#oneaday, Day 53: Freewriting #3, or What The Hell Is Going On In My Head?

[In the absence of any particular inspiration today, I’m going to start that clock for ten minutes once again and just write without editing, except that which happens on “autopilot” as I type. Let’s see what happens this time, shall we? Three. Two. One. Go!]

Fire light.

A camp fire.

Figures all around. Standing. Waiting. What are they waiting for?

Who knows. No-one knows, not even the woman standing apart from the group, facing the other way, into the forest. She weeps, for something lost and almost forgotten.

The men chant. No-one knows what they are saying, not even then. It is a dead language, dredged up for this ceremony which no-one is sure of its purpose.

The woman turns. The men continue, seemingly oblivious to her presence. Her face is streaked with tears.

She pulls off the shoulder of her fur top, first one, then the other. The garment falls to the floor. She is naked in the darkness, the red glow of the fire illuminating her skin.

She walks towards the fire. The men still chant. Over and over. She walks. Closer. The heat is on her skin now, making her sweat.

What is this? she thinks. Why am I here? I don’t know what this ceremony is about, or what it is that is going to happen next.

A man’s attention is distracted. He stumbles over one of the words of the dead language. No-one notices except the woman. She turns, her flaxen hair falling over her bare shoulders. She locks eyes with the man.

One word goes through her mind. Heretic.

Why heretic? Why is he a heretic when I don’t understand why any of us are here? she thinks.

The man is panicking, trying his best to find his rhythm and get back with the rest of the group. Still no-one has noticed except the woman, now staring at him, the light of the fire reflected in her widening eyes, still glistening with tears.

The man looks away from her, down at the floor, as he continues to mumble the words, missing things here and there.

Eventually, he can take it no longer, and sinks to his knees, his bare legs striking the dirt on the ground and grazing them. It hurts more than he expected, but in a short while it won’t matter.

The woman is filled with sorrow for this man’s fate. She doesn’t know what it is, but a flash of something – a forgotten memory? A vision? Something blasts through her mind, and it is not a pretty sight. She catches a glimpse of the man’s face in her mind’s eye, his face contorted with intense torment and pain.

Then she knows. She has to save him. She has to get out of here. She takes a step forward. Towards him. Moving slowly, her bare feet gliding across the dirty floor.

The kneeling man looks up at her with pleading eyes. Her eyes still glisten. Her heart is filled with compassion for this man, this poor man dragged into this situation beyond his control, just like she was. And she knows that it is time. It is time for this to continue no longer.

She takes his hand. The other men chant, over and over in a forgotten, dead language. They are oblivious to what she is doing, and oblivious to the young man’s mistakes. In a few short minutes, all that will change, and she knows this. She pulls him up to his feet and nods her head towards the darkness of the forest, away from the angry red glow of the firelight.

Where should we go? she asks herself. I don’t know where we are.

Run, he says with his eyes, looking at her, on the verge of tears.

The unspoken communication between the two of them passes quickly, and, hands clasped tightly together, they run into the forest. Plants and branches sting and lacerate their bare legs as they run, but in a few short minutes none of that will matter. In a few short minutes, the ceremony will be over, for better or worse, and all this will cease to matter.

Given our desertion, she thinks, my money is on “worse”.

But she doesn’t want to stick around to find out. And she’s sure he doesn’t either.

Where to go? The forest paths seem to lead in every direction.

The only thing they can think of is the direction they cannot go in – back towards the flames. That way lies only suffering and death.

But where to go from here?

[Yeah, I know. Don’t ask.]

#oneaday, Day 52: Nostalgiarising

Been feeling a little nostalgic over the last few days. The Final Fantasy story I told last night was just one of the things I’ve been remembering. I’ve been finding all sorts of other crap around the place recently – one of the most recent rediscoveries was a cardboard document wallet containing some play scripts, posters and a few other bits and pieces from when I was at university. I love finding old playscripts in particular, because we always used to scribble all over them and sign them on the last night of a performance. I’m glad we always did that, because it means I have great keepsakes like this. Ignore the dreadful attempt to draw Cloud Strife that is inexplicably on the front page.

Four points about these pages:

1. I have no idea what the stains are.

2. Yes, I am aware my script is bound using duct tape.

3. Don’t try and email “Costume Lucy”. She’s not there any more.

4. The “makeup” mentioned in several of the comments is referring to this:

(I’m the one on the right.) My mother inexplicably told me that me being dressed like this reminded her of my Grandad. I don’t remember my Grandad ever looking like that, unless I didn’t know him that well. (Yes, Mum, I know that wasn’t what you really meant.)

