Seven Ages of Rock

I've really been enjoying the Seven Ages of Rock series on the BBC these last few weekends, from the Who ("Won't Get Fooled Again" is still one of the most kick-ass rock songs with great guitar licks) and Hendrix (who give me my theme tune, "hey, Joe, where you going with that laptop in your hand? Gonna write my old blog down...") through the wonderfully weird late 60s early 70s stuff (Floyd and the Wall, the wonderfully androgynous Bowie), the performance rock (dear old Freddie and the boys from Queen), the Metal years (memories of my leather-clad, long-haired, headbanging times at Madison's rock club), great goddam music.

Then last week's episode, Left of the Dial, charting indy rock from the mid 80s to mid 90s, from early REM through to Seattle, Nirvanna, Henry Rollins, Black Flag, the grunge scene. Again great music, great attitude (almost punk in the DIY and fuck-it-all attitude) but for me personally that one was something more; that was the soundtrack to my student life, the music of my college years, drinking, noisy parties with various substances passing around, good friends, more drinking, doing a course I really liked (where watching movies counted as 'research') and basically having one of the best bloody time of my life (never understood the cliche that the school days were the best of your life - college was much better. It came with louder music, later night, longer mornings and drink and other pleasurable things). Somewhere along the line I also managed to earn myself a good degree in between waking up after a party and finding someone had painted 'graffiti' on our flat's walls with shaving foam or tripping over my wall mirror on the floor because someone had taken it down to snort off of. And that music there all the time. That episode just plugged me directly back into my mid 20s student life for an hour. And I fucking loved it. Might be years in the past now (scary to think how many years and how quickly they've gone past) but god that music just pulled it right out of me as if it was yesterday. And at least that era didn't end with a shotgun in the mouth for me. I love classical music, I adore jazz, but a big part of my soul is forever rock and roll, a true believer in the Holy Trinity: bass, drums and electric geetar, baby. There's a part of me that still wants to bawl out "touch me, I'm sick". I hope there always will be.

Fopp no more

Dammit, looks like Fopp has gone to the wall, probably the only music store I spend time in these days (never been mad on Virgin, not the best range plus they are too pricey and I haven't been into an HMV since I left The Bookshop Who Shall Not Be Named since it is part of the same company and therefore part of the Evil Empire. Plus their range and prices weren't terribly good either and I never liked browsing there). For those who don't know it, Fopp was became a nationwide group doing really good deals on music (and later DVDs and some books and graphic novels) and was especially good for backlist albums at very cheap prices which encouraged you to stock up on older material too. Which meant since it was cheap you thought, well, I'll just buy that and that and that...oops, just blew thirty quid... They also had a 'suck it and see' policy where you could return an album if it really sucked.

But it was also a special institution to music lovers in Glasgow where it first started and my mates and I spent many happy time having a rummage through the music on offer on the store on Byres Road near Glasgow University. In fact a couple of months back when Gordon and I were through at the revamped Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum we went for a walk in the sunshine afterwards, up towards the University towards the old stomping grounds of our younger days for a drink then into Fopp there. Sure, we had Fopp in Edinburgh (two of them actually) but going into the old Glasgow store was also a nostalgia trip for us. I was thinking in going in for a browse this weekend (downloading is fine as far as it goes, but I still like to physically own an original album) but that ain't gonna happen now. I feel especially sorry for the staff as they are not only out of a job but according to the news reports they aren't going to even get paid at the end of this month.

Jonas Moore mashups

There's an upcoming new multimedia webcomic coming up which I have been blogging about on the Forbidden Planet blog recently called the Many Worlds of Jonas Moore. Unlike most webcomics (some of which are very, very good) Jonas Moore is taking advantage of the fact it is online to used mixed media, so we we have comics panels, animation, video, music and even archive footage as we follow the actor Colin Salmon (from the Pierce Brosnan James Bond movies and Resident Evil) as Jonas Moore, a character in an online game who has become sentient in a world where the British Empire never fell and the world population is kept quiet by being addicted to many online games, some of which seem very similar to our real history. Marked as defective and to be deleted JOnas goes on the run across the different games worlds. A bit Matrix, a bit Moorcock and a dash of Bryan Talbot's Luther Arkwright.



One of the things I really like about the concept isn't just the mixed-media format but the fact that Howard Webster is encouraging readers to take the material and remix it into their own mashups - so far some indy bands have remixed some of the viral videos they have created to go with their own music (such as the one above). With so many big studio comics-based movies using the bands on their soundtrack as a marketing gimmick to get folks to go I like the fact that Howard is doing this remake-your-own approach; they're also hoping if people remix material later on to create sidebar stories that the best may be incorporated into the ongoing story. Apparently this sort of approach is really pissing off the professional marketing folks and ad agencies, which, in my book, makes it even better. And doesn't Colin Salmon look bloody cool on that bike (Lili, stop drooling over him!)?

