Snow Day

Why, in the UK, does the snow take us by surprise every year?

We act like we have never seen the stuff before.

Ohmygod! Snow! On the ground. On the roads. Everywhere! White stuff! I can’t possibly travel in that. Our modern technology just cannot cope with it! We’re just not built to function in snow! Stop the country! Back to the caves!

A hundred years of industrial revolution grinds to a halt in the time it takes for some middle class office worker to pull back the curtains, see an inch of snow on his people carrier and decide that it is simply too difficult to attempt any kind of journey into work.

Scott of the Antarctic would throw his frozen shite at us in disgust. I bet Sir Ranulph Fiennes is out on his front lawn right now sunbathing and eating a Cornetto.

What utter wussies we are.

The entire country shuts up shop. It’s ridiculous. My wife has had to take an unpaid day off work today because all the bloody schools are closed.

There’s barely an inch of snow on the ground here in the Midlands! It’s nothing. Nothing at all. When I was a kid I can remember weeks and weeks of heavy snow in ‘81/’82 and having to walk to school in it every day. The staff all turned up for work. And so did most of the kids. The only time the school ever gave us a day off was when the boilers broke.

Nowadays everybody leaps onto the smallest snowflake as an excuse to take a day off. To have an impromptu holiday. No wonder this country is the poor old man of Europe. Where’s our hardy British spirit gone? Over the last few decades it’s been replaced with a whiny, wheedling, shirking tendency to try and wriggle out of any onerous responsibility or task that requires even the tiniest bit of hard work. Nowadays I suspect schools and businesses close merely to avoid the possibility of litigation should someone slip and smash their buttock on a kerbstone while trying to gain access to their premises.

It’s cowardly, lazy and a little bit tawdry.

The snow up North has been far worse and I bet there’s a fair few people there who will still struggle into work nonetheless.

From the Midlands down to the South though (maybe I’m wrong) the snowfall hasn’t been nearly as bad. It should be business as normal with the added novelty of some beautiful winter views to gawp at from our office windows.

Instead most people are at home watching telly or building snowmen in the garden.

I’m not. I’m at work.

Harrumph.

Pass me another turd, Scott old man, I’ve got the ballista working properly now.

The Day The Music Died

I’m wondering if I have fallen out of love with music.

Or, to be precise, new music. The discovery of it. The giving a go of new bands. The trying something new. I seem to have become as locked into the music of my formative years as my parents were when I was a kid.

Why does that happen?

When I was a teenager (though I came to record buying late) I was an avid music consumer. I would buy a batch of records every week. Singles, EPs, LPs, picture discs, I couldn’t get enough. I can remember going to a record shop in Birmingham and spending so much money that the shop assistant was kind enough to not ring the amount up on the till to save me from embarrassment. I must have blown an entire week’s wages in one go on rare records and collectibles. That seems so obscenely hedonistic now.

In no time at all I had built up an impressive collection of literally hundreds and hundreds of records (which I still own). They took over my entire bedroom. All of them boxed, alphabetized and inventorized. It was a collection that I lavished love and time on. And each weekend I’d carefully load up my turntable with my latest acquisitions, carefully wiping the dust off them with the special cloth I had bought for this purpose and savouring each hiss and pop of the needle swinging itself into the opening groove.

It was my life.

And then somehow, in the nineties, my expenditure dropped off, my interest waned and was pulled elsewhere. I moved on and got into other things. Books, computers, gadgetry, travel. The fact that the nineties were an awful decade for decent music only hastened me out of the scene.

And now, here in 2009, I’m somehow completely on the outside of it all. On the outside looking in but unsure of where the door is or if I even have enough interest to want to open it and step inside. A few new bands have caught my ear – The Doves, The Editors – but I haven’t gone as fanatically overboard on them as I did when All About Eve arrived on the music scene in 1985 or when Kate Bush released “Hounds Of Love” in the same year.

The passion for new music has left me.

My MP3 player is proof of this. The majority of its contents have been sucked from my CD collection and I’d say that 90% of that is from the eighties. I’ve become trapped in my very own time warp.

I’m no longer “down with the kids”. I’m looking at them and frowning at the infernal noise they listen to and dare to call music – much the same way, I suspect, as when my father just couldn’t appreciate the blisteringly fierce music of The Jam’s “Funeral Pyre” and dismissed it as tuneless rubbish. At the time his music of choice was Buddy Holly and Marty Robbins.

Is this the fate that has now befallen me?

Worryingly, checking my MP3 player this morning, I can’t fail to notice that “El Paso” is already on there...

*Sigh* It’ll be “Rave On” next.

And not in a cool way either.

Popping One's Clogs

My last post (or more specifically, its title) got me thinking about Red Dwarf. And in particular the episode where Rimmer and Lister perform a mind swap. For those of you who don’t know the show, Rimmer is a hologram (cos he’d dead) and gets to borrow Lister’s body for a week on the condition that he puts it through a rigorous training regime to get it back into shape. Rimmer, of course, reneges on the deal and goes on an extravagant orgy of eating and drinking. Lister is less than happy about this and accuses Rimmer of mistreating his body. Rimmer’s answer is that Lister has mistreated his body himself for years... and points out all the little pains, tweaks and twinges that Lister never ever mentions...

Now I’m not, by rule, a hypochondriac. By and large, like Lister, I ignore all but the most insistent messages that my body gives me. Or at least I did when I was younger.

Now that I’m 40 I’m suddenly becoming more aware of them. The slight headaches that come and go. The twinges in my guts. The aches in my elbows and my thumbs. The low level but nevertheless ever-present back pain.

Lying awake in the morning I can’t help but think my body is giving up whispering its messages to me and is now beginning to shout them at me through a loudhailer.

Are these all signs of my inescapable mortality?

I’ve never been one to dwell overlong on death and existentialism but I guess with my granddad grumbling his way through Death’s waiting room and a spritely 2 year old running around my home my thoughts are, quite naturally, being prodded into contemplating the great mysteries of life.

The last ten years of my life have flown by like they’re nothing at all – which is a little worrying for the next ten which will take me up to (gulp) the big 50. I’m already slowing down. I can feel it. My powers of recovery are weaker. I feel more tired more easily. I’m starting to really enjoy eating my greens. And, worst of all, I have stopped buying music.

I am becoming – slowly but perceptibly – old aged.

Mentally I still consider myself the same curmudgeonly, mean spirited grump that I was in my twenties... but physically I’m now less inclined to chase after ruffians on bicycles and throw my shoes at them for being cheeky. The spirit is willing, etc, etc.

