Clandestine Classic XXXV - Once Around The Block

The thirty-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.

What comes to mind when you think about Badly Drawn Boy? Chances are it's the soundtrack to About A Boy. After all, it was Damon Gough's commercial high point, featuring the relatively successful Something To Talk About and Silent Sigh. And I won't carp about that, because it's a decent album full of music for Hugh Grant's least irritating movie performance. But this is Clandestine Classics... it doesn't deal in commercial high points, or popular ditties endorsed by Nick Hornby. Oh no. For today's classic, we have to go back, back, back, before Badly Drawn Boy were releasing albums, back to when they just had EPs to their name...

Once Around The Block was released in August 1999 and tottered to a dizzy #46 in the UK singles chart. How it didn't get higher I don't know, it's not like the pre-Millennial chart was stuffed with gems. I suppose that's the difference a film association can make... Even when re-released, and pushed harder, a year later it only got to #27... and that's surprising because in many ways, Once Around The Block is very similar to the more successful work that followed: it has the same whistle-ability, the same low-key, lo-fi rhythm, the same trick of a downbeat-yet-upbeat melody. In fact this track, a prototype for the success that was to follow, arguably set a standard that much of Gough's subsequent work struggled to live up to. For me it's the slightly phased, recurrent acoustic guitar riff, the delicate harmonies with self, the shuffling, languorous backbeat... these are the things that make this track special. Memorable, even - I bought this song fourteen years ago and, until today, hadn't played it for at least five years, if not more. And yet it feels like I heard it yesterday, that's how fresh it has remained in my mind.

Then there are the lyrics - deceptively simple, yet all the more memorable for that. The closing lines are a perfect case in point:

Take a left, a sharp left and another left.
Meet me on the corner
And we'll start again

Now that repetition of "left, left, left" shouldn't work, but it does, somehow. In fact, it may even be the reason I bought this in the first place.

Damon Gough is still going into bat for the Badly Drawn Boy first XI, though the law of diminishing returns applies, here as everywhere. I see he recently had to apologise to a gig crowd for being a bit shirty onstage (and that's not the first time either), but hey. Today's classic later appeared on The Hour Of Bewilderbeast, and so of course can be picked up there. And then there's always YouTube, which reveals an utterly charming video (even if the young lady with braces has already-perfect teeth). Here you go.

Four

Book review time - "Let's Kill Love" by Mark Kilner

Stop for a moment and take a look around you, maybe browse a newspaper of two. There is plenty to suggest that modern life can be... well, disturbing, to say the very least. Unsettling, even. Kilner's talent, so ably and repeatedly demonstrated in this book, is to take the small horrors of life in 21st Century Britain and take them a step further...

This collection opens with the excellent short-story-as-introduction "Vanity Search". In it, a fictionalised version of the author is asked whether his work is "horror as in werewolves and goblins or horror as in psychopaths running around with knives?" With a sigh, the author replies, "I hope I don't mean either of those things." It's a nice statement of intent and entirely appropriate, because whilst there are genuine scares, moments of violence and other unpleasantness in these stories, this book is not a blood-soaked gore-fest....it's far, far better than that. Kilner deals in the horror of small things, the horror of modern life, the horror of people and the things they do. Prepare to be deeply unsettled by the real reason for the growth in management psychobabble in "Inhuman Resources", small-time crooks and councillors (so alike, in many ways) in "That's The Way To Do It" (after which you'll never think of Punch and Judy in the same way), and the pervasion/invasion of technology in "Superficial Intelligence". Throw in a very clever slice of Ballardian fiction in "Killing Time" and the Grand Guignol novella "Postmortem" and you already have an outstanding debut collection, and that's without the eponymous "Let's Kill Love", a sobering tale for today's relationship-obsessed culture.

Being familiar with Kilner's work already, there are a couple of short stories that I had hoped would also be in this collection (I think "Run Down" and "Dead Flowers" would have sat nicely alongside the other stories here) but I hope this just means the author is holding them in reserve for his next collection, keeping his powder dry. On the evidence of this book, a new and distinctive British voice has emerged, with a talent for engaging, contemporary, psychological horror. I said at the start of this review that Kilner's skill is in taking the horrors of modern life a step further; the beauty of this it that, having read each story, you are left with something to look back on, bigger themes on which to reflect. This is no mean feat to achieve once - to do so repeatedly shows real quality.

If I was the sort of blogger to give star ratings, this would be a 4.5 star review, but whatever the rating, be in no doubt: Mark Kilner deserves to be read. Lucky for you then that "Let's Kill Love" can be snapped up on Amazon right now.

