Radon Brainstorm

Dodgem Logic 8

2011-04-01T05:01:00.000-07:00

The inkwell has inevitably dried up somewhat as energies are pooled into Plasm, and four months without posting here seems like forever. The new issue of Alan Moore's Dodgem Logic has belatedly appeared however, replete with a contribution from Simon Munnery no less, though it will sadly be the last in the conventional glossy manifestation that had looked to be serving it so well. My self-illustrated article on hauntology, Giving Up The Ghost, comes after a similar hiatus, having been written and filed back in mid-December.

As a postscript to the piece (which is a response to Reynolds' Society of the Spectral), I should acknowledge that my standpoint on popular music does admittedly come across as rather out of time in places, referring seemingly as it does to a wish for the kind of shocking, epochal Bowie & Ronson/Boy George/Roses & Mondays-style TOTP era-defining moments (timely, in light of all this BBC4 archive-rogering) that I'm just about old enough to remember but no teenager would recognise. I am however just young enough - just livid enough - to feel a touch cheated by haunted audio, as wildly unsuitable a backdrop to events unfurling upon this foetid isle at present - or indeed to my current personal woes - as it is possible to imagine.

Now I'm wouldn't be dumb enough to pretend that the cultural minutiae (which has become formulae) celebrated by the Found Objects crowd, the trivia of a wider hauntology, means nothing to me. Certainly not when all the evidence - especially on this blog - suggests otherwise. That's not the point; I'm approaching my mid-30s and I can - and do - revel superficially in the past from time to time. I love 1981.

My gripe stems from a bemusement at how the straight replication and revisionism of much of haunted audio has advanced apparently unchallenged for so long now. In what way does such dilution, such an unstinting reverence for the past, suffice as an artform? Will it really do? Trunk repackages the past, Ghost Box copy it. Mordant and VHS Head take *exactly* the same points of reference and create. See the difference?

There's also something about the ceaseless repetition of themes and the sheer visibility of all that pulp detritus on Found Objects - the musty paperbacks, the timecoded clips - that just seems to be so utterly ruinous. The romance of discovery, of physical artefacts, of those nebulous, uncanny moments - all somehow devalued by their interminable 'dumping' online. I'm aware of how po-faced that sounds, and I know I've strayed into this territory myself before on many occasions, but it's the extent of the uploading that bothers me; it's actually put me off.

Reynolds can't be blamed simply for lauding the hauntological trend in the first place, but perhaps the drift into middle age has blunted the guile of those taking part. It's impossible for the virtual world meanwhile to adequately accommodate the wider scene's multi-sensory wail. The enterprise has mostly failed.

Dodgem Logic 8 is available from all the unusual outlets. Here's hoping it doesn't suffer a similar fate long term.

Plasm

2010-12-03T14:29:00.000-08:00

A brief gobbet to explain the slightly deco 'P' atop the sidebar.

Plasm is the new home for the drawn musings which have been steadily occupying time over the autumn. A small range of 'Screen Stars' prints will be available online through Etsy and the like very soon, though should you find yourself in Northampton's market square this Sunday (5th December), hold your nerve, and navigate the cobbled rink to my stall and see/buy/argue in person.

The new blog will operate in a bipolar fashion with Radon, which will maintain an ambient pace in logging any written developments.

Why not make it a special Christmas for the unhinged cinema-goer in your life with a pencil rendering of Roger Moore in The Man Who Haunted Himself?

There's a Smelling in Borehamwood

2010-11-25T04:08:00.000-08:00

Me on Len for Sight & Sound. Rossiter's insistence on standards would have made him the perfect man to have on your team in times if austerity, yet oddly his perfectionism also seemed to mark him out as something of an individual. The article coincides with what might constitute a flurry of Rossiter-related releases, namely two particular artefacts.

A quality that is shared by another of my favourite actors, the potatoey everyman Gene Hackman, is that singular adroitness - or knack - of delivering a good personal turn in an otherwise dire production (we should make exceptions here for Gene's Polish accent in A Bridge Too Far), and it's this consistency of performance that should be remembered when viewing Tripper's Day, out now on DVD for the first time. Rossiter is ok in what was his final sitcom bow (he died midway through transmission of the Thames series), but the show itself is pretty atrocious. I'd say it's aged badly, but no-one really appeared to like it the first time round in truth. The second such cultural despatch is the first ever (hard to believe really) biography of the man, Character Driven - The Untold Story of a Comic Genius by Guy Adams, published by Aurum Press. No idea if it's any good, but at least someone else (in addition it should be said to the admins of this fondly dedicated fansite) is attempting to ensure his legacy is so justly revered.

The eponymous Norman Tripper's appropriately fastidious moustache meanwhile seemed like a good excuse for a drawing. I'm also available for commissions for portraits of alive, non-moustache wearing subjects by the way. Thanks.

Dodgem Logic 6

2010-10-24T11:51:00.000-07:00

Yet more 'local' scribe work finds its way onto the printed page as winter's talons hover prematurely into view, courtesy of the new issue of Alan Moore's Dodgem Logic, out now. My piece is a tangled spool mess entitled (not a little pretentiously) The Magnetic Axiom, and looks at analogue film recording, archiving, and (briefly) home video hardware. A real pleasure this time to be featured alongside Iain Sinclair and Stewart Lee.

There's plenty of scope for a follow-up of sorts to this, but creative spasms of an altogether more hands-on nature are presently occupying a surfeit of time enforced by my adjudged irrelevance in the workplace. Or redundancy, depending on your appetite for language. Stay tuned.

Steady Hands, Shakin' Stevens

2010-09-27T03:11:00.000-07:00

In the end the colour never came, and only Coburn appeared at the Sanctuary show. Still, I feel I'm just about getting to grips with the 'tooth' of gesso on board, even if it does blunt the graphite rather quickly.

The profile Coburn/Elliot didn't make it to the gallery wall, and as such is an 'online exclusive'. You lucky people. The cigar-lighting one did, but I liked it enough to post here. And I'm glad I snapped the Rossiter/Perrin triplicate drawing when I did, as shortly afterwards I royally fucked it up with some sanguine pencils. Anyway, more of these to come.

On a similarly leaden tip, the acute monochrome skills of KAW have been blazing a scrawled trail across this fetid province for some time - check her here. I've also been alerted recently to the exquisite (and, assuming a suitable stipendiary agreement can be reached, 'Mark Weaver-trouncing') space-age graphic might of Nat Nicklin - www.natnicklin.co.uk - and the complete and utter genius of Arthur Ranson's website.

Ranson's astonishingly detailed inky oeuvre straddled both Look-in and 2000AD during the 1980s, and as such was a big draw (apologies) for both my brother and I as kids. There can't be too many artists who have successfully bridged the divide between that still very pre-pop feel of early '70s UK comic strips and the full-blown apocalyptical sci-fi of the modern graphic novel. Perhaps there isn't much of a divide at all, I'm not sure. I suppose what I'm getting at is the stark difference in tone between strip artwork for Doctor On The Go and Anderson: Psi Division.

IPC Magazines eventually got rid of their archive of Look-in artwork without even telling one of their finest and longest serving practitioners, a move of staggering idiocy and disrespect which left Ranson understandably irked. Somehow five years ago his original rendering of a 1981 Shakin' Stevens front cover fell into my possession, so I thought I'd better ask if he wanted it back. He doesn't. Can't think why. Still, he seems like a proper gent, and I'd recommend setting aside some time to properly enjoy his self-manned site, if only for Sapphire & Steel.

Faces by Plasm

2010-08-14T11:44:00.000-07:00

A brief scrawled preview ahead of a collaborative exhibition at the Sanctuary gallery, Northampton, as part of the county's Open Studios month. Not a great deal of colour here I know, but it'll come.

The above is a plotting graphite James Coburn in The Internecine Project. Mine will be a generally pop-based contribution, but not solely based on dead film stars. That's the plan anyway.

The show runs from the 6th to 17th September and includes work by Linzi Bright, Gill Swift and the newly exalted Rebecca Jane Mills.

See how the rural art scene cowers.

Prawn Sandwiches & Cooking Sherry?

2010-07-20T11:14:00.001-07:00

Having provided the weak link in the all-star convoy of World Cup blogging that was Minus The Shooting, writing about football doesn't seem the most appetising proposition at present. The cream of the contributors there could feint & turn their extemporaneous theories on cognitive dissonance, tiki-taka and Freud's shinguards on a sixpence: I was more of a James Milner, straining to deliver a lumbering stepover of a post about England being a bit boring over a period of hours. After a week's involvement I wisely sidled off-screen and back to work.

Sunday's network premiere of The Damned United has however brought back to mind some of the problems I had with the film on first viewing at the cinema. And anyway, its subject did rather transcend the game after all.

The career, character and impact of Brian Clough did of course lay a considerable path for movie-making hyperbole. Yet the inspiration for his eventual celluloid commemoration only contrived to blunder the opportunity, unfilmable as David Peace's novel is. The fleshing of detail on such a brief and inscrutable episode in Clough's life swells the enigma in print, but the weight of contention over his 44 days at Leeds makes for a terminally weakened big screen adaptation, with far too many hypotheticals over deceased key figures (Clough himself, Peter Taylor, Don Revie and Billy Bremner) whose depicted conduct is still in many cases vehemently opposed by surviving relations. With much - but not quite all - of Peace's portrayal of a bleak, boozy & deteriorating Clough omitted from Tom Hooper's film version, the appearance of his staggering Rocky-esque achievements at Forest as a mere footnote only serves to magnify the missed open goal.

Michael Sheen's performance is for the most part excellent, though the tally of over-egged boardroom sneers is a touch unwieldy. Clough's world-beating confidence surely never manifested itself in anything other than that cold, dead-eyed stare, or the schoolboy's joy-in-mischief that surfaced when challenging Muhammad Ali to a fight or gleefully predicting Manny Kaltz's evening at the hands of John Robertson prior to the 1980 European Cup Final ("We've got a little fat guy that will turn him inside out. He'll turn him inside out!"). And whilst this lack of outward emotion undoubtedly betrayed the vulnerabilities that would eventually get the better of him, the almost whimpering petulance on which the entire plot rested - the attribution of Clough's enmity for Revie to the Leeds manager's cold shoulder during an FA Cup tie some six years previously - seems laughable.

There are flourishes, such as the priceless scene where Timothy Spall's squashed Taylor feeds Clough sweets with an almost post-coital affection on the long drive down to sign Dave Mackay to Derby one Sunday lunchtime in '68. Acutely observed too is the smokey, shitty air of late '60s/early '70s football, with its wooden dug-outs and generally beige, dour demeanour. You do have to wonder why the expense was spared so embarrassingly for the Leeds players' hairpieces though.

These dubious thatches do not represent the film's most ridiculous fabrication however, that particular accolade being convincingly earned by the bewilderingly incongruous assimilation of Roy Keane's "prawn sandwiches" jibe towards club directors. This awkwardly lazy co-opting of a quote to events which took place 25 years before it was actually delivered makes little sense: why falsely accredit such a line to Clough, the most quotable individual in the English game? The very idea that Derby's civic and sporting dignitaries were enjoying such exotic fare at a football match in 1974 is scarcely believable anyway.

