I'm coming home, I've done my time

It's been a while. I could make some kind of excuse but that's pretty pointless for two reasons:

• Scatman John tribute bands have played to bigger audiences than the one that reads this blog so the lack of posts has gone by pretty much unnoticed
  
• my lack of writing is ultimately down to laziness

It has been a fairly insane few weeks though and I now find myself back in Edinburgh, living with Mama and Papa Menopause and wondering just how the fuck I ended up here. The Mancunian adventure was short-lived, didn't quite work out the way it was supposed to and I'm living back in the familial bosom for the first time in ten years. Expect more posts as I try and reacquaint myself with the fact I'm back with my family and the friends who've known me longer than anyone else.

(Just realised that last sentence sounds like the tagline from some arse-clenchingly bad reality TV show - apologies)

Leaked Report: 96% of Management Consultant Reports 'Bollocks'

A leaked report, apparently commissioned by management consultants Price Waterhouse Coopers, claims that 96% of management consultancy reports are "complete and utter bollocks." The report is scathing in its criticisms of the consultancy business. The author, who has now left PWC, claims that companies would save far more money by implementing sensible hiring and business practices, rather than running "blathering, chequebook in hand, to consultancy firms and treating them as shamans and mystics who can mysteriously solve everything."

The report is particularly critical of the language used by consultants and the senior management at the companies they work with:

Most of the language used by consultants (and indeed the majority of our clients' senior management) is an attempt to sound more intelligent and important than they actually are. We tend to spend a lot of our time in meetings and giving presentations rather than doing any real work and as such we have little to show in the way of results. Rather than increasing a company's revenue, looking at ways it could develop its employees or plotting the future course of the company, we prefer to make speeches, give presentations and write motivational emails using popular buzzwords and phrases. A straw poll among my colleagues showed that "focus on focus," "mission critical" and any reference to "synergy" are our current favourites.

The report concluded by saying that the essence of consultancy is "little more than charlatanry dressed up as a form of business intelligence." It goes on to say that the leading consultancies exist "for no appreciable reason other than to charge equally pompous executives a shitload to tell them what, for most people, should be self-evident."

Senior executives at PWC today would not give any further information with regards to the identity of the report's author and why it was commissioned. However, sources have indicated that it was written at the same time as another recently leaked report, "Advertising: Selling People Shit They Don't Want or Need," written by a former employee at DDB London. The offices of both companies are close to a West London branch of Starbucks which was closed recently after traces of sodium thiopental were discovered.

Broken - Soulsavers (V2, August 17th 2009)

Like many people of a certain age, the first I heard of Mark Lanegan was Nearly Lost You, Screaming Trees 1992 song that ended up on the soundtrack of Singles (this is their network TV debut on the Letterman Show - ace but slightly unsettling due to the fact they seem to have OJ Simpson playing drums for them). Since then he's released solo albums, had stints with Queens of the Stone Age, teamed up somewhat incongruously with former Belle & Sebastian chanteuse Isobel Campbell and has now pitched up with English production team Soulsavers and their third album, Broken.

With every album and project he's embarked on, Lanegan's voice has seemed to sink deeper into the past and on Broken he sounds as if he's broadcasting from some antidiluvian radio station with the weight of foreknowledge bearing down hard on his soul. Due to my excitement and anticipation I made the mistake of listening to Broken on my way into work this morning. It's not a morning album. Hell, I'm writing this at 10pm with a glass of wine, the only light in the room is a small lamp and the glow from my laptop but it still feels I'm listening to this record at least four or five hours before I should. Tracks like instrumental opener The Seventh Proof, Palace Brothers' cover You Will Miss Me When I Burn and Pharoah's Chariot sound as if they should be filed alongside Closing Time or The Boatman's Call - melancholic slow marches to soundtrack the longest and darkest nights.

It's not all about Mark Lanegan though. Australian singer/songwriter Red Ghost takes lead vocals on epic album closer By My Side, duets with Lanegan on Rolling Sky and provides backing on You Will Miss Me When I Burn. Her vocals bring a different texture to Lanegan's but fit the tone of the album perfectly. Hopefully this cameo will give her the exposure she clearly merits (her cover of King of Leon's Molly's Chambers needs to be heard by anyone who gives two fucks about music).

Broken isn't perfect - Death Bells sounds like something Screaming Trees might've knocked off during a fag break in the early 90s - but fans of any of Mark Lanegan's past projects will find plenty to keep them going here. Just don't try using it to gee the troops.

Scotland's not for Me

According to reports in today's Guardian and other news sources, a campaign is underway in the States to boycott all things Scottish as a protest against the Scottish government's decision to release Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.