My time with the Theatre Group at Southampton University is one of the things I most fondly remember from my past. One day we’ll manage that reunion that Anja and I are always talking about. Maybe even this year. Who knows?

Also found in said folder:

Programme from an episode of Songs of Praise that our extremely non-religious secondary school attended, signed by Diane Louise Jordan of Blue Peter fame.

Programmes from other productions I was in – our extremely over-budget, ambitious, futuristic Macbeth from the time when everything had to look like the Matrix; our first attempt at taking a show up to the Edinburgh Fringe (A Month in the Country by Turgenev, performed outside. Not the wisest decision, but it was fun.)

My second attempt at freewriting from when I first found out about it – dated 16/9/01 at 21:36.

My “P” for “passed” plates for my car (which I never put on the car, because having “P” plates on is an invitation for other drivers to treat you like even more of an arse than they do already)

And, finally, this delightful 20th birthday card, hand-made for me by my friends Sam and Chris.

Rediscovering stuff like this is awesome.

#oneaday, Day 51: Final Fantasies

Picked up Final Fantasy XIII today, but I’m not going to talk about it too much just yet. I want to do a proper “first impressions” post. Suffice to say, though, I’m enjoying it so far. It has been extremely linear so far, as people have been saying, but it’s certainly not a worse game for this fact. So far all the characters seem appealing, and the dynamic between them, now they’ve all met each other, is shaping up to be interesting. I look forward to seeing what happens.

I wanted to talk about my memories of the Final Fantasy series generally, as it’s a series that will always be close to my heart for a variety of reasons. I’d never even heard of it prior to Final Fantasy VII’s release, but I was intrigued when I heard my brother discussing it and he mentioned the oft-quoted fact that it was “one of the only games that had ever made anyone cry”. It sounds trite now, of course, as everyone knows what FFVII’s “big shock” was, and the moment has lost its emotional impact. But I remember playing that game for the first time and not knowing what was going to happen – so when that moment at the end of Disc 1 came, I genuinely felt something. It hadn’t been spoiled for me. I knew something tragic happened at some point in the game, but that was it. I wasn’t prepared for them to kill off a main character like that. It was, of course, even more traumatic for the fact you could rename every party member in FFVII, so it was like someone I actually knew died. (Shush. I was young and stupid.)

Of course, killing off main characters isn’t something that FF has traditionally shied away from, but being unfamiliar with the series prior to that moment, I wasn’t to know. In fact, not only was I unfamiliar with the FF series, I was unfamiliar with the RPG genre in general, my only real experiences with it having been Alternate Reality on the Atari 8-bit (which, when I played it as a young child, I really didn’t understand) and the dreadful Times of Lore by Origin on the Atari ST. Neither of them had gripped me, perhaps because of the deficiencies these games held in the narrative department. Alternate Reality just didn’t have a story full stop (besides that which you made for yourself) and Times of Lore was just… well, crap. So, suffice to say I hadn’t felt particularly inspired to pursue an interest in the RPG genre – not until FFVII turned up, anyway.

A particularly fond memory of VII comes from one long summer when my folks were away in America for a few weeks. It was the first time I’d been left home alone and, among other things best left for discussion another day, my friend Woody and I spent a lot of time playing Final Fantasy VII. At one point, we played it for thirty-six hours continuously, whacking each other over the head with couch cushions when the other looked like they were falling asleep. Eventually, we did pretty much both pass out, with some peculiar dreams and talking-in-sleep going on. The tequila probably didn’t help matters.

We fell asleep as we were in FFVII’s Ancient Forest looking for the Apocalypse Sword prior to the endgame. I remember falling asleep to the music there and it infecting my brain. I can’t hear that track these days without thinking of the peculiar sensations of sleep deprivation, slight drunkenness and square eyes from staring at the TV for too long.