I’m becoming less inclined to move with the times. I’m losing my grip on popular culture. Musically I’m still in the 80’s and cannot deny the parallel with my parents who were stuck in the 60’s when I was getting into Killing Joke and Fields Of The Nephilim. New music is beginning to pass me by.

Of course there other factors at work here. Less disposable income. Less space in the house to store my already humungous record and CD collection. But is this how it starts? Will I start falling in love with old black and white films purely because they remind me of my childhood? I can’t deny I’m already tempted to buy retro kid’s programmes on DVD for Tom (Bagpuss, Chorlton & The Wheelies, Pipkins).Of course I realize this is not on. He needs to be experiencing the same reference points as his peers not those of his father.

So am I merely wanting to regress to my own childhood to satisfy my own craving for what was once familiar? Isn’t this one of the signs of old age? Seeking to abandon the confusing present for the safety of the rose tinted past?

But maybe I’m looking at all these twinges and aches the wrong way. Maybe they are protests? A wake up call to get with the programme? To smell the New World coffee? A rallying cry to deliver me from the abyss of entropy?

Hmm. You know, I think that’s how I’m going to look at them.

A call to arms. A war cry raged against the dying of the light...

My 40’s are going to be my new 20’s. Old age can wait a little bit longer.

I is feelin’ the need to get me some bling, innit?

Making New Cheese Out Of Old Cheese

I don’t believe it.

They’re bringing back Knight Rider.

Re-made, re-cast and possibly retro-fitted, Michael Knight and his camp Kit car are already gearing up to turbo-boost back onto our TV screens sometime this Autumn.

And I feel nothing but dismay.

Some things are just best left alone.

Most of the TV shows from the eighties being a case in point.

Although I have fond memories of Knight Rider, The A-Team and Airwolf et al, they are time-locked into a small, blessedly sealed, period of my teenage years and that is where I’d prefer them to remain.

My teenage years weren’t great. I was shy, geeky and nerdy and not particularly a success with the ladies. I lived most of the time in my head, my imagination fuelled by the shows above, my morals and political outlook to a degree informed by the heroes who machine gunned their way to justice and democracy for all. In my innocence I bought unthinkingly into the American way.

Yes folks. I wanted to be Michael Knight. I wanted to be David Hasselhoff.

Oh the shame. And I’d rather not have to relive it.

Well, to be honest, I never wanted to actually be Michael / David. But I did covet the car. I coveted the car in a big way. Yes, I wanted a car that looked butch but was, at heart, gay... Though that gayness is only apparent in retrospect. At the time it wasn’t so obvious. Kit was, well, just Kit. Just as C3PO was just C3PO (and not a metallic version of Charles Hawtrey – which he plainly is).

Looking back on it it’s plain to see why I was such a messed up teen.

But that aside, I’m just sick of this regurgitation of the eighties. It’s lazy. Nostalgia is nice when it is infrequent but not as a permanent mindset. And nostalgia certainly isn’t an art form worth spending money on.

But plainly I’m wrong.

Some TV money man somewhere obviously feels Knight Rider is good for a few bucks more. So they’re wheeling it back out of the scrap yard only this time without the Hoff.

Which surely is a bit like having The A-Team without Mr T?

Or Star Trek without Shatner?

Er...

OK.

That last point wasn’t argued so well but even so...

It’s just not going to be the same. It’s like – having mentioned Hawtrey above – trying to remake the Carry On films. It cannot be done. Sure you can emulate all the physical / visible ingredients. But what you can’t recreate is the original time frame. Nostalgia just cannot be contemporized.

Now, maybe I’m being unfair. Maybe they will inject a whole new ethos into it. New blood into old wine skins, etc, or whatever the saying is. But why bother when you can buy the originals of every bloody series from the eighties on Amazon?

I mean, can people not write anything new anymore?

What are they going to remake next?

Street Hawk (remember that anyone)?

Whizz Kids (anybody)?

CHiPs?

Geez. CHiPs. Please, please don’t get me started on Eric Estrada...

On Fire

+++ APOLOGIES +++ MINORITY INTEREST POST +++

So. Torchwood.

The Doctor Who spin-off returned for a third outing last week in a lavish new 5 part story that was broadcast every day, Monday through to Friday.

I was, I admit, dubious.

Series one and two of Torchwood were disappointing. Like a chocolate cake that just wasn’t quite chocolaty enough (the diet coke of sci-fi). Good ideas were there – but were spread to thin. The acting was good but the scripts were frequently weak. The stories built up nicely and then were abruptly deflated as Russell T Davies pulled yet another lame solution out of an all too convenient hat.

Deus ex machina done as cliché.

It was too lightweight. Which was a shame as Torchwood had promised much in the early days. Something meaty. Something more adult than the family oriented Doctor Who… but it seemed to fall at the second fence.

In various interviews writer Russell T has admitted he had neither the time nor the ideas to fully realize series two. It showed. The series was patchy and frustrating. So often nearly there… but never quite.

And here they were for series 3 – promoted to BBC1 no less. Somebody high up at the Beeb obviously had faith in them.

In my opinion that faith was at last validated.

Torchwood: Children Of Earth was as close to a sci-fi masterpiece as I’ve seen on terrestrial telly for a long time. Fantastic script, a plot that set the nerves jangling and disturbed the emotions and a proper gut wrenching finale that, while inevitable, left you gasping. It was harsh. Very harsh. But a good harsh.

I’m not going to spoil the plot for those of you who haven’t yet seen it yet (I’m aware that Torchwood makes it out to the US and NZ among other places) but the storyline dealt with some very difficult subject matter. Parenthood, our children and our desire (and our failure) to protect them. Self serving politicians. Child abuse. The rich / poor class divide. Bigotry… and for once Russell T didn’t pull his punches. He followed the dark path to it’s horrible conclusion rather than bottling out at the eleventh hour. It wasn’t pretty.

But it was truthful.

One particular scene where UK politicians decide the grisly fate of millions of children reminded me of the meeting the Nazi’s had to formulate their “final solution”. An entirely deliberate reference point, I’m sure, and of course it added a ring of truth to the entire premise: such a meeting taking place wouldn’t be that outlandish. It’s happened before. In living memory. Civilization is a very thin veneer plastered over a bubbling magma of waiting anarchy.

And as history shows it doesn’t take a lot to puncture the crust.

It made for uncomfortable viewing. Maybe having children myself over-sensitized me? But the idea of the state not just interfering with my children but claiming ownership of them for its own ends really upset me. Again Russell T was tapping into very real, very relevent fears – how much personal autonomy can anyone really have in a nanny state that is always looking over our shoulders for our own good? Who does the family unit really belong to? How far would you go to protect your kids? What if following the parental instinct to protect your kids at all costs became treasonous?