Peter Morgan's script is sadly peppered with telegraphed dialogue, with the final scene, where Taylor and Clough make up after the Leeds debacle having parted company acrimoniously post-Derby (another factually unsound plot device), ending with a celebratory tipple of cooking sherry. "Well, I wouldn't say no" says Clough of the offer, an uncomfortably offhand acknowledgment of personal trials to come. He certainly deserved a finer toast to his talents on film.

Dodgem Logic 4

2010-06-22T11:21:00.000-07:00

The conclusion of my article - The Planners and the Planned: Sightlines on the Legacy of Modernist Planning and Development in Northampton - features in the brand new issue of Alan Moore's Dodgem Logic, out now. Should you be braced for major blood loss promised by today's swingeing announcements, you may be interested to know that the official site is offering free postage & packing in the UK until the end of June. Once again, a pleasure to be involved.

"I Have A Feeling That Something Is About To Happen....Something Final"

2010-06-15T05:05:00.000-07:00

As a somewhat belated response to the superb Radiophonic-related screen grab smorgasbord on show over at A Sound Awareness, Toys And Techniques and Unmann-Wittering last month, I thought I'd return the favour.

Recovered from a 1989 Central region broadcast Beta recording, this is Symptoms, an eerie 1974 psycho shocker from Spanish director Jose Larraz, more famous for the erotic horror Vampyres. It stars the weirdly glacial, doll-like Angela Pleasence (daughter of Donald), and features plenty of the genre's touchstones - insinuated lesbianism, a crumbling manor house etc. It was entered for the Cannes Film Festival, but its relative failure apparently affected Larraz deeply.

Symptoms remains a real rarity: it's probably never been on TV in the UK since, and you'll have to pay over the odds for an import DVD if you really want to see it. I'd go into greater detail on the film, but the first five minutes is all that's survived on this particular recording. The lovely title sequence however is a hauntologist's wet dream. A decent review plus background can be found here.

On a tangential note, the mental terror of England's participation at the World Cup is one of many points up for dissection at Minus The Shooting, to which I'm delighted to have been invited to contribute in the hallowed company of Zone Styx Travelcard, K-Punk and others.

Army of Collins

2010-05-26T08:37:00.000-07:00

Me on Phil for The Quietus. Incidentally, years ago I was forwarded a mock poster for the imaginary film that gives this post its title. It would've made an excellent accompaniment to the article, but I've not been able to find it. If anyone does unearth a jpeg of it somewhere online, do let me know. I think the basic premise entailed some kind of massive Collins-cloning programme, whose threat to world peace was left to Danny Glover to avert. In the meantime, the above will do as an illustration - it's a scan of the Smash Hits sticker referred to in the piece.

The Strange Case of the Ghosting Footballer

2010-05-11T15:42:00.000-07:00

Following Arsenal's 2-1 defeat away to Blackburn last week, the football press sought once more to revel in the wounded howls of Arsene Wenger, who mourned the lack of protection offered by officials to his goalkeeper, Lukasz Fabianski. The sport yawned as Wenger claimed Sam Allardyce's players "don't even watch the ball" when challenging goalkeepers, and that referee Martin Atkinson's refusal to penalise the tactic in the game was "unfair".

In our cherished variant of the sport, which vaunts the adroit technique of Stoke's Rory Delap - that astonishingly lateral ability to throw the ball a very long way (Morten Gamst Pedersen showed himself as a keen disciple of this approach at Ewood Park) - and accommodates, below a sparse half dozen or so outfits capable of continental competition, several 'professional' tiers of breakneck, overtly corporeal menace, Wenger, is a figure of fun. Repeatedly buffeted and bullied by those more physical exponents of the Premier League's atypical brand beneath the maxim of "there's nothing in the rules that says you can't do it" (a giant, snarling Kevin Davies patrols land north of Totteridge on the map in Wenger's nightmares), he's generally seen as a stroppy old tart with no stomach for a fight. And in this country, that's what we like. A fight.

Few in English football have had quite the same battle of late as another of the domestic game's true artisans, Joe Cole, and his naming this afternoon amongst the provisional 30-man England squad for the World Cup in South Africa implies he may yet win out. An outrageously skilled practitioner who is surely now quite familiar with the mockery of repeated calls for him to prove his worth, his latest such struggle has entailed, at the age of 28, the persuading of his continued existence to his club manager, national coach, and seemingly everyone else on the planet too. For Joe Cole has threatened to disappear completely, and the suggestion of his prevailing throws a lifeline to the prospects of genuine English invention this summer.

Now admittedly, not even Cole's keenest followers can claim that he's in the most sparkling form at present. Having returned to action after a nine month hiatus wrought by the tearing of a cruciate knee ligament, it initially looked like he might seamlessly regain peak playing condition straight away. Various injury setbacks and a rematerialisation as the squarest of pegs in Chelsea boss Carlo Ancelotti's rotation system have since curtailed his progress however. But whilst celebrated imports like Deco and Ballack have had to comply with similar employment within the side's midfield line-up this season, Cole's predicament is as unique as the playing ability which somehow so many appear to overlook.

Football is, of course, a team game, a fact that Cole would have no doubt attempted to console himself with as he was shunted out towards the white line (and not too far over it one would assume) in the 92nd minute of Chelsea's 2-0 triumph at Anfield last week. Yet to what degree Cole is deemed an individual, that is to say, possessor of the kind of exclusive skills that the vast majority of players only dream of, is fast becoming a secondary issue to the specific denigration that he alone has had to endure for both Chelsea and England.

The football manager's hackneyed lexicon offers two particularly pertinent cliches to which Cole would most easily relate. The first - that some players respond to the hairdryer, whilst others need an arm around them - is not an adage that Cole's club or country coaches have properly observed since he left West Ham. There, Harry Redknapp called him "the best 11 year-old footballer I've ever seen in my life" and went on to make him a first team regular with international caps soon following. Glenn Roeder then awarded him the club captaincy, before the marked shortcomings of that Hammers vintage alas saw them ebb out of the top flight. For the modern-day England international the despair of relegation is especially uncommon, but Cole's gloom had not lingered long when Claudio Ranieri plundered him for Stamford Bridge, where, after a stuttering debut season, the balance of the managerial abuse/praise proverb was swiftly reversed.

Which brings us to the second most relevant car coat platitude, and one which, having clearly defined Cole as a player who thrives on the encouragement of his coach, seems most peculiar to defy. That a manager should never publicly criticize his players is something of an unwritten rule and not strict dressing room law - and therefore provides a neat loophole in sporting decency - is a fact clearly not lost on Jose Mourinho. Such sensitivity relies on the relative scruples of the boss at the given time, and as Mourinho generally places his own media image before those of his players, the prospect of Cole's brilliance ever outshining that of "the special one" were always rather less than slim. Frequently compared to Clough he may be, and indeed Mourinho may share a commensurate ego with ol' big head and has inspired each of his teams to practically lay down their lives for him in a fashion redolent of turn of the '80s Forest too. His man-management of Cole however was not remotely as straightforward.

The idea that Mourinho shaped Joe Cole, nurturing and augmenting his talent into the impish diviner that graced the 2006 World Cup, is a frankly muddy claim. He did indeed blossom under the Portuguese, becoming a vital factor in Chelsea's back-to-back title-winning seasons of 2004/05 and 2005/06. But whether it was Mourinho's singular strategic nous or the simple regular inclusion of Cole's name on the teamsheet that was responsible for this upturn in fortunes is not exactly clear. His early evaluation on Cole has tellingly incited a popular brickbat with which to smack the hapless midfielder ever since: having flicked an audacious winner at home to Liverpool in October 2004, Mourinho famously labelled Cole "two-faced". This oblique, elaborately severe reference to defensive shortcomings (Cole was deemed praiseworthy for despatching the goal, but also utterly irresponsible for threatening its protection thereafter) we'll return to shortly.

It should be noted here that oddly enough - and history may eventually ignore this truth - it wasn't actually Mourinho who laid down the baton of inappropriate aspersion, but Sven-Goran Eriksson, a noted admirer and considerably more docile proposition as overseer of the national side. As England prepared for competition at the 2004 European Championships, Eriksson made clear his issue with Cole, in an albeit characteristically less vocal manner.

In a press conference following the warm-up game against Iceland, one hack prompted the Swede with a consensus of opinion that singled out Cole's failure to adhere to direction, to which he "rolled his eyes in assent". As a second-half substitute, his neat combinations with then-club colleague Wayne Bridge down the left culminated in a trademark scissors pass out to the full-back, nimbly performed to the audible delight of the crowd in a move which resulted in Bridge's goal. If the instance of Wayne Bridge finding the net for his country wasn't unbelievable enough, Cole's performance was also paradoxically lambasted in the press: he'd managed to miss a sitter, and according to many was therefore enduring an "England nightmare". Eriksson of course was more muted, though the intended recipient of his apparently implicit command to all ten outfield substitutes on the night was barely disguised: the advice that "you don't have to show me you can beat five men in the wrong part of the pitch" was, in effect, anything but a blanket instruction. The art of dribbling - indeed the most basic self-expression - was evidently not why he ended up surprisingly selecting Cole for the tournament. We'd been led to believe that the strategy here was to shape a squad around two complete teams, with Cole a straight deputy for Paul Scholes, by this time toiling under Eriksson (indeed terminally so at international level - he announced his retirement immediately after the Championships) as the left point of a nonsensical diamond midfield formation. As it turned out, Scholes was replaced in each of England's four games, by Owen Hargreaves twice, then Ledley King and Phil Neville. Cole never got a kick.

So, perhaps in spite of rather than because of both Eriksson and Mourinho's methods, Cole rallied to thrilling effect in ensuing domestic and international campaigns. By the time of the last World Cup in Germany, he'd become a fixture in an England team which seemed for so long to be lacking that balance centre left. Even after Scholes' blunted departure, Eriksson took some considerable cajoling to promote the appointed understudy, with Cole's preferred position a continuing debate. The obvious emergent carp pointed to his keenness to cut inside on his right foot, that he wasn't a natural winger; of course, the asymmetry had nothing to do with the fixated posturing on the opposite flank, whose utterly bulletproof occupant was as much of a winger as he was a modest inconspicuity. Any imbalance here was immovably skewed towards the obsessive definition of stylish football as something which wore a bleached quiff and an affected pouting glare towards the press pack.

Cole's art won out in the end. What should have proved his only significant career obstacle - that of the existence of Rooney, an unimpeachable inhabitant of Cole's more appropriate calling in the withdrawn striker's role - was ably circumvented with a series of impetuously deft displays from the wing. But not only did he prove a standout performer in an admittedly fairly woeful England side (never more conclusively than against the Swedes, where an unyieldingly perfect 35-yard lobbed volley and pinpoint assist would have sealed a comfortable victory were it not for our slumbering rearguard), he also showed himself to be the only Englishman truly cognizant with world football's somewhat less assailing aspects.

