Semi-final Magic

It's FA Cup semi-final weekend and I was looking on the Guardian's website at a great Joy of Six article highlighting some majestic semi-final moments. It's the sort of writing which makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up; dramatic descriptions of true footballing heroes and their super-human exploits on the field. (the segment about Bryan Robson is excellent.)

Ryan Giggs' bob and weave against Arsenal gets the inevitable mention but, despite being one of the great semi-final strikes, I put another on par with it.

Mark Hughes' volley against Oldham for Manchester United in the '94 semi embodies everything which makes Sparky one of my favourite ever United players.

The Guardian article cites context as being vital in the compiling of their list and this goal features the sort of heart-stopping drama which United made their own in the 1990s and beyond.

After a dull 90 minutes Oldham went ahead in extra-time when Neil Pointon stabbed home after an uncharacteristic Peter Schmeichel flap. With a minute left, and United running out of ideas, Brian McClair looped a desperate ball over his shoulder to ask questions of the Oldham defence. Muscling his way between a couple of defenders it dropped to Hughes who pulled the trigger on that pneumatic right foot of his to keep United's double dream alive.

It was so typical of the Welshman. He was a warrior, always ready for battle and always putting his body on the line for the good of the team, commitment never a question. Sir Alex Ferguson once said you could put your life on Hughes scoring when you needed a goal and here he drew on all his bravery and supreme vollying technique to take the tie to a replay (which United ran out 4-1 winners). God, I love Mark Hughes.

Lyric of the Week

Clutching at straws? Most likely. But I've been listening to a bit of Nick Cave recently (both with the Bad Seeds and his 'other' band Grinderman) and it is on a song from Grinderman's second album, Grinderman 2, which has found me laughing to myself on the bus, getting a couple of odd glances in the process.

The song is Kitchenette, a classic Cave tale of adultery, lust and death, and the lyrics in question are:

I keep hanging around your kitchenette
And I'm gonna get a pot to cook you in
I stick my fingers in your biscuit jar
and crush all your gingerbread men...

Menacing enough, but the lines which have brought me much mirth are:

What's this husband of yours ever given to you
Oprah Winfrey on a plasma screen
And a brood of junky buck-toothed imbeciles
The ugliest fucking kids I've ever seen

Synth Brittania

Having dipped right into all that is synth- and electro-pop recently (I found Dare by the Human League at a car boot sale on vinyl) I decided to look up a documentary BBC4 showed called Synth Britannia.

I can't remember when it was first shown but it isn't on iPlayer anymore. Instead, I found it on Youtube and have pasted the links to all six parts. Don't worry, its only an hour and a half long (not long enough for me, though) and covers the genre's beginnings in 1970s industrial England through to inadvertently providing the soundtrack to the social upheavals of Thatcher's Britain. I think its a great documentary and expresses how significant, irreverent, varied, daft and creative the genre was (and still is considering the synthesiser has been reigning supreme for a number of years now). Enjoy.

My favourite album cover, like, EVER!

There's something terribly unforgiving about the cover of the Human League's 1980 album, Travelogue.

The grainy lack of focus, the violently bright sun lurking ominously (is it rising or setting?), and the mysterious figure being transported across harsh arctic plains - all of these elements add to an overall picture of nihilism, of a bleak, solitary future (the League were constantly looking forward) where there is a lack of simple human connection. In short, I think it looks brilliantly chilling.

The cover also reminds me of the opening scenes of John Carpenter's re-make of The Thing, which sees an Alaskan Malamute running away from it's frantic Scandinavian masters after something has gone horrifically wrong at their research facility.

Unfortunately I can't find out who shot the cover. But in a weird way I don't want to know.

Live: Crystal Stilts - 24/3/11 - Audio, Brighton

Judging by the scowls on their faces it’s difficult to tell whether Brooklyn noise-popsters Crystal Stilts like to be beside the seaside. The first show of their seven-date British tour sees them on the south-east coast in Brighton playing to a surprisingly sparse crowd.

All too often the band has not so much been accused of ripping off Joy Division but molesting Ian Curtis’ corpse. The post-punk pioneers are clearly an influence, but Crystal Stilts also take inspiration from the strung-out insouciance of Velvet Underground and the swampy mysticism of the Doors.

The influences come together seductively on Departure, a swirling broth of fuzz bass, descending chords and creeping, funereal keys. The song is drawn out, letting it have its way with the audience, and when it is brought to an end, punters shake their heads wondering what strange plane they had just been taken to.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. When it wants to their music can reach euphoric highs, as demonstrated on the spritely Sycamore Tree and the swaggering Through the Floor. This is as upbeat as it gets though as these moments are snuffed out quickly by a further dose of the morose.

For the most part the band look thoroughly disinterested but one gets the feeling that it would be a cardinal sin for them to look like they enjoy what they are doing. Does Lou Reed ever smile? Did Ian Curtis ever burst out into a beaming, ear to ear grin? Lucky for them their music has plenty of life in it yet.

Friday On My Mind

Like 42.5million other people, my curiosity got the better of me the other day and I watched the video for Rebecca Black's Friday on Youtube.

I was typically reluctant at first as I had decided the song was going to be an atrocity. It was a purely instinctive reaction, but then I thought why not see how bad it actually is? Maybe its the masochist in me, he who writhes and squirms ecstatically in the horror, but I have always found terrible music highly comedic, no matter how earnest the performer is.

My opinion didn't change once I had heard it. Yes, it is a sorry piece of music, the aural equivalent of watching a dog with no legs trying to stand up, but is it really worse than anything else in the charts?

The top 40 has always been smattered with shit and as I write this it is no different. The Black Eyed Peas have their perennial place in there, this week with Just Can't Get Enough. Its as irritating and auto-tuned as Black's single. Another pot shot leads us to Tinie Tempah's Wonderman (featuring Ellie Goulding), which is as banal and monotone as listening to an old person talk about something which you simply do not care about.

What do we have here? Olly Murs' Heart On My Sleeve, a terminal ballad of euthanasian proportions; Alexis Jordan's Good Girl, one of the worst songs to enter the chart this year, yet it reached number six; and George Michael's butchering of True Faith, calling into question whether it is worth saving children in Africa.

Friday certainly isn't better than anything in the charts but with all the commotion surrounding it one could be forgiven for thinking that it was a recitation of the Nazi Party manifesto produced by Stock, Aitken and Waterman. With it's insistence on repetition and auto-tuning it is no different to the majority of the music in the charts right now. Take this as a warning: we haven't heard the last of Rebecca Black.

...But Seriously.

And so today it was announced that Phil Collins is retiring from the music industry. I can't say I've ever cared for Collins' music except that he features prominently in my favourite book of all time, Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho.

Patrick Bateman's meandering paeans to stars such as Collins, Whitney Houston and Huey Lewis and the News are amongst the funniest moments in the book and go some way to demonstrate Bateman's sickeningly bland facade, masking the gnarled torment within.

In Mary Harron's film adaptation, Bateman (played by Christian Bale) entertains two prostitutes whilst informing them emotively about Collins' work with Genesis ("too artsy, too intellectual") and his later solo work ("more commercial and therefore more satisfying, in a narrower way"). Engaging in sex with both women, it is to the soundtrack of Sussudio, Bateman's personal favourite, from Collins' 1985 album No Jacket Required. Its a perfect 80s pop song which, to anyone who has seen the film, is now loaded with gratuitous sexual imagery and Patrick Bateman's immortal line, "Sabrina, don't just stare at it, eat it."