More street art - Abracadabra and Britain Wins Gold

More pointed street art/graffiti spotted on the walls of my adopted home town. I do like my paste-ups and stencil art to be a bit political. Anyway... other posts in this series can be found here, here, here, here and here.

Happiness is easy...

There are some things in my life that make me happy, indeed some are a source of such joy as I never imagined possible. Equally, there are some aspects of my life that depress me beyond words, taking me to dark places that leave me clinging desperately to the good things as motivation for... well, everything.

I don't propose to list the things that fall into these categories, the causes of my joy and misery - this is just a blog, after all, not therapy (although some might argue it's both). And of course, like most introspective fools I'm prone to mulling over the latter rather than celebrating the former. After all, who doesn't like to scratch a bothersome itch or, more fittingly, pick at a scab?

Also like most introspective fools, at least those that do their introspection properly, by which I mean "like me", I'm quite cynical when it comes to self-help books, CBT and all the rest. If I get to the point of needing help, I'll talk to my mates, thanks. But even so, when I saw a copy of Alex Quick's 102 Free Things To Do - inspiring ideas for a better life in my local library I was intrigued enough to get it out on loan and have a read. Thankfully, it doesn't set out to be a self-help book, or to rid the reader of misery and depression. It simply lists some things the reader can do for free (mostly) that might improve his or her quality of life.

In summary, these are the 102 things:

1. Go out and look at the stars
2. Keep a diary - but only one sentence a day
3. Meter your energy use with a smart meter
4. Give up your car
5. Get up earlier
6. Sketch your relatives - it's better than photos
7. Treasure your precious human body
8. Go on an archeological dig
9. Write a letter to your future self
10. Don't confuse affluence with well-being
11. Memorise a poem
12. Ask a child for advice
13. Take part in a police line-up
14. Give up craving for recognition (and be admired for it)
15. Notice when things have improved
16. Go on holiday without leaving your bedroom
17. Practice random acts of kindness (and, if time permits, senseless acts of beauty)
18. Climb a mountain
19. Turn your house into a restaurant
20. Start a film society
21. Remember that making mistakes is part of being human
22. See the sun rise and set on a single summer's day
23. Get fit without joining a gym
24. Sit still until you see wildlife emerge
25. Contact a friend you haven't spoken to for years
26. Go cloud-spotting
27. Learn to meditate
28. Volunteer for something
29. Spend a day and night in a forest
30. Cherish older people
31. Reconsider your career
32. Enlarge your comfort zone
33. Achieve your ideal weight
34. Learn how to talk to strangers in public
35. Visit Project Gutenberg
36. Gather a meal from the wild
37. Learn another language
38. Invent a language
39. Pretend you are a valet for humanity
40. Go busking
41. Start a book in which to record things that have really, really made you laugh
42. Go somewhere outdoors that is very silent
43. Make Christmas presents for your whole family one year
44. Give something up
45. Cheer up lonely men in public places
46. Swap your CDs
47. Adopt or invent a personal motto
48. Support your local eccentric
49. Become a freegan
50. Swim in the sea
51. Get to know your neighbours
52. Act without expecting anything back
53. Deliver meals on wheels
54. Look for glue
55. Send a message in a bottle
56. Have an eco-friendly bonfire
57. Attempt a world record
58. Walk in the rain
59. Give away free trees
60. Do a sponsored parachute/bungee jump
61. Perform
62. Cycle 100 miles in a day
63. Serenade someone
64. Reflect on something you're grateful for
65. Cook and eat a nine-course meal
66. Write a love letter
67. Create a lair
68. Notice beauty
69. Let go of emotional pain
70. Write down your parents' or grandparents' stories
71. Look at your day-to-day concerns from the point of view of five years from now
72. Fan the flames of desire
73. Contemplate imperfection and impermanence as forms of beauty
74. Join a gardening scheme where only your labour is required
75. Laugh in the face of death
76. Train your memory
77. Accept the full catastrophe
78. Write the first sentence of a novel
79. Cherish solitude (Sister Wendy does)
80. Get your friends to sponsor you to go to Spain and celebrate La Tomatina
81. Embarrass your children/teenagers
82. Work a room
83. Confront people politely
84. Learn a trick
85. Be a representative of your country, in your country
86. Try lucid dreaming
87. Come to terms with ageing
88. Be a bookcrosser
89. Teach a child something fun
90. Make your gratitude less perfunctory
91. Give away your superfluous possessions
92. Grow huge sunflowers
93. Smile
94. Go bell-ringing
95. Form a debating club
96. Take your shoes off and walk in the dew on a sunny morning
97. Dress up
98. Give up your TV
99. Be 'Lord' for a day
100. Write fewer emails and more letters
101. Don't expect that things will be different in Tenerife
102. Find out what's happening near you and join in

Yes, I know. In places this is a bullshit list. It's just the chapter headings, after all. Some things, like "smile" - well clearly you need to read the book to understand what Quick is getting at. But, in general, these are things that sound... fun. Life-enhancing and, who knows, maybe even life-affirming, don't you think?