It may be as bewildering a truth for the weary England supporter that the game is practically non-contact beyond these lairy isles as it is unthinkable to accept our increased inability to show up to the exposition. International engagement is a truly foreign proposition to a studs-up Rooney, a wrestler Terry or any number of domestic dummies who queue to snap the fibulas of Wenger's wide-eyed young pucks in the name of the tackle. At the 2006 World Cup, the sheer bemusement on the faces of Eriksson's anxious combatants as the wider footballing planet broke its' back in demonstrating the sufficiency of a mere hand on the shoulder (and not all-out onslaught) was sad to behold. And whilst the world game effectively confirmed its' abandonment of the pretense to fair play for the embracing of Maradona's "pickpocketing the English" approach, with each participating nation brazenly indulging the darker arts associated with the ball-playing favela diabolists who would claim the Argentine as their God, only one pride-bursting three lions-emblazoned ambassador acknowledged the trend. Frequently falling foal-like to the turf, Joe Cole was not once cautioned, despite being one of the biggest divers and perceived con-artists in the tournament. He was however also one of the most fouled.

This perhaps unpalatable yet advantageous awareness should have established at last a correct recognition of Cole's playing identity. Global sportswear manufacturers and soft drinks firms generally get it when they recruit for those all-star ad campaigns just prior to the major competitions, the kind that feature Messi or Ronaldinho enacting the most stupendous high-speed Rubik's chicanery with the ball. In the main however, the combination of a search for the highest profile and a true paucity of Anglo tricksters means teams of crack programmers have to grind through the night, fashioning CGI sequences of Steven Gerrard simply trapping a pass, or JT smiling without slipping over. The over-arching aim here however is entertainment, and the effort to find the requisite Brazilian performer is a considerably less arduous task. A somewhat ill-exposed contribution to a Nike campaign in 2006 came when Cole's stock was at its highest, though Jose Mourinho - as, ironically, with all those continental administrators of Cole's variable career thus far - is no particular subscriber to the Joga Bonito philosophy.

An April 2005 Champions League quarter-final second leg thriller in Munich probably stands as Mourinho's favoured memory of Cole, though you'd guess it was not so much for the brace of goals he unerringly laid on that wrapped the tie, but for the feral, ball-winning, slide-tackling labourer that perversely appeared in his image too. This weird apparition, one that fulfilled the manager's express wish that Cole cede to defensive duties, is not one that this most obvious of street footballers has willingly returned to. For Cole, the kind of player equally comfortable juggling a tangerine over a jagged fell as with a thermally bonded size 5 on the most lovingly tended lawns, the instinct is to leave defending to the (at least) half dozen or so lumps behind him more specifically detailed to the task. In a footballing culture blessed with the type of man-for-man capability that might permit a regular interchanging of roles, it would be easier to understand why Cole's repertoire of skills may need upgrading. Yet in England, where tactical rigidity and a still relatively brusque playing style is commonplace, he's not so much cherished like a precious gemstone as maligned, a sideshow anomaly. All individual freedom or assertion discouraged, the principle is not so much total football as totalitarian.

The exasperating policy that attempts to curb such innate rarefied talent is one which Cole has quite mysteriously been dogged by, and it is yet to be seen whether the incumbent England coach will uphold the trend by leaving him at home this summer. Perhaps Fabio Capello might remember how he brilliantly weaved the opening goal of his tenure against the Swiss in February 2008, the face-saving injury time equaliser nudged home in a turgid friendly at home to the Czechs six months later, or indeed the two similarly redemptive finishes that followed swiftly in Andorra, heaving an eventually stress-free qualifying campaign into life. That said, it might pay here to recall how the Italian chose to relay his gratitude to Cole in the latter fixture. Having netted from the bench to the relief of his distinctly anaemic teammates, Capello adhered to tradition by violently castigating the player, this time for dropping too deep in avoidance of the ever-impotent Emile Heskey up front.

Ever toyed with, and routinely admonished just when his ability threatens to bloom, it's no surprise that Cole's race to regain form and fitness ahead of the World Cup in South Africa has been framed with expressions of doubting conviction from those twinned Italianate impediments to playing time. Ancelotti has not felt compelled to hand Cole a sustained run in Chelsea's first team, whilst Capello described him as "not the player I remember" having deigned not to offer the call-up for the Egypt friendly back in March, now possibly to be seen as merely a spur to achievement. An at times accordingly careworn, fading player has attempted to devour those scant opportunities handed out, where he is most often appraised as having tried too hard to impress. How foolish that he should aspire to catching the eye. If he still fails to nail down a place in the 23-man list - to be named by June 1st - the tournament will be England's first without Cole since Euro 2000, where, according to Kevin Keegan, only a broken leg prevented his shock invitation. He has not played himself into the team, but an England squad minus his name and attendant expertise is surely a miserable prospect. Will we once more be resigned to hooking our faith solely upon the rank predictability of tactics and painful inertia in support play that are more recognizable as staples of the national side than unequivocal individual skill, or that feeble delusion of indomitable spirit?

Capello has doubtless realised that he can't cling steadfastly to his professed decree, allowing only those in-form onto the plane; England's strength-in-depth, or lack of, simply hasn't allowed it. Gerrard and Michael Carrick are widely acknowledged to have endured poor club seasons, but both are expected to make the final squad. Those who once haunted Cole with their cries for a genuinely left-footed midfielder to conform to the orthodox wing game, thus replacing the former, have meanwhile fallen strangely silent. We'll therefore rest our hopes on the Liverpool skipper somehow sparing any retractable roofing that the sundry new stadia might have to offer by reigning in his compulsion to thrash the ball high and wide out of every game he plays in. The alternative rests on a chance for the as yet untried Adam Johnson, a potentially vacuous gamble with Walcott's unwittingly lazy vacation of four years ago in mind.

It may be too late for Cole to excavate proof of a hitherto unsubstantiated South American heritage, but a dramatic exit (to an albeit not quite as remote destination) is however on the cards. The newly crowned Premier League champions have given precedent to a burdensome wage bill, which, contrary to popular opinion, is surely more gratuitously immodest than the salary demands attributed to Cole in recent months. A testimony of character suggests that it is a request for relative parity with his colleagues - and not flat greed - which is proving the obstacle to Chelsea's meeting terms, and clearing the way for an anticipated free transfer in the close season. Not that the Stamford Bridge faithful see it that way.

Whatever criticism may be meted out from the man picking the team, Cole has always fallen back on some staunch backing from the stands. Yet the archetypal crowd pleaser is now perceived as avaricious, and, in view of his meagre return last year, downright selfish. His further isolation from once devoted fans only brings us to another riddle, this time of a more intrinsically personal nature.

Some footballers appear to thrive on controversy, on squalid nightclub brawls, boozy philandering or the general qualities of boneheaded insouciant belligerence that have fashioned the modern player's stereotype. You could almost infer a link between the bravado of consequent tabloid attention and the influence of a name on a teamsheet: certainly, Cole's largely exemplary, almost annoyingly professional attitude doesn't look like it's done him too many favours. A practically childlike exuberance and honesty once again mark him out as anything but the everyday Premier League egotist, with a recent acceptance of the pointlessness of trying to "talk yourself into the England squad" suggesting humility is a not wholly obsolescent virtue.

But still Cole, perhaps until today, has had to fend the untrustworthy tag to such a routine that at times you'd have to wonder where the rationale for his comparative rejection stems from. Of course, the luxuriant creative midfielder has forever had to fight - as any tortured artist might - for the truest recognition, especially in England. But if 'Glenda' Hoddle thought he had it hard convincing Greenwood and Robson of his merits in the '80s, he should spare a thought here. If Cole had been Hoddle, he'd have been dropped for the square jaw. And as the one-time boy wonder begins to show the same tell-tale signs of aging as his idol, you'd assume Zinedine Zidane's reputation (or indeed confidence) was not once marred by premature hair loss. The recession of Cole's early crowning as the most gifted player of his generation may yet however be prevented.

Yet Cole is not one to moan. He'll be stoic and conscientious, get his head down and practically bait the ignominy. Maybe the distraction of having to take so much criticism on that chin would be best evaded by adopting Wenger's whine: Arsenal's evangelical boss shouldn't take life so seriously after all, having been taken to the bosom of English football as an ingenious though somewhat amusing curio. Perhaps Cole might not remain on the periphery for much longer.

Surely impossible to like, yet frequently unwanted. Most have no idea what to do with him, some don't even really know precisely who he is. A punchdrunk full-back might be forgiven for letting him out of his sight: but if Joe Cole vanishes completely, who might shoulder the blame?

BBC1 holding slides 1980 - 1984

2010-05-02T04:18:00.000-07:00

Dodgem Logic 3

2010-04-25T13:39:00.000-07:00

Very pleased indeed to have contributed to the above, which is available now from the Dodgem Logic site as well as sundry outlets of varying repute. The piece - The Planners and the Planned: Sightlines on the Legacy of Modernist Planning and Development in Northampton - is actually a three-part deal, with the third and final section to be printed in issue 4, due in June.

Hubbick Allround

2010-02-27T12:51:00.000-08:00

With trefoils the size of tea trays, this is George Warr (left) and Harry Hubbick, kit manager and trainer respectively at Preston North End, scanned from the 2nd May 1981 issue of Shoot!. In relation to Beckham and the football world of 2010, this is indeed from a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, and despite the lack of Stan Smith or Beckenbauer-style endorsements for these fellas (not to mention their conspicuous absence from the promo displays at the flagship Berlin store), adidas Originals they most certainly are.

"iconic Star Wars themed apparel? I've shit 'em".

And Another Thing

2010-01-09T12:15:00.000-08:00

Another visual delight, again courtesy of the new job. This is 'New Towns', a book published by HMSO for the Department of the Environment in 1973 to commemorate the UN seminar on new towns, which the UK hosted. And not only is it a nice book with a lovely cover, but it was donated to the University of Northampton library in 1994 (when it was still Nene College) by a Mrs H. Redfern in memory of her husband, the one and only Gordon Redfern, architect responsible for much of the housing design in Northampton's Eastern District, the original 'overspill' expansion area.

Redfern cut a pretty eccentric figure in his days in Northampton according to press cuttings from the time, sporting as he did a huge Banham-esque beard. It helped him stand out from the rest of the Development Corporation crowd somewhat, and I can't help wondering how the swift rotting of the houses on the Thorplands estate in the mid-1970's might have affected him perhaps a little differently from the rest. Here's an early article of his on planning & Socialism from a 1958 edition of the Universities & Left Review.

"I think the eastern district will be a pretty fine place to live" he said as he announced his departure from the NDC in October 1973. "We have established sympathetic relationships with many people in the town so that while many may not like what we are doing, they accept the honesty of our intentions."

Anyway, Happy New Year.

Smashing things

2009-12-11T14:19:00.000-08:00

So I have a new job, and it's in a creative environment, and it's rather inspiring. It's also afforded me a little more time with which to discover the following design nuggets.

