or just lay down and die. Now I can't afford the sort of camera I'd like, but I did manage to capture one of the vultures as it soared over at little more than head height (left) - an awesome sight. It was a pretty amazing feeling topping out Pimené too; I don't think I've been higher on foot.

I'm not going to bore you with untold reams of scenic photography, partly because my camera isn't good enough to justify it but mostly because you can do a Google image search if you're that desperate for shots of Pyrénéan gorgeousness. Nor will I tell you about the place we ended up the next day which, I think, is possibly the most naturally beautiful place I've ever been in my life... because if word gets out, more people will go and it will only get spoiled.

What I will say is that, having been back at work all this week, it's sad that the events of seven short days past feel so long ago and far away. It's a sobering feeling, recognising yourself as a wage slave... but at least there is the consolation that being a wage slave for twelve thirteenths of the year pays for such pleasures as the lads' jaunt to the mountains. Oh, and this weekend's ticket to see Morrissey too.

Quite often, life can be pretty bad. But I try to keep telling myself that, as griffon vultures and Morrissey prove, it isn't always so.

Yesterday was Tau Day

What's that, you say - Tau Day? All is revealed below.

In my younger day I used to be quite handy at maths, and this seems a reasonably compelling argument to me. What do you all think?