Radio 4 - Sometimes Really Quite Good

Radio 4 gets it so terribly wrong a lot of the time. Atrocious sit-coms; history of the world in ten million bits of fluff; The Garlic, Olive Oil and Aga show. And as for that Agricultural Soap Opera - Grrr!

However it does excel often enough that I keep on coming back.

Take tonight's edition of "Front Row", their regular Arts programme. It would have been an interesting enough companion to chopping carrots for Sweet and Sour Chicken even with just the articles about Highgate Cemetery and the new Doctor Who online game. But it was the musical items that made it really special.

First off was a report on Derry's attempt to become Britain's next city of culture. Cue music from The Undertones, the most joyous and ballsy music there ever was. Guaranteed to make you smile, except it reminds me that the world has been without John Peel for nearly six years now, and that's a crying shame.

Second was a piece on how Rhianna's "Umbu-reller-reller-hay-hay" has become a modern classic that is being covered by an insane variety of bands from punk to indie to light jazz and onto (my favourite) Rockabilly. Listen to The Baseballs' version and I challenge you to have no emotion about it. Made me smile, made Stanetta stomp off in disgust. That's no mean trick.

Florence + The Machine @ Blackpool

I went to an awesome gig at the Blackpool Winter Gardens. It was 1982, I was 16 and Ultravox blew the walls down.

I went to an awesome gig at the Blackpool Winter Gardens. It was yesterday, I was 43 and Florence + The Machine blew the walls down, set fire to the roof and stomped up and down on the ruins.

Her voice is miraculous, her stagecraft is compelling and her backing band really know what they're about. The live version of "Girl With One Eye" was Edgar Allen Poe scary and the singing, whooping and bouncing rendition of "Rabbit Heart" had the energy of a military coup.

Totally faultless and I can't see how she can possibly improve, but by jingo I'm looking forward to watching her try.

Lost - The Plot

Oi ! You ! The script writers on "Lost" - I'm coming to get you.

Yes, I know you've finished writing it and the final series is airing on Sky just now. But this gizmo on a my head is a hydrogen bomb rigged to explode on impact so I'm hoping to break the time-barrier and make you change some stuff when I come down there and head-butt you.

Do I have your attention ? Good - I only have a few perfectly reasonable issues.

Firstly, quit putting in new twists before you've resolved some of the old ones. After a while there's no drama - you just shrug and think "Oh that bowl of mushroom soup hasn't been explained. I'll bet we won't hear a word about it for twenty episodes and then it'll fall on someone's mother's bodyguard's sister's head for no good reason."

Secondly, characters. If you will insist on gratuitously introducing new ones, you dilute even the comic-book paper-thin characters we almost care about. Best to work on the basis of one-in, one-out. And when you kill one off, make sure they damn well stay dead.

And thirdly, totally ignore me. I'm just a guy with a nuclear bomb on his head. What you do is totally marvellous - do you really have to stop after series 6 ?

Letts Get Stuck In

The only thing I have in common with Quentin Letts is that neither of us can write quite as well as we think we can.

It seems he's the type who keeps a list of people who have irritated him in some way. The result is his book "50 People Who Buggered Up Britain" which is 277-pages of sheer sneering whine.

His prose style is bizarre - like a collaboration between a petulant adolescent and a dyspeptic retired judge. But that's not the real problem with the book.

HIs choice of targets is bewildering enough - some of these people were doing their job or the right thing or both. Heath sacked Enoch Powell - and that was a bad thing ??? Callaghan started us on the long road to decimalisation ???

Some of the blows are particularly low and lazy. Why criticise Ed Balls for having a silly name and goggly eyes when his handling as Education secretary of the Baby P case is so much more worthy of invective?

The main gripe I have though is that Britain plainly isn't "Buggered Up". Heck it stand to improve, but this country is one the best things about an imperfect world. It works as least as well as it always did and in some ways it's getting better and better. Just ask the stream of people who stow away in boxes and take very shallow breaths to get here.

And it's not individuals who do the damage. All of the issues that annoy Letts are the result of large complicated (but dull) social forces. For example, it's simplistic (but oh so human) to pretend that John McEnroe was responsible for our lack of respect for referees because he so publicly lost the page with one in 1981. How much easier to blame a person.


