The Obscurer

Monday 14th January 2008

The Obscurer Awards 2008

Firstly, my apologies if this site is intermittently running slow for you; I have looked into the problem and have narrowed it down to being something to do with computers. If you find it annoying then pity me, because all my WordPress admin stuff is running just as slowly. Hopefully it will resolve itself in time, but for now my only option seems to be to grin and bear it.

Secondly, welcome to the contractual obligation that is the Obscurer Awards. When I first did one of these, some three years ago, it seemed like a great idea. By last year is had become more like a chore, but something inside me still makes me want to write this rubbish, even if no-one wants to read it, so I will just try not to waffle on quite as much this time around, although I will probably fail in that endeavour. Any road up, here we go.

  • Single – Arctic Monkeys/Brianstorm. For me the year’s best single should be more than just a good song, but something you hear all over the place and that is not simply the latest track released from an already familiar album. This makes picking my favourite single tricky as I hardly ever listen to chart music. My largest dose of the stuff comes around May when I tend to go on holiday someplace that has a pitiful medium-wave reception and I end up listening to more Radio 1 than I would choose. Fortunately last year my holiday in Cornwall more-or-less coincided with the release of the Arctic Monkey single that preceded their 2nd album Favourite Worst Nightmare, so there was much singing along in the car to Brianstorm as we pootled to Praa Sands and Mousehole. And a very fine thing it is too; not as good, perhaps, as their more recent single Teddy Picker, but a muscular number all the same that dispelled any understandable fears that the Monkeys would be a flash in the pan. Meanwhile, Brianstorm’s evil twin was Jamie T’s Sheila, which I heard far too many times on my holiday; a painful number sung in the sort of mockney drone you associate with an alumnus of Reed’s School. But hopefully I won’t have to endure that crap ever again.
  • Album – Radiohead/In Rainbows. This is a far easier category to award, as there were a number of good albums out last year. The aforementioned Arctic Monkeys LP showed a nice developing sound, while Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible, if lacking the other worldly brilliance of their debut Funeral, was still an excellent collection of songs; but I think Radiohead’s album pips them all. I have already covered In Rainbows in some depth here, so suffice it to say that a few months on I can now put names to all the tracks and I am still listening to it regularly. Christmas also brought the £40 discbox featuring a second CD with six further tracks, all of which could easily have made it onto the album proper. They really have spoiled us this time.
  • Book – Magnus Mills/Explorers Of The New Century. When I finally, finally finished the Mao biography, I began a new regime of trying to read at least a chapter of a book a day in order to make inroads into my reading backlog, and it has been a great success. Of everything I have read Magnus Mills’ latest novel stands out. Written in his usual spare style, and in a tone reminiscent of his novel Three To See The King, it was great to be back in Mills’ strange and unsettling world as we discover the story of two groups of adventurers setting off with their packs and mules to see who can first reach the Agreed Furthest Point. Wonderfully bizarre as usual, it comes as a shock around three-quarters of the way in as the truth about the mules hits you like a thunderbolt, and the whole piece becomes that bit darker. Stiff competition, but I think this slim tome is Mills’ best novel yet.
  • Film – Pan’s Labyrinth. Every year I apologise for not having seen any of the previous year’s films, and this year is no exception. So I’m going to cheat by picking a film that was actually released right at the end of December 2006, which is as near as dammit last year, give or take, so I’m having it. Anyway. The story of a young girl who escapes into a fantasy land to get away from the cruel reality of her life with her stepfather, an army captain whose job it is to crush the resistance in the early years of Franco’s Spain, Pan’s Labyrinth manages to be both magical and brutal, a stunning tale that is visually magnificent, and which stays in the memory for days after you have seen it.