Leaving aside the questions about the legitamacy of the trial and the verdict itself, a lot about this campaign is questionable. The motives are clear but the logic behind the campaign is at best convulted, at worst a glaring example of hypocrisy and self-righteousness.

Firstly, take the following quote from the Boycott Scotland website:

Most especially after the horrific events of 9/11, the world needs to be reminded that terrorism must be punished and never rewarded. Terrorists must never be shown compassion or mercy, for these people have no respect for human life. The British, who ironically have themselves been victim to numerous acts of terrorism on their own soil, seem to have forgotten.

Who was responsible for the majority of the "numerous acts of terrorism" in the UK? That'll have been the IRA. In their heyday, where did a significant amount of their external funding come from? Er, that'll have been the US, especially the East Coast (this BBC article is from 2001 but it says it all really). I don't recall families of the Omagh/Enniskillen/Harrods/Warrington victims calling for a boycott of MacDonalds or shopping trips to New York.

Secondly, given the war in Iraq and the motives behind it, the following is difficult to read with a straight face:

You have shown to the international community that your government and the United Kingdom as a whole will stop at nothing to pursue the neverending and relentless acquisition of oil revenues.

I doubt that any country in the West can claim the moral high ground when it comes to their government's actions in the "acquisition of oil revenues" (or any other commercial interests), but it's especially difficult to accept criticism of this sort from across the Atlantic. Does anyone honestly believe the war in Iraq is unrelated to the millions of barrels of oil that lie under the deserts there? If the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was supposed to pave the way to Iraqi's having control over their own oil wealth the war might have attained at least a patina of justification. This simply isn't the case:

Negotiations are under way for Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP — the original partners decades ago in the Iraq Petroleum Company, now joined by Chevron and other smaller oil companies — to renew the oil concession they lost to nationalisation during the years when the oil producers took over their own resources. The no-bid contracts, apparently written by the oil corporations with the help of U.S. officials, prevailed over offers from more than 40 other companies, including companies in China, India and Russia.

Noam Chomsky: It's the Oil, Stupid

Boycott BP by all means but at least be consistent and boycott any oil company that has acted in a morally questionable way, then see how difficult it is to fill your tank and keep a clean conscience.

The storm surrounding al-Megrahi's release is sure to rumble on and there are doubtless questions that need to be answered about it (and indeed his trial itself). This campaign will answer none of these questions.

To blog or not to blog (bet that's never been used before)

Just a quick post before what is hopefully a deep and uneventful kip. Two reasons behind this post - one, I want to test this app and two, I'm a-pondering.

I read this week that there are 900,000 blog posts written every day. Does the world really need the mardy-arsed musings of iMenopause bumping that up to 900,001 on the odd days when I actually write something? I've barely scraped the topsoil from the surface of the blogs that are out there and I've already uncovered enough shit to cover all the fields in the uk for the rest of time (given that the world may well end in 2012 that might not be as impressive a comparison as it first seems).

So, what am I bringing to the blogosphere (do people still call it that?). Short answer - I've no fucking idea. Maybe it's some primal need to get my voice out there and my opinions heard, regardless of how small my forum actually is. Maybe it's nothing more than a chance to live my failed dreams of a career in journalism. Any ideas? Feel free to let me know because I sure as fuck don't. If i stumble across the answer I'll be sure to share it with all three of you.


-- Post From My iPhone

À la recherche du villes perdu

Last Saturday was Manchester music night on BBC4. The line-up included live performances of Mancunian luminaries through the ages and a documentary tracing the Factory story. I didn't need to watch it - I know the details in the same way as Evangelicals know their Scripture and have probably bored as many people with my proselytising. Hell, I'd even seen this documentary before but I quite happily sat through it again. So much of the music I love was made by Manchester bands and now that I live in the city, programmes like this take on an extra resonance. It's not just a history of the record label and the bands associated with it but a social history of the city at the time, and how this was as big an influence as the legendary Sex Pistols gig at the city's Free Trade Hall in 1976. With two days holiday coming up and no plans it was obvious what I had to do - wander round the city I now call home and just see what's out there.

Remarkably enough for Manchester the weather held. Two days of something you could call 'summer' and not breach the Trade Descriptions Act. Perfect conditions for dandering around, camera and notebook in hand, recording impressions of the city and formulating an all-emcompassing theory as to what's made Manchester so integral to the last thirty odd years of British music. The problem is that the city described in all those Factory retrospectives is not the city I'm living in now. The Granada TV studios that Tony Wilson called home may not have changed that much but pretty much everything else seems to have.

The site that was once the Hacienda is now home to a block of flats which, according to the marketing blurb, offers its tenants "stylish, luxury living in a vibrant urban environment." Unsurprisingly that didn't sit well with those who remember it as the world's most famous nightclub.