So in short: wrong-headed, plain wrong and not that well written.

Quite a bit like reading "The Daily Mail" .

Satyagraha@ English National Opera

Da da da da dad dad dad
Da
Da
Da Da
Dadadadadadadadadadad ... dadadadadadaaa

Doodle-a-coodle-a-toodle-a-loodle-a-doodle-a-poodle ...

(Repeat)

Philip Glass' opera "Satyagraha" is wonderful music to have on when you're studying. I can testify that three hours of repeated arpeggi over what might as well be random pieces of Sanskrit is the perfect way to soothe your subconscious while your forebrain is trying to make sense of such wonders as the Jordan curve theorem.

Quarter of a century later, I've forgotten everything I know about abstract algebra, but at the performance of Satyagraha by the ENO in London I saw this week, I was shocked at how I had near note-perfect recall of the music.

I should have brought an algebra book though, because unfortunately there's not enough happening on the stage to keep your forebrain occupied.

It's meant to be about how Tolstoy, Tagore, Gandhi and Martin Luther King are stages on the road to "Satyagraha" ("Truth Power"). What that actually involves on stage is men on stilts doing huge origami, giant puppets, and (about 90% of the time) people walking in exaggerated slo-mo across the stage ...

.. left
... to ... right

and then

right ...
to ... left

and then ...

(repeat until brain death - and then a couple more times for luck)

I nearly had a giggle-fit during one of the big metaphorical half-hour paper-folding sessions. It was solemn and serious and probably as allegorical as all get-out, but without warning, my mind conjured up the image of Rolf Harris sitting next to me and whispering in my ear :-

"Can you guess what it is yet ?"

That said, there were many positive points to the evening. The vocalists were incredible, the score is inventive and well worth hearing and the concert orchestra were patient and disciplined.

But bring a book. Or some ironing. Or Rolf Harris.

No Trouble, No Trouble

Thanks to "Soul Music" on Radio 4, I am not going to moan about the BBC for a whole year. They can continue to spend my licence fee money on utter garbage like Graham Norton, Total Wipeout and four-hour amateur dance phone-in shows for every one of those twelve months and they won't hear a peep out of me.

"Soul Music" has a simple premise - that there are pieces of music that have had a huge impact on the lives of a sufficiently interesting range of people. It is currently into its 9th series, and it's amazing to me that they've taken this long to get round to "Dido's Lament" by Purcell.

It's a song of very few notes that has an effect similar to pepper spray on anyone with a soul. Or maybe just me. Anyway, there have been amazing recordings over the years, from Janet Baker to Hayley Westenra and I would have loved just to listen to all of the performances back-to-back. Instead, the programme looked a little deeper.

Firstly it tried to explain note by note just how Purcell managed to ratchet up the emotion. Pretty elementary stuff for any musician I'm sure, but quite a revelation for a civilian like me.

Then, as well as covering the more famous recordings, it spent some time looking at some of the more unorthodox attempts. Alison Moyet didn't quite do it justice in a smoky jazz style, but mostly they looked at Jeff Buckley's performance at the 1995 Meltdown Festival.

I love Jeff Buckley's work and this is one of the best songs of all time. You might expect the combination of the two could not possibly live up to my expectations.

Ohboyohboyohboyohboyohboyohboy !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The cellist at the recording was interviewed and he described how Jeff Buckley arrived with the lyrics written out on paper, with the high notes written high up and the low notes low down. He obviously thought to himself "typical blooming rock star" ... right up to the moment when he started to sing.

Jeff Buckley's voice is a freakish four octave-wide gift from the gods. It's crammed full of raw emotion and undiluted musicality. He took that song from fifteen generations ago that has been performed by thousands of the best singers of all time and made you think about it in a new light. It certainly blew away the cellist who said that the performance made him realise he knew nothing about music. He knew the theory, he could play the notes, but he just wasn't anywhere near to Jeff Buckley in terms of feeling it.

I've said enough - Jeff Buckley's recording is on YouTube and the episode of "Soul Music" is still available on the BBC website for a few days only.

Enjoy.