First of all, a truly stunning poster illustration for the 1970's soft-porn Dorian Gray adaptation, courtesy of Andrew Lindstrom's seriously tasty WellMedicated blog. It might be another Arnaldo Putzu piece, though no-one seems to know. More on him to come incidentally.

And secondly, I was fairly familiar with Eduardo Paolozzi from some research for a commission a few years back. I'd only recently become aware of his involvement however with the pivotal 1956 This Is Tomorrow exhibition, which lead me to this staggering print, found on the Grafik site. Beautiful choice of subjects, colours & composition.

Fuck me, this is like food.

Raw Genius

2009-11-14T06:07:00.000-08:00

At long last, an official online repository for the astonishing skills of the late great Peter Elson.

Police Brutalism

2009-11-02T09:09:00.000-08:00

It could be that The Sweeney is the most Brutalist TV programme ever made. Although in actual fact The Professionals - LWT's showbiz ying to the gritty, everyday yang of Thames & Euston Films - concentrated far more in the bomb-gutted, derelict and disused warehouse schtick that the The Sweeney has perhaps become more erroneously linked with, Regan & Carter hit their stride at a key moment in London's post-war overhaul. Alternate episodes are shot in either Victorian terraces and public houses, or amongst the kind of gleaming municipal developments such as those cast in two installments I've seen recently.

As if to perfectly illustrate the hard-hatted transition between decaying, smashed-to-fuck factory and modernist housing regeneration, the series 3 episode 'Down To You, Brother' (original transmission 22/11/76) bases its story around a slimy, somewhat old-school property villain in whose path Regan has previously crossed. The baddie, Raymond Meadows (played by Derek Francis, who also starred as the entirely unrelated Brother Martin, an exasperated monk in Carry On Abroad) attempts to cultivate a bent, bribe-laden relationship with Regan, with the shadowplay's setting occasioning visits to his latest development.

The Alexandra Road estate in NW8 takes this particular role, with Meadows in effect assuming the guise of site foreman to Neave Brown, the American-born architect. This swooping complex of stepped, Mediterranean-esque apartments has a real 'stadia' feel to it, owing to the tiered terracing, a ziggurat tilt redolent of the Brunswick Centre. Meadows hangs around a bit and points, and the production team plainly had limited - though fairly revealing - access to the site, for understandable reasons.

An episode from the previous series, 'Thou Shalt Not Kill' (original transmission 24/11/75), is afforded considerably more location time however for a good old-fashioned bank job. Two lunatic gunmen (one of which is called Monk - what is this monastic theme all about?) hold several staff and customers hostage in a university campus branch of the 'National Mercian Bank', whilst Regan & Carter plus an extended team of flying squad heavies including marksmen perch themselves around and about the network of adjacent buildings, poised to strike back.

Eventually, at the end of what seems like the entirety of a tense, balmy summer's day (during which a hapless George Carter delivers the requested sustenance of "champagne & tinned nosh" to the villains in his pants to prove he's not tooled up), even Haskins wades in for some uncharacteristic field work.

The heist eventually ends and our brace of nutjobs 'get theirs' off site, which in this instance is the grounds of Brunel University in Uxbridge, West London. These sapling-lined environs are exploited to the hilt, and our heroes gambol over the concrete like macaques, presenting via the stark geometry of the campus ample opportunity for dramatic, expansive angled shots. Alas the same site's extraordinary Ludovico Medical Facility is not featured, though it is of course the perfect companion to Thamesmead in A Clockwork Orange.

Everything else was puce & mint green.

"Norfolk & Surrey Estuarial Slurry"

2009-10-07T08:31:00.000-07:00

Now this is what you call hauntology. Back in 2002/2003 Baron Mordant expressed a wish to scatter his squalid East London environs with a spraycan Mordant 'M', and I fashioned the requisite stencil. He duly issued his nozzle, but alas the flimsy card frame didn't last too many repeat brandings owing to the font's linear properties (Cressida Swash Caps, initially taken from an old 1970's transfer where it was called Triline, and familiar to many via the Brown Watson publisher's logo seen on numerous kids tv/film tie-in annuals from the same era). Its deterioration thus led to a cessation of said guerrilla activity.

I'd not seen any evidence of MM's peppered urban ligatures until this summer, when out of nowhere a Mordant fan, one Graham Brown, snapped the following on the Hackney Road near a rehearsal studio called The Premises.

This week seems an apt time to mention it, as it sees the release of the brand new Mordant album, SyMptoMs. It's a curved through-ball of a record, classic MM in its singular gait yet a markedly more song-based departure from previous despatches, with smearings of pixelated folk, Krautrock & lunar synth hums gluing together the Baron's soaring 'Guildford Borough Council Planning Enforcement Team' vocal style.

Another surviving remnant from Mordant's past has continued to surprise and confound of late. This particular ghost being me. MM is still referred to as a duo, despite my having left the fold a full year ago; I've not had anything to do with any of the releases since the MM024 split Shackleton 10", and I'm beginning to wonder exactly how long this comedic misnomer will go on. Not that I'm complaining, in fact I quite enjoy it. The Baron has been expertly and seamlessly steering the ship alone through a glut of mercurial, mesmerising releases, and it's just odd that journalists and retailers alike can't seem to display the same agility by correctly defining who exactly is involved. A little unfair too to the Baron, the nebulous, skewed outfit of occasional Mordant artists (Shackleton, Vindicatrix, Dennis Greenidge among them), and a touch derisory in view of the lovely farewell MM site news page entry written by the Baron on the 9th October last year, which plainly hasn't been read by enough of those in the business.

So, slack yet amusing as it is, hauntology has its first true phantom artist. As the Baron rather chillingly told me last week, "you'll never leave".

Should anyone find an 'M' on their property (or indeed on their person) and is now considering pressing charges having read this, please note that Baron Mordant "doesn't remember doing it". Ok?

Mass Participation

2009-10-03T06:54:00.000-07:00

As anybody who has ever met me will know, I do not take to taking part. I don't get stuck in, and I don't get involved. Therefore, my competing (a word not used strictly correctly) in the Great North Run the other weekend was something of a bizarre experience, lent a febrile edge by the unseasonal heat and chaotic nature of the occasion.

'The world's biggest mass participation running programme' - a blanket subtitle given to the full gamut of Bupa-sponsored 'Great Run' events - offered in this instance a place among some 54,000 numbered & singlet-decked entrants. We squeezed onto the gas chamber Metro into the city, got whipped into a whooping frenzy of a group warm-up at the start, burst the banks of the course throughout with torrents of piss (evidence that medical advice suggesting a mere 250ml of water was all that was needed in the hour before the race was not generally heeded - correct hydration should have kept urine a pale straw colour), and warmed down afterwards by clambering through the crowds for our family & friends and then shuffling for a good hour in the Metro queue home again.

Some 28 minutes passed between the firing of Sting's starting gun - sadly pointing the right way - and yours truly getting to actually start the race, such was the depth of the staggered herds stretched along the A167 central motorway. Scores of runners thusly found the time to jump the barriers and siphon themselves into the embankment before exertions began. The event MC saw us off with a salutatory cheer for each charity as respective fundraising participants sped by in an oblique, ecstatic hollering of myriad debilitation - "Muscular dystrophy!! Cystic fibrosis!! Children with autism!!!" - and we were off. Early upward gazes on a blindingly bright cloudless day afforded views of the Gateshead Trinity Square multi-storey (still standing but unlikely to see another summer) in and out of the spectator-thronged flyovers, before the course wound into sundry council estates.

Here, elderly grandmothers manned enormous soundsystems on parched driveways and mums & daughters weaved neatly among the runners to cross the road to the shops. Scores of volunteers were on hand to dole out the sponsored booster refreshments of Powerade and Aqua Pura in biblical quantities, whilst the good burghers of Jarrow and Hebburn offered the unauthorised repast of sausage rolls and cheese & biscuits via Tupperware. Prone oxygen-masked bodies lined the final strait, surrounded by cheering onlookers and their fanning high-five palms. I knew I could've done better.

So yes, it was surreal, exhausting in more ways than one, and for the most part complete fucking chaos, but I don't know how else a curmudgeonly sod like me would've ever been moved to raise money for charity. For this I have to thank my running partner Kelly, a fiercely motivated athlete who roared home nearly an hour in front of me, and of course my Rebecca Jane, for industrial stacks of Jaffa Cakes and unwavering support (not to mention her own reserves of endurance, in evidence over the 6 hour drive there and back again). A uniquely odd experience all told; I've never done anything quite so virtuous. Therefore, it was certainly worth it, and if you want to add to the JustGiving sum blinking beneath the banner on this page, then you can do so for another few weeks yet. Sincere thanks to all those who have already donated.

We came, we ran, we weed. There is, on the greatrun.org site, a facility which allows you to compare your time with that of any other runner on the day via name search, so it's possible to find out which celebrities beat you. If I ever do it again, my aim will be to beat my own risible time, and that of this woman, my newfound nemesis.

Wheezing For Coins

2009-07-25T11:21:00.000-07:00

Finally, as you can see by that slightly cumbersome little widget to the top-right of this page, I've sorted out my Great North Run '09 sponsorship. By clicking on the 'donate' button you can access my JustGiving page and allocate funds directly to my charity of choice, The Stroke Association.

It was, if you excuse the phrase, a no-brainer to go for The Stroke Association. Late last year, my beloved Nan died after suffering two strokes, the last of my grandparents to go. Her first such episode was seemingly surmounted very successfully with no obvious lasting damage, but by the time the second more debilitating stroke occurred she was sadly too frail to recover. I feel bad about only visiting her the once after the second stroke, but to be honest I was too upset by seeing her on that occasion to want to go again. And anyway, the Nan I knew, to whom I owe the joys of many childhood summer holidays via late night rummy, sherbet lemons, tinned peaches and visits to Kew Gardens had pretty much gone.

The sheer frustration she must have experienced in her final months and the accompanying deterioration in quality of life I can only imagine. If you'd like to aid research into strokes, how they can be prevented and their sufferers rehabilitated, then please give generously. And have you seen that F.A.S.T. (Facial weakness, Arm weakness, Speech problems, Time to call 999) TV ad campaign, with the Sue Johnston voice-over? Pretty hard-hitting, as close to the 1970's PIF style as I've seen for years.

So while it seems a bit flippant to talk of struggle in light of what my Nan withstood in her last months, not to mention her entire lifetime, training has been bloody hard. March was blighted by knee injury, then extraneous work-related strife impeded on motivation, and now it's got really warm. No-one told me it'd get this hard when it got warm.

But after the refreshing camping pod escapade of last week (and after re-assessing my withering drive on seeing a peloton of middle-aged fell runners scaling the Cumbrian crags), training vigour has been stepped up. Clear the way.

Here's to you Nan. You may not want to raise a glass of sweet Budgens sherry in tribute (understandable), but do click on the link.