  • Sport – Manchester United vs Chelsea: FA Cup Final. Commonly regarded as the worst FA Cup Final for some years, the reason I have picked it as my sporting highlight is because of what it represents. In the lead up to the match all the talk in the media was about how epic the match would be, with the nation’s two top sides battling it out at the new Wembley. I personally wasn’t that bothered; what with United and Chelsea having so dominated the league all season I had no enthusiasm for the game. Little did I realise I was not alone. I was in Sennen on the day, and decided to pop to catch the last 10 minutes of the game at the Old Success pub; coincidently, I had watched some of the previous year’s final at the same pub. On that occasion the place was choc-a-bloc with people watching Liverpool defeat West Ham; this time the place was deserted, apart from a couple of blokes and the barman. Not exactly scientific I know, but for me it seems a striking example of how football’s trend towards monopoly means that the sport seems to be losing its way and its grip on the imagination, even while the media, clubs and FA continually talk it up.
  • TV – Frontline: Afghanistan. Much as I may moan that the telly is shit, I still end up with loads of stuff on my PVR that I have to wade through, and at this time of year as I try to pick a favourite I realise just how much good stuff there is amongst the dross. I should say a special thank you to In The Night Garden and Pokoyo, the Calpol and Calprofen of children’s television, for their hypnotic effect on my daughter, who can go from screaming teether to compliant angel in a blink of an eye the moment they come on. Elsewhere I enjoyed Channel 4’s anniversary, re-showing A Very British Coup and Dennis Potter’s interview with Melvyn Bragg; Flight Of the Conchords deserves praise for being the best new comedy show in ages; Screenwipe and TV Burp still beautifully mock the medium that feeds them; and Doctor Who continued its erratic but generally fine form – I thought the Christmas special was crap, but one episode in particular, Blink, was the best bit of drama all year (and which, if you read this in time, you can watch tonight at 7pm on BBC3; failing that, you can borrow my son’s DVD.) But for me the stand out piece of work was Vaughan Smith’s film for Newsnight as he was embedded with 12 Brigade of the Grenadier Guards in Afghanistan as they went on an operation with the new Afghan army in Helmand province. Newsnight’s films can be quite hit and miss, coming as they do from a variety of sources, and I had no expectations when I started watching the film, but I was soon gripped as I witnessed what the troops out there have to deal with. It was humbling stuff; and you can watch the whole 16-minute film here.
  • Radio – Radcliffe And Maconie. Mark Kermode’s demolition of Pirates Of The Carribean 3 on Simon Mayo’s show is one highlight of last year, but the combination of Mark Radcliffe and Stuart Maconie on Radio 2 has given me a great listening alternative between 8 and 10 of a weeknight. I don’t know how they came together, and in fact they often aren’t together as one of them may be on holiday or covering another show, but either way they are always good value. A highlight for me would have to be the serendipitous moment when I turned on the radio just as they started playing Madder Rose’s Beautiful John, a song I hadn’t heard for years but still love, made all the more special for Mark’s admission that he only played it because he stumbled upon the LP while clearing out his records. It jogged his memory, and in turn mine, as it took me back to when I first heard the song, at a time when I would alternate between Craig Cash on KFM and Mark Radcliffe’s old evening show on Radio 1. So that’s rather neat, isn’t it?
  • Blog – Chase Me, Ladies, I’m In The Cavalry. Late to the party as ever, Chase Me Ladies was just one of the many blogs that I had heard about but never read, until I came across it one day and realised what I had been missing. Harry Hutton has a wonderfully wry sense of humour and each brief and pithy post is a joy; what’s bloody typical is that since I have become a reader he posts less and less frequently, but when he does it is well worth the wait.
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Monday 7th January 2008