Stan Awards

I love the end of year lists that clutter up the newspapers and TV schedules at this time of year. It's a great opportunity to pick up out the stuff that actually has lasting importance from the flashy and the superficial. So much the better that we've got a whole decade to look back on.

The following are the Stan Awards for the twenty-noughties - beverage of their choice in my local coffee shop for any of the winners who fancy collecting the award in person.

Book of the Decade

Carol Ann Duffy - "Rapture" (2005)

So few words, all of them exquisite. Never has the arc of a passion been more skilfully evoked. You can read the poems in the book in an hour and that's one of the best uses of an hour I can think of. Set aside two or three hours though - you WILL want to read it over again when you finish.

Band of the Decade

Radiohead

Look, they had the album of the last decade with "OK Computer" and still somehow managed to follow it up with four great albums that bore little resemblance to their greatest hits and to each other:

2000: Kid A
2001: Amnesiac
2003: Hail to the Thief
2007: In Rainbows

Seemingly infinitely creative, even going so far as to offer "In Rainbows" as a download with a voluntary price tag.

Album of the Decade

Florence + the Machine - "Lungs" (2009)

In a different mood I could have chosen :-

• Radiohead - any of the four albums from the decade
• Amy Winehouse - "Back to Black" (2006)
• Arctic Monkeys - "Whatever people say I am, that's what I'm not" (2006)
• PJ Harvey - Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea (2000)

But I couldn't resist making a fuss about this amazing début album - warped lyrics, a fine voice, sound textures like no other, and an intoxicating sense that here is a performer with a future and I can't wait to hear her next five or six albums over the next decade.

TV Show of the Decade

The Wire

You've heard it all before, not least from me. Makes the best of the rest seem amateurish and lacking in ambition by comparison. Mrs Stan bought me the complete box set for Christmas.

Best. Present. Ever.

Film of the Decade

Shrek (2001)

Funny and imaginative, rewarding repeat viewing in a way that the sloppy sequels don't.

In a different mood I could have chosen one of these :-

• Mulholland Drive (2001)
• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
• Children of Men (2006)
• Man on Wire (2008)

My Name is Stan, and I am ...

... a snob.

Well, a recovering snob. Maybe.

There was a time when I'd turn my nose up at a film unless it was in some exotic language and consisted mostly of an old man smoking cigarettes for three hours and then moodily bouncing off on a spacehopper. Books with plots, dance performances that actually fitted the music, poems that scanned, paintings that looked like anything at all - how on earth could any of them possibly be any good?

"Mainstream" was my favourite four-letter word and damn you for a small-minded individual if you dared point out that it has ten letters.

The first piece of evidence that I'm changing is Miranda Hart's sitcom "Miranda" on BBC2. She is in no way tries to Subvert The Form or make us think and at no point am I tempted to rub my chin and murmur "Interesting ...." or "How True!". The physical humour is rather blatant, the language is simple and the situations far from complex.

But.

She makes me laugh. Out loud and often.

I've applied my analytical brain to the reason why, and all I've got is this:-

She's a funny person doing and saying funny things.

Look also at "Flash Forward" on Channel 5. The acting is wobbly and the dialogue is risible. But, you know what ? I couldn't care less. Because what it does have is a white-hot plot and insane amounts of pace. And sometimes that's enough to get you through an episode to the usually jaw-dropping cliffhanger at the end which makes you want to tune in next time.

In my snobby days, I'd have called it a "popcorn drama" - in fact, I still do, but nowadays I add " ... and could you please pass the popcorn".

Unfashionable

I'm still doing lengths up and and down England every week in the Big Stupid Spanish Diesel, which has given me scope to get extremely bored with the usual dozen or so albums I play on the journey.

For a change this week I went out of my way to pick out music I hadn't heard for some time - the theory was that if it was rubbish, Oxfam would get it, and if it was good then it would go on the list to freshen up my music rotation.

First up was "A Love Supreme" by John Coltrane. I've heard it half a dozen times without getting it at all. I've been told a few hundred times in hushed tones by better musicians than myself that it is brilliant - which always makes me feel thick.

After listening to it again, I'm no closer to understanding it and nowhere near enjoying it. Too many notes ! It still sounds to me like a pre-schooler blowing through daddy's sax after too much sugar. One for Oxfam.