Pod Life

2009-07-25T10:02:00.000-07:00

After a few wind whipped & rain lashed nights in a tent in the Derbyshire peaks last week, my girlfriend and I shifted our hols onwards and upwards into the Lake District, and a camping pod wedged between the Langdale Pikes. These lovely little Tolkien-esque huts, which resemble a cross between an upturned boat hull and a hollowed tree stump, offer the camper the same rudimentary back-to-nature experience as the tent, only from within a carpeted, insulated, locked & bolted (and safely moored) interior. The tent was fine, but did at times feel a touch like a placcy Tesco bag in comparison with the pod.

I'm sure we could sense the sneers from the weather-beaten real campers inhabiting the rest of the site, but we were still 'roughing it' enough to be woken at 5am by sheep chewing on the tiled outer shell. It was their manor after all. Keep in mind also that pods don't constitute the very top-end of no-frills camping: you can hire yurts which in truth are more like hotel suites - king-sized beds, Cath Kidston furnishings and everything.

Anyway, we had a smashing time, despite the sadly too late arrival of my Carry On Camping tea tray, bought specially for the trip.

Sell Me A Lung

2009-07-19T16:23:00.000-07:00

It's possible to find some superb stuff when thumbing through old '60's/'70's issues of the Architectural Design journal. Fine design & illustration, excellent articles, and loads of period advertising. This however is a little chilling. Wonder just how 'detailed' that information service was.

"Currie Gives Spurs The Shits"

2009-06-21T15:23:00.000-07:00

Do you still get banners like this at Cup Finals? Maybe you do, I've not been taking too much notice. The one in this post's title comes from the 1982 FA Cup showpiece between QPR and Tottenham. I say showpiece, but in truth the game was something of a turkey, and this was the first match of course - after a 1-1 stalemate AET, a Thursday night replay took place which Spurs won thanks to a Glenn Hoddle penalty.

I've just seen the full BBC1 match coverage on an old Maxell Epitaxial 750 Betamax tape, and if the game had been anything like as action-packed as the finals that both preceded and succeeded it (I refer here of course to the replay in '81 and both the Man Utd v Brighton games) and, as with the 1983 decider, finished on 90 minutes, I could've enjoyed an eventually bumped episode of The Pink Panther straight after Grandstand.

And if it hadn't been for the slack Spurs defending that allowed Terry Fenwick to nip in with an equalising header 5 minutes from time, this particular Cup Final would have been decided not only by Hoddle's deflected slip-shot, but by the decidedly meaty Glenn Hoddle tackle (re-read those last five words if you have to) which set the move up. Gary Waddock did well to eventually get up again after said two-footed lunge, and it seems alarming now to note just how many rash challenges went unchecked back then, and were furthermore deemed quite acceptable. Take Fenwick's outrageous studs-up dive in on Garth Crooks earlier on in the match - it wasn't the future Spurs full-back who had his name taken (it would've been a straight red these days), but the hapless Crooks for retaliating.

The man of the match award was more or less impossible to allocate, such was the dullness and ultimately inconclusive outcome to the game. The BBC even held over their viewer's choice until the replay (cut to a trio of telephonists taking votes via headset long after the final whistle, and the rather cumbersome placing of ballot slips into dishes marked with the names of each player). That said, probably QPR 'keeper Peter Hucker laid more claim than anyone else to this particular title, brave and unflappable as he was in the face of increasing Tottenham pressure and a whack in the ribs from Steve Perryman late in normal time. Hucker looked considerably older than his 22 years, no doubt owing to his similarly stoic hair, whose sheer height and volume remained unperturbed at the last in the driving rain.

Incidentally, by '82 supposed footballing laxative Tony Currie was something of a warhorse and spent much of the game staggering across the pitch with various pulls, tweaks and cramps. Surprisingly though the achilles injury which had dogged him in the run up to the big match didn't seem to trouble him, and his only significant contribution (other than serving as something of a talisman to the then second division Rangers) was to divert Hoddle's shot into the net with his thigh on 110 minutes. Sadly for Tone, he was to top this in the replay, when, playing as captain in place of the suspended Glenn Roeder, he gave away the penalty from which Spurs ultimately triumphed.

In the familiar pre-match six-yard box suited & booted player interviews, Currie explained his heel woe to Bob Wilson and considered (somewhat incongruously as it turned out) the similarities between Hoddle and himself. Wilson then talked to the giant centre-back Bob Hazell, before beckoning over a young Clive Allen, a Ranger at the time. In a moving moment, Bob proffers some orange foamy headphones and links the striker up with his father Les, a 1961 Cup hero for Tottenham who's sharing the gantry with David Coleman. A stilted conversation ensues, tailing off into trembling lips and eyes welling over with mighty pride. Close to an entire stand of Allens were in attendance for what turned out to be a disappointing showing for Clive, who limped off early in the second half. Five years later he'd enjoy a coruscating 49 goal season for the lilywhites, but was alas to endure yet more Cup Final heartbreak.

Curious final for kits this as well, with both teams turning out in rare away red/black and yellow strips respectively. They're both fantastic, the Tottenham Le Coq vintage especially.

"Miller Grinds Hazell's Nuts", that was another one.

The Scandal of Britain's New Towns, Built on Cake Board

2009-05-23T16:46:00.000-07:00

Perhaps one of the editorial or design staff at Buttons lived on a particularly dilapidated high-rise and had a dark sense of humour. It's hard to believe that the inclusion of the above suggested activity didn't appear out of at least a little devilment, despite the tone of innocence found throughout the rest of the publication.

Buttons was a weekly comic for very small children which came as an annex to the BBC's 'See-Saw' strand of pre-school programming back in the 1980's, and as such featured cartoon strips of all the fondly remembered shows of the time. Whilst flicking through a pile of '82/'83 issues recovered from my parents' loft in search of some sweet King Rollo & Willo The Wisp action (pleasantly surprised to find considerable coverage given to the original Crow & Alice era of You And Me too), I found this thinly veiled ulterior commentary on post-war housing.

Now it is of course common to hear poorly built council houses described as being 'paper thin', but these innovative designs are recommended to be constructed from cardboard. This is a step up from the houses on the 1970's Thorplands estate in Northampton, which actually were made in part from paper, namely a waterproof 'breathable' sheeting fixed to plywood frames. The foundations however comprised of concrete slabs, not the foil covered cake board suggested here.

Maybe that 'leave to dry' line is something to do with rising damp, though I might just be reading too much into it.

The Deft Rattle

2009-05-04T05:14:00.000-07:00

A photo taken by me appears on page 49 of the latest issue of The Wire. It accompanies a lengthy review by David Stubbs of the forthcoming Mordant Music/Shackleton dubstep compilation Picking O'er The Bones, and in the shot, Baron Mordant can be seen demonstrating how the Japanese apparently continually stretch their muscles in the street.

His hamstring extension came as we emerged from an underpass in Watford on a fairly abortive outing in February. The town was fetid with football as Crystal Palace were visiting Vicarage Road that day, so we schlepped out to Cassiobury Park to talk about masonic corruption and prog rock.

Picking O'er The Bones is due out at the end of this month, and collects together all the MM Shackleton vinyl releases onto one CD album.

Limber up. It's better than Watford.

Futura Display

2009-04-18T14:13:00.000-07:00

In recent weeks a few other bloggers have mused on the Barbican's labyrinthine sci-fi delights, most notably as part of this psychogeographical picture posting and in Charles's affection for the complex's slippered space age highwalks. I can't really compete with these architectural breakdowns, so I won't try, but an Easter Sunday visit to the area brought to light a few design delights in the form of logos & type, and has set me thinking once more about the way that Brutalist buildings in particular have informed the regeneration of urban art.

My girlfriend and I had initially made the Le Corbusier 'Art of Architecture' exhibition the focal point of the day, and although I was more absorbed by this than possibly any gallery show I've attended in years, it was the surroundings that gave me more food for thought. I loved the incredible Philips Pavilion he collaborated on with the composer and architect Iannis Xenakis (who apparently composed according to geometric formulae - I must explore this guy properly) for the Brussels World's Fair, but the 'Le Corbusier in Britain' room was what I was really into. This showcased his influence on the trends in UK building design between the 1950's and 1970's, and naturally led us back outside.

There's not much more pleasing to the eye of the Helvetica fan than the bold-cut letterforms seen on several of the buildings onsite, including the City of London and Guildhall Music & Drama schools respectively. Their 3D appeal was undiminished on the day by a straight 'Barbican' i-dot's dislodging, a suggestion of motion in the otherwise unyielding brick & concrete stasis. Of late the arts centre has perhaps more aptly employed Futura as a blanket venue font in various weights, and a neat guide to its' use can be found here.

A cyclical swarm of serif 'B's can be found around the centre too, a windmill or swastika depending on your cynicism I guess. Better still however is the gold plate maple leaf-cum-crystal emblem of the adjacent conservatory, appearing seemingly out of nowhere and tucked high into the leaden porridge exterior like an inset diamond. Here I'll concur with Charles: there's something very Blake's 7 about this particular hothouse, appointed as it is with hard geometric decks and balconies over which the discord of the contrasting foliage is allowed to spill and envelop. For some reason it reminds me of the BBC's Adventure Game too - was there a set on the programme that looked like this?

After a pint of Special and a cheese & pickle sandwich at the Bunch of Grapes, London Bridge (the charm of the Young's hostelry lives on), we strolled on to the South Bank, where post-war metropolitan architecture feeds the urban language of graffiti most obviously. I've seen the Krylon-caked 'legal' walls around the underpasses and skate parks here many times, but it's only since developing an interest in the style of the buildings above ground that I've really made the connection between Brutalism and the next level of graf shapes.

The part played by high-rise social housing in the evolution of worldwide hip-hop culture is well documented, yet indirect with regards to the visual aesthetic reflected back in the mirror of graf angles & links. The jagged skyline formed by the Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Hayward Gallery and IBM building however is met head-on by the vivid multi-dimensional vistas of spray-can frontiersmen like Daim.

Futura 2000 may have been conspicuous as an artist in his progression from trains to atoms and the street to true abstraction, but when writing is this groundbreaking, graf's interpretation of modernist cityscapes is distended into letters and character shapes seemingly via chaos theory. And crucially, just as the coldness of minimalist design is rejected and embellished upon with colour and complexity, so too are the roots of staid fundamentalist bubble letters truly redeveloped into something more visually representative of the continual interweaving of sonic urban scenes and settings.

A more in-depth study of this relationship can be found here. I'd have loved to have heard how Xenakis would have scored it.

Digest

2009-02-23T15:19:00.000-08:00

A brief summary of recent extra-curricular thread-crossing:

First of all, many thanks indeed for this archive addition to my John Madin piece from Owen Hatherley.

Interesting to note from this that Madin was involved in new town planning back in the day. Owen's palpable fury with the civic fathers of Southampton sounds depressingly similar to the way that many residents of Northampton feel about the town's lurching growth and routine destruction of heritage over the last 40-odd years. A discussion relating to said theme has emerged here, borne of Taylor Parkes' discovery of the Development Corporation's tragically embarrassing foray into the pop world back in 1980. The use of the word 'tragically' is acutely necessary here if you're familiar with the wider story, and the town is ironically conspicuous in its' lack of energy, specifically on the part of the Borough Council.