When Penguins Ruled the Earth

For years I've made jokes about gigantic prehistoric penguins, from millions of years ago - Penguinosaurus Rex, tall, with a huge, long, sharp and deadly beak, from the Time When Penguins Ruled The Earth and Doug McClure had to rescue buxom women in fur bikinis from them. Then today I read that actually there is a little truth to my penguin-obsessed nonsense. I just love it when real life is almost as weird as fantasy.

"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe"

Adam Savage of top geek show MythBusters (one of my favourite bits of factual viewing and not just because I look a bit like Adam, especially when I have my hat on) has written a piece in Popular Mechanics in praise of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner as it celebrates its 25th anniversary (link via Boing Boing). I'm totally with Adam on this one - like him I have to re-watch the film every year or so; its one of the most visually ravishing films of all time and easily up there with Lang's Metropolis for stunning images of a future city. The opening scene of LA in 2019, towering buildings with video walls mounted on them, flames shooting into the night from industrial towers and hover cars flying between them all set to Vangelis' music ranks as one of the most stunning visuals in movie history. It still sends shivers down my spine no matter how often I see it, the impact made all the more sudden by being prefaced by a very quiet moment as an explanation of Replicants and Blade Runners is scrolled across the scene before suddenly boom! Future LA.



Adam argues that despite massive advances in effects and digital manipulation which can now create almost anything a director imagines the film's effects remain astonishing: "I worked on Star Wars Episodes I and II, on the Matrix films, on AI and Terminator 3; yet 25 years later there are ways in which Blade Runner surpasses anything that's been done since." He's right, it still looks amazing, which is a tribute to the legendary Doug Trumbull and his effects colleagues but also to Ridley Scott too, a director who has a real flair for visuals. The film, like another now-classic, Citizen Kane, wasn't a commercial success when first released, but (again like Citizen Kane) has gone on to gather a cult audience, critical plaudits and inspire generations of later artists.

For visualising a future cityscape it has to be up there with Lang's Metropolis; both also owe much to photographs and film of New York in the early 20th century (imaginary cities and the real meeting, but then all 'real' cities are also partially imaginary, made up as much of our memories and dreams as they are what our eyes take in). The themes (very Philip K Dick, appropriately) of alienation, individuality, identity and what it is to be human and what is real and what is dream add to the lush imagery. No wonder it is still one of my personal top ten movies of all time.



Some great visualisations or descriptions of imaginary urban spaces: Blade Runner, Metropolis, Carlos Ezquerra's concepts for Mega City one in the original Judge Dredd back in '77, Otomo's Akira, Bill Gibson's Sprawl (see Neuromancer, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive), Jeff VanderMeer's Ambergris (see City of Saints and Madmen, Shriek: an Afterword), Alex Proyas Dark City, Kafka's work, Borges, Warren Ellis' Transmetropolitan... I'm sure you can all suggest other good examples from books, movies and comics or any other artforms. A final bit of movie-comics trivia, Ridley cites the legendary comics artist Moebius' Long Tomorrow graphic novel from the mid 70s as a key reference for Blade Runner's visual look. The graphic novel was written by a young Dan O'Bannon, who would later write Alien, which Ridley would direct (one of his first big successes); Dan would later adapt another Philip K Dick tale, We Can Remember It For You Wholesale for the film Total Recall. I'm sure I could add more here, but it's time for Heroes :-)

Dig for victory

I noticed in the news that the Bevin Boys have been belatedly honoured for their efforts during the Second World War. Some were volunteers, some drafted, but instead of the army, air force or navy they were drafted into a service just as dangerous (although a lot of folk simply don't realise how dangerous) and even dirtier - they were the guys who had to man the coal mines to keep the home fires burning (literally). And it reminded me of my papa on my mother's side, who was a miner and who trained many of those boys. A couple of years ago I bought a book on the history of mining which covered the region back home for my mum and dad; we were surprised to find inside a bunch of grinning Bevin Boys with the senior miners who trained them, one tall, broad, strongly built man standing out.

He looked like the Comrade, who we lost the other year, but it couldn't be him back then... Papa, his dad. I only new him as an old man, semi-crippled from the work in the pits and missing fingers, speech damaged (of course he never got any compensation - slip on a wet towel and sprain an ankle today and you sue for ten grand, crippled in mining accidents then, tough) and we just don't have a lot of photographs of him when he was in his prime. How like the Comrade in his prime he looked, grinning for the camera, strong, confident, young, smiling out at us in this book from across six decades. These men took the 'dig for victory' slogan literally, tearing out fuel for the war effort from deep under the bedrock of our islands, its a bloody disgrace they had to wait sixty years for even this tiny amount of recognition.

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness."

Mark Twain.

Twain/Sam Clemens has been a favourite author since I was a boy. In the bus to work a few days ago I looked up from my book when it was picking up passengers and saw someone had written this quote on the window of their flat facing out into the street two stories up where only the occasional person in a double decker bus would be high and close enough to read it. How lovely. Of course, I tend to include reading as 'travel' because it is travel for the mind...