Next though was a real find - Film Four's "Essential Soundtracks Compilation" album. Just check out the track list here - I listened to the second CD first and was immediately in Eclectic Music Heaven, where Chuck Berry, The Prodigy, Jimmy Cliff and The Pixies come together.

I had heard "Speaking of Happiness" many times before but would never have been able to put the name to the gloriously clear soulful voice that sings it. It's Gloria Lynne - she deserves to be better known.

But the biggest joy was hearing "Happy Heart" by Andy Williams. Big and unfashionable - it demands your attention. I imagined someone in 1969 driving up the pre-motorway trunk road in a Ford Anglia listening to it on a tinny radio. Then in my head-film, I cut to myself in 2009, driving at £60-fine-and-three-points mph on the M6 listening to it on my rather excellent stereo. Can anyone point me to more powerful voice from the last forty years. Tom Jones ? You're having a laugh.

The fact is - female "Torch" singers have never been more popular (Duffy, Amy Winehouse, the Pop Idol lot etc.) but all the male voices these days seem to be whiny indie kids. But these things should by rights come round in cycles.

So here's a prediction : the biggest selling song of the next 12 months will be a man in an Italian suit with a voice like a Viking God singing a torch song, backed by a big band playing real instruments.

Pour marcher sur un nuage

"Man on Wire" won this year's Oscar for best documentary film and I've only just gotten around to watching it.

It's the story of a French tightrope-dancer (not a mere walker) who limbered up on a wire over Notre Dame de Paris and the Sydney Harbour Bridge before taking on the newly-built New York Twin Towers in 1973.

It's a pretty cool stunt but the real story is the way his monomania sucked in a circle of friends to make this impossible dream happen. I won't spoil the plot, but there have been wars fought with less preparation and planning than went into this caper.

A highlight for me was the way he described the first step onto the wire - the moment when he shifted his weight from one foot anchored on a building to one on a swinging, dipping, twisting wire over a quarter mile column of air.

Why would anyone do that ?

Like Louis Armstrong said :

"If you have to ask, you'll never know."

Or as he put it :

"I did something magnificent and mysterious, and I got a 'why?' - and the beauty of it is that I don't have a 'why.'"

The very best Art forces you to change your ideas about what is possible, and by that standard this is great art indeed. A man walking on clouds certainly doesn't need a "Why?".

Speaking of great art, the soundtrack is amazing - Michael Nyman's greatest minimalist hits, including the jaw-droppingly awesome "Memorial". Also his equivalent from the century before - Satie's Gymnopédie and Gnossienne. And Fleetwood Mac's "Albatross" and "A Fifth of Beethoven" as a nod to the era of the stunt and just for laughs.

Anderson and Reed do Yellow Pony in Manchester

Update : Warning : if you believe the Guardian music critic, I don't know what I'm talking about.

***************************************

I was waiting in the bar of the Palace Theatre in Manchester, idly people-watching and this guy took the empty seat at my table and said "Have you ever seen Lou Reed before ?" I had to confess I hadn't and it got a bit awkward because in truth I didn't know his work well at all.

I was there to see Laurie Anderson whose albums "Big Science" and "United States Live" were a regular background to my brave fight with university Mathematics.

Look up Laurie Anderson and marvel at all the different genres people attempt to confine her to. Art Rock ? Avant-Pop ? Transethnicism ? I actually prefer her own term : "Difficult Listening Hour".

She's best known for "O Superman" - a track that (the more missed each day) John Peel helped to unlikely, improbable chart success in the UK in the early '80s. Spoken poetry over an electronic backing from an idea by Massenet really shouldn't be so popular. That said, while she was #2 on the charts, #3 was The Tweets "The Birdie Dance", so there was obviously something in the water at that time.

The pieces that were hers on the "Yellow Pony" show were clever, stimulating and technically brilliant. Lou Reed's pieces were human and emotional and man, can he play a guitar.

The real treat though were the pieces where you had no idea if it was one of hers or one of his. Where two unique talents mingle and where the result could not have been created by any single human.

So many sounds, so many words - I have no idea where to start to explain, so I will leave it unsaid.

It was chuffing good though. Possibly the best performance by an over-60s married couple the world has ever known.

