Coffee and Cake - 8th August 2009

Addison Road in Kings Heath is quiet as the sun sits high above in an immaculately clear sky. Strolling down this street with a bag of cold beers, I was wondering where I was being taken for I was in the Midlands for the weekend paying a visit to a certain young lady and one of the things we had planned as entertainment was to go to something called Coffee and Cake. My host had been before and described the situation to me: Local freelance journalist Cassie-Philomena Smyth hosts a free, monthly event which showcases local musical talent in the serene setting of the back garden of her terraced house. Whilst some invites are sent out it also relies upon word of mouth promotion; ultimately you are encouraged to just come along and enjoy the music, all very relaxed y’know.

I am real nervous.

We finally reach the house and, tentatively shifting down a darkened side-alley, we make our way into the garden. It is a long yet narrow space with moderately tall fencing either side and a scattering of people are sitting on the grass, looking dreamily up at Tom Peel who is sat with just an acoustic guitar, the first act of the day.

There is a heady cocktail of utopian contentment, beaming sunshine and great music which grabs you by both hands, leading you towards the music, as soon as you enter (I was half-expecting someone to put flowers in my hair); everyone seems to be getting on well, plenty of smiling and woozy grinning, and the quality of the music is astonishing.

Despite many of the acts being restricted to the minimalism of acoustic instruments, the differing styles provide enough contrasts to keep the audience interested; from the loose rhythms of Tom Peel to the youthful exuberance of Tantrums, no act could be charged with sounding like the one before.

Goodnight Lenin! perform for the first time in front of an audience and deliver a highly confident set, binded by luscious vocal harmonies; Greg Smith’s self-deprecating humour wins the crowd over, his music a scuzzy, scratchy indie fare. We are then treated to some performance poetry from Jodi Ann Bickley whose sharp, funny and painfully honest observations (on the rockiness of love in particular) have the audience both captivated and howling with laughter.

Other highlights include Ali Forbes whose delicately measured vocals and guitar, receive rapturous applause from the ever-increasing crowd. By now the garden is a blossoming, bustling place as more and more people slip in. Anna Palmer (aka Little Palm) wows the crowd as she is accompanied by her electric keyboard and drummer (don’t worry, he is only using a snare drum with his bare hands – it hasn’t descended into MTV –style pseudo-acoustic wooliness). Her jaunty pop-jazz, coupled with her acrobatic vocals, provide yet more variety to the proceedings.

It’d be far too easy to compare it with something like Woodstock and its naive hippy idealism (and besides, the haircuts were far too edgy) but one certainly had a sense of being part of something whilst sitting there with what essentially was a small amount of people but enough to make the day feel like an event. Is this the future? Is this how all gigs will be in five, ten, years’ time? I can’t provide such answers, I’m only a humble farm-boy, but by the time it was dark and everyone was all fuzzy from drink, I found myself blabbering away to whoever was sat around, telling them how great I thought it was. No doubt I’ll see them there next time. A wonderful day.

Green Day - 21 Guns

Hurray! Green Day are back to show us all how messed up politics and the world are at the moment. The problem is no one seems to have told them George Bush jnr. isn’t President anymore and that God’s cool older brother Barack is here to save the day (unless he ‘does a Blair’ and fucks it all up).

The song itself is a stagnant ballad if ever I heard one, a spluttering regurgitation of the previously-released Boulevard of Broken Dreams. It plods along in such a turgid fashion it makes a ticking clock sound like majestic fireworks.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxsPVy7jbXA

Michael Jackson Memorial Service - Staples Centre, Los Angeles, California - 8th July 2009

“They’re not taking his body to that concert, are they?” my mum asked incredulously as we watched Michael Jackson’s coffin loaded into a gleaming hearse which was soon gliding along a Los Angeles freeway bathed in beautiful sunlight, making its way to the Staples Centre for the King of Pop’s memorial service.
“Yep,” I said, with an acceptance only a child of the 90s could possess.

And so Michael Jackson was wheeled into a packed out arena for the lucky few thousand to mourn his passing and celebrate his life.

As expected, a whole cavalcade of ‘slebs shared their memories of Jackson. These fame-drenched admirers ranged from the over-achieving (Queen Latifa) to the genuinely genial (Berry Gordy – not realising the irony when he said Jackson “...was driven by his hunger to learn…to constantly top himself”), all the while giving their verdict on the man’s talents and legacy. The most interesting stories came from those who had known Jackson personally for a number of years, those from the Motown family (all of whom had an unsettling waxy quality about their appearance). Their stories offered an insight into Jackson the practical joker, the loyal friend, the dutiful young man. All of this was delivered in front of the Jackson family who occupied the front row; the exhausting amount brothers, each wearing a single spangled glove, sisters Janet and LaToya, mother Katharine and the villain of the piece, father Joe.

Others recycled the same crap which has been repeated, parrot-like, since his demise. Crap such as “He was a one off” and “He made the world a better place”. When Usher claimed “I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Michael Jackson,” I thought to myself Then he has a lot to answer for...

The musical tributes were as patchy as the details of his death. Mariah’s hatchet job of I'll Be There, Stevie Wonder’s tender Never Dreamed You’d Leave in Summer (a voice of truest gold), Jermaine Jackson’s brittle Smile, Usher’s bog-fucking-standard Gone Too Soon; this was clearly not the time to celebrate his best music, the funkier upbeat numbers, but instead to wallow in melancholy and Jackson’s ballads.

