The Fenland Gent

The lad that sings with Stornoway looks like a member of the pre WW1 officer class. He has a high, strong, boyish voice. I could imagine him singing The Eton Boating Song. If he could act, I’d cast him as the lead in a film about A War Poet.

I’m not sure about some of his rhymes. “Attic” with “Static” in The song Zorbing always makes me wince a bit.

But I like that song and 2 or 3 others. I like they seem a bit posh (not sure they are though). I like that they are very English.

Cocos Lovers were fine. They kept a big crowd in the club tent entertained and seemed to be entertaining themselves at the same time.

The top row of photos are of Cocos Lovers, the next row is Stornoway. They’re thumbnails. I cheated with the photos and mucked around with them to make the pictures look better because the originals were a bit tatty.

The links below are for Spotify were you can hear the debut LPs by the bands.

Cocos Lovers (Spotify)

Stornoway (Spotify)

Before watching my new Jethro Tull video (see previous post) I’d never seen the video for the song “Too Old To Rock and Roll. Too Young To Die”.

I’d have remembered because it’s so awful.

This afternoon I found this in the Sue Ryder charity shop in the village.

Jethro Tull. Slipstream. VHS

It cost me 50p.

I’m delighted.

But before I write anymore about that….

I recently bought a VHS player on Ebay which is attached to my Mac with a thing called Elgato Video Capture. This converts old VHS in a fairly effortless way. The quality is little better than OK but I’ve been watching the converted films and TV shows and clips and on an iPad and they are perfectly watchable.

I set the VCR/video capture thing up up so that I can go though the piles of VHS tapes in my attic and keep anything I want before throwing them all away.

(The whole time I’ve been doing this there is a voice in my head saying throw those old tapes away – just throw them away- don’t look at them – don’t waste precious time. Just throw them away).

Meanwhile – Elsewhere:

I love trawling through charity shops but, because of Ebay I suppose, it’s become a lot harder to find some piece of glorious retro tat which thrills.
However because of the Elgato Video Capture set up I’m suddenly finding all sorts of fairly wonderful stuff on the VHS shelves in my local charity shops which I know I can now digitize.

(The voice in my head is screaming – you’re supposed to be getting rid of this stuff you idiot. How long are you expecting to live?. You’re going to end up with so much stuff that you cannot read it/ watch it./listen to it all. Fool.).

Anyway – back to Tull and to Hell with the voices in my head.

The blurb (quoted beneath “in full” and “unedited”) on the back of the Slipsteam VHS easily took care of my voices:

Blurb

“JETHRO TULL LOOK EVEN BETTER ON SCREEN THAN THEY DO ON STAGE”

How do you take one of the World’s leading rock bands like Jethro Tull and improve on their live performance?
After all their stage act is as famous for the way it looks as for the way it sounds.
SLIPSTREAM, conceived and executed specially for the screen is the answer.
And even though concert material is naturally included SLIPSTREAM is far more adventurous than previous music programs.
The format is conceptual from start to finish with a coherent storyline.
It includes film shot on locations as well as in the studio, together with animation, special effects and library footage.
The band members themselves appear in a number of different guises in the conceptual sequences, with Ian Anderson adopting such diverse roles as Aqualung, the music hero of a previous album, and Dracula.
All in all, it’s a unique show and probably one of the most adventurous music specials ever made”.

In other words it’s bonkers, pompous and ridiculous and I love it.

I guess one day this clip from the film that someone else has put on YouTube will be taken down but until then this clip of Songs From The Wood gives a sense of what this quite brilliantly stupid film, which was made in 1981, is like:

I don’t understand why they’re all wearing white boiler-suits and look like neo-Nazi plumbers. The special effects are like something out of Blake’s 7. The coherent storyline is not coherent. Nor is it a storyline.