Clueless No More

It's a stream of feeble puns, older even than the outdated format of the show. The chairman didn't really get into his stride and three quarters of the panel trotted out the same material they've been overusing for half a century.

To summarise - in my honest opinion, the first episode of the new series of "I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue" was by some margin the best programme on TV or radio this year. An absolute delight, and I'm still smirking like am imbecile as I type this.

If you're new to the programme then you've missed fifty series of the best semi-improvised verbal playfulness the world has ever seen. There are running gags, scattergun punning and the groaningest end-of-the-pier innuendo known to man. There are fictional games and invisible sexy assistants. And now there's even Victoria Wood.

For just about all of the fifty previous series the chairman had been the great Humphrey Lyttleton, who brought a jazzman's sense of comic timing to the role. Stephen Fry was the chairman tonight, and although he is a formidable intellect and a considerable comedian, I was disappointed that he didn't really put across any kind of "voice" like he does when he's chairing "QI". On that programme he's geeky, unworldly Fry of Queen's College, Cambridge and it works well there. But it took 6 years of that show to get that voice right, so it is expecting a lot for him to shine on his first day in this job. And by the way, we're talking about a job that the last guy did for thirty years and I swear he was still improving right up to the end.

So why was it my favourite programme of this year when I am so critical of it?

It's simply because I feared the show was dead and that there would be no more of it. For me, this new series was like seeing an old friend in the street - one that I believed was dead. They might not seem quite themselves at the moment, but that doesn't stop you wanting to rush up and give them a huge hug and thank your choice of deity or muppet that they still live.

So, thanks be to Kermit; "Clue" is back ! It's a great comfort to know that I'm guaranteed at least a smile, a groan and a chuckle on Monday evenings.

Paradise Downloaded

My car these days is powered by supermarket diesel, Radio 4 and poetry. This later power source arrives courtesy of the nice people at Librivox, a network of volunteers who record themselves reading out-of-copyright books and make the recordings available for free on their website.

I found them when I failed to find an audiobook of "Paradise Lost". I had been inspired to read it by Armando Iannucci's passionate and accessible programme "Milton's Heaven and Hell".

It's not as distracting as I thought to have different untrained voices reading each section of the book - the quality of the reading is high, as you would expect from willing volunteers reading a text that obviously means a lot to them. Not sure which profesional actor I'd chose to read "Paradise Lost" with Richard Burton being dead. Anthony Hopkins would probably have to suffice.

Anyway, the book.

Wow.

Like.

You know ?

Just .. er ...

Big.

Mighty.

Towering.

The reason I like Carol Ann Duffy's work is the way that she uses simple language to describe the human experience of eternal issues such Love and Hate and lots of other stuff just begging for Capital Letters.

Milton by contrast deploys a formidable arsenal of vocabulary and attempts to actually explain those eternal issues, or as he has it "... to explain the ways of God to Man".

It's as though Carol Ann is describing how it feels to watch an exciting football match, but Milton actually tries to get across how it feels to have your shirt tugged as your goalie boots over a last minute hopeful Hail Mary freekick into the box and a dozen heads rise hoping against hope for a miracle.

My instinctive religio-phobia has kept me away from this book for so long, and that's a pity. Like so many cultures through history, Milton uses The Gods as metaphors for human emotions and experiences. I'm sure many devout Christians would dislike some of this book. This atheist absolutely loved it though. I didn't get all the classical and biblical allusions, but at those points you just let the pure music of words wash over you.

But not to the extent that you forget you're responsible for steering a ton and a half of metal doing 69.5 mph on the M6.

Star Trek

When I was 12, I had a problem. OK, I probably had several problems, but here we're going to discuss The Science Fiction Problem.

You would have thought that 1978 would have been a great year for a young sci-fi fan. "Star Wars" was at the cinema, "Star Trek" was on endless loop on TV and "Blake's 7" had started to run around an old quarry in Surrey in fancy dress.

But ...

• Although "Star Wars" dazzled with the special effects, the plot was an ill-disguised wafer-thin fairy story.

• "Star Trek" had some excellent plots ("City on the Edge of Forever", "The Trouble With Tribbles", "A Piece of the Action"). But the acting and the dialogue and the shoddy sets ... yeek.
  