Dark, dark ideas. Which is exactly what I want from sci-fi. It should be far fetched, futuristic, in turns utopic and dystopic. But most of all it should be relevent to the here and now.

It is interesting to note that John Barrowman (Captain Jack Harkness) was not at all enamoured of the decision to reduce Torchwood to a single five-parter. He’s been very public in announcing his displeasure, feeling that the show has been punished in some way, deliberately constrained.

Well I can recall a tutor of mine telling me that true creativity comes out of constraint, out of limitation. It is a good thing. It should be embraced.

I think Torchwood series three is the proof of the pudding. Rather than a run-of-the-mill 12 part series that misses as much as it hits, we had An Event. We had something that has sadly disappeared with the advent of cable TV and iPlayers and “watch whenever you want to” telly. We had something that millions of people watched at the same time and talked about the next day in anticipation of the next part. It was a good move by the BBC. A clever move. It reminded me of the time in the mid eighties when ITV lost the rights to broadcast the Olympics and so instead bought a US mini series called “V”. It was a ratings success. Everybody sick of the wall-to-wall Olympic coverage on the BBC tuned in to it. Everybody tuned in together. It became an event.

I don’t know where Torchwood will go after this. My hope is that we will see more five parters like this. I’d rather see five lavish, top notch, intelligent, adult episodes per year than a 12 episode series that constantly flounders beneath its own padding.

Last week Torchwood finally delivered.

First class.

I’d like to place another order please.

Fun To Funky

The BBC managed to divide my loyalties last night.

Was it to be Heroes – now already half way through the much improved fourth series? Or was it to be the first episode of the brand new series of Ashes To Ashes?

In the end it was no contest. The twin allure of Keeley Hawes and “Gene Hunt” (possibly the finest fictional cop creation of the last 20 years) managed to knock Hayden Patisserie (or whatever her name is) and Silage into a cocked hat.

The Quattro beats the Petrellis as sure as rock beats scissors.

Apologies for those of you who don’t get this show but your loss enables the rest of us to feel smug. Thank you for your sacrifice.

Yes. My life is complete. The Gene Genie is back not only with a vengeance but also with a cracking soundtrack that featured The Human League, Duran Duran and The Thompson Twins (I used to love The Thompson Twins – it was so nice to hear them again).

Hawes’ “Alex Drake” character has been given something of a makeover – the New Wave makeup has been toned down, the perm has disappeared in favour of a flicky bob and her hot pants are now tighter than Hunt’s shoulder holster. In fact whereas a bullet from Hunt stands only a 99% chance of flooring you the arsenal Keeley is packing in those hot pants is guaranteed to a put a red blooded male on his back without fail 100% of the time and without leaving an unsightly exit wound. A definite plus for those of you who can’t afford dry cleaning bills. She can fire a few rounds in my direction any time.

Last night’s episode tipped us straight into the heart of Soho and endemic police corruption and featured a script that could cut diamonds. In turns both funny and moving it was virtually impossible to keep tabs on all the references that peppered the dialogue. But why bother even trying? Just sit back and enjoy the ride in the knowledge that the cops aren’t going to pull you over for not wearing a seatbelt and won’t bang you up for sporting a mullet. Folks, good times are here again.

It’s time to roll those jacket sleeves up, loosen that leather pencil tie and whack some Dire Straits onto the tape deck.

Welcome back to the Eighties.

Home at last!

Proper Winters And Erin Grey

So is this a proper winter?

There’s been considerable debate in our house.

Well. Karen mentioned once that the temperatures this year have actually hit freezing a few times rather than just being “a bit chilly” and I grunted in reply that they still haven’t approximated anywhere near the arctic winters that I remember from my childhood.

But thinking about it I can only really recall one particularly arctic winter from the 18 or so that constituted my pre-adult life...

*(adopts West Country pirate-like accent for no good reason whatsoever)* Aar, it were the winter of ’82 and us young uns had to be carried through the mile high snow drifts like new born lambs in the arms of the bare-chested, ruddy nippled menfolk lest our poor shoeless feet should freeze solid like the last packet of rissoles at the bottom of the meat freezer at Iceland...

I think 1982 sticks in my mind because it was my very first year at Secondary school (the “big school”) and I had to tramp a mile or so there and back on foot which back then seemed akin to some poor African child walking 15 miles to fetch water from a bore hole and slay a gazelle or three on route, skin it and bring it home pre-butchered and ready for the village cooking pot.

Really I had no idea I was even born.

But the winter that year was genuinely very bad. A proper winter in every sense of the word. Snow that was several feet deep and lasted for weeks. Icy winds that froze ponds, streams, canals and rivers solid. Loads of days off school because either the boilers broke down or not enough staff / pupils made it into school to make a normal school day viable. And so bleak and grey outside that it seemed as if the sun had fizzled out completely like Jim Davidson’s telly career.

Going outside was frequently not an option that winter. I can recall in particular having to work hard to bend my parent’s arms to allow me to go for my usual Saturday morning walk to the papershop (we call them newsagents now) on a morning when the overnight snowfall had been extraordinarily heavy. Not going out that day was not an option for me. You see, every Saturday during this period I would religiously go to the papershop in the morning and hand over my hard saved cash – a piddling amount by today’s standards – to purchase a couple of packets of Buck Roger’s In The 25th Century sticker album stickers. I was very close to completing the album but the one sticker that I was most desperate to have and hadn’t yet acquired was the portrait of Colonel Wilma Deering that was to go on the very first page alongside Buck Rogers himself. My 12 year old self was very much taken with Colonel Wilma Deering – played by Erin Grey – and watching re-runs now it seems clear to me I must have had a thing about rather austere looking women with steely blue eyes and a slightly cold manner... though I will say she did look bloody fine in those tight jumpsuit things that they constantly crow-barred her into.

Crow-barred? I do hope not. I’d like to think that perhaps they oiled her up instead in order to facilitate her body’s smooth entry into that 1980’s smooth warm white Lycra... ahem. Oh yes. Where was I?

Well, this particular Saturday I finally got that much sought after sticker and it was fabulous. It was worth battling through snow drifts that were so high they swamped my wellies. It was worth enduring the biting cold that ate through my finger gloves like Kerry Katona eating her way through the last rissole at the bottom of the meat freezer at Iceland. It was worth the whole God damned ice blasted winter.

I still have the sticker album and no, it isn’t complete. I think once I got Wilma my incentive to buy the packets of stickers each week suffered a loss of impetus. I’d got what I wanted: Erin Grey in a tight blue futuristic zipper top smiling sardonically to camera. What a girl. Hard as steel but gorgeous enough to make the coldest of winter snows melt.

