LCD Soundsystem, Brixton Academy, 24th May 2010

If frontman James Murphy follows through on his stated intention to make LCD’s next album the last, the world will be poorer for the loss of a band that works hard at pulling off the best kind of gig: a cross between a party with your best mates and a rave (complete with a fog of dry ice and lasers). It’s Saturday night and it seems everyone’s been invited: 40-somethings mix with 20-somethings and no one feels weird.  Given it’s essentially a farewell tour, what we get is a greatest hits show, from the first single ‘Losing My Edge’ to ‘Daft Punk is Playing at My House’ through to the new single ‘Drunk Girls’.  You can draw a musical evolutionary line back from LCD to two other influential New York bands.   Lyrically they’re close to Talking Heads, musically closer to disco-era Blondie.

From the opening ‘Get Innocuous’, drummer Pat Mahoney powers everything, keeping time as precisely and tirelessly as a machine.  It’s immensely satisfying dance music that builds and builds, adding layers of rhythms until you find yourself locked into a chugging groove before its all broken down again and the next track starts up. ‘Yr City’s a Sucker’ is one such example.  Given Murphy’s love of cowbells and various other members of the band hammering bongos or yet more drums, at times it smacks of the relentless funk that was Go-go.

In a recent interview with The Guardian, Murphy said he succeeds at making ‘dumb body music’ but the biggest cheer of the night went up for the opening bars of  ‘Someone Great’.  It’s one of the greatest songs ever written about heartbreak and loss, about carrying on with the trivial minutiae of life (‘there’s all the work that needs to be done…songs to be finished’) when you’re dying inside.  If any doubt still exists, it proves that dance music can be as much about the heart as the feet.  Murphy sings it mockingly at first, as if it doesn’t matter, before the obvious love of the song’s sentiment by the crowd obliges him to put his heart into it.   A 4 song encore ends with ‘New York, I Love You but You’re Bringing Me Down’ which comes over like a cross between a lovely lament from the drunk at the end of the bar and a musical show tune.  White balloons then tumble from the ceiling like it’s closing time at Studio 54 and with that, they’re off.

Snow Business

ACL is one of those initialisms which is referred to in uneasy tones by snowboarders, as if the existence of the thought of it will have an influence over the course of events on the mountain.  The snap I heard from my knee as my board wedged in a thick pile of snow and my body gave into inertia was conclusive enough for me.  Grands Montets at Argentiere (near Chamonix) had been blessed with the best snowfall of at least a month and riding through it had been beautiful until that noise.  The only silver lining was the experience of being rescued.  Able pisteurs strapped me into a sledge and took me down to a point on the mountain where I was hooked onto the back of a skiddoo.  Then it was onto the cablecar for the final leg down to ground level.  As they saw me waiting to get loaded in, boarders and skiers alike looked at me with my leg in a splint before grimacing and turning away, not wanting to let the black worm of the thought that it might happen to them eat away at their brains.

Two weeks and two days later, an MRI scan has confirmed it: my anterior cruciate ligament is ruptured.  It's not until something happens to one of them that you realise how much you use your legs.  For a fortnight now there's been no more cycling into the city, no more running for a bus and nothing so easy as just nipping to the local for a swift pint.  Pints I can still do but 'nipping' is definitely out.  Exiting the front door of the building (once I've reached it) brings Groundhog Day.  Along with my first intake of the best air of the day, there is inevitably a smug looking cyclist with the sun on his or her face, enjoying the peaceful streets of Notting Hill as salt is  slowly rubbed into my wound.  The GP thinks it will mean surgery but is sending me off to the knee doc just to make sure.  Meantime I'm trying not to think about what is ahead of me.  Some say six months before I'm back to how I was but one friend wrote to say that he's just at the point of being signed off by the doctor 11 months later.  In the meantime there is no choice: the patient must learn patience.

As a footnote to this, I'm glad I booked insurance.  In Euros, the rescue cost 360, the doc 150, the leg brace and drugs 90.  The insurance company also booked out three seats for me on the plane to put my leg up on and a car the other end that delivered me to my door.  I've previously had a rant about insurance companies not being fit for purpose so respect where its due: thank you Flexicover.

Success and Failure

If you find yourself in a newsagents this week, have a flick through this weeks copy of Look or the May issue of Company Magazine.  In Look you'll find an interview that I did with the Salad Club ladies Rosie & Ellie, who run a pop-up restaurant.  It was the second time I'd interviewed them, the first being for the blog initially, but then the South London Press liked it and subsequently ran it and then NFT picked it up for online.  I did pitch it to Look at the time and they passed...but then they thought of me later when they had an appropriate umbrella to put it under: pop-ups.  You know; restaurants, shops, bars.  Wish I'd thought of that as a group.  What I did think of was how crowdfunding is gaining pace.  It's a way of financing your project, whatever it is, by asking the online community to pay for it.  In return they might get shares in your company or a share of the profits but often they get nothing at all: they just want to see the project completed.  One of my case-studies, Kate Madison, tantalised Lord of the Rings junkies so much with the prospect of another film, they chipped in £17,000 so they could have another hit of the orcs and elves saga.