Manchester is awash with new developments, most of which were no doubt accompanied by sales brochures promising the same as the Hacienda's. I can't really comment: the flat I live in is part of a block in the Northern Quarter that was at one time a warehouse of some kind or other. As I roamed around the city I couldn't escape the feeling that I got here at least twenty years too late. I still get to play at living in the 'bohemian' part of town but it looks as if the city that seduced me from afar as a teenager no longer exists.

I probably haven't been here long enough to write about the city anyway. Chances are I'm not looking in the right places, or maybe I just need the right guide to take me out there and show me what Manchester is truly about.

The National - Royal Festival Hall, London, August 10th 2009

I'd looked forward to this gig for months: The National, live in London, their only show this summer in the UK. They're a band I fell in love with round about the time Alligator was set free in 2005 and I'd desperately wanted to see them since then. However, come Monday night all I wanted to do was get out of the office and not have the same conversation again:

Colleague: So, what you in London for? Meetings?
Me: No, going to a gig tonight.
C: Ah cool. Who is it?
Me: The National.
C: Who?
Me: The National. They're an American band.
C: Oh, right. What kind of music is it?
Me: Hard to say really. I guess rock, for want of a better word.
C: Nice. Enjoy.

By the end of the day I was asking myself just how I had ended up stumping up ninety quid on eBay for tickets to a band that no-one seems to have heard of. Therein lies one of the core truths of The National, people either know about them and obsess accordingly, or have never heard of them and shrug at the mention of their name. Like the music the band creates there is no middle ground: it's all or nothing.

Earlier, an already good day had taken an even better turn when I discovered Broken Records were the support act that night. They'd played a tiny gig just round the corner from my flat in Manchester a few weeks before but a lack of funds and a surfeit of hangover had kept me on the sofa. I'd since bought their album and regretted that decision but karma had patted me on the head and given me a second chance.

Lazy shorthand has labelled Broken Records "the Scottish Arcade Fire." I suppose that's inevitable for any band whose lineup includes a cello, violins and an accordion, especially once you throw in a penchant for emotionally charged songs with sweeping choruses: the handy pigeonhole is complete. To me they're more likely direct descendants of that epic Celtic bluster mastered by The Waterboys and U2 (before Bono took over the UN).

Despite being fronted by a singer bearing an uncanny resemblance to my former (evil) boss and having to contend with a constant dribble of people arriving, BR gave a good account of themselves. Starting with album highpoints Nearly Home and If The News Makes You Sad, Don't Watch It, it'd be a surprise if they hadn't gained a few new fans by the end of their forty minute set.

This is the point now where I'm supposed to start writing about The National's performance. I've set the scene, given the opening band their due and now it's time to crystalise the main event. I've been pacing around the flat working out how to do so and I'm no closer to an answer. It's nothing to do with the fact that I'm writing this five days after the event - I can see the whole show unfolding before me if I want. The second glass of wine I'm working through and the cigarettes I've smoked are irrelevant to this process too. It's somewhere between straightforward and profound: a lack of skill on my part and a concert of unnatural magnificence on theirs. Bastards.

Matt Berenger stalks the stage, a cross between Rainman and a demented crab. The rest of the band are equally at home veering between tightly bound melodies and cacophonous waves of noise. Berenger slips on spilt wine, clambers up walls and disappears into the audience during a rendition of Mr November that makes you think humanity might not be a lost cause after all. Two old blokes go nuts in one of the boxes, looking like Statler and Waldorf from The Muppets on the kind of pure coke only police chiefs and Colombian overlords have access to. You know that in fifteen or twenty years children will be discovering The National's albums in their parents' record collections and their mum and dad will share a knowing look as they remember the night that lead to little Matt's conception.

I'm lying in bed at 3am after the gig listening to song after song again even though I know I have to be up at 6.30 to pack. It doesn't matter. It's The National. It doesn't matter that can listen to the songs any time, I have to listen to them now. I know I'll be tired in the morning but I also know that I can put on Alligator as I head into work and I'll be fine.

I think of the gig, of the conversations I had that day and of the fact no-one seems to know who The National are and I have mixed feelings. Part of me wants to keep it that way, introducing them to friends that I know will fall in love with the band in the same way I have, then pass the knowledge onto their friends. Another part of me wants them to stand astride the globe and rescue guitar music and emotive lyrics from the grasping, pallid hands of Cold Patrol and Snowplay. Thankfully, I reckon the latter is highly unlikely and this is probably a good thing. The National need investment on the part of the listener. They're not a band you'll hear in Tesco and be able to buy their album at the same time as your weekly grocery shop. They're a band that will enter your heart and mind and stay there as long as you have your health and faculties. Eventually you'll need to see them live and if you're lucky you will. You'll then know how little justice a review can do to the experience.