Which of course they did. Eventually. Leaving the world a rather grey, limp and drab place in its absence.

*sigh*

Now that folks was a proper winter.

When Heroes Grow Old

Heroes Unmasked was of double interest to me last night as not only did it preview the season finale of Heroes (due for UK broadcast next week) but also focused on Wendy and Lisa, the delicious duo who long ago were musical compadres of Prince and now score all of the incidental and theme music for Heroes.

I’ve long been a fan – from the early Revolution days, through Purple Rain and Prince’s purple patches and finally during their last incarnation as independent pop duo “Wendy & Lisa”. If I’m honest I still play their solo (duo?) albums on my MP3 player but then I’ve always been an eighties head at heart anyway.

But enough about my confused biology...

As the narrator introduced the theme for the night’s analysis they kindly cut to a clip of Wendy and Lisa grooving their funk-thang on TOTP – early nineties by my reckoning – all gorgeously teased hair, cheekbones, curvy hips and tight bouncing tops... how they enticed the eye even as they pleasured the ear... my excitement was mounting.

And then we were presented with the lovely ladies as they are today.

I feel down-right mean for saying this but they looked old.

I mean they looked “old” – not just older. Maybe it was the appalling light in their studio but they didn’t appear to have aged well.

I apologise. I don’t know why. I just feel the need to. For making such an uncharitable observation. I feel I’m being somehow mean spirited and disloyal. And I’m being grossly unfair. Their heyday was 20 years ago for God’s sake – what did I expect? I ought to be proud that they’ve spurned the cosmetic surgery route and have decided to stay au naturale. To stay real. They always were “real women” – it was part of the attraction.

And – let’s be honest – I’m no spring chicken myself. More like a leathery turkey. Old age is already digging its gnarled claws into my once plump and youthful flesh. I’m getting white hair all over the place these days (but enough about my bizarre biology)... Minor cuts are taking longer to heal... I’m grinding my teeth when I sleep... I go all sentimental when I hear Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas”...

It’s surely a case of the pot calling the kettle black?

And despite the wrinkles, despite the jowls, Wendy and Lisa have still got it for me. The old (no pun intended) spark is still there. So we wouldn’t go out partying anymore – what does it matter? So Wendy wouldn’t tease my bod with her quirky guitar licks – so what? There’s nothing wrong with a nice frappuccino in a quiet, downtown coffee house. And bowls, so I’ve been led to believe, is a fabulous sport. Hell, I may even enjoy a bus tour to an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical...!

Sigh. So it’s come to this: Wendy and Lisa have mutated in my mind from teen-hood fantasy girlfriends into imaginary aunties...

*Shrugs*

But if that’s how the cookies crumble, I guess I’ve just got to embrace it and move with the times... (now where did I put my pension book?)

Most Embarrassing Record

In a move that will probably prove to be as unwise as John McCain choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate and simultaneously start the blog world’s most shortest lived meme I hereby pose the challenge:

Name your most embarrassing record / CD ever!

You know the kind of thing.

You were young / old. You were feeling impetuous / temporarily insane. You had the money spare and you just thought, “What the hell, Shakin’ Stevens has never looked so good...” and before you knew what you were doing you’d done the deed; you’d bought IT – the single or album that for a short while was a guilty pleasure and then with the passing of time just became a source of unpleasurable guilt. The record that you store secretly in a separate place from the rest of your collection just in case visiting hands chance upon it in the midst of your other far cooler musical acquisitions.

The record that will lose you friends, family, hairdressers and influence people in a bad way.

Ahem. OK. Deep breath.

Mine is “Wired For Sound” by Cliff Richard.

I know. I know. I feel like upping the challenge a bit more and yelling, “Yeah! Beat that!”

Let’s get one thing straight. I hate Cliff Richard. I loathe the man. And I am at pains to point this out to absolutely everyone that I meet. Every time I see his sanctimonious, tea-stained leather face staring up at me from a magazine or newspaper I just want to vomit. And as for his singing voice... that “Oh I’m so sincere” warble makes me want to gouge a hole in space and time and chuck him into it.

But “Wired For Sound” in my opinion is a great record. What can I say? It’s a really catchy melody. It’s got great hooks littered all over the place. It wasn’t written by Cliff. Maybe this explains it?

And can I just add that liking the record does not mean I enjoy watching the video. The video – Cliff gliding around on sparkly roller-skates like a terrified geriatric tied to a conveyor belt of death is not the stuff that great music videos are made of. I hoot with vicious laughter every time I see it.

But I do have the song on my MP3 player. And I have been known to listen to it whilst pootling my way around town.

OK. It’s done. Hate me if you must. Revile me if you can but the gauntlet is thrown down.

I now challenge Inchy, Rol, Tris, Reluctant Blogger, Brother Tobias and The Sagitarian to name their most embarrassing record of all time. Usual meme rules apply: pass it on, let other victims know they’ve been tagged and then wash your dirty musical laundry in public.

Go on. You know you want to.

Slipped Discs

In response to a tag from Old Cheeser I’ve been invited to share with you the ten albums that I just could not live without. The ones that saw me through the drink and drugs hell of my teenage years (I couldn’t get any for love nor money). The ones that helped patch up my achey-breaky heart (please note this post will be a Billy Ray Cyrus free zone). The ones that, joking aside, continue to inspire me, lift me and make the world seem a much better place when I listen to them.

Fire up the Quattro, guys, welcome back to the eighties!

In no particular order:

1. Killing Joke – Brighter Than A Thousand Suns.

I’ve been a long time fan of KJ, right from the occult inspired punk furore of their early releases through to the metal-esque tribal moshes of their more recent output. And yet I’ve never ever considered myself to be a metal-head. In truth I abhor heavy metal and all it stands for... Neanderthal, beer fuelled, sex obsessed, unintelligent music for spotty boys who cannot get girlfriends. Instead I’ve always leaned towards sensitive, well crafted, texturally layered music for young men who cannot capture the love interest of a beautiful gal. But KJ were the exception. There was intelligence behind the anger, a furious need to push back the boundaries, to confront everything. “Revelations” is probably the ultimate KJ album – it captures the KJ sound with a dirty purity never before or since achieved but because of that it is probably quite inaccessible to most outside listeners. Odd then that I choose “Brighter Than A Thousand Suns” as this is probably their most accessible album to date and I’m sure many KJ puritans see it as a skeleton in the KJ cupboard. Critics at the time cursed it with the moniker Adult Oriented Rock. This does it a huge disservice. Oh I’m sure fans of KJ’s early punk forays were pulling out their spiked hair at Jaz Coleman’s beautifully honed vocals, the sustained chord changes, the orchestral sweep of much of the album’s content... it is after all a truly beautiful album. And this is not what KJ are supposed to be about. But the anger is still there. The occult paranoia. The conviction that the world is about to end imminently and enjoyably. The fire still burns but not now in an uncontrolled blaze... instead it has been sculpted into something truly majestic. “Chessboards” even today fills me with heart pumping exhilaration and “Goodbye To The Village” is a perfect anthem for the fight against global warming and world-wide corporate expansion. I still dig this album out on a regular basis and wallow in its unadulterated glory. Point of note: it was the amazing lyrics of this album that first got me into writing poetry.