A final Hey Judian hurrah ended proceedings with group singalongs of We Are the World and Heal the World before one of Michael’s children, Paris, spoke. For a child who had spent a sizeable chunk of her life behind a shroud or a veil for reasons of privacy, here she was, in front of thousands at the Centre and millions watching around the world, to deliver a simple message of her father. Only the most granite-hearted were not moved. One of the lesser Jacksons thanked the masses as the Jackson clan quickly exited stage right.

You may not believe me but such is the twisted, gnarled and horrifying world of Fame that Jackson once occupied as it's mad Overlord I was genuinely expecting him to somehow rise from his coffin and declare the whole thing a publicity stunt. I was also expecting dancing elephants, African tribesmen moonwalking in unison and lots of wind-machines. I certainly wasn’t expecting the brutally sombre affair delivered. Then I watched something else.

Franz Ferdinand ~ Can't Stop Feeling

Ok, try to overlook the fact that the introduction sounds like a naff early-noughties Bacardi ad or the opening music to a chat show even shittier than Graham Norton’s. Now try to ignore that there isn’t really a chorus and that it’s stultifyingly cosy.

What you need to tell yourself is that it has a clammy charm, a tight-chested intimacy which is perfect for those sweaty bars and lurid clubs you frequent (yeah, I’ve seen you) and, above all, they haven’t lost it just yet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1UErb1YzXs

Freemasons ft. Sophie Ellis-Bextor ~ Heartbreak (Make Me a Dancer)

Sophie Ellis-Bextor's latest attempt to resurrect her 'career' sees her joined by chart-bothering dance production team Freemasons.

EB's plummy diction aside, one could easily imagine hearing this embedded somewhere in the middle of the Eurovision Song Contest, sung by a lovely Hungarian 'woman' or by a teeth 'n tits Latvian.

Summery enough, yet sounds as convincing as me telling you I'm fully clothed as I write this.

Brian Jones 1942-1969

French philosopher Rene Descartes once remarked that the greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices as well as the greatest virtues. This is Brian Jones, who died forty years ago on the 3rd July, in a nutshell. His death can be counted as one of the more mysterious rock deaths, but Jones has the distinction of being rock’s first major casualty – and the first member of the idiom’s notorious '27 Club'.

Born Lewis Brian Hopkin Jones on 28th February 1942 into a neat middle-class family in leafy Cheltenham, Jones found himself in and out of trouble almost from birth. Having fathered three children by his early twenties his rebellious, uncontrollable nature was matched only by a dazzling intellect, often excelling academically, as well as a prodigious musical talent which saw him gain an understanding of any instrument put in front of him.

After quitting school (not before getting his then fourteen year-old girlfriend pregnant) and nomadically travelling Europe, he returned to England, relocating to London in the late 1950s. It was here he met Michael Jagger and Keith Richards for the first time; the two of them hearing Jones in a London club, mesmerised by the boy with the perfectly conditioned blonde hair and crystal blue eyes, playing sensual, soaring slide guitar. Their mutual love of the blues drew the three of them together and, accompanied by Charlie Watts on drums, Bill Wyman on bass guitar and Ian Stewart on piano, they became The Rolling Stones.

And it was his band. He came up with the name, attracted all the women to the gigs when Mick and Keith were still just spotty, awkward kids and acted as the group’s manager in their embryonic state (Jones would often receive more money than the others for gigs, something he kept secret from them for years). Jones couldn't write a tune to save his life and it was only when Mick and Keith were forced by the Stones' eventual manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, to write their own songs that Jones lost control on the one thing in his life which seemed to bring him solace.

Alcohol, drugs, paranoia, busts and bust-ups; these were the thing which punctuated the latter years of Jones’ life.

Having been ousted from any position of real authority within the band, Jones found he had little to contribute as Jagger and Richards went about forming their rock-solid songwriting partnership, with each song building on the now runaway success of the last hit. He would often turn up to the studio blind drunk, stoned out of his mind or in a different state altogether thanks to the vast array of pills he used to wash down with bottles of brandy. Just about able to sit slouched on the studio floor he would drift in and out of consciousness, leaving the other band members to slyly unplug his electric guitar, a musical euthanasia which put him out of his, and their, misery.

He seemed to find a degree of happiness with Swedish beauty Anita Pallenberg, yet his capricious mood led him to frequently hit her. She wasn’t the first of his girlfriends he had beaten. When Pallenberg left Jones for Richards during a holiday the three of them took to Morocco in 1967, it appeared that this was the final nail in Jones’ fastly-approaching coffin.

Since he was found face down in his swimming pool, his death has been the subject of many lurid tabloid tales and is firmly located within the stained corridors of rock folklore, yet one thing is certain: Jones was an exceptionally insecure, narcissistic man who could treat people with both vulgarity and sincerity in equal measure. He was one of the first casualties of rock yet one feels he would have burned himself out eventually, rock star or not.

A Glimpse of a Wednesday Afternoon

As I was on the bus earlier I eavesdropped on a conversation with a couple of old ladies. One said to the other, "I'm reading a lovely book at the moment. I forget what it's called but it's about a young woman who becomes pregnant before the war, but then her husband dies. Eventually she begins working in a cinema, and cinemas were privately owned back then mind, and she works her way up to become the manager. It really is a lovely book."

Then I thought about what I was currently reading: A book in which a class of 42 Asian students are selected by their authoritarian government to wage war on one another in a brutal and blood-soaked fight to the death until there is one remaining survivor who is cruelly labelled the victor. The book? Battle Royale by Koushun Takami. And it really is a lovely book.