So I'm writing for a living (a small one).  How did I do this?  Jenny Wood, the Features Editor at Look let me work with them unpaid for a week.  It was easily worth it for what I learnt.  From the outside Look is all clothes and celebs but have a look at the real life stories and think about the research and persistence it takes to get them; that's what they taught me.   Crowdfunding came up the week I was there.  I got to know my subject and secured half a dozen case-studies.  As they were all women, I pitched it to women's mags after Look's Editor had passed on it.  Three more turned it down before Company picked it up. It's a good feeling when someone says yes to a pitch.

One little bit of me has failed though, a bit of my body to be exact.  I'd be pretty happy this week if I hadn't got myself a suspected torn anterior cruciate ligament whilst snowboarding in Chamonix last week. If my Doctor ever calls me back with an appointment for an MRI scan, tune in in next time to see if 'suspected' has become 'confirmed'.

How Gaga's diction can help you win at Scrabble

One can learn any number of things when ennui leads to search engines. Claiming he discovered it in a bored moment at work searching results for diminutive words, a friend recently told me of his discovery of the continued online speculation about Lady Gaga’s gender.  I tried it and it works; if you type the word ‘if’ followed by a space, Google’s predictive guesswork throws up the top search as ‘Is Lady Gaga a Man?’ with over 41 million results.  The rumour started at last year’s Glastonbury, where a short red dress revealed something pink flapping about between Gaga’s thighs, although the Youtube footage displayed by www.ladygagaisaman.com and numerous others is too grainy to be conclusive.  With so many people apparently wondering, the question has been put to her on a couple of occasions.  Initially deadpanning that, ‘It's just a little bit of a penis and really doesn't interfere much with my life.’ she went onto say ‘I’m sexy, I’m hot. I have both a poon and a peener. Big f*cking deal.’  It’s at times like these that www.urbandictionary.com proves its worth. ‘Poon’ is the shortened version of poontang; ‘peener’ is the hybrid of penis and wiener. 

Urban dictionary can bring a whole new dimension to your Facebook Scrabble playing and there’s one word I’m hoping to get in the next time my boss’s back is turned. Big time US interviewer Barbara Walters asked Gaga if she was ‘part man, part woman’, a question that was interpreted by many online speculators as asking her if she was ‘intersexual’ (104 points on a triple word score if you’re wondering). The dictionary defines this as ‘being intermediate between male and female’. For the record, Gaga gave a definitive answer about her gender, a very definite ‘No’. Surprisingly for such an astute self-publicist, Gaga missed that opportunity to label herself as alien in the same sense as Ziggy Stardust, the alter-ego of her idol David Bowie. If people are speculating about you, why put a stop to the continuing free publicity by issuing a confirmation or a denial? Realising this, she backtracked a little by saying 'That's really quite a story! But in a sense, I portray myself in a very androgynous way, and I love androgyny.’ Despite having killed one rumour, the sheer number of the search results suggests ongoing interest, perhaps because one question remains unanswered.  What was that thing flapping around between her legs at Glasters?

Haircut 100

Do most men resent having to get their hair cut?  It's a knife edge experience for me.  On exiting the hairdressers I'm either elated and surprised that its gone so well, trying not to check my reflection in shop windows as I go, or angry and frustrated that I wasn't able to articulate myself sufficiently so that the guy with the scissors could understand me.  On those days I don't much care to see my barnet in a window as it's either going to be too short and I'm looking like I have some sort of wasting disease or I've got some crazy new 'do' that's too young for me which has left me looking like something out of Nathan Barley.

My first problem is describing what I want - embarrassing for someone who wants to write for a living you might think and you'd be right.  'Shorter at the back and the sides, a bit choppy on top, you know?' used to be my usual hopeful refrain before I noticed that every man around me at the time had more or less the same thing, with amounts and type of 'product' being the only real difference.  My other tactic was to find a picture of someone I thought had a cool haircut and take it with me.  This never works.  Brad Pitt, along with his other aesthetic qualities, has good hair and good hairdressers.  Brad's hair is like Brad himself - tough and thick.  It can be coerced into just about any shape and it WILL ALWAYS LOOK GOOD.  Usually because, on a handsome man, any old chop will.

Most of my mates have got to a haircut that suits them and stuck with it.  The classic is of course the skinhead or crew cut.  But what is a crew cut?  We have here a problem of definition.  The dictionary describes it as 'a very short haircut for men and boys'.  With this sort of vagueness its no wonder that its hard getting your hair cut the way you want.  Anyway, you know the cut I mean if you're a bloke.  Your hair might grow out curly or you've given up trying styles that don't work so you just get the barber to do a grade 4 clipper cut.  Or you bypass the whole barber bit, you've got clippers and you do it yourself.  If you're balding, this is definitely the haircut you should have.  Other blokes I know do the choppy thing that I described above even though it feels about 10 years old now.    Away from these two styles you're into fashion territory and that is a step too far for me.