2. Kate Bush – This Woman’s Work

What can I say about Kate Bush that hasn’t already been said? Everybody should own at least one Kate Bush album. Personally I’m the proud owner of just about every 7” single she’s ever released and have all her albums neatly lined up in chronological order on my record shelf. Everybody raves about “Hounds Of Love” and it IS a fabulous album but for me she hit her peak with “This Woman’s Work”. Lush and layered with rich depths – not unlike the woman herself – this album is amazingly evocative and emotive. “The Fog” is my all time favourite track though it is overlooked by many. Strings that catch the heart and a simple metaphor about learning to swim and letting people go all combine to get me watery eyed and blissful. The sustained emotional drive of this album is very powerful and purely feminine whereas “Hounds Of Love” has an inexplicable male energy to it – not that that’s a bad thing. “This Woman’s Work” is Kate Bush at her most complete and accomplished. It’s never been bettered.

3. Fields Of The Nephilim – Dawnrazor

OK. I admit it. I was a goth at heart. I even bought myself boots and a cowboy hat to see the Neph’s play at Birmingham Powerhouse in the mid to late eighties. This album owes more to Ennio Morricone than to true goth-dom however – full of howling wind and the ker-chink ker-chink of metal spurs. You can practically see the dust bowls rolling down the dusty street at high noon. “Volcane (Mr Jealousy Has Returned)” sees Carl McCoy’s thunder-bass vocals put to good effect with the catchy refrain “yer-hee yer-hee yer-hee”. Lyrically it’s a ridiculous album but something about the sidewinder guitars and the spaghetti western ambience just works for me. It makes me smile with fondness every time I listen to it. You gonna reach for those irons or just stand there whistling Dixie?

4. Breathless – Between Happiness And Heartache

I don’t actually know much about Breathless. I was given a copy of this album on cassette by a penfriend and fell in love with it immediately. It’s all ‘sensitive poetry boy’ kind of stuff but packaged up in jangly guitars and marvellously throaty vocals. Music to listen to when you’re reminiscing about a relationship break-up that no longer upsets you... when any upset you do feel is purely a luxury and a pleasure. This is an album of emotional indulgence for me. It’s a humble album in many ways and I doubt many people will have heard of it... but that all adds to the sense of intimacy I feel when I listen to it.

5. Danielle Dax – Jesus Egg That Wept

Danielle Dax is something of a curio and an enigma in the world of music – never quite crossing over into the mainstream despite many efforts to do so... and yet I bet most of you would recognize “Big Hollow Man” or “White Knuckle Ride” if you heard them. However, “Jesus Egg That Wept” was apparently recorded on a humble four-track before she got a major record deal and captures a rough and ready sound that is both unpolished and rawly energized. Danielle’s vocals aren’t for everybody – dipping to monster baritone and then rising to eyelash flickering angel all in the space of a heartbeat. Standout tracks here are “Hammerheads” – a nursery rhyme diatribe against the male ego and “Evil Honky Stomp” which begins with the memorable line “Up at the big house they’re branding niggers...” There was something both disarmingly charming and ineffably dangerous about Ms Dax. It’s a shame she wasn’t bigger as she would have been the perfect antidote to the Stock Aitkin and Waterman malaise that was to infect the UK music industry in the nineties.

6. Propaganda – P-Machinery

Ah Claudia Brucken and her fabulously sexy German nose! Propaganda delivered – with the help of Trevor Horn – one of the most perfectly polished and lush albums of the eighties. “Duel”, “Dr. Mabusa” and the title track all stand out as immaculate examples of synth driven eighties pop. My personal favourite is “The Murder Of Love” which features Claudia’s sexily Teutonic vocals put to good effect as she convicts a love-rat to some terrible fate. Sadly Propaganda’s follow up album was a huge disappointment - mostly because the wonderful Claudia had left (I think) to pursue a solo career that was just as equally disappointing. Alas we shall not see the like of her nose again. It made her look like an exotic bird woman. An eagle faced Valkyrie. Coupled with her cold Germanic demeanour and a fetish for outfits made out of metal lattice work... well, let’s just say she launched a few fantasies from the closeted comfort of my adolescent bedroom.

7. Wendy and Lisa – Eroica

Talking of adolescent fantasies, I’m a huge fan of Wendy and Lisa. Most people will know them as being members of Prince’s original backing band, The Revolution. When Prince disbanded the Revolution in the late eighties he lost, in my opinion, much of the beauty and the oddly delicate touches of much of his sound. He descended into self indulgent soul-funk and I bailed out of the whole Prince ‘thang’ when he released the God-awful “Graffiti Bridge”. Wendy and Lisa, however, decided to form a duo and go it alone together. If that makes sense. They released 3 superb albums here in the UK and developed a robust and respectable following... but alas they just couldn’t quite hit the big time which is a great shame. “Eroica” is their most accomplished album and features some gorgeous classics – “Mother Of Pearl” would have been an immediate smash hit if someone at their record company had had the brains to release it as a single and “Valley Vista” for some reason makes me melt at the knees. My God did I have a thing for Wendy when I was growing up. Sigh. Anyway, enough of my teenage bedroom daydreams – Wendy and Lisa are still plugging away at the music scene though have diversified into atmospheric and aurally textured sound worlds. Those of you that watch Heroes will know that Wendy and Lisa supply the incidental music and the theme. It’s far removed from the groovy-disco-pop-funk tracks that they were producing in the eighties. As a critic at the time memorably wrote – some people make music for people to dance to; Wendy and Lisa make music that dances.