Some of the 102 I've already done (they're green). Others, I can't imagine I'll ever do - they're red. But the rest are up for grabs. Don't worry, I'm not going to turn this into a blog theme where I religiously post about every task as I tick them off, to the eventual boredom of everyone concerned, no no no. But I might blog about the odd one or two, if any turn out to be stupendous. Bottom line, though, is this - I haven't been that cheerful lately, sorry, but I wanted you to know I'm trying to do something about that.

Now, Constant Reader, if you could add a 103rd task to the list of inspiring ideas for a better life, what would it be?

P.S. +1 kudos points to any readers ID'ing the song from which this blog post takes it title (only 1 for this, as it's easy...)

Colossal Velocity

Important film news. Personally I quite like "Chap Of Steel" but anyway... The world premiere must surely be in Norwich? Where better than Cinema City?

Clandestine Classic XXXIV - Closer

The thirty-fourth 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.

What comes to mind when you think about Travis? Chances are it's their pajillion-selling and semi-ubiquitous second album The Man Who or maybe it's only marginally less successful third, The Invisible Band. Or maybe you have a festival memory of hoisting an umbrella into the air as the band played their biggest hit, Why Does It Always Rain On Me? What I very much doubt it brings to mind is today's clandestine classic, Closer, a 2007 single from the band's fifth album, The Boy With No Name.

There's a good reason why, of course. Firstly, the band's fourth album 12 Memories had been a little too political, a little too angsty for some. Then drummer Neil Primrose jumped head-first into a shallow swimming pool while on tour in France. Breaking his neck, he almost died due to spinal damage. If not for his bandmates, he also would have drowned. Serious stuff, I'm sure you'll agree, and more than enough reason for the band to drop out of circulation for a while. The trouble is, dropping out of circulation for a while is a bit of a crime these days, and Travis's lazy-hack-muso-journalist title as "the next Radiohead" was snagged away by Coldplay and Keane, both more than capable of shifting product to the Radio 2 crowd.

They did return though, and in 2005 they were drafted in as last-minute replacements for Morrissey at the Isle of Wight festival. In need of a warm-up gig at short notice, and with no album to promote, they played a crowd-pleasing greatest hits set at UEA, and one of the the highlights was a world premiere of a new song, Closer.

All the Travis trademarks were there from the start - Fran's fragile vocal delivery, deceptively simple chords, the solo that almost isn't, the twisted lyrical themes of love (unrequited), loss, heartache. Most of all, of wanting to be loved. In other words, a return to the familiar, non-political territory of albums two and three.

Today's classic is probably the most commercially successful of any that I've featured thus far - it peaked at number ten in the UK singles chart. But it's still clandestine, in my book, just because it's so far down the list you think of when you think about Travis. Besides, it seems like a good time to be talking about them - after an amicable hiatus and solo outing from Fran, the band are back (back! back!) with new material to promote and a new album in the offing.

In the meantime, you can find today's classic on the aforementioned The Boy With No Name, as well as the solid-gold Singles collection. Alternatively, naughty boys and girls may be interested in this, in which case you ain't seen me, right? And then there's always YouTube - I do love a video that steps outside of itself, if you know what I mean? If you don't, you will do after watching this. Cheers.

Footnote: yes, thanks, I'm fully aware that "semi-ubiquitous" is a bit like being a little bit pregnant. Cut me some slack, eh...?

Shooting the Moon

Much as I might like one, I don't have a digital SLR, just a compact camera, or "point'n'shoot". Admittedly, it's quite a good point'n'shoot, but that's all it is. Imagine my pleasure then, when presented with a full Moon and a clear sky a couple of weeks ago, that I was able to shoot this.

