Sweet young thing ain't sweet no more

Avenues and Alleyways is precisely one year old today!



Hurrah.

Of course, London's a very big place

... a man could lose himself in London.


Enjoyed my brief trip to London last week. I don't often get the chance to have a wander around, so it was nice to make the most of the opportunity. I promised my daughters I'd take some pictures for them, so I did.


I felt a bit touristy snapping away, but I couldn't give a shit. I like this photo of Big Ben I took. It looks almost professional if I say so myself.


I went for a nice walk along Victoria towards Westminster, over to the South Bank, up to Trafalgar Square, onto Picadilly and back to Victoria to have a couple of much-needed pints in the Duke of York.


Spotted Cleo Rocos walking along Picadilly. What are the chances?

I wouldn't normally do this kind of thing

I'm really not that interested in football; the World Cup is the only competition I'd purposefully watch, but all the same...


...good luck to Dunfermline in today's Tennent's Scottish Cup Final!



C'mon the Pars!!!

Reversing the polarity of the neutron flow

The title of this post has absolutely sod all to do with the content, but I've been looking for an excuse to use this Jon Pertwee-era "Doctor Who" line for ages, so there you go.

I'm away this afternoon for a two-and-a-bit day working trip. Tonight and most of tomorrow will be spent in Northampton and then Monday night and Tuesday I'll be in London.

Quite aside from the fact that I'll miss my wife and kids so much I can't bear, I'm not sure I'm looking forward to Northampton too much. By sticking "Northampton" into Google's image search, the main town seems to be quite nice with lots of fine looking buildings and recreational areas, but I will be staying a fair distance from the town/city centre in an hotel sandwiched between the M1 and a rather "lovely" industrial park. I do hope it's more glamorous than the image I've got in my mind. I'm thinking "I'm Alan Partridge"; 182 days in a Linton Travel Tavern where there's nothing to do and nowhere to go, hemmed in with very dull, but important businessmen. Please say it ain't so. I just hope there's a Geordie madman like Michael working behind the bar.

No doubt, there'll be a lot of dreary, executive pampering going on, but I'll be making sure I'm well away from it. I've got my copy Vic Reeves' "Me:Moir" to be getting on with and a Creative Zen chock full enough music to keep me entertained throughout the "ordeal".

Can't wait to get to London on Monday night. I'll be on my todd and have a bit of time on my hands in the evening, so it's a toss up between visiting the Saint Etienne-endorsed landmarks of Camden Town, a trip out to Old Ford Lock to get a look at the former Big Breakfast house (yeah, I am that sad, but I really loved that show and I miss it every day), or perhaps a walk along the Thames (north side or south side? Ooh, decisions, decisions!).

Be seeing you...

I was lookin' back to see if you were lookin' back at me to see me lookin' back at you

Too Young To Die - 1990-1995

I have written before about how I spent the latter part of the 1980s following bands such as The Mission, The Sisters of Mercy, The Cult, The Cure and All About Eve and how by the end of 1989, I was starting to broaden my horizons a little. Therefore, I thought I'd begin to chronicle "what happened next".

You can't wrap your arms around a memory
When 1989 turned into 1990, I was still just a fresh-faced (if not quite so innocent) eighteen year old. For me, 1990 began with the eagerly-awaited (by me) early-January release of The Mission's "Butterfly On A Wheel". It was a track I had first heard played live when they brought their "Highlands and Islands" tour to the Glen Pavilion, Pittencrief Park in Dunfermline (not exactly in the Highlands, or on an island, but I was rather chuffed all the same) in August the previous year. It was (and still is) a lovely track and, naturally, I bought the 7", 12", 10" box and CD box to get all the mixes and b-sides - Mercury Records were utter bastards like that; they knew dumplings like me would fork out for all formats just to get everything. The single's parent album, "Carved In Sand" followed soon after with subsequent singles, "Deliverance" and "Into The Blue" each enjoying their own (mind-bogglingly) multi-format releases. I went to see them on a further two occasions in 1990 by which time the band's main "rock god", Simon Hinkler, had departed. My interest in them had wained significantly by the end of the year.

Sub Pop Rock City
My interest in the Seattle "scene" continued into the 1990s. My favourite of these bands was Mudhoney. They didn't release much in 1990; their outstanding third album, "Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge" was released in the Summer of 1991. My mates and I went to Glasgow's Queen Margaret Union to see them at this time, supported by Courtney Love's Hole (in every sense). Mudhoney were fucking great; Hole were just *okay*.

It goes without saying that 1991 represented the high water mark of (what was annoyingly dubbed) Grunge. Nirvana's fantastic "Nevermind" and its first single, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" were the breakthrough releases, launching the scene worldwide and opening the floodgates for all types of dirge. Soundgarden never really "did it" for me, but their 1992 single, "Jesus Christ Pose", is just breathtaking - it stopped me in my tracks.