But I’ve liked Jethro Tull since I was 11 or 12 (thanks in part to Dave – who was my Dad’s art school hippy mate and to a baby sitter named Wendy) and as such I sort of judge them differently to any other band. If “Yes”, for example, had made a film like this I would be scathing in my hatred (probably) but however idiotic Tull got they would not only get a pass from me but I have always delighted in their stupidity and will always be laughing with them (even when they weren’t themselves laughing) and never laughing at them.

This wasn’t the only Tull VHS that was in the charity shop. I also picked up the “20 years of Jethro Tull” documentary/compilation so it’s going to be a Jethro Tull evening and that’s what I love about charity shop finds – that the circumstances of my evening have been generated by happenstance.

I’m growing increasingly Pooterish.
I need to watch that I think.
(He typed Pooterishly)

Tonight Film 4 is screening Ingmar Bergman’s “The Silence’” (14/7/10)

I like Bergman. He brings out the moody adolescent in me but there is way more to Bergman than merely the stuff that feeds the imagination of dull witted goth type youths. What I really like about his films is that he never really compromised, there is very little sentiment and very little that offers redemption.

It can make for pretty harrowing viewing.

But I’m not sure The Silence is the bleakest film ever made. I reckon it to be the second bleakest.

This film was the third in what is sometimes called Bergman’s “Faith Trilogy” and all 3 films are real contenders for the “Most Miserable Film Ever Made Gold Cup”.

The first of the trilogy was “Through A Glass Darkly” where a young schizophrenic after having sex with her brother (probably), has the stark realisation that God does not give a toss about us. She also thinks God is a spider. She then thinks that the spider god violates her.
All pretty bleak stuff – but the brother has a bonding moment with his dad at the end – and this late burst of redemption means that it can only get bronze in the search for the bleakest film ever.

The second of the Trilogy is “Winter Light” where a Priest in a remote Swedish village realises, a bit like the schizophrenic girl, that if there is a God then he is indifferent to our problems. One of his parishioners sees things the same way and as such he takes himself of to the woods and shoots himself. The Priest’s reaction to his parishioner’s death is to tell his (the Priest’s) fiance how much he hates her, really hates her, how he has seen her in her most intimate moments and how he hated what he saw. What follows is footage of a lonely hate filled priest carrying out a religious ritual he sees no point in.

For me – “Winter Light” is the bleakest film ever made. It’s where Bergman fumbles about in human intimacy and ends up finding existential angst. It’s because of this, and because it’s done subtly and because “The Silence” does tack on an ending which hints at a bit of “there’s always the children” type redemption that I would say “Winter Light” gets the “Most Miserable Film Ever Made Gold Cup”.

I like Bergman’s films but I do think that if you think about this stuff too much it could drive you potty. It’s probably because they do make for difficult viewing that this quite lurid trailer (with it’s talk of lesbianism and incest and “the flesh”) was produced to try to flog “The Silence” to American audiences.

All this talk of Holland and how they changed their style of play in the 2010 World Cup got me searching for footage of the 1974 World Cup Dutch team on YouTube

This clip of Brazil Holland is brilliant. The Brazilians are thugs. Fists, elbows and scything tackles are used to try to stop the Dutch & at 3:03 there is a rugby tackle. They may have won in 1970 but through the rest of the decade the Brazilians really were also-rans.

I’m not going to include England in this list because after Rob Green let the ball slip under him and the team fell to pieces I stopped paying that much attention. I don’t think I was alone in this. A few fat blokes in sports wear and a few dopey youths may have wept a few tears into their lager but beyond that I got the impression that most people thought it would have better if we hadn’t been there at all.

So I wasn’t especially disappointed with England but I was disappointed with:

1. The Dutch.

I grew up loving Dutch football. The first match I remember watching was the 1974 World Cup final and if football was a religion then names like Neeskens and Johnny Rep and Cruyff run through my imagination like Old Testament Prophets and if you think that’s a bit melodramatic – well it is but I played Subbuteo loads as a kid but I only ever played 2 teams – Holland and Ajax. I loved them.
Of course, the days of total football have passed but during the following decades there was always something about the way the Dutch played that still had echoes of total football, of flair, of “sexy” football.

Not this team though.