Dropping A Gear

Word arrives of a terrible event in the World of Clarkson.

When CDs containing the banking details of seven million Britons went missing late last year, Jeremy Clarkson insisted it was a storm in a teacup.

To prove no one would be able to access money by using the records, the outspoken broadcaster and columnist published his own bank details.

Now, however, the Top Gear host has ended up with egg on his face – after one entrepreneurial thief removed £500 from his account.

The fraudster set up a direct debit using Clarkson’s bank account details and paid the money to the British Diabetic Association, one of many organisations which do not require a signature to set up a direct debit.

Writing in his newspaper column, Clarkson, 47, said: “Back in November, the Government lost two computer discs containing half the population’s bank details.

“Everyone worked themselves into a right old lather about the mistake but I argued we should all calm down because the details in question are to be found on every cheque we hand out every day to every Tom, Dick and cash and carry.

“To hammer the point home I even printed my own bank account number and sort code.

“And guess what? I opened my bank statement this morning to find out that someone has set up a direct debit which automatically takes £500 from my account.

“The bank cannot find out who did this because of the Data Protection Act and they cannot stop it from happening again.”

A very sad state of affairs. Sad, obviously, that the prankster didn’t manage to set up a direct debit for Friends of the Earth, RoSPA or a similar organisation that would really wind up the fool. Far worse though is that I wrote a fairly sanguine post on the whole HMRC lost discs fiasco back in November that made much the same point that I now realise Clarkson also made; and that is sad indeed.

But there is still some hope. Clarkson now states that

“I was wrong and I have been punished for my mistake.”

“Contrary to what I said at the time, we must go after the idiots who lost the discs and stick cocktail sticks in their eyes until they beg for mercy.”

So he has changed his mind, which is at least something; he is no longer my ally, and even when he was I was blissfully ignorant of the fact. The worry is, though, that if we have agreed on this one matter, could we agree on others? Doubtful; but just to make sure I don’t upset myself I vow never again to read anything written by the silly sod.

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Monday 7th January 2008

Undertaking

A morning spent fruitlessly trawling through a large tin of Celebrations attempting to locate just one last Snickers must mean conclusively that the Christmas period is finally over, so perhaps I should dust off this old blog and write something down here; but what?

Well some old things don’t change with the New Year; for one thing Inside Track are still mithering me. Once again I have received a mailing from them inviting me to attend one of their workshops where I can learn all about investing in property so that they I can profit to the tune of a tidy sum. Since having a chuckle while reading their first letter to me a few years back, I’ve always thrown their post straight in the recycling; for an organisation that proclaims that spaces on their seminars are limited and rapidly snapped up I can’t understand why they insist on sending unsolicited invitations to someone who has ended up on their mailing list for no good reason at all. But still the letters come.

However, they seem to have changed tack with their most recent mailshot; just take a look at their latest envelope.

Yes, Inside Track was responsible for making 200 people millionaires last year; now they want me – yes, me – to swell their number and become the 201st. Clearly for Inside Track the arrival of 2008 is no reason to rest on their laurels for 2007; oh no, not only do they want to make me rich, but they want me to join their rich list for last year, so boosting their already impressive statistic of 200 success stories. I can only assume that they don’t simply want to make me a millionaire, they also want to help me to travel back in time, to have become rich some months back; or at the very least they are going to backdate my windfall.

Perhaps I should be flattered by Inside Track’s continued interest in me, but why do I get the nagging feeling that their target audience is not the financially astute, but rather the gullible? Certainly they have hitherto been wasting their time with me, unwilling as I am to get roped into something that exhibits all the signs of financial charlatanry; but time travel? Well, that changes everything. Rather than wasting my time as I had assumed, will an Inside Track seminar instead afford me all the time in the world? Even the mere possibility of it excites me; perhaps I have been far too dismissive of the dubious clots.

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Monday 24th December 2007

Christmas Spirits Of Ammonia

Television scheduling today looks to be so much neater, perhaps more professional, than in my youth. There was a time when programmes would start and finish at all sorts of odd times, with the awkward gaps filled in by cartoons; now programmes seem far more likely to begin almost religiously on the hour or half-hour, and the cartoons have been replaced by trailers and other promotions. Whether this is down to greater discipline on the part of programme makers, or to refinements in the schedulers’ art, I don’t know.

What I do know is that I find it a shame. The uniform regularity of the schedules, the lack of surprise, feels dull. I miss the occasional cartoon; more’s the point, I miss them on behalf of my kids, who it appears will never know the pleasure of the TV announcer revealing that there is just enough time between the end of Grandstand and the start of the News to squeeze in a Daffy Duck cartoon, or the extra special thrill of discovering as that cartoon ends and another starts that you are to be treated to a double bill.