This particular messageboard thread also morphed into some brief ruminations on new town music, whose burgeoning examination is touched upon via these kind words from Charles at Fantastic Journal.

Finally, the architecture theme pivots home to this lovely interview with Bob Stanley on Tecton, Trellick & PVC windows. And apparently just as distanced from ground-level Britain as Goldfinger this week is Morrissey, who, despite patting himself on the back for being "on the line" as a songwriter for so long, proved just how aloof he is from reality with his careers advice.

Enjoy/Endure

2009-02-17T14:50:00.000-08:00

Like Logan, I've been running since I hit 30. To be more accurate, I've been running on and off for nearly 10 years but only started to take it seriously around the time of my 30th birthday, and fair enough, Logan himself was a 'Sandman' and not a legit runner, but anyway. This week I've learned that my late and fairly speculative ballot entry to this year's Great North Run has been successful, so a 'lifeclock' of a kind - that which counts down the time I have to train myself up to handling a 13.1 mile run by September 20th - has started blinking.

Although still really a beginner, I enjoy running immensely. Inside a year I've progressed from barely managing a mile three times a week to handling 5 miles every weekday fairly comfortably. My energy levels have increased, my immune system has successfully protected me from myriad seasonal bugs & viruses, and most noticeably, my general mood and sense of well-being has benefited dramatically. My motivation meanwhile stems in the first instance from a need to combat a fairly stagnant day job and ward-off the infinite resulting physical debilitations which have variously afflicted my colleagues, and has in recent months been boosted with the help of a running partner, whose name coincidentally rhymes with Logan.

It's common practice for runners to keep training logs, diaries of progress whose contents can act as reference points to aid long-term technique. It had crossed my mind to chart my own advances via a runner's blog, but to be perfectly honest, after some considerable trepidation ahead of this very weblog regarding its' likelihood to actually be read, I'm fairly certain that any such new blog really would be insufferably boring. Something like a cross between a truncated weather report and a brief and incorrectly detailed appraisal of the latest twinge in my left achilles tendon.

That said, I will post anything I deem of relative broad interest relating to my training. Like I said, I've a long long way to go before I'm in the kind of shape required for a decent showing in the event, so it'll be some journey.

Quite plainly, neither am I on the same planet as a wordsmith as Haruki Murakami, the celebrated Japanese fiction writer who has augmented his literary career with regularly impressive race times in marathons all over the world. He recorded his own experiences as a runner in last year's superb What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, which included some fantastically articulated yet unpleasantly daunting tales, from running the original Greek marathon course on his own (for fun) during the height of summer and to the utter bemusement of locals, to his sole adventure in the seemingly terrifying world of the ultramarathon: a quite matter-of-fact account of some 62 miles in one day which involved a changing up of his trainer size at mile 34 due to swelling, and the depth of pain at mile 47, where he describes his muscles as a "seething Revolutionary Tribunal". Murakami is nearly 60 and his heart beats annually.

So whilst I've no real wish to become a fitness bore, I do fully intend to maintain my running as a long-term daily fixture beyond this September. The feeling of freedom and sense of achievement it gives you is immense - no need for gym fees, plenty of fresh air and an acute sense of reinvigoration every time. Murakami says he's never tried to zealously convert non-runners and that just because it may be right for one person doesn't mean that it's right for another, and I largely concur, but it does strike you on your daily run that no-one seems to even walk these days - in actual fact you're more likely to come across more runners than walkers.

But these are early days. I'm no know-it-all, in fact I don't even know if I'm an over or underpronator (please drop me an email on this if you've noticed either way), and I've not really nailed down a decent runner's diet yet. As an acknowledgement of this, and as a sop to all non-runners and non-believers, I include the above jpeg of the renowned American running guru Jim Fixx, who died of a massive heart attack aged just 52. After running.

(by the way, details on fundraising are yet to be established - if you'd like to sponsor me I'll post info on how to do so as soon as this is confirmed)

Madin's Lament

2009-01-19T13:29:00.000-08:00

Birmingham is, for the uninitiated, a fair mecca for lovers of Brutalist architecture. Most of it was designed by one John Madin, a Brum native who came to dominate the city's post-war skyline with his vast concrete conceptions.

A trip into town with a camera today however is lent a plaintive, romantic air, as Madin, now in his eighties, is alive to witness the buildings he designed fall prey to the wrecking ball, one by one. Several of the structures he created between the 1950's & 1970's have both gone up and come down already (including the BBC's Pebble Mill studios), and now his most controversial design, the Central Library, is also set for demolition.

The upturned pyramidal stack or 'ziggurat' has been the subject of both considerable acclaim and scorn since its' completion in 1974, when it was originally intended to form the central focus of a wider complex including a bus station beneath the ground level of the structure, surrounding water gardens and walkways linking other civic buildings. Changes in fashion and taste and the conflict of private investment meant none of these further developments were realised, and a choice of cheaper but substandard materials have taken their collective toll on the building's facade. Madin himself has lambasted the city's council for allowing his plans to be compromised so drastically, and for stuffing the main square with cheap shops and fast food outlets. The neglected pools he designed he described in 2007 as "a scene of absolute devastation".

In the summer of 2008, the Dutch firm Mecanoo won an international RIBA-launched competition to design a replacement for Madin's library, which, according to the Architect's Journal, "the city council is trying to persuade architecture minister Margaret Hodge not to list".

The old NatWest building on Colmore Row is another of Madin's designs, and looks even more forlorn, peppered as it was on the day we visited with the ejected contents of both kebabs and bird's guts. However, the 20th Century Society are strenuously campaigning for the protection of this period of architecture, whose sci-fi planes and elevations continue to inspire designers and graf writers the world over. And despite the seemingly wholesale culling of Madin's work, Birmingham is still host to a number of memorable Brutalist structures. The corrugated casing of the New Street Signal Box - complete with giant lever - is absolutely stunning, as is the sheer expanse of the Jury's Inn hotel, a skyscraper possessing the kind of bravado which might have been rewarded with a split-screen starring role in the Dallas title sequence had the Ewings relocated their enterprises.

Meanwhile, another of the city's broadcasting landmarks is, as I type, being levelled. The old ATV studios, adjacent to the former ITV franchise holders' headquarters, the enormous Alpha Tower (Grade A locally-listed), is slowly seeing its' distinctive diamond arches disappear after lying empty for a decade.

As I emerged from Broad Street, a chill wind whistled through the Alpha's angled piloti and flattened the demolition contractors' 'keep out' boards, helping to reveal the sad exterior in various states of destruction. A combination of crisp, sharp sunlight gently fading and the image in my head of flan-flinger-as-reaper conspired to ghost the lens, and the shots accordingly lost their focus. Here's hoping Mecanoo will help Birmingham's civic fathers regain theirs.

ISBN 978-3-89955-222-5

2008-12-20T11:03:00.000-08:00

Very happy indeed to have several Mordant Music pieces featured in the latest instalment of DGV's unrivalled logo design anthology, Los Logos 4. This one's absolutely massive, with more than 5,000 logos collected from around the world and indexed according to theme over nearly 600 pages, housed inside a beautiful golden linen hardcover. Included are the idents for the Travelogues, Tower and Carrion Squared releases, plus 4 hitherto unseen Dead Air logo variants.

If you're an interested artist or designer, or simply an enthusiast for the consistently stunning output from this Berlin-based publisher, ignore the ever-so-slightly cumbersome twinge in the series title sequence (los, dos, tres....er, 4) and spunk up the £35 RRP.

Yeah, I know, £35. It's fucking lovely though.

Reyner v Royston

2008-11-09T10:18:00.000-08:00

Only just started getting into these architecture books from the '60's/'70's Brutalist/Modernist era, but I'm immediately struck just as much by the covers as by the contents. I've got a huge old gold on red embossed jacket-less HMSO housing guide called 'Development Plans: A Manual on Form and Content' (which Stanley Donwood might have based his scuffed & frayed 'Amnesiac' designs on) but the best are the two featured here.

Sadly neither designer is credited, and although the op art piece featured on 'New Directions in British Architecture' by Royston Landau to the right is pretty tasty, the brilliant worm-like thing on the cover of Reyner Banham's 'The Architecture of the Well-tempered Environment' softback (presumably meant to represent the electrical and gas systems of buildings on which designs the book specifically concentrates) wins out easily here.

I'll get on and read them now.

Blanqueford Regenerated

2008-10-05T10:50:00.000-07:00

"With the release of this album, Blur have arrived in Blanqueford. In this British newtown people "advert think", happiness is guaranteed at Eat n' Treat and you queue in cars to visit the Sunny Fields Shopping Centre. This town is preparing for the future by airbrushing the past."

On reflection, nothing about Modern Life Is Rubbish should really have worked. The album that somehow reset the dials for a subsequent multi-million selling pop heritage - and just about thwarted Parlophone's apparent wish to issue P45s to Albarn, Coxon, James & Rowntree - was a modest seller for a band who were derided as little more than a joke at the time of release and whose legacy of influence has since stalled via the feeble faux-Weller strums of countless impostors.

Of course, indicting others as cheats and copycats when arguing the case for a band who made their very name on shedding skins and playing parts might seem utterly hypocritical, but it's necessary to acquaint oneself here with the exact nature of Damon Albarn as both artist and performer, and moreover with the context of Modern Life Is Rubbish within the cultural and musical climate of Britain in the early to mid-1990's.

"My lack of natural lustre/Now seems to be losing me friends"

Like a lot of their contemporaries in 1990/91, Blur made no secret of their love for US bands like Dinosaur Jr and The Pixies, but an abortive Stateside tour left them pining for home and the foibles, flaws and traditions of British culture. Seeking to extricate themselves also from the winsome UK indie mire that prevailed through the turn of the decade via the regulars at Oxford Street's Syndrome nightclub, Blur returned to the roots of their inspiration and replaced the bowl cuts, expansive t-shirts and queasy Barrett-esque psychedelia (ostensibly a southern funk/noise melding of two nonsense scenes, 'Madchester' and 'Shoegazing') with cherry red DMs and the epileptic single Popscene, released in March 1992. If the intention was for the band to morph into New Wave wind-up merchants, then it worked. The single certainly didn't.

On The Jesus & Mary Chain's Rollercoaster tour, Albarn climbed the amp stacks and got his cock out while Dave Rowntree canvassed politely backstage for participants in "punching competitions". Meanwhile Popscene stalled forlornly at number 32 in the charts. All four bandmembers began drinking themselves into oblivion and live performances deteriorated accordingly. Blur's new direction had failed.

Through the remainder of 1992, the band appeared to be doing their level best to implode. Shambolic onstage and seemingly aimless in the studio, Parlophone's subsidiary Food dismissed out of hand the second album's first draft. Packed as it apparently was with ill-defined non-entities like Badgeman Brown, Hanging Over and the once mooted follow-up to Popscene, Never Clever, Albarn was ordered to disappear over Christmas and come back with some proper pop singles.