It's not a great photo, being a bit fuzzy and still a little distant - it's certainly light years away from the sort of lunar photography my friend Mark produces. But the thing that gets me, and the reason I'm writing this, is just how advanced digital photography is getting. As I mentioned, this was taken with a compact camera, and handheld, not on a tripod or any other mount. Yes, I did tweak the camera's settings slightly - it allows a degree of manual control - but really I didn't do much more than extend the zoom to its fullest limit. And in case you're wondering, the photo hasn't been cropped or digitally post-processed either - all I've done is scale down the size from the original 18MP to something that fits nicer on this here web page. And I think the results speak, not for me as a photographer (I'm a bit run of the mill) but for the camera, because the results are half decent. I mean, you can see Tycho and Copernicus clearly, and the Sea of Tranquility stands out nicely (Mark - fill me in with some more identifiable features!)

I'm now on the lookout for a website that tells me when the Moon is at perigee, so I can dig out a tripod and try again...

Not Film, er, 2009 but a film review anyway: Mésrine Part 1 - Killer Instinct (or, better late than never)

Funny what turns up, isn't it? Scrabbling for something to write on in the side pocket of a sports bag yesterday, I happened upon a little notebook that I hadn't used in some considerable time. It was mostly empty but near the front I had made a few notes and, on the 10th of August 2009, scrawled a just-legible film review for the French gangster epic "Mésrine part 1 - Killer Instinct". Here, unedited, it what I thought back then.

Disillusioned with the army, disappointed in his father, Jacques Mésrine's (Vincente Cassels) path towards his ultimate status as France's public enemy #1 is set when he falls under the wing of small-time crime boss Guido (Gerard Depardieu). It quickly becomes apparent that Mésrine has a talent for all things criminal, and a confidence with the more physical aspects of his career choice (this is a violent film, but not gratuitously so). It also becomes apparent that he puts himself, and the respect and companionship that comes from his work partnerships, ahead of family life, forsaking his wife and child in a literal "us or them" moment.

After leaving a mob associate crippled, Mésrine and Jeanne, his new partner (both romantic and criminal), flee to Canada where they become minor media celebrities after a botched kidnapping. Mésrine in particular likes this brush with fame, and it is difficult not to wonder if this will be a telling factor in part 2 of his story, released next month.

Mésrine's incarceration in a brutal Canadian prison ends with his escape and, incredibly, his later attempt to jailbreak the remaining inmates. By contrast, Jeanne doesn't want to be sprung from prison, and her relationship with Mésrine ends there.

Cassel's performance as the anti-hero Mésrine is compelling - he is on-screen for almost all of the film's two hours. It is a testament to the strength of his performance that, even though his character is a damaged individual with sociopathic tendencies, you root for him - you want him to get away, to escape.

Depardieu's cameo as Guido is also excellent, a suitable compliment being that his performance would sit well in an early Tarantino film.

There, that's it, that's all I wrote. No top and tail, no summary, just a straight synopsis and a few observations. Maybe I planned to wait until I'd seen "Mésrine Part 2 - Public Enemy #1", I can't remember. What I will say is that both films are good, and Part 1 is bordering on terrific. I should also reiterate that these are French films, so if you don't like subtitles, well, maybe that's an issue for you. For everyone else, hustle over to Amazon where, four years later, you can pick up both films on DVD for less than nine quid.

Got to love that Internet

Thank you Tim Berners-Lee et al. With the Internet, it is virtually impossible to be bored for long these days. Here are some things I have found online this week that have amused, entertained or otherwise occupied me, and that I really feel duty-bound to share with you.

• Classless society? Pah! Take the BBC's class test and see it you're one of them or one of us...
• If you're quick you can get tickets to see comedy god and all-round nice guy Dave Gorman for free! Choice of dates but all in that there London though so, you know, sorry if, like me, you live elsewhere.
• You know that advert for Galaxy chocolate featuring Audrey Hepburn in her prime? Well, unlike the old beer ad featuring Marilyn Monroe this wasn't achieved with splicing in genuine film footage, this was done with a model (Ellie Burton) who, whilst pretty, doesn't actually look like Audrey that much at all. Cursed/blessed CGI!
• And best of all, thanks to the usually excellent and always interesting Voices Of East Anglia, this week I discovered the US animated spy spoof "Archer". Set in a seemingly Sixties-styled world but with contemporary references, this Bond/Flint/Powers/Uncle spoof follows international man of mystery Sterling Archer as he debauches his way around the globe. Is debauches a word? Probably not but it should be. Anyway, "Archer" airs on the FX network in the States and has been shown on 5* over here (at least the first three series have). Somehow that passed me by, which is a shame because the compilation video highlights VoEA included had me guffawing like an idiot schoolboy. Yes, of course it's only the "best bits", but it seemed to suggest a programme full of snappy dialogue, knowing parody and genuine laughs. I'll be looking out for the next series on 5*, and suggest you do the same. Here's that video.