doubleshiny

Originally published in Swine Magazine

If like me you find the conversation can dry up after 12 solid drinking hours, read on and furnish your pickled brain with some proper knowledge on our malty best friends.
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Originally published in Swine Magazine

Who’s up for a trip around Parliament Square then? A swift visit to the Churchill memorial, swerve Abraham Lincoln where some tourists from Arsecreek, Kentucky are posing, and past Benjamin Disraeli, whoever he is.
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Originally published in Swine Magazine

Drunkenness, class wars, casual racism and a complete rip-off. Yes, the Glastonbury Festival is the most British of events. What escapes me is how the failure of a multi-million pound company to sell out a festival in three hours should be of any concern to anyone, anywhere, at any time.

I’m sick of hearing about Glastonbury. I was sick of it before I even heard of it. Why this overblown monster, this idiot taxation system, this money-grubbing behemoth of corporate whoredom should be greeted with such dewy eyed reverence by the music fans of this country is beyond me. The news that ‘Glasto’ , as it’s bog snorkelling ‘disciples’ insist on calling it, hadn’t sold out in under 4.0 nanoseconds was greeted with more wailing and gnashing of teeth than the death of John Lennon. Could it be that the World’s Greatest Music Festival (TM and don’t you forget it you snivelling internet pirates) was losing its grip on the zeitgeist?

Well hold the phone Martha, Glastonbury isn’t on the cutting edge? You could have fooled me, they even had Shirley Bassey there last year. It was a faux-ironic move that the made the students piss themselves but which was lost on the urban youths of Hackney, which is possibly why this year, when dear Emily Eavis announced - shock horror – Jay-Z as the headliner, the regular Glastonbury crowd started burning their crosses. ‘This isn’t irony, this is just unexpected! This will not stand!’ bleated Effie and Hugo Thorntonley-Smythe as they ditched daddy’s credit card and started making plans to plant cotton fields in Ecuador instead.

Glastonbury has finally been seen for what it is, another hollow ‘experience’ for those with more disposable income than imagination to tick off their Observer Music Monthly ‘Do Before You Die’ list. It’s been a long time coming but finally the wheels have come off the Worthy Farm bandwagon. The ‘Glasto tourists’ have realised that although it might be a mildly diverting after-dinner topic to mention that they’re forgoing the South of France this year and taking the kids to ‘really experience Glastonbury’, they don’t particularly want to spend over £600 to subject Kitty and Basil to ’99 Problems’ while a load of cidered up City boys vomit on their brand new Jeff Banks tent.

The new generation of festival goers are not fooled by Glastonbury and its fake hippy ethos. They have more choice than ever before, more new festivals cropping up every year, and they go not necessarily for the lineup, but for the fun of it. Remember fun? It’s what festivals are supposed to be, a weekend away camping, listen to a few bands you might not normally bother with, have a few drinks, etc. You know, fun? Glastonbury over recent years has become more like a stint in Vietnam than a weekend break. First there’s the ridiculous notion of pre-registering, where you hand over more information to Festival Republic Ltd. than you would to a national census. Then if you’re actually lucky enough to win the ticket lottery you have to plan for the inevitable deluge where your tent and all your belongings are washed away on a river of someone else’s feculence with your only comfort being an acoustic set by The Pigeon Detectives which you can’t even hear properly. Yeah, that sounds like a blast.
Vacuous proto-hippies will claim that the best of the fest is actually away from the music, in the ridiculously contrived Field of Lost Vagueness and the Healing Fields but even they are being ploughed over this year.

The day Glastonbury failed to sell out isn’t The Day The Music Died, it’s the Day That Music Woke Up And Punched Michael Eavis In His Great Big Beardy Face. The fact that organisers believed Kings of Leon and The Verve would offer value for money demonstrates just how clueless and out of touch they have become. The Verve reunion must be the least wanted comeback since legwarmers so why foist them on an audience who were pre-pubescent when they last charted? It’s almost as if they were trying to counteract the boat-rocking signing of Jay-Z with something purposefully bland and inoffensive, like having cucumber dip with your Balti.

However, the headliners can’t be blamed for the lack of interest in Glastonbury, after all T In The Park also have The Verve and Kings of Leon and they managed to sell out, as did Leeds/Reading (The Killers, Rage Against the Machine and Metallica). The fact is that the Glastonbury ‘experience’ which cons so many into going is losing its sparkle year after year, starting with the sell off of the management to Mean Fiddler in 2002, which was brought on by the fence-jumpers and the ridiculously over populated 2001 and 1999 festivals. So in essence it was the freeloaders who killed Glastonbury, trying to force the hippy envelope and take advantage of the naïve security and the ease of spreading the ‘weak fence pole’ hints online.