• "Blakes 7" managed to combine worst features of both.

In short, nothing on TV or Film in 1978 compared to written Science Fiction, which was fine. I lost myself in Heinlein, Asimov and "Doc" Smith and I never became a Trekkie, Trekker, Star Wars fan or Warsie.

Fast forward to 2009 and I'm nearly 43 and at a loss in Basingstoke.
I decided to see the new Star Trek film, and blow me if it didn't make me feel like was 12 again.

The plot was unsatisfying, the morals were simplistic and Simon Pegg's Scottish accent was laughable. But that's nothing when you're riding a starship on a blast wave to escape the wake of an exploding black hole. Or making a HALO drop from the edge of space onto a platform drilling down into the core of an alien planet.

This film is a inch deep but it's light years wide with a considerable visual impact that probably would have totally poleaxed me if I was 12.

The euphoria quickly faded after the film when I jumped into my tatty diesel car and navigated myself inaccurately around the one way system. Seat Toledos don't have warp drive. Or photon torpedos. And I can tell you that you desperately want to use both when you're in a dump like Basingstoke.

Nick Harper @ The Horn, St.Albans

I didn't have any expectations at all for this gig. It was a convenient excuse to meet up with m'ex-colleague Kenny and have a few beers and do a few crosswords listening to the Horn's eclectic jukebox. In fact, I told Mrs Stan that I hoped the gig would be cancelled so that I could feign disappointment and we could carry on setting the world to rights and arguing about 3 down.

I don't know what the words "Folk Rock" mean to you, but in my mind they don't translate to "A Good Night Out". However, Nick Harper turns out to be one of the best guitarists I've ever seen, he writes better poetry in his lyrics than many a professional poet, he's a very talented vocalist, a comfortable performer with a real rapport with his audience and he is a more than adequate stand-up comedian.

Sometimes the special effects strayed into what Bill Bailey would describe as "Let's Go Inter-Stellar!", but otherwise the gig was a total delight and made me want to seek out some of his albums and tell everyone I meet that they should too. It also gave me a new appetite for live music.

The back-room at The Horn where Nick played is only big enough for a medium-sized wedding reception, which was great in terms of atmosphere but it must have led to a rather stingy box-office return. Although, saying that, I saw Hue and Cry play a large Glasgow theatre quite a few years ago, and the distant response from the audience led Pat Kane to moan all night that they should have played two nights at "King Tut's" instead. I hope Nick keeps playing these intimate venues, but equally I hope he finds a way to make it pay.

Speaking of which, you should definitely download "Blue Sky Thinking" which was the highlight of the show and very representative of what he's about. Clever lyrics and one man and a guitar making it sound like a whole band's playing.

I think you'll enjoy it, but it won't sound nearly as good on your iPod as it did Live.

Poetry

It's all going to be OK.

Bolton aren't getting relegated this season, Swine 'Flu is just a bout of the sniffles, the economy isn't heading all the way down to zero, and the right woman got the Poet Laureate gig.

Sorry to keep banging on about Carol Ann Duffy. I just love the way she attempts to describe the indescribable by putting ordinary words together in artful ways. And now she's taken on a job that drove the previous holder of the office to write an ill-advised, poorly executed rap for Prince William on the occasion of his 21st birthday.

In honour of her appointment, I have written the following :-

Carol Ann Duffy, when you take on the laurel.
Please don't waste time finding rhymes for "Balmoral".

My favourite poem of all time wasn't written by her though. It was written by the Brazilian poet Pelé in 1970. Receiving the ball on the edge of the Italian penalty area, does he prosaically dribble between the centre backs and round the goalie ? No, he pauses and side-foots the ball to an obscure unoccupied piece of green by the touchline so that a Carlos Alberto-shaped blur could come from nowhere to bullet that ball into the net. The poem doesn't have a name, but I call it "Brazil 4 Italy 1".

Who says poetry has to be about words ?

Which part of "The Past" are you having a problem with ?!

I was watching the blokes from Abba on BBC Breakfast this morning and found myself nodding along. They had been asked (probably for the ten millionth time this year) whether they thought Abba would ever perform together again.