I got to the hairdressers 15 minutes early thinking I would look through a few mags and find something that suited me.  You're right, we're back in 'show the man a picture' territory.  GQ was nearest to hand and I trawled through endless adverts feeling more and more desperate, only distracted briefly from my quest by Anne Hathaway looking like a sexy Morticia Adams in boudoir attire.  In the ads there are a lot of geeky looking slicked parting type things and worse still, there's a lot of 80's styles that are apparently beloved by Ralph Lauren, D&G and all that crowd.  I looked like a geek when I was 17 (some would say I still do), I don't live in Hoxton and I'm not gay so they were all out.  Giving up, I told Giovanni my dilemma.  'I never know what I want', I said 'Can't you just cut something that suits me?'  I was his first client of the day and he looked like it was a bit early to be creative.  'Let me have a look...' he said, initially buying time before getting to work.  He did his best.  My hair looks a bit like it did when my Mum used to take me, asking the barber for 'just a trim'.  No 'product', natural, not too daft but in truth a bit boring.  Not exactly cool but something I can live with.  And yes I did do the shop window thing on the way home.

Save BBC6Music

 To trust.enquiries@bbc.co.uk, srconsultation@bbc.co.uk

Dear Sir or Madam

While the recession means times are tight for all of us and I understand that the BBC is answerable to the licence fee payers, please don't axe 6 music.  I'm 37 years old - too old for most of Radio 1 except for the stuff that's on in the small hours (thank you iPlayer) and too young for Radio 2, which is too middle of the road for me and most of my peers.

6Music is good because it's a place where I can listen to new music when I want to (Marc Riley, Tom Robinson), can occasionally be assured of a classic from the days when I was mad about music (morning Shaun Keaveny) and be entertained by fantastically daft stuff in between (hello Adam & Joe).

You only need to surf Facebook or Twitter for a while to realise how much the station is loved and revered.  At it's best, its truly a station in the mould of the BBC's greatest ever DJ - John Peel.  It supports new bands, lets you hear them live and raw and is discerning in broadcasting older, mostly pretty cool music that you might have missed first time around, thus opening it up to a new audience.

The BBC is something I'm proud of as a Brit.  I love watching David Attenborough as much as I do Dot Cotton.  Similarly Mary Anne Hobbs does it for me as much as Desert Island Discs.  But without 6Music, there will be a big empty musical hole in my life.  Don't force us to listen to all the other rubbish commercial MOR stations like Absolute.  Keep us stimulated.

Please keep 6Music on air.

Regards,

Lee Mannion

PS If you need to make cuts, get rid of George Lamb.  He's not bad on the telly, but just because a bunch of mates have a laugh when they get together, it doesn't mean everyone listening will if you broadcast it.

Smile or Die

The answer to the question that I set myself is yes, this week at least.  I'm writing for a living.  I got my first commission to write something for a magazine and it pays a weeks wage.  Of course I was happy (its what I've been working towards after all) but I've noticed some strange things about myself as a result of it.  The most significant is a kind of superstitious paranoia.  I thought about naming the magazine on here but then I thought that if I did and the feature ended up getting killed, I'd end up looking really stupid and no one wants that right?   Which means that I've somehow got to the point of thinking what I write here in the blog would have some influence over future events, which is of course plainly ridiculous. I've been reading about a similar sort of thing recently in a book called Smile or Die by Barbara Ehrenreich.  The tagline to the book is 'How Positive Thinking Fooled America & The World'.

As someone who is naturally cynical, I was drawn to it.  Someone suggested I read this book called 'The Secret'.  You might have heard of it.  Its a compilation of various theories of positive thinking from what you might call self help books.  One of the major theories they put forward is 'the law of attraction' which suggests

'that you can have anything you want in life by focusing your mind on it.  The universe exists to do your bidding if only you can learn to harness the power of your desires.  Visualize what you want and it will be attracted to you.'

as Ehrenreich herself summarises it.  The obvious answer to this is that there are an awful lot of people in the world who, for example, probably visualize having access to clean drinking water.  The reason why they don't have it, according to the law of attraction, is that they just don't want it enough.  Rhonda Byrne, the author of 'The Secret' stated that disasters like tsunamis can only happen to people 'who are on the same frequency as the event'.  In other words, they brought it on themselves.  You're probably getting what I think about 'the law of attraction' and 'The Secret' by now.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a positive thinker - I'm definitely the glass half full bloke.  I think like that because I have travelled.  I've seen beggars in India with grotesquely out of proportion limbs through elephantiasis.  In the same country I saw a yellowed corpse surrounded by flies dumped by a river, probably there (I was told) because the family couldn't afford a proper burial. Maybe it was more sinister.  I was told not to go the police in case they tried to pin it on me and extort money.  So I know that I'm lucky by comparison.  Food in the fridge, roof over my head - life is pretty good.

But to get back to the (frankly bizarre now I come to think of it) point, I've had to write the blog this week to convince myself that what I write here does not have an influence over the events of the universe.  Actually last week's blog proves it.  Kimberley Walsh has not been in touch.