If Glastonbury truly is a national treasure there needs to be a re-think on what exactly it is there to achieve. If the original aims were trampled during the Battle of Yeoman’s Bridge in 1991 when New age Travellers clashed with police, they certainly haven’t been allowed to resurface since, instead the festival has moved further and further away from the mission of free entertainment and co-operation. Personally I blame Thom Yorke, and until he’s burned in a wicker man on the Field of Lost Vagueness the ‘Glastonbury Highlights’ programme on the BBC will be mis-named.

Originally published inSwine Magazine

Fuck the NME. Fuck them right up the arse with a pointy stick. Fuck XFM. Fuck polka dot dresses, new rave and the ‘re-birth’ of indie guitar music, because without all that overblown, empty dollar green garbage, The Cribs new album would be number one for a hundred million years and The Kooks would spontaneously combust in the face of the awesome power of three brothers from Wakefield who write the best songs this fledgling century has seen.

As you might have gathered, it’s hard for me to undersell The Cribs. Their presence in British music is like a little Radio Caroline, bobbing about in treacherous circumstances, battling through the jaunty and the desperate on the airwaves to re-assure you that you’re not going mad. Their first album, ‘The Cribs’, was a DIY effort which burned through 40 odd minutes of adrenaline guitars, shouting and Beatles-esque melodies. It was a gem which was left in the dust as the majors pushed out The Thrills, The Coral and other soft going singalong albums in time for festival season of 2004. The follow up ‘The New Fellas’ was a hook-led classic. Something of a climb down from the rattiness of the first album, but it held chart worthy songs like ‘Mirror Kissers’, ‘Hey Scenesters’ and ‘Martell’ which amused the Radio One playlist for a good few weeks. With Alex Kapranos at the helm, some were expecting a sharper, more poppy album this time round. ‘Men’s Needs’ is anything but a compromise to the current scene. You can hear the influence of Kapranos as vocals are shoved up front, the distortion has been reduced and the hook lines and iron-clad melodies are given a starring role.

More than anything this album is threatening the boundaries of what the indie revivalists expect from a record. There is not one second of filler on this offering, listen to any big seller from The Kooks, The Feeling, The Killers and try and say the same, the words’ll stick in your throat. In fact, it’s difficult to keep a straight face discussing these bands in the same breath as The Cribs, although they’ve been lumped together by every magazine and radio station going. The record starts with the spastic rallying cry of ‘Our Bovine Public’, reducing The Cribs so-called rivals to porridge in the space of 2 minutes and 16 seconds. Any one of the next eight tracks could be a single, horrifically catchy equality anthem ‘Men’s Needs’ has been, and ‘Moving Pictures’, the half mournful, half hopeful tune that feels like you’ve always known it, is the next one out of the bag. The big surprise of the record is ‘Be Safe’, which marries a marching bassline to the spoken words of Lee Renaldo (of Sonic Youth) and a rousing event chorus. It will sneak up on you and assault you before delivering you battered into the end of the album and the warm waters of ‘Shoot The Poets’, a sweet anti-love song with a touching vocal from Ryan Jarman.

In all probability The Cribs will survive the poisoned association with the increasingly generic indie scene, and will still be releasing albums as brilliant as this one when the likes of The View are ‘pursuing other projects’. In the meantime, The Cribs are flicking vs at the bands they recently lambasted on stage at Glastonbury and going off on tour to be with the already converted, who are getting smugger by the minute.

According to Professor Aric Sigman, a psychologist and biologist, children under 3 shouldn’t be allowed to watch television. Aged 3-7 they might be permitted half an hour a day. Aged 7-13 they can watch 2 hours. Any more than this and your child is liable to suffer all manner of problems, from ADHD to morbid obesity. "Screen media must now be considered a major public health issue” wobbles Aric. Strangely enough, he used to appear as the resident doctor on Going Live! which was over two hours long and therefore unacceptable for children’s viewing by his standards. I remember switching over immediately when he came on with his transatlantic drawl, trying to tell me about acne treatments when I wanted to see Trev hit Simon with a pie.