There are 4 reasons why this Dutch team got to the final.

1. They are well organised and were shaped to stop the opposition.
2. They have some talented players
3. They’ve been very lucky.
4 They’ve been cheating and getting away with it.

It would be daft to object to the Dutch decision to play a pressing game, with 2 holding midfielders who were there to stop the opposition playing. It may not be what you’d expect from the Dutch but when done well, such as when the Italians do it, it has merit.
It would also be daft to bemoan their immense luck – that’s the way football is and if a team gets a series of lucky decisions or bounces then it’s up to their opposition to do something about it. Brazil and Uruguay didn’t do enough to beat a lucky Dutch team but that’s hardly the fault of the Dutch.

However there is nothing daft at my getting cross at the way the Dutch cheated and how they very nearly got away with it.

And this wasn’t just cheating.

There were different dimensions to the Dutch approach to cheating.

This was Total Cheating.

Firstly – their talented players have amongst their talents their capacity to fall over and roll around on the ground like little children. Robben did it so much against Brazil that a Brazilian player stamped on him – which was quite funny but stupid and self defeating.
Van Persie has it in his game as well.

Secondly. They left the foot in. Almost all of them. Whenever they could. If there was an opponent to kick they did. Sometimes this was done with low cunning, a little stamp or a kick at the ankle. Sometimes it was a blatant chest high kung fu kick. (How the officals missed De Jong do this is beyond me).

Thirdly. There was Van Bommel He cheated his way through the Brazil game with his niggling deliberate fouls, he should have been sent off against Uruguay (in that game he also added some pathetic Rivaldo-esqe play acting to his list of crimes against the game) and he should have been sent off in the final. In fact he should have been sent off about three times in the final.

The Dutch ruined this World Cup. They stomped all over it and kicked their way through it. I’m glad they lost and I hope they go away, get rid of the current managerial staff and come back in 2012 playing football that is a joy to watch and is a joy for them to play.

2. Torres Being Injured.

Spain were really good but I don’t think they were great. Certainly not as great as the team that won the European Cup in 2008. Defensively they were excellent and the way they kept the ball and passed the ball and then did something brilliant with the ball at a key moment was lovely to watch. But sometimes I got a bit bored. Sometimes I found myself getting annoyed that they had just achieved in 20 passes what other teams could have done in 2.

Torres is more direct than his team mates. He can, and does, play the possession stuff but give him the ball anywhere near the box and his first thought is to score and I think Spain missed that. Without Torres this Spain team play some great stuff and are a good team but with Torres they may be one of the very best ever International teams. Unfortunately Torres was crocked for most of the tournament and as a result the Spanish quite often sank into their “faffing about” style of play.
He should never have cut his hair,

3. The way we talk about football in this country.

Some of the punditry in this tournament was just crap. In this country the pundits like to talk about a particular player or team and not the game as a whole. Ex players and current managers fixate on refereeing errors, which are rarely the decisive factor in deciding a game. And there is still the slight residual tone that says Johnny Foreigner is still Johnny Foreigner and huge generalizations are made – so, for example, the idea that South American’s cheat and are dirty just won’t go away even though it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny (- and don’t give me Suarez – any professional player would have done the same). This World Cup also featured a new and weird way to generalize about foreigners which was that African teams all represents each other as if Africa is one big happy rainbow continent. Patronising rot.

The lowest point was Hansen laughing at the idea of another pundit having done some research. It’s garbage. Get it off the telly and who knows maybe we’ll develop a culture of football in this country that goes beyond delighting in Stevie G giving it 110%

This article in the Scotsman makes a few of these points in a much better way.

(Actually it wasn’t all bad and I’d miss some of it if it were gone. Once I would bleat on about John Motson but I missed him in this World Cup)

4. Some Of The “Big” European Teams Being Crap.

Whilst I wasn’t overly disappointed about England going out I was disappointed that England, France and Italy were all hopeless. It’s the World Cup – there are millions of people watching. What on earth were these men doing pissing about like that.

Fools.