And this, to the surprise of many, he did. For Blur pre-Modern Life were regarded as far too pretty and smart-arsed for their own good, and crucially lacking in the substance that their frontman - arguably the biggest show-off of his day - seemed certain they possessed. Blur rode into town somewhat fortuitously on the back of 'baggy' in 1990/91, and when it seemed likely they would be summarily dropped by Food in late '92, few were surprised and some were undoubtedly rubbing their hands in expectation.

So when Albarn finally began to augment his cockiness with the kind of craft he'd been talking up to anyone who'd listen (and few hung around post-Popscene), he could feel assured that some would never be convinced. But the ability (not to mention sheer confidence and bloody-mindedness) with which Albarn rescued Blur's fortunes in 1993 doesn't tell the whole story.

Whilst Albarn himself in fairness has never tried to hide the fact that he's a bit of a pretender, the kind of pop role-player for whom the practice of choosing and acting out a character becomes the way of life rather than the lives of the adopted characters themselves, the 'jazz hands and puppy dog eyes' image to a large degree damaged his and Blur's lasting reputation. Jon Savage spat at what he saw as the shameless Kinks pastiche of Parklife, yet in response to Miranda Sawyer's probing of this mistrust, that Blur's precise appropriation of iconography amounted to no more than middle class boys mucking around with working class fashions, Albarn simply stated "that's exactly what it is". Melody Maker even ran a Blur cover in 1994 with the headline Would you buy a used ideology from this man? .

What got lost in the ensuing boorishness of 'Britpop' however was the subtlety of imagery Blur called upon with their 1993 rebirth (those sledgehammered 'British Image' press shots notwithstanding, obviously). By the time For Tomorrow appeared as the second attempt at a lead-off single, the path to their renaissance had been cleared by Suede - whom Blur perceived had stole their thunder - and more specifically Pulp and St Etienne. These were acts who toyed with a seedy, multifarious & man-made seam of British everyday life, a modern life where the mundane could become romantic. Italian coffee bars & R 'n' B never came into it: this was a specific perusal of (and in Blur's case a sentimentality for) the Britain of formica, polyester and idealist town planning.

Just as Blur found both a quasi-comfort and frustration in the Britain which boiled down Archigram's hypothetical fantasy land into vast windowless megastructure precincts and paper-thin timber-clad estates, Albarn railed in song against the consumerism and Americanisation of the accompanying social flow. And whilst Popscene found the band a good year ahead of the trend, Modern Life cemented their lead not only of a fashion which resented the lank lethargic angst-fuelled grunge import, but also of the lament for the world of 'lost futures' which Ghost Box took more than a decade to inhabit. The dead-eyed fictional new town of the 'Blanqueford' one-sheet illustrates the prescience best: communities growing fat in passenger seats in preference to dimly-lit walkways bowed over A-roads, derelict districts of a well-intended brave new world turned ghoulish in the glare and vulgarity of the development corporation brochure. Blur at once sought to celebrate the energy of the original aspiration whilst simultaneously drawing on their disdain for how the professed utopia evolved.

There are obvious dangers in pop if you're seen to exclaim "time for action!" dressed in Ben Shermans and three-button suits, and unsurprisingly Blur found themselves unwittingly at the vanguard of an eventually weak-willed third wave of mod. Here, the catch-all branding was most pointedly erroneous: at the launching of the For Tomorrow campaign the band sported full skinhead uniform (from the neck down at least), and by the time Girls & Boys began their chart ascendancy in earnest in March 1994, the casual vogue of tracksuit tops and trainers was the order of the day. If the Baracuta Harrington was a staple of the period, it was not out of any deference to the Ivy League rock 'n' roll icons who had given it such popular appeal. Phil Daniels was a hero (not yet a collaborator), though Albarn & Coxon spoke lovingly of his brilliance as the high-rise anti-hero in Meantime more than they did for the archetypal scooter boy misfit of Quadrophenia. Admittedly the verve of The Jam's earliest character studies proved a conceptual inspiration, but Weller's resurgence as an earnest, 'authentic' soul everyman was an irrelevance to the pace and promise of Modern Life Is Rubbish.

"Practice doesn't make perfect when you're interbreeding/Speaking drivel can it get confused with heavy breathing?"

Most influential to the playful, angular gait of the album's best songs though are probably Madness and XTC. Here they found a connection with a specifically English sense of pastoral drollery that had fallen distinctly out of fashion by the early 1990s, when the predominant mood for guitar bands was one of weighty self-consciousness. The taut staccato verses of Colin Zeal echo Sgt Rock's skip-stomp beat, whilst the pinpoint vocal harmonies throughout the album (and in particular Albarn & Coxon's call and response Starshaped chorus) seem twinned with much of the rest of 1980's Black Sea. Elsewhere, the stop-gap buffoonery of Intermission and Commercial Break became live pogo favourites whilst Sunday Sunday's brass-assisted knees-up made it onto the racks as the album's third single release, despite the reservations of Food boss Dave Balfe.

If Blur just about got away with the goofy swagger of Sunday Sunday (whose knockabout theme outstayed its' welcome with Parklife's title track just a year later, and almost terminally so with the now drastically aged Country House in 1995), then the same can't be said of the near identical When The Cows Come Home, which, perhaps in view of Alex James' assertion that it was "too oompah for widespread appeal", was relegated from the eventual tracklisting and farmed out like much of the scrapped original album as single b-sides in bumper multi-format packs. These comprised largely unfocussed New Wave embryos (a live version of Never Clever) and beaty baggy leftovers (My Ark), plus a selection of demos under the pre-Blur 'Seymour' moniker and 'popular community songs' backing the Sunday Sunday release. Of credit however are the affected krautrock funk of Es Scmecht and the kaleidoscopic haze of two sinister beauties from the For Tomorrow package, Peach and Bone Bag.

This residual shimmer of Blur's first phase Floyd obsession crept its' way onto the album too, and coats several tracks in a woozy bloodshot sheen via Coxon's effects-heavy howls and quivers. Albarn's Balfe/Cope dig Pressure On Julian doesn't quite come off, nor does the warped drunken lament of Miss America (where Dave Rowntree's credit is listed simply and aptly as 'The Plough, Bloomsbury'). Starkly underrated meanwhile is the visceral drone of Oily Water, an endless MBV-esque wall of noise far more in-keeping with the druggy mores which Albarn grandly and paradoxically declared he'd vanquished upon Leisure's release.

For all the misfiring of the album's turbulent recording period, it could never be said that the band didn't apply themselves. The full realisation of the kinships Blur appeared to share with XTC and Pink Floyd both came agonisingly close in 1992, when sadly neither a fruitless studio experiment overseen by Andy Partridge nor a mooted film collaboration with Hipgnosis helmsman Storm Thorgerson could re-ignite the nascent project's spasmodic progress. But a handful of exquisitely crafted songs emphatically did.

"Kicking around in the centre of the town looking in shop windows/Those mannequins look far too real at night"

Whilst Modern Life's world is peopled largely by the misdirected, the 'losers' who frequent Villa Rosie or upwardly mobile cretins like the protagonist of Colin Zeal, the finest moments on the album are reserved for daydreams, romantic snapshots not quite so cluttered by the broad brush, often acid-tongued portraits which, for many, would only mark out Albarn as nothing more than an opportunistic fraudster. What For Tomorrow and Chemical World achieved however (both emerged from Albarn's enforced songwriting sabbatical in late '92) simply cannot be reconciled either sonically or lyrically with the largely substance-less frivolity of their debut.

For Tomorrow's enchanting tale of lovers caught punch-drunk in the vortex of London life could thematically (and somewhat ironically) have found its' way onto either of the first two Suede albums, but an air of melancholy rather than gothic horror is indulged to sumptuous effect. Whether the "trying not to be sick again" is down to a solace in hedonism or the sheer dizzying turbulence of what's passing them by is unclear, but the sense of trepidation - which a pithy yet judiciously apportioned 'la la la' chorus can't obscure - is palpable. This careworn and ever-so-slightly embittered 'us against the world' leitmotif is set powerfully against a wondrous cadence of melody ("London's so nice back in your seamless rhymes") and a stunning, snaking Alex James bassline. Crucial too is Stephen Street's production: whereas his handling of Blur's increasingly experimental bent wasn't sitting too well by the time of their eponymous fifth album in 1997, the string arrangements and backing vocals here are quite sublime.

More in tune with the raucous, distorted capers of Blur's live sets, Chemical World begins in an explosion of heavy six-string chords and thumping snare stops, before Coxon's sugary arpeggio beckons in what appears to be a commentary on Blanqueford itself. The supermarket 'pay me' girl makes her escape to a more rural setting and some rosy cheeks, the local snooper sets his sights on an exhibitionist target (Albarn could be on either side of the lens here) and a conflict between insular old town natives and the overspill is hinted at with the lines "these townies they never speak to you/just stick together so they never get lonely". Beneath the bawdiness and social engineering arcs a sweet yet ambiguous chorus of grapevine ruminations on "putting the holes in", perhaps a reference to the very device on which Albarn's study relies: the view through the cracks in the weatherboarding and a community's fabric made porous by a soaking in soda pop.

Arguably better than both single releases however - and a track without which no evaluation of British mid-'90's pop, let alone Modern Life Is Rubbish would be complete - is a song which didn't even appear on the album. Young And Lovely is a staggeringly delicate rites of passage song which owes its' 'lost classic' status to Dave Balfe's insistence that the vacuous Turn It Up take its' place on the LP, meaning a relegation to the B-sides of both the second CD and 12" Chemical World releases.

This plaintive recounting of childhood merging into teenage insouciance boasts a gossamer light verse of acoustic guitar and strings, whose impeccably measured vocal juxtaposes a parable on the rush of youth against a contemplation on a static shop facade dummy ("Friday's child doesn't know if it's awake or if it's dreaming"). Despite the burgeoning indifference of 'Friday's child', one last teary-eyed reassurance is afforded to mum and dad - "I'll do my bit, I'll raise the flag/I'll be just like you" - before a spiralling hammer-on coda.

Young And Lovely perfectly fixed Albarn's newly affecting depth of songwriting within a keenly adopted and archly English setting, and is in many ways emblematic of Modern Life's chaotic cycle. Blur were by turns out of control and over-restrained through its' timespan, but several shards of brilliance and a rare conviction of concept helped navigate the disarray. As an album, Modern Life Is Rubbish is flawed and patchy, and the final selection of tracks from the pool provided makes no sense in places. Yet between Popscene's false dawn and the overplayed though finely honed craft of what followed, it stands as a raw and unjustly overlooked chapter in the band's catalogue. Blur would never be so vital (or so surprising) again: although they continued to regenerate, Britpop's muddied waters and the self-consciously speculative mish-mash of their post-'95 work meant Albarn would take until his 2006 The Good, The Bad And The Queen project to regain his ability to truly dazzle.