Who’d want to be a kid in 2007? Junk food will kill you, toy adverts are immoral, myspace will see you killed by paedophiles, television makes you fat. The poor little sods are cosseted from all sides by over-protective hand wringers desperate to preserve an idea of childhood that hasn’t existed outside of The Famous Five. We are in danger of producing a generation of defenceless weirdos who have no idea how to survive in the modern world. If parents absorbed all the media messages about how to bring up their children their heads would explode. Your child may not sit in front of the television but they may not be allowed outside in case a stranger kidnaps them for a starring role in his child porn videos. They may not eat junk food or too much salt, or sweets, or fizzy drinks, or more than one serving of oily fish, or red meat. In fact, why don’t we just suspend our newborns in saline filled pods until they reach 18, that way no harm can possible come to them and we won’t feel like Fred and Rosemary West because Cosmo ate a cheeseburger and then watched Dr Who.

Unfortunately this kind of relentless over-parenting has infiltrated television anyway. Any child allowed to watch TV after 7pm will see wave after wave of ‘bad’ children being fixed by Supernannys or Child Psychologists until they sit properly, eat their carrot sticks and go to bed at 8pm on the dot dreaming of another sticker on their behaviour chart. The BBC even has a parenting website where you can check up on where you’re going wrong. There’s a very helpful section on how to explain wars and conflicts to your kids. During the first Gulf War I remember writing a diary entry on the day the conflict began. I wrote with great detail and excitement about the new Sylvanian Families rabbit I had been given, and added at the end ‘PS War broke out’. I really didn’t give a shit about war and international politics, I assumed that if it got really bad, ie there were Iraqi soldiers marching down High Street, that school would be cancelled and my dad would probably sort them out. Now, parents are being told to sit their children down quietly and explain that ‘something bad is going on very far away but you’re safe here’. Of course we all know that this will actually scare kids shitless because they understand inherently that parents lie about everything. They will interpret this ‘chat’ as “We’re probably going to die soon, but please don’t make a fuss’.

Star charts are another method of breeding greedy brats who can’t cope without attention. The thinking behind them is that they encourage good behaviour by rewarding it. Eaten your dinner? Star! Gone to bed? Star! Stopped beating your brother with a wooden spoon for no reason other than it’s mildly diverting? Star! So what happens when junior gets to school and expects praise and rewards for behaviour he should be displaying anyway?
Will they have a star chart in his University classroom? Or in the boardroom? No. By this time he’ll have to get used to the fact that the vast majority of people behave well all of the time, and get bugger all benefit from it. Either that or he can siphon off interest from company pension funds into an offshore account for forty years and then spend five minutes on the naughty step.

The Sunday Supplement method of child rearing is even more vomit inducing. It generally involves skipping ropes and Mummy and Me Painting Classes and is the preserve of middle class upward movers who think that the childhood they never had is what should be afforded to their children whatever the cost. This imagined idea of what children enjoy doing is even more barmy than the Supernanny tribe’s. They spend hundreds of pounds on toys the same as the rest of us, only Harry and Olivia-Jane get hand made Cornish hoops and sticks or genuine Gloucester-built rocking horses that Dad saw on Countryfile. The children’s misery at being the only people in school who don’t know how to pronounce Wii is compounded by the weekends being rigorously timetabled with ballet, pony trekking, pottery and cello practice. Then, when Olivia-Jane gets happy slapped because she can’t weave herself a wicker shield quick enough, they take their kids out for ‘home schooling’, effectively ending their normal lives and consigning them to a future filled with Bee Identification courses at the local Ranger’s station because pubs are for morons.

“Screen media” is one of the few pleasures that kids are still allowed to enjoy. Where else is a child able to see a lion eat a gazelle? Toxteth? Is mum meant to fork out £25 on a ticket to see Manchester United play in the FA cup because 90 minutes is too long for a child to sit and watch it for free at home? I would like to challenge Professor Sigman to try and prevent my two year old sisters from watching Numberjacks. He won’t last five minutes.

Originally published in Swine Magazine

Elt goes political all too late for Sun City....

Mention the words ‘Sun City’ to any adult over the age of 30 and watch them shrink away in revulsion as they remember the injustice, the pain and the stigma attached to owning that record, written by Silvio Dante from The Sopranos. But Sun City was also a resort, built in ‘Bophuthatswana’, a made up country which was named as an independent state in order to strip black tribespeople of their South African citizenship, and force them to work in the lucrative platinum mines, and the new Sun City casino.