We're gonna get deep down
An especially good mate I met at college, introduced me to the joys of Stone Roses and Happy Mondays. Their rock/pop/dance crossovers had really opened my eyes and ears - the whole thing just sounded so exciting and fresh. Pretty soon, another band would be joining them in the forefront.

One Sunday evening in early 1990, I was listening to Annie Nightingale on Radio 1. She played this amazing, largely instrumental track. It featured a catchy clickety-click percussion sound, slide guitars, brass and deep, deep bass. It immediately caught my attention; I remember thinking "I fucking know this song", but I couldn't quite place it. It certainly sounded a lot like the Stones' "Sympathy For The Devil", but it wasn't a cover version. Eventually it clicked - it was some kind of remix of "I'm Losing More Than I'll Ever Have" from Primal Scream's eponymously named second album. Of course, it was "Loaded" - a track which still sounds as vital today as it did seventeen years ago. Andrew Weatherall's reinterpretation "I'm Losing More..." meant that Primal Scream had finally hit their stride with a tune that was as catchy as crabs and captured the moment perfectly.

The follow-up releases, "Come Together" (choose the Farley version, not the Weatherall one), "Higher Than The Sun", "Don't Fight It, Feel It" and "Moving On Up" consolidated this success and, combined with 1991's "Screamadelica" double album, showcased the Scream's eclectic taste and their willingness to combine lots of different styles.

On the escalator we shit paracetamol
As 1991 wore on and 1992 dawned, I had grown very weary of guitar-based music, particularly the type produced by the tiresome "dog-on-a-string" bands such as Mega City Four and Ned's Atomic Dustbin. The ones I hated most from this era were The Levellers - don't get me started on them. After the initially exciting sounds of Ride's "Chelsea Girl", "Drive Blind" and "Like A Daydream", the UK's "shoegazing" scene had sent me (and indeed, itself) into an effects-laden slumber. Shite like Slowdive epitomised this lazy scene and were the final straw for me. I wanted proper tunes again. As luck would have it, some of the bands producing music at the time felt the same.

Saint Etienne's first three singles ("Only Love Can Break Your Heart", "Kiss And Make Up" and the perfect "Nothing Can Stop Us") had caught my attention during 1990 and 1991. Their first album, "Foxbase Alpha" was just so different from a lot of the drek which was around at the time and was unashamedly tune-laden. Hit singles, "Join Our Club" and "Avenue" followed in 1992 and Saint Etienne have remained my favourite band ever since. I am a bit of an Etienne completist and ever since I started this blog (almost a year ago), I've wanted to write a piece on them, but I don't think I could ever find the right words to do them justice. Quite simply, they are divine and are still going strong. Their 2005 album, "Tales From Turnpike House" is beautiful, but I must grudgingly admit that I'm starting to get a bit long in the tooth to appreciate their current preference for filmaking and soundtrack-recording - please guys, I really love you, but any chance of a "proper" album anytime soon?

Other late 1991 treasures include Teenage Fanclub's "Bandwagonesque" and The World Of Twist's "Quality Street".

I always felt Teenage Fanclub's early releases and the album "A Catholic Education" sounded quite shabby. "God Knows It's True", their between-album single was a step in the right direction. By the time the boys found themselves at "Bandwagonesque", they had learned how to stay in tune and even added a touch of Glam Rock to their sound (see "What You Do To Me" especially).

The World Of Twist had released a couple of cracking singles in the early '90s ("The Storm" and "Sons Of The Stage"). "Quality Street" capitalised on this early recognition the band enjoyed, but in spite of the attention, they soon joined Intastella and Denim into the "Whatever happened to..." category.

Massive Attack's "Blue Lines" (featuring the singles "Daydreaming", "Safe From Harm" and the show-stopping "Unfinished Sympathy") was a rich delicacy and is truly too divine for words (so I'll leave it at that). As with Saint Etienne, Massive Attack remain one of my favourite acts to this day. Their other albums from the '90s, "Protection" (1994) and "Mezzanine" (1998), differ significantly from "Blue Lines", but are every bit as wonderful. "Dissolved Girl" from "Mezzanine" is a brooding powerhouse which spills over into a thunderous guitar overload and is easily my favourite Massive Attack track.