8. XTC – Skylarking

As with Kate Bush everybody should own at least one XTC record. And as with Kate Bush I’m the proud owner of much of their vinyl output. I could have picked any one of XTC’s marvellous albums to grace this list: “Black Sea” with the classics “Sgt Rock” and “Generals And Majors”; “English Settlement” with “Senses Working Overtime” (possibly the greatest pop single ever) or even one of their later offerings, “Oranges And Lemons” with the heartily clever “Mayor Of Simpleton” and “Poor Skeleton Steps Out”. “Skylarking” however is the one that brought XTC some kudos and success in America thanks to the track “Dear God” (which initially didn’t appear on the UK release, pop-pickers). “Dear God” was a woeful lament about the state of the world and a loss of faith set against an almost medieval sounding acoustic guitar. Allegedly some disgruntled student in America forced his Uni radio station to play the track over and over again at gun point. But “Skylarking”, I have to say, is hardly a reactionary’s dream. It’s a warm, languorous, fun, ultimately English summer cocktail of an album that is best played outside when the sun is low and the barbeque is high and the beer is cold. If “Mermaid Smiled” doesn’t make you grin then your heart needs to be thrown onto the barbie to warm it up. Pop pure and simple, unpretentious and divine.

9. Siouxsie & the Banshees – Twice Upon A Time

It’s probably a cheat to have a compilation album on here but I don’t care. I love this album. “Swimming Horses” is hauntingly beautiful and is possibly my favourite Siouxsie track of all time followed closely by “Song From The Edge Of The World” which alas doesn’t appear here and “Dazzle” which does. The musical output of Siouxsie & the Banshees was an odd mix of experimentation and fixedness. No matter how avant garde they tried to be they only ever sounded like themselves. The reason for this I’m sure lies in Siouxsie Sioux’s distinctive vocals. Both a curse and a gift. Personally I’d veer toward the latter. What can you say about Siouxsie? Formidable. Intelligent. Uncompromising. Passionate. Individual. Wonderful. A must have.

10. Bjork – Debut

I was on holiday in Canterbury when I first bought this and initially bought it on cassette so I could listen to it on my Walkman. I didn’t take it out again for the entire summer. “Debut” caught a charm, a knowing naivety, a gentrified naughtiness about Bjork that was never quite seen again in her follow up albums. “Venus As A Boy” is, of course, the stand out single – the video made frying eggs seem somehow incredibly sexy – but “Come To Me” is by way and afar my favourite track from the album. A warm, bath towel hug of a song, you can almost feel Bjork’s arms around you, holding you close as she croons / breathes the vocals intimately into your ear. Ah if only. How perfect Canterbury would have seemed if that had really happened! Instead I had to make do with Bjork on my Walkman and a collection of Roger McGough poems in my hand. An odd mix to be sure but it worked for me. And all of Bjork’s mispronunciations have never seemed so cute! Ah Bjork. How do you like your eggs in the morning? Oh. Fried. OK... do you want a sausage with that?

There you go folks, my top ten albums as picked today. Trouble is tomorrow I dare say I could easily give you a different ten. And a different ten the day after that. I’ve missed out loads but a top hundred would be totally impractical. Right I’m off for my lunch. May have to delve into some of these on the old MP3 player. Technology may have changed but my taste in music hasn’t. I guess I’ll always be an eighties boy at heart!

Cough Drop

I’m having a weird day today, probably aided and abetted by the fact I had a crap night’s sleep last night...

Baby Tom was fine, I can’t blame him at all – the sleep training has really paid off and any night time disturbance now tends to be very minimal. Instead, despite having eyes as heavy as John Prescott’s sick bag, I just lay awake into the small hours, wearing myself out with my many fruitless attempts to drop off.

The knock-on effect today is that I feel out of kilter with the rest of the world and totally benumbed. I feel like a cheap pair of 3D glasses – things aren’t quite lining up properly but I can still tell what they’re supposed to be.

If I was at home I could cope with that quite well. But I’m not. I’m at work and am required to be “on the ball” and capable.

None of which is actually in my job description but I feel too drippy to point that out.

So I’ve had a painful morning dealing with complaints of sexual harassment levelled against our cleaner (sorry, Hygiene Technician), meeting a lighting rep who has totally exhausted my fake interest in light bulbs, dichroics and barn-door shutters, running around trying to catch up on the paperwork that has been flapping around my desk since my day off on Friday and I have just shambled through the most bizarre office conversation ever which started off on the subject of new local authority gumf warning us about the dangers of the “employee terrorist” (the office bully by any other name), leapt onto the John Prescott bulimia bandwagon about halfway through and then finished off on the delightful subject of condensed milk sandwiches as eaten by Lenny Henry on Tiswas back in the early eighties.

My brain feels warped.

I feel like I’ve just coughed it out of my mouth like a dropped bollock in a fashion rather reminiscent of the Ood on Doctor Who on Saturday.

None of which bodes well for the afternoon...

Explosive

I'm glad to say the title of this post isn't a reference to my current bout of close nappy encounters but to the season finale of Ashes To Ashes which was televised last night.

It was simply brilliant. The writer's kept us on tenterhooks all the way through and threw in an ample selection of red herrings. The final twist was heart rending. I won't spoil it for those of you who haven't seen it yet but I didn't see it coming until a few seconds before the actual denouement.

Keeley Hawes is a terrific actress and I've really loved her bubbly DI Drake character - somehow both girlie and professorial at the same time - but I do think she hasn't been stretched nearly enough in her acting abilities. Last night however changed all that. Her screams of despair as she sat in the middle of the road were gut wrenching (and I should know, my guts have been wrenched quite a bit this week). No dialogue was needed. They just faded to black. Perfect. Gene Hunt stepping in at the last moment to take the child's hand was also masterful. It subtlely confounded all our expectations and yet also re-affirmed his inherently paternal role.

In short it was a sad, sad, very tragic story and yet we were left feeling somehow uplifted at the end - mostly I suspect because Drake's relationship with her mother had finally reached a plateau of emotional fulfilment. There was an emotional closure of sorts that mirrored Sam Tyler's at the end of series 1 of Life On Mars. This mirroring is the right way to go I feel (we must bring balance to the Force!) and so I was not at all surprised to learn that the BBC have a second series of Ashes To Ashes already lined up for next year. My feeling is that it'll be the final one and after that we'll have to reconcile ourselves to a life without Gene Hunt.

Can you imagine such a thing? Scary.

Funniest moment for me last night (aside from DI Drake driving a huge pink tank over a car) was DC Chris Skelton finally pointing out the obvious to DS Ray Carling: that he bore an uncanny resemblance to most of the gay rights protestors they were currently holding in the cells.

I'm sure the gay rights people were all absolutely horrified...

Police brutality indeed.

Ecstasy

Ashes To Ashes made my night in a number of ways last night.