Sun City was a nauseating example of white cultural and economical supremacy in South Africa. Apartheid was at its most healthy and the ban on gambling under the National Party drew thousands upon thousands of rich, white South Africans from Jo’burg and Pretoria to Sun City, where gambling was legal and blacks were banned. In a country where virtually every business and institution stank of corruption and apartheid, Sun City excelled itself. And what better way to draw the rich, racist and ignorant than to stage huge concerts, with some of the world’s headline acts. Acts like Queen, Rod Stewart and Elton John. Ah yes….Elton John.
Elton’s been back in the news lately. He’s turned 60, he’s caused controversy in Tobago as local church leaders have warned he may ‘unduly influence’ the youngsters (presumably they mean dressing like Benny Hill after a date with Trinny and Susannah), and he’s taken on a new role as a crusader for equal rights.

Oozing sanctimony like a giant lefty slug, Elton tells the New Statesman that he is very concerned over bigotry and tells is “We should all stand up for basic human rights.” Right on Elton, except you’ve changed your tune since 1983 when the basic human rights of black people to be treated better than dogs in South Africa were the subject of much consternation to many. Elton crossed the picket line of all cultural picket lines when he agreed to take the Sun City dollar and stick two fingers up to the UN boycott. Of course, when questioned about this sanction break he simply replied that he did not see Sun City as being the real South Africa. Roberta Flack turned down $2 million to perform at Sun City. You can bet she thought it was the real South Africa.

Mind you, it would be easy for Elton to forget he ever visited Sun City, the world wide web holds little information about the show or the surrounding controversy : it’s like the event never happened. In the 1908s he UK Musician’s Union refused to support visas for many artists, including noted anti-apartheid singer Johnny Clegg who had ‘broken’ the UN boycott by playing with Zulu tribespeople, but had nothing to say about Elton’s transgressions. The Union had initiated the boycott itself in 1961, years before the UN, but strangely failed to take action or make comment on any British or American artists, concentrating instead on those from other countries looking for approval to tour Britain.

John’s constant whining about gay rights in the UK is sickening when you contrast this cause with that of the black South Africans he so quickly pissed on to be able to thrust his fat spangled arse into the foulest of all money troughs. Gay people in the UK may have it tough, but they can vote, they can employ straight people, they can ride on the same buses with straight people, they can have passports. Elton’s personal political battle – for the right to have a wedding as tacky as Jordan’s and to have bigger tits – is a transparent act of selfishness. In fact, all of his political leanings show a distinct lack of empathy with anyone dissimilar to Elton John. ‘It Could Have Been Me’ is the title of his New Statesman whine. God, just imagine….

Originally published in Swine Magazine

In last month’s Swine Magazine Shaun Smith pronounced the British Darts Oranisation Championship coverage as one of the few things that would cheer you up as you saw all the shite you’d paid hundreds for less than a month ago now reduced to 8p and slung in a wire bucket as a warning to others. True enough, sport has been risible in the last few weeks : deserved humiliation at the Gabba for Sir Andrew Flintoff and his knock-kneed troupe of titled tossers who were too busy turning their logos to the cameras to catch a fucking ball; the BBC asks website visitors to ‘pick your England Rugby Union XV’ and we wonder if Judy Dench is available; we’re so accustomed to a two-horse race in the so-called ‘Best League in the World’ that the prospect of Chelsea dropping two points counts as a footballing coup.


So left with snooker – sport’s own screensaver – and darts to choose from, five million people tuned in to watch two fifty year olds toss the arrows in the BDO final, half of them hoping to see a match rivaling the excitement of the PDC’s final where Raymond van Barneveld beat Phil ‘The Power’ Taylor in a tense sudden death round, and half just amused to see fat blokes and mulleted birds taking a pub sport seriously.


And so to the Lakeside where the thousand most annoying people and their kids from everyone’s local are sat at pub tables swilling beer that you suspect is at bargain prices to stimulate the atmosphere and stop ‘Tiny’ McGee from Doncaster from chinning the barman when he expects eight quid for two plastic pints. They wave ready made signs saying things like ‘SHEILA + WILF AT THE DOG, PUTNEY’, the obligatory ‘180’ pre-printed cards having been handed out and customized with ‘TEZ YOUR A NOB’ and ‘SHIRLEY – MARRY ME?’.


Entrance music, costumes and nicknames are of course de rigeur in darts these days. Like puffed up American wrestlers they wait at the arena entrance, dry ice billowing and some poorly chosen entrance music playing in the background. Anastasia Dobromyslova of Russia inexplicably chose Evenescence’s ‘Bring Me To Life’ which as far as I know has little or nothing to with darts. Andre Brantjes chooses the rather somber ‘Everybody Wants To Rule The World’ by Tears For Fears, and Tony West says ‘Let Me Be Your Fantasy’ with the help of Baby D.