In 1992, the music press had seized upon their "next big thing" - Suede. In spite of my growing dislike for guitar-based music, Suede's first three singles, "The Drowners", "Metal Mickey" and "Animal Nitrate" were outstanding. Brett Anderson might have stood on stage, slapping his arse with the microphone, but I'd rather have had that than four disinterested blokes, staring morosely at their shoes from behind their regulation fringe-over-the-eyes hairdos. Guitarist, Bernard Butler (not to be confused with Gorden Kaye's "Coronation Street" character from the early '70s!) preferred to actually play tunes rather than make loads of distorted, wishy-washy "soundscapes". For me, the last great Suede single was "New Generation", released in 1995 - after that (and the departure of Butler), they just seemed to want to release identikit songs, usually featuring the word "gasoline" somewhere in the lyrics.

Now you're talkin' like you made a change
By mid-1992, I was far more comfortable with allowing myself to actually enjoy proper pop music; I could stand up and not feel embarrassed, when talking to the serious Indie-kids about the kind of stuff I'd begun to like, nor even give a flying shit if they didn't like it. There are two examples from Summer 1992 which typify my newly-rediscovered love of this type of music - stuff in the charts which featured that all-important killer tune!

The first is En Vogue's "My Lovin' (You're Never Gonna Get It)" : OH. FUCKING. YES! What an amazing track; proper tune, proper singing. and absolute shitloads of attitude.
The other is Maria McKee's collaboration with Youth, "Sweetest Child" : forget the overwrought histrionics of "Show Me Heaven", this was a soaring tune-and-a-half. Never heard of her again after that.

Through this new frame of mind, a thousand flowers could bloom
In late 1994, I bought Portishead's "Dummy". Again, this is another one of those defining moments. Portishead filled their tear-stained torch songs with creative sampling, booming basslines and Beth Gibbons' VOICE. Their 1997 follow-up "Portishead" continued the theme, but is it really ten fucking years since they released a studio album? Jeez. I'm a patient man, but come on for fuck's sake.


I think I'm going to shut up (for now), but please feel free to look at just a few of my favourite tunes from this era, 1990-1995...

Aphex Twin : Helioshpan [neat video made by a fan]
Blur : To The End
Edwyn Collins : A Girl Like You
En Vogue : My Lovin'
Hardfloor : Acperience I
Kylie Minogue : Confide In Me
Massive Attack : Unfinished Sympathy
Pet Shop Boys : Go West
Portishead : To Kill A Dead Man
Primal Scream : Come Together
Prodigy : No Good (Start The Dance)
Pulp : Disco 2000
Radiohead : Creep ["you're so VERY special" - hmmm... tame]
Ride : Like A Daydream[will forgive the shoegazing because the tune's so fucking good]
Saint Etienne : Nothing Can Stop Us
Saint Etienne : Pale Movie
Smashing Pumpkins : Disarm
Soundgarden : Jesus Christ Pose
Suede : Animal Nitrate
Supergrass : Alright
Teenage Fanclub : What You Do To Me
Tricky : Overcome
World Of Twist : The Storm

For some people... isolation can, in itself, become a problem

In December 1980, my Dad and I were stopped in Dunfermline by an American lady at the bus-station-before-last (long story about shit town planning in Dunfermline) in Carnegie Drive.

"Oh. My. God!" she exclaimed as she looked straight towards the nine year old me. "Can I have your autograph, please?".

We both looked at her a little perplexed. Sensing we weren't quite sure what she was getting at, she asked, "Aren't you the kid from 'The Shining'?".

Er... no.

Oh, how we laughed.

[Post Script : The right-hand picture, is me in my first school photie - it is 1976 and I am aged five. My two front baby teeth had recently fallen out and my Mum had told me to smile, but not to show my gums - hence the slightly pained expression. Four years later when I was mistaken for the boy out of "The Shining", I had pretty much grown into my hair!]

Breathe... keep breathing!

Don't lose you nerve.

There's nothing quite like a kip on the couch in the middle of the afternoon. After a week's hard graft, it's great to be able to flake out and snore your head off on the settee whilst the "Coronation Street" omnibus on ITV2 drifts in and out of your dream. On occasion, upon waking from such a heavy slumber, I might experience one of two types of weird sensations.

The first is a commonly recognised phenomenon known as sleep paralysis. To put it quite simply, the mind is awake, but the body is still asleep. This means that it is possible to open my eyes and know I am lying on the couch, to be aware of the TV and so on, but I cannot move. What is really bizarre about it is that it only ever seems to happen when there's nobody else in the house and yet, I get this overwhelming feeling that there is some kind of presence in the room. Sometimes there is a feeling that someone is sitting on, or pushing down, on my chest as my heart pounds. Either way, it can feel absolutely terrifying; there is a very real sense of overwhelming dread and fear, that I am dying and my blood is turning cold and a very, very dark and chilling air is descending upon the room. Attempts to save myself from this impending doom are thwarted by the fact that I cannot call out as my mouth won't move. The thing is, I suppose I've kind of got used to it, so when it happens, I've come to recognise it for what it is and can often force myself back to sleep to allow my body time to wake up, but it's still a very chilling experience.