1) It featured XTC’s “Sergeant Rock”. A track that took me straight back to my school days and swapping football stickers in the playground.

2) It featured Killing Joke’s “Turn To Red” – a track from their little known first ever EP, released before they’d even been signed up by Malicious Damage records. You’d have to be a diehard fan to spot it. I am that fan.

3) DS Ray Carling, a man even more homophobic and chauvinistic than Gene Hunt himself, had to infiltrate a gay night club posing as a homosexual to get close to a target. He looks like a Village People reject at the best of times anyway and blended in remarkably well. He even looked to be enjoying himself until sweet nothings were whispered in his ear. His smile dropped faster than a nympho’s knickers at a swinger’s convention and the fists flew wild and hard. He looked like a rabbit caught between the headlights of a fast moving car. Hilarious.

4) Gene Hunt. Ploughing mercilessly through every single euphemism for anal sex and homosexuality known to man with a straight face (well, what else would he have) and his team laughing along with him... until an after footie match celebration of hugging and male bonding at their local boozer was cut abruptly short by DI Drake wondering if they were all closet homosexuals themselves. You sunk my battleship indeed. Anything that blasts homophobia and football clean out of the water is absolutely fine by me...

5) Keeley Hawes just because. But mostly because of the red, off-the-shoulder top that was so flimsy it accentuated every movement and jiggle underneath it. Officer I’ve been a naughty boy and need to be taken into police custody immediately. I may have to be restrained and frisked. Please, please don’t go easy on me...

Sheer ecstasy.

The Great Hunt

Don’t get me wrong, the previous episodes of Ashes To Ashes have all been brilliant but something about last night’s felt like they’d upped the ante to a new level. The dialogue was cracking and included some fantastic jokes (Gene Hunt: how many birds does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: two. One to run around screaming “What do I do? What do I do?” and the other one to shag the electrician.) The storyline was dark, dense and dynamically directed. The acting, as ever I have to say, was superb.

Definitely the best episode so far.

The relationship between Hunt and Drake is developing nicely and I like the fact the writer’s are not merely confining it to a simple will-they-won’t-they sexual stand off. Certainly the work based spats and the confrontational dialogue all hint at underlying sexual tension – and Hunt was certainly put to the test last night when, trapped in a sealed room, DI Drake stripped down to her red basque as the internal temperature soared. Standard police issue I assure you (the basque that is, not Hunt’s reaction). But in terms of physical expression Hunt’s feelings towards Drake appear to have an undeniably paternal edge. This is also backed up by Drake’s responses – teasing, simpering, pouting but ultimately deferential and seeking comfort. The naughty girl playing on her father’s affections. Knowledge that her parents are about to be killed by a car bomb – hence she grew up without a mother and a father – could also be feeding into Drake’s emotional responses towards Hunt of course but, whatever the reason, Hunt is unwittingly assuming a parental role in their stead.

The parent issue is, of course, one we’ve seen in the show’s previous incarnation – Life On Mars. There Sam Tyler returned to the 1970’s, a few weeks before his father mysteriously disappeared never to be seen again. Naturally the loss of a parent would impinge upon a child’s psyche hugely and maybe this provides the answer to why Tyler and Drake end up in their respective time periods. Who knows? But it does lend the psychology of the show a pleasing symmetry and consistency.

What is different about the two shows however is the ethos that drives the respective heroes. Unlike Sam Tyler DI Drake is very much “sexed up”. She’s flirty, knows how to use her looks and her physicality and is more than happy to do so – she’s already bedded a “Thatcherite wanker” in a previous episode – and seems unable to stop herself playing the breathy, slightly giggly Marilyn Monroe character around the boys in the office. Tyler on the other hand spent the whole two series’ of Life On Mars not getting into WPC Cartright’s knickers when it was clearly plain that he dearly wanted to. The poor boy lived like a monk. Drake on the other hand is living like a party girl and is up for absolutely everything.

And why the hell not? Drake after all represents the freedom and liberation of the modern woman which, while not being all that it should be in 2008, is still a lot better than it was in the 1980s. She’s intelligent, impulsive, intuitive, professional and sexual all at the same time. The same as her male colleagues in fact – so equality as near as damn it – though given the escapades of DS Ray Carling and DC Chris Skelton we could possibly scrub intelligence from the male version of the list. Though to be fair, Carling and Skelton are in the show essentially to provide light relief.

The sexism of the boys aside it was interesting to see Drake’s 2008 behaviour juxtaposed with the women’s libbers of the 1980s. In comparison to Drake they were almost in denial of their own sexuality yet at the same time prepared to use it as a clumsy weapon to get what they wanted from men – one of them used sex to get someone to spy for them. Of course it ended badly – the guy wanted more and became aggressive; he attempted rape and was killed in the ensuing struggle. The question is though: is Drake’s behaviour actually any more sophisticated or worthy of celebration?

The easy answer is yes. She’s not using sex as a bartering device but as pleasure for herself in its own right. But the issue is nevertheless complicated. The lines are blurred. Is Drake fighting the cause for all women or is she merely colluding with the male dominated world she now finds herself immersed in to get what she wants – to survive, to get back home to her daughter? Is she merely fighting for herself rather than for any cause at all? Ultimately though all of this is meant to be inside Drake’s head and merely reflects her own internal conflicts. But as we all know, microcosms can often be useful mirrors to the bigger and badder macrocosms that contain them...

The easy answer therefore is that there is no easy answer. And that’s fine by me.

I look forward to seeing the next stage of Drake’s journey unfold next week.

Snooker Loopy Nuts

I’m loving Ashes To Ashes.

I’m loving the music – Visage, OMD, Vangelis – though I’m a little perturbed by how many of these quintessential eighties tracks I still play regularly on my MP3 player. Stuck in a time warp? Who me? (Have I gone back in time? Am I in a coma? Am I insane? Etc, etc...)

I’m loving Gene Hunt’s interrogation techniques – pin your chosen scrote down across a snooker table, spread his legs, line up your cue and slam the pink into the top corner pocket.

Pot black indeed.

I’m loving the clothes and the make-up – white jackets, red and black colour combos, hair swept back on one side, Siouxsie Sioux eyeliner.

But most of all I’m loving Keeley Hawes as DI Drake.

The woman seems to be constantly drunk. Not that she’s a hard ligging boozer or anything; she’s just totally intoxicated by her circumstances...

Unlike Sam Tyler who experienced his time in the 1970’s as a bad trip – all paranoia, angst and the fear – Drake is living her time in the 1980’s as a lucid dream. Her ethos seems to be, as this is all happening inside my head I can do whatever the hell I like.

