Mouse Trumpet – the biggest band you’ve never heard

Even in the age of endless “internet phenomenons”, Mouse Trumpet might just be the strangest band in the world. Well, today, at least. With an aversion to having their songs heard, their faces photographed or their members even named, it’s hard to work out how they intend to achieve their stated aim of being “the biggest underground band ever”. Not that asking them yields any solid answers either.

They are, as far as I can tell, a trio from Scotland, whose music sits somewhere between Section 25 and Chic – or at least, that’s the legend. They described their own music as “Experimental Rhythm Swamp-Twee” but have no music available to listen to anywhere.  It’s difficult, if not impossible, to prove or verify anything.

Their method of ‘promotion’ thus far has been like a game of word-of-mouth pass-the-parcel.

For Shame, I think I’m just too much of a prude

Despite the onset of adulthood, I’m still one of those people who squirms, then chortles or sucks through his teeth whenever a TV continuity announcer says that the following programme “contains sexual scenes from the start”.   I do wish Steve McQueen’s new film Shame came with one of those as a preface.  Or maybe, in my case, a warning that “those of a squeamish or sensitive disposition should perhaps look away for the next 101 minutes”.

For all that it’s called Shame, it shows little abashment when laying out, as starkly as is legal, the full, squalid horror of sex addiction.  It takes its subject very seriously indeed, thrusting it in front of your eyes and making you watch every grunt and grimace – the camera rarely averts its gaze.  Yet, even with a high number of stickily realistic sex scenes, Shame still manages to be a resolutely unsexy film.  McQueen’s crowning achievement has been to make sex addiction look as repellent onscreen as heroin addiction.  It’s harrowing stuff.

The more things change…

…the more they turn into The Village Green Preservation Society.

Memories of Bob Holness, 1928 – 2012

Like anyone of an age, I’m very sorry to hear of the passing of former Blockbusters host, Bob Holness.  His show was essential tea-time viewing for me in the mid 1980s, being a quiz with questions I had a reasonable chance of answering correctly. Not that I was ever brave enough to apply to take part, mind you, but I did think the prizes were rather excellent. Bob was as gentlemanly and respectable a host as you could have, and in his banter with contestants and ability to cut out any nonsense showed he was a savvy choice for both the concept of the show and its time slot.   Blockbusters was always a slightly odd quiz, in that it tested the theory that two heads were better than one. So, with two contestants up against a solo one, it was always nice to see the solo ones doing well and reaching one or more Gold Runs, where all the prizes were to be won.

Bob was perhaps a little like a doddery uncle at times, but his often awkward smalltalk with contestants was all part of his charm.  It also led to some great comic moments, over and above the ubiquitous “I’ll have a ‘p’ please, Bob”. 

My first “novel” – Never Kill Farmers

It was a morning like any other.  I was sitting at the breakfast table, the television flickering and droning behind me, and I was still trying to figure out why Anne Diamond was my dad’s fantasy woman.  In front of me, Bill (for it was he) failed to notice the corn flakes falling from his spoon, and splatting into the bowl below, as he gawped at Miss Diamond in one of her “trendy” jumpers.  I could hear her laughing behind me, laughing at everything her guest (probably Stan Boardman or someone like that) said, despite none of it being remotely funny.  Meanwhile, I noticed my own corn flakes were revolting.

     ‘Mum, the milk’s sour’ I complained. 

     ‘I should hope so,’ she said.  ‘It’s been maturing in the cupboard for a week.’

     There was a break for the adverts in TV AM, so Bill picked up his giant Herald, and began laughing like an executive, pretending he understood the articles.  ‘Hmm,’ he said.  ‘I see things are dicey in Lebanon.’

     ‘How do you mean “dicey”?’ I asked.

     He coughed, as he turned the page.  ‘You know, like wee cubes.’

     It was then I decided to leave home.  Within ten minutes I had packed a case and left through the back door via the kitchen.  Neither of my parents appeared to notice me leaving.