The second strange feeling is a kind of confusion I sometimes get as I drift back into real life. It's as though I've fallen asleep in 1982 and woken up in 2007 with a wife, two kids, a house and a career and it takes me a couple of minutes to remember that I really am this age and I find myself thinking, "How the hell did I get here?". Just to be absolutely crystal clear, I'm not sitting there wishing it wasn't so - I'm very happy with the way things are and the life I have - it's just a trick of the mind, but it's such a strange feeling and for a moment or two it really does feel like the last time I checked, I was 11 years old. Maybe I'm some kind of reverse Sam Tyler - I haven't had an accident and I've gone forward in time.

Whilst we're focusing on this weird, sleepy subject, I get some strange recurring dreams too...

One I've had since a very early age has to do with crossing the Forth Road Bridge. When I was really wee, I always thought that you had to go all the way up and down the suspension cables to get to the other side (I thought trains had to travel up and down the cantilever construction of the Forth [Railway] Bridge, so I'm sure you can imagine my confusion at London's Tower Bridge at the start of any Thames TV programme - and don't even get me started on the bizarre way the buildings apparently rose out of the water!!!). My dreams still regularly feature me having to travel across the River Forth by shinning my way up and down the cables of this bridge.

Another recurring dream is one I've had throughout my adult life - I keep dreaming my teeth fall out. I've never had any teeth out because they were rotten (although I'm sure regular visitors to this blog will remember my experiences at New Year when I had four wisdom teeth out - see here, here, here and here) and I've only ever had one filling in my life. Maybe it represents some other kind of anxiety. Who fucking knows?

Phew, all this blogging is making me feel a bit tired. Off for a kip, I think.

And you walk along with your Ding-Ding-Dong

"Well...", as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart once exclaimed, "Here we go again!".

The 1000th Eurovision Song Contest takes place tonight - will you be flying the flag? I have to say, that bloody Scooch song has managed to get its claws into me and it won't let go. I hated it at first, but its just the catchiest wee bastard I've heard in a long time.

It always surprises me how, in recent years, the winners of "A Song For Europe" (or "Making Your Mind Up" as it now appears to be called) have tended to be the lesser-known names. Scooch had reformed especially for Eurovision (they split up years ago, frustrated that the nation's music-buying kids decided that there was only really room for one Steps-style act - and that, funnily enough, was Steps) and they managed beat off "stiff" competition from the likes of Justin Hawkins, ex-Atomic Kitten Liz McClarnon, Big Brovaz and er... Brian Harvey. Okay, perhaps not necessarily the cream of UK talent, but certainly established acts with their own fan bases who (I'd have thought) would have been voting in their droves for their heroes. The same thing happened last year when Daz Sampson's "Teenage Life" (sounding strangely similar to The Black Eyed Peas' "Where Is The Love?") triumphed over Kym Marsh/Ryder and Antony Costa in the UK heats. Of course, it flopped when it went on to the song contest itself, but Daz should console himself with the fact that it still receives frequent airplay in Gran Canaria (when we were there a few weeks ago, if we heard it once, we heard it a million times).

It goes without saying, Scooch's "Flying The Flag", its cabin crew theme, costumes, dancing and paddle-waving is every bit as camp as the occasion demands - and let's face it, we wouldn't want it any other way. That's just the way the Eurovision Song Contest is. In spite of the fact that the show seems to take over an entire evening on BBC1 (and I'm not too happy that "Doctor Who" has been bumped as a result), it is something I find unmissable. I enjoy slagging off the acts; I love it when they sing out of tune (haha - Gemini!); I love the biased voting (so there's no real hope for Scooch, then); and, as with many folk, I love Terry Wogan's inspired commentary which seems to become more sardonic and sarcastic with every passing year.

Go on, Terry - do us proud! Just keep that idiotic Fearne Cotton away from proceedings and I'll be a happy man tonight.

Oh aye, and good luck to Scooch too.

Nice and tight...

...especially round the arse.

After the Slade/Vic and Bob post, I nipped on over to YouTube and wiled away a couple of hours watching some classic sketches. I am being unashamedly lazy tonight and have decided to embed not one, but two, YouTube clips from "Shooting Stars".

I remember finding these absolutely hilarious at the time, but had somehow, in the intervening years, managed to forget about them completely. I love re-discovering stuff like this and now I just can't stop playing them.

The first clip is "Geordie Jeans" and is from around about 1997. I recall a Geordie girl I worked with at the time telling me there really was a Geordie Jeans shop in Newcastle! Sadly, as this article reveals, it looks like they went out of business a few years back.


The second clip is "Geordie Jumpers" from the revived series in the early 2000s. Bob Mortimer and Matt Lucas look totally manic in this one.