The players in the BDO look pleasingly uncomfortable with the foofarah of their entrances to the hall. In the semi-final between Martin ‘Wolfie’ Adams and Ted ‘The Count’ Hankey, the organizers had a field day, scattering plastic bats and toy wolves everywhere and turning the smoke machines up to full. “It’s the Wolfman versus The Count” announced commentator Tony Green, in case some of us didn’t get it. And there’s Martin Adams, entering to the strains of ‘Hungry Like The Wolf’ and giving the obligatory howl. Hankey wore a full length black cape and tossed more plastic bats into the crowd. Both men had big smiles and winked at the crowd constantly, like they were desperate to make out that this was just a bit of fun.


Both semi-finals were superb, England captain Martin Adams beat arrogant bastard Mervyn King who has in the past blamed air-conditioning and the length of the oche for lack of form. King had earlier threatened to walk out of the competition if rumours of him joining the Professional Darts Association persisted. In a brilliant TV interview he looked set to knock Ray Stubbs spark out for pressing the issue but unfortunately anger management seemed to triumph.


Phil Nixon had entered the tournament for the first time, and as a rank outsider at 150-1. He played eleventh seed, Dutchman Niels de Ruiter and went 5 sets up only to see de Ruieter come back to make it 5-4. On finally winning 6-4, the oldest player in the tournament entered the final as outsider again, looking slightly less glamorous than ‘Wolfie’ Adams, with the half-hearted nickname ‘Nixy’, and looking like a greying Roy Cropper.


For all the sound and fury of the build up, it looked as if this would be the quickest final in recent years. Adams powered ahead, accurate, confident and focused, annihilating Nixon who looked like he was throwing chocolate logs into concrete. Going out for the break in the first to seven sets match, Adams was 6-0 up. In the players’ lounge, Bobby George, whose bling would make King Midas shield his eyes, wears what looks like a mayoral chain as Ray Stubbs begs him to confirm that the Beeb have got a real routing on their hands. “Nixy must be gatted.” Says Bobby.


Back on the oche and Tony Green is all but packing up his butties when out of nowhere Nixon pulled eight consecutive winning legs out of the bag – tossing in 180s like he was at a practice session and leaving ‘Wolfie’ Adams to howl in disbelief. On and on he went, Adams starting to miss the doubles that he’d landed without a problem only minutes before, and Nixon banging them in with pinpoint accuracy. From 6-0 and the prospect of an early night, came 6-6 and the players tied at 2 legs each. Martin Adams had been one dart away from victory eight times in the first half of the final, now his arm looked like lead, and Phil Nixon, the 150-1 shot had him by the balls.


Through all this, the crowd are going mental for every underdog dart that leaves Nixon’s hand. The cameras meanwhile, are bouncing between the action and the two players’ wives, sitting in the balcony. Sharon Adams wears ‘Bet Lynch’ by Matalan, a beautiful silver leopard print blouse with added ruffles. Much was made of the fact that a BBC make-up girl gave her a good going over before curtain up. She looks heartwarmingly attractive – even Tony remarks on how ‘well’ she looks. Suzanne Nixon has been given no such attention but sits with half a lager in her hand, clearly seen as intoning ‘Shitting hell!’ when Nixy misses an important double.


Tony Green refers constantly to the two women; “Sharon Adams has left the hall, she can’t take it any more!” he said as Nixon finally leveled to 6-6. “Suzanne Nixon’s standing up – she’s not going anywhere!”. This was about as far from the misguided idolatry of the World Cup WAGS of last year as you could get. It was justified recognition for women who haven’t been in receipt of BMWs or lucrative advertising contracts, but have lost their houses, like Sharon Adams did when Wolfie’s first foray into professionalism went awry, or acted as the main breadwinner like Suzanne Nixon whilst Phil tried for twenty years to get to the BDO finals. The financial rewards now that those dreams have come true are paltry by today’s sporting standards. In the same week as David Beckham gets $1million a week for his semi-retirement, two darts players get 70 and 30 grand respectively for being World Champion, and Championship runner up. The same day as the final a woman opened some random boxes on Deal Or No Deal and beat the championship earnings of Phil Nixon by two thousand quid.



“They’re playing for the world’s greatest title” says Tony Green. In a world where Mourinho blames lack of money for Chelsea’s misfortune, and not even the landed gentry can keep the colonists down at cricket, it’s difficult to disagree.