5. Henry Winter.

Henry Winter is a football writer for the Telegraph and I found myself disagreeing with quite a bit of the stuff he wrote and some of the stuff he tweeted. That’s OK – talking about football is all about opinions and it’s by listening to the opinions of others that you may sometimes learn something.

Henry Winter follows no one on Twitter. I take that to mean that he’s not remotely interested in the opinions of others. This perhaps helps explain why so much of what he writes is tosh.

In my opinion

6. The Ball.

I’ve been watching football for years and I don’t think I’ve seen so many mistakes by players good enough to play for their country. It must be the ball, or at least the ball at altitude. So I reckon FIFA made a mistake by choosing a new ball. It lead to too many scrappy games. I don’t think this was the only mistake FIFA made.

7. The Tournament Being In South Africa.

I reckon this was also a mistake by FIFA. I can see what FIFA were trying to do but it didn’t work. I didn’t get the sense of a nation delighting in hosting the World Cup in the way that the Germans or the Japanese and the Koreans did in past World Cups.
There are obvious reasons why but the empty seats and empty town squares suggest that FIFA overreached. It’s a shame but FIFA’s priority is to organise the best tournament it possibly can and I’m not sure that’s what they were attempting here.

It’s football. Not politics.

8. The Vuvezela.

Horrible bloody noise.
Apparently there was a debate about them.
Between who?
Between clever people and idiots.
That’s who.

9. Twitter

One of the things I like about Twitter is when you follow lots of people doing the same thing, such as being at a festival. I followed quite a few journos who were in S. Africa and a few of them did tweet about things that happened to them as they went about their day to day business which was great – but I couldn’t find anyone who wasn’t a journo. All a bit disappointing really.

10. Twitter Again (And The Opinions Of Millions)

All those opinions. Everyone seemed to have one – players and managers in the post match interview, commentators, pundits, fans, friends, strangers I’ve meet in pubs, cab drivers and all those millions of people on Twitter all banging on about what they thought about what a team or player did during one brief passing match or minute, or moment.

Oh and me as well. I was also at it.

It wore me down a bit

This isn’t a blog entry. It’s an exercise in self loathing.

Read The Ten Things I Liked Most About The World Cup Here

I thought the 2010 World Cup was an odd tournament with the best bits being easily good enough to remind me why I really like football but with the bad bits doing more than enough to remind me why I’ve been struggling to work up any enthusiasm for the game over the last season or so.

Anyway here are my 10 best bits.

1. Germany.

The opening round matches of the group stage were pretty terrible but the Germans brightened things up by thrashing Australia.

Watching this team and the efficient, moody and tedious (and narky) German side of Effenberg, Bierhoff, Kahn and Matthäus seems a distant memory.

I reckon this “new” German way of playing began in the 2002 finals when the Germans annihilated an atrocious Saudi Team 8-0. It is a direct, adventurous and at times thrilling way of playing and it really flourished in the 2006 World Cup in front of a German home crowd. The players and the fans made football feel like a big adventure and that spirit was still there in this World Cup and the way they took Australia and then England and Argentina to pieces were high points of the tournament. They should have won this World Cup. As it was they had to settle for third but the game in which they they won that, against Uruguay, was the best game of the whole tournament.

2. Uruguay.

Forlan was my player of the tournament (and was voted player of the tournament by whoever voted for these things) and Suarez looks like he may have a long career playing at the highest level. Fucile looked a proper talent as well.

There was one cloud over Uruguay’s tournament and that was the Suarez handball against Ghana. This saw him being hated by a whole continent, which is impressive, but I doubt there is a professional player who would not have done the same. The Ghanaians had 120 minutes, a penalty and a penalty shoot out to win the game but they didn’t and that’s the way football works – you need GOALS not EXCUSES.
Suarez got his punishment, and whilst it may be of no comfort for Ghana, that punishment may be one of the reasons Uruguay did not get to the final (- that and a dopey linesman and the fact Van Bommel was allowed to kick whoever he wanted).