Late 1993 saw Blur embark upon a triumphant 'Sugary Tea' tour and document their prior collapse in the wonderfully tragi-comic tour film Starshaped. By the time of Parklife's delivery barely six months later, their rehabilitation was complete. They made better, more cohesive albums in the ensuing years, but the Parklife single and over-mugged accompanying promo was used as a stick to beat the band (and specifically Albarn) with for some considerable time. Their peers eked out the decade steadfastly clinging to the Blunt-posh mockney mantra as if one day it might come true, and in an incongruous twist, Stephen Street emerged to produce two albums by the band's most inept progenies, Kaiser Chiefs.

Whatever Blur have to answer for (and you could argue that there's plenty), this pivotal moment remains misunderstood. It wasn't simply to do with mod culture or anti-Americanism, and the band's success never appeared overnight out of some crude Lazy Sunday con-trick novelty. Despite the fog of so many misappropriated RAF roundels, Modern Life Is Rubbish somehow hit its target.

The Eno/McCann axis

2008-09-26T12:35:00.000-07:00

Incredible pop archaeology here - never knew you could once buy LPs at your local corner shop.

Minder series 1, episode 7 - ‘The Bengal Tiger’, original transmission late ‘79. Terry McCann is minding Arthur’s local newsagent, Mr Mukerjee, and here he’s discussing Popol Vuh's work with Herzog with the proprietor’s daughter. An uncanny krautrock/ambient coincidence, as Eno's Another Green World can clearly be seen as if affixed to Terry’s raging member at about 1 o’clock. Note Stevie appears at a mildly aroused 4.

Rare Putzu No.1

2008-03-22T14:09:00.000-07:00

I'm delighted to have laid my hands this past week on not only my first quad movie poster, but moreover a possibly scarce example of the virtuoso illustration skills of Arnaldo Putzu. Putzu arrived in Britain in the late 1960's as the last of the esteemed 'Italian Connection' of film poster artists, and picked up a stylistic baton laid down by the great Renato Fratini (quite literally in the case of the 'Carry On' series, seamlessly continuing Fratini's superbly riotous caricature ensemble pieces after he left the UK industry in 1970). Mainly known for his hundreds of weekly illustrations for 'Look-in' throughout the '70's and into the early '80's, Putzu also majored in Hammer horror artwork, legendary posters for 'Cromwell' & 'Get Carter' and countless bawdy Brit comedies and pulp thrillers. 'Inside Out' is an excellent example of the latter.

The poster itself isn’t in great condition, but it does feature some superb portraits of the stars involved – Savalas, Mason & Culp - and was designed by Vic Fair (using the same triangular device featured in his own illustration for 'The Man Who Fell To Earth'). The sketchy, fast flowing brush strokes are trademark Putzu - look at the brilliantly rendered red hair on the Culp portrait - as are the bold outlines and shirt collars which he was so fond of using for his 'Look-in' paintings of the time, but the skin work is interesting. Putzu usually layered tonal hatching patterns in progressively finer strokes, yet here he's used a rougher, drier form of highlighting – almost like a sponge print technique.

It's a shame that with so many of these great illustrations, there's more dynamism to be found in the paintwork on the poster than in the movies themselves, and for that reason it seems that great swathes of them have vanished altogether or are at least very hard to find. But of course, this is the very root of motivation (and captivation) for the collector, and as this post title implies, I'm hoping 'Inside Out' will be the first of many.

The Ullevaal Stadium Legacy

2008-01-25T13:45:00.000-08:00

As Fabio Capello storms the fixture lists ahead of his opening friendly as England coach against Switzerland in a couple of weeks, we might do well to glance into the history books and perhaps adjust our collective expectation of what he might find, and eventually achieve. For the clamour seems to be to recover not necessarily any lost glory (what glory?) but more importantly our playing identity - widely held as that 'Dunkirk' spirit, the passion, the reliance (if all else fails, and it will) on a team of Terry Butchers, on bulldogs & lions. This misdirected priority of course stems mainly from a prehistoric notion of how we should best address our playing style. Of greater significance however is the very image on which it is based, an image which can be easily exposed as having very little basis in fact at all.

The idea that our national side is somehow rooted in such a staunch, backs-against-the-wall resolve is born of the chief characteristics of a handful of players - and nothing more. Butcher (those shots of him celebrating World Cup qualification in Sweden back in '89 - practically headless - are largely responsible for the delusion on their own), Robson (whose complete refusal to accept the dominance of a legendary Dutch side in Euro '88 - bundling the ball home in a dying gesture of determination when all around him in white shirts had long left the stadium - could still bring a tear to the eye), and Pearce (threatening to bring an entire stanchion down in pursuit of a retaliatory free-kick winner when Basil Boli's headbutt went unpunished in '92).

Of course, Pearce also missed a vital penalty. Beckham might have made this list too for his second half against the Greeks in 2001 if it weren't for his appalling disciplinary record. In fact, if you take away these talismans and just think for a second about those crucial moments for the England team in competition in recent years, what remains of this feted 'resolve'? Increasingly pathetic shoot-outs, petulant dismissals, Gascoigne (oh the passion), and as the Croatia game irrevocably proved, a total disintegration of nerve at key moments - even when all the luck in the world is on our side. These are the things that make up the English footballing character: the exact opposite of the 'spirit' lie so widely accepted by a forgetful nation.

This same nation will of course usually bemoan rough justice when the bulldog's brittle edifice comes crashing down, when the truth is exposed. You don't need to scour the results archive for too long to realise however that we've had much, much more than our fair share of good fortune down the years.

One such example, and a perfect mirror of the Croatia debacle, is the 1-2 World Cup qualifying defeat suffered in Oslo back in 1981. Of course we eventually endured to make it to Spain the following summer, but the original ITV broadcast shows that we were falling into similar traps of complacency even then - and even after the qualification horrors of the 1970's.

Going into the game, England were sat comfortably astride a tedious looking Group 4 table. Manchester's then rivals in management - United's Ron Atkinson a touch glib pitchside with Moore, John Bond of City slightly more forthright in a sci-fi emerald studio next to Rosenthal - both fell into the now all-too familiar trap of assuming that we simply had to turn up to win. Even Kevin Keegan, conspicuous in his gusto and conviction in the eventual game (and possibly only faintly remembered as a totemic lion in battle a la Butcher due to genuine talent and insufficient blood loss on the pitch), sees fit to puff out the chest before combat: "we've no reason to fear anyone if we play like we did in the Nep Stadium". Nothing wrong with confidence Kev, but this is stretching it a bit. And should we come unstuck, there's always the customary convenience of shoddy turf - this time roaming gulls and inset sprinklers outside both penalty areas provide the scapegoat.

It's only the cameo of Peter Barnes which provides any creative vigour - albeit briefly - as England toil to recapture the initiative lost after Robson bundles it home (for the first time in an England shirt - and despite controlling the ball with his upper arm) and a sudden collapse ensues. Interesting to note here that it wasn't Eriksson who pioneered the anxious relinquishing of a one-goal lead, and that Lampard & Gerrard aren't the first top class club midfielders to wane into total uselessness for their country, as Hoddle & McDermott both go through football hell in the greying Oslofjord. But it's the performance of John Bond that lingers in the memory.

The poor man's Malcolm Allison, sallow, puffy yet flash with a Sylvian parting and synth con-man gait, Bond is shifty and distant in his punditry but is as bemused as anyone as to why England have pissed this one away. "I would have pulled him off in Hungary at half-time" says Bond of the hapless Ray Clemence (in whose turmoil Bond continues to revel whenever the opportunity arises), and during the interval in Oslo suggests the players "want their behinds kicking". Despite such sadomasochistically charged analysis, Bond is direct - and moreover rather prescient - in his verdict on the team's performance, a verdict which can be more suitably applied to today's side. Finding fault with Clemence again for both Norwegian goals, he questions the goalkeeper's mental preparedness, suggesting that he's "lost a little bit of heart for the game", and post-match openly criticises the whole team for a lack of enthusiasm and consistency. Such frank words are of course whispered (if offered at all) by ex-players or bosses these days: the suggestion that England internationals just can't be bothered, whilst far nearer the truth now than 27 years ago, is considered an outrage, an affront to the superstar diva footballer and a charge only levelled by those who surely have no understanding of the game.

No such whispering for Bond, though he does seem to whistle through his teeth a little. He's predictably bewildered and frustrated by England's inept approach play ("I don't understand it Jim"), but just as he refuses to mince his words when it comes to his inquest into the game, nor does he entertain the kind of tabloid hysteria we've tragically come to embrace, rightly dismissing out of hand Rosenthal's hastiness in asking whether or not Ron Greenwood would (or should) resign.

So while common sense and plain speaking have long since departed, some things in football never change. As the folklore of England's true grit gathers ever more momentum, the unavoidable reality of our national game remains. When push comes to shove in the big matches, true character comes through, but in England's case, it's only palpable fear that rises to the surface.

One final thought. Capello may now be embarking upon a genuine last chance for England to wrest some semblance of real pride from such all-encompassing fantasy. When Steve McClaren unwittingly announced yet another Year Zero for English football on that filthy night at Wembley two months ago, we could at least still call upon the opinions of a few ex-players still close enough to the game. The experience of a Waddle or Butcher - however it informs their points of view - stems from the last generation to play in mud, the last generation with any awareness at all of how the game used to be and what it truly means at ground level. Possibly the last generation with any opinions at all in fact.

The next crop of English talent will inevitably in some instances fall under the stewardship of the first wave of ex-Premiership celebrity, managers like Gerrard, Ashley Cole, or Ferdinand perhaps. Or Pennant. How I wonder will they maintain a player's "heart for the game" or recognise the kind of utter chaos in which the national team currently flounders? That really is something to fear.

Season's Symptoms

2008-01-01T11:24:00.000-08:00

Through a season drenched in scant light and strewn with popped foil lozenge carcasses, whose contents promised a suppression to symptoms but no cure, I've been ruminating on whether or not to do this. What would it be for? Who'd want to know? Today however I resolved not to ruminate any longer and summoned the gumption with which I write; I suspect the impetus alone may eventually affect the cure to such ponderous inertia. After all, the inertia is the disorder itself, not a condition thereof.

I'm still not sure what this is about or if it's particularly necessary, but there is of course a twinge of 'want over need' to all this post-Christmas ball-watching anyway. Late morning Bank Holiday drives to a teeming retail morass and an overwhelming choice of fuck all. Try to redeem a voucher, pick up another virus. You don't need that.

The enjoyment of the newly-received Panda Bear CD - the contrast of purest melody with jarring arrangement and a suggestion of lyrical definition without actually giving much away, yet plenty to savour - is tempered by the toiled removal of a jewel case label residue (an import?) for what seems like the album's duration, and in turn the residual bother. I can't remember the last time I had to do that. It seems almost quaint.

But of course, I didn't really need to pour over that. And while the strict value of these despatches cannot as yet be surmised, their purpose may become clear in time. I have a rough plan.