The cartoons are still out there, of course, on their own digital subscription channels, and on DVD; perhaps it was the recognition of the money to be made from these commercial opportunities that spelt the end of the filler cartoon on the main networks, but if so it seems short-sighted to me. Sure, it worked in my case – fearing my son would miss out I bought several Tom & Jerry DVDs, and I urge you to do the same; you’ll want to stop at volume 5, mind, when the sublime comedy and Scott Bradley’s joyous Gershwinesque scores give way to tatty drawings, grating music and unfunny jokes – but I can’t help thinking that lacking a presence on terrestrial TV is akin to the cartoon makers shooting themselves in the foot. There must be kids growing up today who have no idea who Tom & Jerry are, and that is nothing short of a disgrace.

Thank heavens for the Internet, then, where free cartoons live to be stumbled upon again, and which hasn’t so much improved on the “old media” as to have taken up the mantle they have so willingly cast aside. For ages I wanted to track down one of my favourite childhood cartoons featuring a chemist who falls asleep and dreams that one of his potions has made him shrink to just a few inches tall while his bottles of witch hazel and ammonia spring to life and dance around him. Interrogating Google meant that I learned that it was called Bottles and was an MGM Happy Harmonies cartoon from 1936, but try as I might I couldn’t find out where to buy it. Then, periodically chancing my arm on YouTube, I finally located the whole 10-minute cartoon the other week, to my – and now my son’s – delight. So here it is in all its glory, my Christmas present to you all, and as a kind of placeholder until I write something here again, probably in the New Year. So until then, take care, and I’ll see you in 2008.

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Thursday 13th December 2007

Press Release

Nonplussed Records is proud to announce the release next week of the eagerly anticipated second album from multi-platinum singer/songwriter James Bland.
Two years ago James rocked the world of music public relations when his debut album – eponymously titled, so exhibiting a level of imagination and originality for which he would rightly become renowned – was released in a unique and ground-breaking flurry of promotion utilising unsolicited SMS messages, viral marketing through videos on YouTube, an interview on BBC Breakfast, and the inclusion of certain key songs in the soundtracks of romantic comedies. Some in the music press quite inappropriately mentioned him in the same breath as Jeff Buckley, and his music enjoyed massive word-of-mouth popularity through being played in the background at countless parties, where it succeeded in neither disturbing the flow of conversation, nor causing anything beyond the very mildest of interest during the small talk sometimes required to fill one of those awkward, pregnant pauses you get.

James’ brand new album, “More Of The Same”, doesn’t so much build on the winning formula of his debut as simply cut and paste it. Of the sixteen tracks only eleven sound the same; existing fans will thrill to the inoffensive nothingness of the new songs that will steadfastly refuse to threaten or challenge preconceptions, while the very best his critics will manage is a lazy, world-weary shrug. Many of the tracks are guaranteed to be instantly forgotten the moment they are heard, and in the highly unlikely event that they don’t all just blur into one another it is probable that they will only be referred to, if ever, as simply “track four”, “the new single”, “that one they use on the Halifax advert” and “the last song on the CD, you know, the long boring one that goes on forever, that feels as if it will never finish, and then has a false ending”, rather than by their actual titles.

The album is preceded by the release of the single “This Year’s Dido”, which music scholars will instantly notice is in the same key and features an identical chord progression to all of James’ previous songs; his fans won’t notice this but they will still find the new song delightfully “hummy”. Hastily remixed with the addition of some jingle bells, and released not at all coincidently just before Christmas so as to maximise its potential to be purchased as an unwanted present by the sort of thoughtless buyer who is unaware of their friends’ musical taste and who forgets to keep receipts and so cannot return the CD but may instead buy a different recording by another Nonplussed artist to placate the original disgruntled recipient, “This Year’s Dido” is being released in as many formats as we think we can get away with.

Both “More Of The Same” and “This Year’s Dido” are available though Amazon, HMV and all good record shops, but for some strange reason not via the very poorly laid-out record company website, which concentrates on lots of flash animation at the expense of usability, and also features all sorts of pointless JavaScript gubbins that means each page takes an absolute age to load, resulting in a website that is actually completely useless in any practical sense.

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