So began Never Kill Farmers, my juvenile foray into novel writing. 

Michael Kiwanuka? Sorry, but…

Call me an old grump (everybody else does), but I’m hugely disappointed that Michael Kiwanuka has come top of the BBC Sound of 2012 poll.  No harm to the boy at all, as he owns a very fine collection of cardigans and jumpers, but his current song Home Again is already a front runner for my most hated record of 2012.  I can’t get to the radio quickly enough to switch it off whenever I hear that delicately picked intro, just so I don’t get to the first foggy-moan of vocal.

Morning presenters on the normally marvellous BBC 6 Music seem to love it (or at least they pretend to) but to me (and those in my vicinity) it’s a vastly unwelcome reminder of dreary, plaintive, pseudo-poetic whiners of the recent past – imagine a computer programme that could meld David Gray, Daniel Powter, James Blunt and the bloke from the Wimax advert into one, and that’s Kiwanuka’s Home Again.  Bilge.

So, another fail for the Sound Of… series?  

Wholly crap, bag o’ shite, etc

Sorry for talking shit yet again, and I know I really should be writing this in a letter to the Southside People or the Daily Mail, but I’ve noticed that there’s a nice new North and South Dublin divide when dealing with dog turds.

On East Wall on the North side, the pavements are, in some lights, gold but mainly brown, with a heavy and regularly replenished covering of dog mess.  Some dog turds have been there for many years.  If (and this will never happen) there’s some sort of restoration/modernisation of East Wall in future, there may be some environmentalist protests at the destruction of historical dog shit, some of which dates back to pre-boom times.

Meanwhile, on the South side, things are a lot more tasteful. 

Jeremys #4: Healy

Fourth in a “series” of short tributes to well-known people called Jeremy

There was a short period of time when Jeremy Healy was a hero of mine.  Back in 1982, before I really knew what clothes were for, I was smitten by a pair of musical designer tramps called Haysi Fantayzee, featuring Jeremy ‘Jeremiah’ Healy and the lovely Kate Garner. I’d never seen donkey jackets look cool on anyone, even Michael Foot, so it was rather a surprise to see these two leaping around on Top of the Pops, strutting a ‘style’ that looked, for about thirty seconds, like it might catch on.  Apart from hits like John Wayne Is Big Leggy and Shiny Shiny, they were famed for this scruffy appearance, their saucy utterings and their penchant for drawing designs on their clothes and footwear using silver and gold felt tip pens.  Heroic!

Baby it’s cold outside – so here’s freezerRoom

In the final month of 2011, I was finally properly acquainted with the music of Cork collective freezerRoom, a band I’d heard plenty about but somehow managed to avoid.  With a name like that, I’d expected them to be purveyors of stark, chilly electro or experimental neo-Krautrock.  But no, they’re anything but; their sound is satisfyingly warm and rich, like hot chocolate on a bitterly cold day.  Their self-titled debut album is a lovely collection of beautifully composed songs, which, for all of the layered sounds and busy arrangements on display, comes over as a gorgeously laid-back whole.

The mix of influences is widespread: it merrily flits across electro-pop, jazz and several dance genres, like trip-hop, trance, chill, drum n’ bass – but it’s all done with restraint, none of these is allowed to overwhelm the atmosphere.  

Pointing the way to a Happy New Year

Dearie me, it’s 2012.

The world is in the grip of death, famine, financial collapse, and, despite the so-called ‘Arab Spring’, there are still a significant number of lunatics running the global asylum.  The New Year arrives with violent storms battering the coasts of Britain and Ireland.  Even David Bowie is about to turn 65.  All we can really do is hope for the best.

This year, I’m hoping to continue where 1997 left off, creatively-speaking.  Let’s call it a ‘creative spring’.  I wrote an awful more in 2011 than I even managed in 1997 (when I took a – ahem – ‘career break’ to write a novel), so here’s to new horizons, finding silver linings in the blanket of dark clouds and, like the Wombles always said, making good use of the things I find.