The result is interesting. It gives her character a tragic-positive spin as she flirts not just with those around her but also with the entire eighties construct that her mind has created whilst retaining an awareness of how badly some of the events she is now reliving actually turn out.

It gives the show a far lighter touch while at the same time allowing it to probe deeply into the blacknesses that lurk on the edges of Drake’s psyche – the death of her cold, calculating, career minded mother for one thing. Drake’s childhood was obviously very dark and I think a few more ghosts are going to come out of the woodwork before the series ends to challenge her glib responses to her predicament.

Yes, in relation to Life On Mars, Ashes To Ashes, is undoubtedly formulaic but to my mind it’s a formula that works. Ashes To Ashes is essentially a mirror to Life On Mars – its missing, long lost twin – with Gene Hunt acting as the bridge between the two. DI Drake is the yang to Sam Tyler’s Yin. The light to his dark. The female aspect to his male.

Quite where Gene Hunt fits into this faux Eastern philosophy I don’t know.

I’m just hoping that DI Drake has the good sense not to challenge him to a game of bar billiards after work...

A Nice Drop Of Bolly

Ashes To Ashes didn’t disappoint. Not at all.

If anything it hit the ground running with its shoulder pads glistening in the eighties sunshine. Not unlike Keeley Hawes’ character, DI Drake, in fact. She was sussed, analytical, self aware and responded with breathtaking intelligence to her predicament.

She was also as foxy as hell. As one of Gene Hunt’s sidekicks, Ray Carling, so eloquently put it: she’s got an amazing pair of puppies.

To be fair this comment was provoked somewhat by the fact she’d made her grand entrance into 1981 dressed as a high class hooker. A sure-fire way to grab everyone’s attention. I must admit I found myself wondering if this guise was a cheeky play on Keeley’s name – Keeley Hawes.

Geddit?

Sorry. Couldn’t resist.

Anyway, I admit I had reservations regarding Ashes To Ashes. Life On Mars was such an amazing show that I couldn’t help but feel that any spin-off would be at best second rate and a cheap, easy-write tie-in to boot. So it was really great to discern that Ashes To Ashes has enough strength and power of its own to stand on its own two feet and give Life On Mars a bloody good run for its money. There’s a different feel and look to the show – not just because of the eighties mis-en-scene – but also embedded in the writing itself. The style is lighter and more humorous though without any loss of depth. The dialogue is sharp and slick. The action has substituted a little of the stodgy 70’s grit with an injection of eighties gloss and glitter. And the music... ah the music is wonderful. This was my era. It feels like coming home.

Just hearing The Passions’ I’m In Love With A German Film Star sent shivers down my spine. Dedicated readers of this blog will know how much I adore this track...

Philip Glenister as Gene Hunt is brilliant. Brooding, uncool yet cool, flippant, sexist, bullish and the most quotable cop on TV since, well, since John Thaw in The Sweeney. But there’s a softer side to him now too. He’s more aware of himself. Aware of the constraints that his police force now operate under. There’s a caring side to balance out the tit-grabbing misogynist – the scene where he puts a blanket over the sleeping Drake was a nice touch.

The references to Sam Tyler from Life On Mars are intriguing too and up the mystique. Apparently after 7 years with Hunt’s team he died... but no body was ever found. This leaves us to speculate pleasurably on his whereabouts – has he died, passed over, moved on to somewhere else? Who knows? It’s just nice to wonder.

Mostly though Ashes To Ashes works so well and so boldly because of Keeley Hawes’ canny portrayal of DI Drake. She’s not as confused or as lost as Sam. She’s sussed. She’s quick and intelligent. Razor sharp in fact. She knows exactly where she is and has some idea of what she needs to do to get herself out of it. Her continual wry analysis of her predicament, far from lumbering us with a tedious, unnecessary narrative, actually lends the show a witty, incisive underpinning. It also adds a fabulous fire and panache to her interactions with the dour Gene Hunt (who is self aware and wry in a different way).

In fact the relationship between Drake and Hunt is the real star of the show. Mutual attraction and revulsion is equal measure. Sparks and spit flying with every word and look. Marvellous. Full of potential and great to watch. I’m not sure who is going to hit who first.

Bliss.

I’ve a feeling that the further adventure of Gene Hunt and “Bollinger Knickers” are going to become essential viewing over the next few weeks. I’m breaking out the shoulder pads already...

Eighties

Sunday’s post – plus a belated fascination with YouTube – has made me review and analyse my music choices.

I’ll admit that at heart I’m an Eighties boy through and through and the result of a misspent youth during this period is a humungous record collection that covers everything from ABC to XTC. I suspect my love affair with Eighties music comes from the fact that this was the era of my “formative years” – I can recall my parents talking of the Sixties with much the same level of reverence and sentiment. And certainly although I loathed Wham and Bananarama at the time I now look back on them with a mawkish fondness and a realization that actually they were pretty damn good... though maybe that says more about my disenchantment with the current music scene.

Hmm. Maybe disenchantment is a bit strong, I mean I’m still buying new music – The Editors, Gnarls Barkely, The Doves, etc – but I’m very aware that the amount of money I invest in music these days is a pitiful fraction of the moolah that I used to throw into my vinyl collection. And that isn’t just down to fraught economics.

Christ. It’s a scary thought but somewhere along the lines my love affair with the music scene has diminished and stalled. Become trapped in a musical time-warp. The Enchanted Forest Of The Eighties.

But it’s an enchantment that makes me happy for the most part. On my work journey I’m more likely to select some vintage Kate Bush or some early Eighties Killing Joke (dependent on my mood) to pep me up for the day ahead rather than anything produced in the new millennium. It floats my boat so what’s the problem?

I do worry though that I’m giving my boy a slightly skewed musical world view by immersing him in bands like The Cocteau Twins and The Pretenders rather than their more modern counterparts but I guess as he gets older he’ll find his own musical path.

An ex girlfriend of mine absolutely hated Eighties music – now if that wasn’t a sign of impending doom I don’t know what was – her argument being that she hated the production values. That’s a pretty fundamental objection when you think about it. Part of what I like about Eighties music is “the sound”. I love the lushness and polish of some of it. Trevor Horn’s stuff certainly stands out a mile.

Ultimately though it’s interesting to note that the Eighties are enjoying something of a revival – so many bands now are emulating (consciously or otherwise) the Eighties look and sound. So much so I feel like the world is entering the Enchantment Forest with me. I’m sure it’ll be short-lived as all fads are. But when everyone else has moved on again I suspect I’ll still be here.

Skipping through Strawberry Switchblades, up to my neck in The Stranglers and wailing along to The Banshees...