No. They didn't. They honestly though it would likely disappoint the audience and it would disappoint them.

Fleetwood Mac are touring again and even though I'm a huge fan of their music I don't think I'll be attending. Stevie Nicks' voice circa 1978 was one of the greatest musical instruments of all time, but nowadays there's a lot of post-production needed to make it sound good on a recording. Live ? No chance. Backing singers woud have to cover for her and Mick would have to hit those drums really quite hard.

That said, I went to a rather brilliant Joe Jackson gig a few years ago and enjoyed it immensely.

What is it that some bands are better off staying home and counting the royalties, while others can play in six decades and have something fresh to say to each of them ?

I'm going to see Lou Reed and Mrs Lou Reed (Laurie Anderson) in July. I'm not going to be the guy in the audience yelling "We Want Nico!". The Velvet Underground are not coming back and there's no compelling reason why they should. Lou Reed is as creative in the 2000's as he was in 1960's and I'm looking forward to seeing what he comes up with next.

Plus, Laurie Anderson cracks me up.

Motionless

So the talentless and clueless suck-up, Andrew "Bowel" Motion, has decided to give up being poet laureate.

Good.

He seems only to have got the job in the first place thanks to Tony Blair's assumption that homophobic middle England would not countenance the appointment of a better qualified lesbian, Carol Ann Duffy.

Now that he has resigned/retired, you would think that Ms Duffy would get the nod and her odds of replacing him are 11/10 on William Hill.

Worst bet in the world - she doesn't have a hope.

Simon Armitage used to be a rebel with a fine ear for language. His work has become increasingly bloated and derivative over the years. He's a heterosexual white male.

In other words, he's the perfect candidate to replace Andrew Motion.

Put your money on him at 5/2 and when he wins, treat yourself to a copy of "Rapture" by Carol Ann Duffy with the winnings.

Confident Prediction

There's a young guy called Nima Nourizadeh who has directed some of the best music videos of the last few years (Jamie T : "Salvador", Hot Chip : "Over and Over", Lily Allen : "Oh my God").

Most recently he won a barrel of awards for directing the Adidas "House Party" commercial

This latter piece is the most assured piece of short filmmaking I've seen for some time. He has an awesome visual sense and enormous flair. He even makes you forget that all these stars have come to a party to celebrate their originality by wearing the same brand of sports shoe. The choice of music is similarly inspired - a subtly re-mixed version of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons that Quentin Tarantino must be kicking himself for missing out on.

Which brings me to my confident prediction : one day, real soon, a major film studio will push a wheelbarrow-load of money this guy's way and he will make the best feature film of the second decade of the 21st Century.

You read it here first.

Unforgettable

"Amnesiac" by Radiohead is a hard album to love. I know this to be true because I bought a copy as soon as it came out in 2001, played it twice and hated it so much I didn't play it again for seven years.

I fished it out recently, and I just "got it" - totally connected with it on a molecular level  and I can't believe I survived without it for so long. I'm now thinking of buying another five more copies so that I can fill all six slots in my CD auto-changer in the car with it.

I'm particularly insanely in love with "Living in a Glasshouse" which sounds likes someone doing a New Orleans Funeral at Glastonbury. It's the single craziest musical collaboration since Father Abraham agreed to work with The Smurfs, being an attempt to marry the Indie Miserablism of Radiohead with those consummate Jazz-Heads, the Humphrey Lyttleton Band. It's an attempt that is doomed to failure, but what a glorious failure it is. The three loud bumps you hear during the song are (1) everything including the kitchen sink being thrown in (2) the rule-book being thrown away and (3) my mind being blown. 

I don't imagine the majority of Radiohead fans will like it. I don't imagine the majority of Humphrey Lyttleton fans will like it. But if you're a fully-paid-up member of both fan-clubs and you're prepared to give it a chance, it will most likely. Blow. Your World. Apart.

It inspired Mrs Stan and I to give a huge amount of thought to left-field musical collaborations that actually worked out well. Queen and David Bowie  (Under Pressure) ?... Hmmm, so-so. Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder (Ebony and Ivory) ? ... Maybe.  Akon and "Alvin and The Chipmunks" (Lonely) ? ... unfortunately not true.

Any suggestions will be gratefully received.