Uruguay were not a dirty team (unlike some of their European opposition), a couple of Forlan’s goals were as good as any in the tournament and they helped make the 3/4th playoff the game that it was (which was everything the final wasn’t).

3. Argentina’s Mad Experiment.

I reckon that Argentina had the best team going into this World Cup but so as to make it fair for the rest of us the Argentine FA appointed Maradona as manager and he is no more a manager than my Mum is – though I reckon my Mum would have selected Zanetti and Cambiassio what with them both being really, really good players. It was a disaster waiting to happen and happen it did but for a while there it looked like the mad experiment might have worked.

Maradona leads a life that reads as a story and in the chapter entitled “Diego Goes to Africa” the story even has a proper story arc.

Act 1. Argentina do not win the 2006 World Cup despite having brilliant players and a decent manager and playing some brilliant football. The view is that they bottled it. The Argentine people turn to their wayward hero Maradona. He’s no manager but he’s no bottler.

Scene 2. But he really is no manager. His team scrape through the qualifying rounds and, as doubt turns to the realisation that he is the wrong man for the job, the wayward hero makes a mad team selection for the finals. This is a low point in Argentine football.

Scene 3. But wait there. What’s this? In the finals, this team, albeit with no real structure or organisation, are playing out of their skin. They look brilliant. Has the wayward hero delivered? Can Argentina win this?

Scene 4. No.
No they can’t.
Tragedy or farce? Make up your own mind but without structure or organisation of course you cannot win the World Cup. Germany make this point to Argentina in one of the most dramatic games of the 2010 World Cup. The wayward hero has failed. It’s over

Scene 5. Or is it? Maybe the wayward hero goes back to Argentina and gets the girl, or finds redemption in the eyes of a child. Or maybe there really are no happy endings in football.

Turns out quite a lot of people I know hate Maradona. I don’t. In this World Cup Argentina were fun and everything about them was very entertaining.

4. Okazaki’s goal against Denmark to make it 3-1.

Okazaki scored the goal but it was Honda who made the goal with a Cruyff like turn, a faint to shoot and a little dinked pass. There wasn’t enough of this sort of stuff in this World Cup

5.New Zealand.

I don’t care much for underdogs in the World Cup. I want to to see the best teams and the best players play each other in games that I’ll remember for years and I don’t want to see the underdogs screw that up. However New Zeland were a well organised team who utilized what little talent they had available in a way that was effective. Good for them and it would have been nice to have seen them get out of the group stage. They were the only unbeaten team at the World Cup.

7 The view from the BBC Studio window.

Just a nice view.

8. Mick McCarthy as a pundit.

Phrases like: “He spanked that“, “Something as industrial as chasing as ball“, and “He hit that with violence” littered what was effectively a sustained argument against the rules of the game delivered in a broad Yorkshire accent . McCarthy’s punditry was an absolute treat.

9. The Brazil N Korea game.

We went to the pub to watch this and the pub was packed with Brazilian kids. The atmosphere was great.

10. The lack of goal line technology.

I love mistakes, controversial decisions and terrible decisions. It all adds to it. Long may it stay the same.

Read the Ten Things I Didn’t Like About This World Cup here

I’m watching North Korea play Portugal in the World Cup and I’ve just seen one of the North Korean players muscle Ronaldo off the ball.
Ha – thought I “Christiano is Stupid, Communism is Good” which only works as a pun if you know the song “Christianity Is Stupid” by Negativland.

I don’t know who made this video but the song still makes me laugh (though not as much as did it when I was a glib youth).

Don’t know anything about this band but someone on twitter just recommended them.

I rate this as ace.

I started this morning by listening to the Bar-Kays and one thing lead to another & I stumbled across this brilliant trailer for a film I’ve never heard of.

WattStax described itself as the Black equivalent of Woodstock and was held on August 20th 1972 (the 7th anniversary of the Watts riots). Tickets were $1.
The film was released a year later.

The soundtrack is on Spotify here
Issac Hayes’ performance is on Spotify here