It was some time after discovering FFVII that I decided to explore the rest of the series and uncovered the world of the music of FF. I managed to track down some scans of the elusive “Piano Collections” books for FFIV, V and VI online and tried playing them. They’re wonderful arrangements – actually properly written for the piano, rather than simply transcribed – so the performance of them has become something of a trademark of mine over the years. Hearing any of those tracks always fills me with a sense of deep joy and nostalgia – not necessarily for the games as such, but because they remind me of times past – of good times with friends, of things that happened around the same time as me playing them – all sorts. Playing the games themselves has much the same effect. It’s actually been many years now since I played FFVII, VIII or IX. Although they are now somewhat aged, I don’t think the soft spot I have for them will ever leave me, and I’ll always carry the memories of what I was doing when I played them. (FFVII – that long summer. FFVIII – first year at university. FFIX – visiting my bro in America one Christmas.)

Yeah, I know. How lame to tell a Final Fantasy story. But I don’t care. 🙂

#oneaday, Day 50: Old Men Rant At The Hit Parade

Caution: YouTube frenzy ahead.

There’s a lot of shit music around at the moment. One only has to look at this week’s top 40 to see most of it. Let’s explore it, shall we? Call it a cultural exchange.

Before I go any further, I would like to add that I don’t hate black people, despite whatever you might interpret from my song choices which follow. I just hate shit music. And a lot of it happens to be by black artists. I can’t think of any awards ceremony I would like to attend less than the MOBO’s. Not that I particularly want to go to any awards ceremonies, ever. But I digress. Let’s dig into the sewers of the UK music scene, shall we?

Hanging in there at number 40, we have Sidney Samson’s Riverside. A song that starts in an atonal, idiotic place and then goes nowhere fast.

This is one of those songs that thinks that having a single hook of about four bars long is enough to build an entire song around. And to be fair, the philistines of the world don’t appear to know any better, as this song has been lurking around the charts for quite some time. But it has no depth to it. There’s no development. At all. The whole song is that irritating twangy synth line and some twat saying “Riverside, motherfucker” over the top of it. What does that even mean? Don’t answer that, because I really don’t give a shit.

Next up, number 30 sees Florence and the Machine performing You Got The Love.

Now, I have a lot of time for Florence, in that she can actually sing, has a distinctive voice and has a band with actual instruments in it. But this song? Ugh. It was already the most overplayed song in the world before she covered it, and with her and her machine being one of the most overplayed bands in the UK at the moment, you get an irritating song which is never more than five minutes away from when you turn the radio on.

One space below that, we have Iyaz and Replay, the first of many whiney black men in the charts today.

I find something profoundly irritating about this style of music. Perhaps it’s the fact that one song in this style is virtually indistinguishable from another. Perhaps it’s the gratuitous mentioning of iPods in the lyrics (I have a weird thing where I think that mentioning brand names or things/people that actually exist is somehow obnoxious. Don’t ask me to explain why, because I can’t.) Perhaps it’s just the fact it’s a shit song. Who knows?

Moving up the charts, we have Jay-Z ruining a perfectly good Alicia Keys song at number 28.

Alicia Keys can actually sing, so why she needs a douche like Jay-Z babbling his nonsense over the top of it is anyone’s guess. To her credit, the infinitely superior version of the song, with no rapping and just Alicia singing, is currently at number 6, proving it is indeed possible to polish a turd.

At 26, we have the Helping Haiti record.

I have nothing against charity records. But I fucking hate this song. And every charity song there has been in the last few years has been of this ilk – slow, boring, dirge-like and filled with “celebrities” trying to outdo each other vocally. Ignore this drivel and just donate directly to the charities if you feel that strongly about it.

At 22, we have another whining black man, this time accompanied by a shouting black man and Sean Paul, who sadly isn’t dead. It’s Jay Sean, Sean Paul and Lil Jon with Do You Remember.

This is just awful. And on a side note, compare Jay Sean’s singing with Iyaz’s. I defy you to tell them apart. The only thing which sets this record apart is Lil Jon’s incoherent shouting and Sean Paul’s incoherent burbling. At least it isn’t a full-on Sean Paul record. I thought we had got rid of him for good. Sadly, he’s still about, but at least it’s only in a “Ft.” role.

I, of course, couldn’t let Glee slide. They’re at number 20.

Golden rule: Leave Journey alone. Golden rule number two: If you must cover Journey, don’t turn it into a wet fart of a song. This song breaks both of those rules.

This next song is unforgivable purely for the fact it uses the Flintstone-based chat-up line. It’s Young Money with Bed Rock, at number 18. I am sure you can guess the line which is used.

In other news… it’s some rappers “singing” about fucking. In their video they wear lots of gold. Stereotype much?

At number 12, Gramophonedzie do their best to destroy everyone’s favourite memories of Jessica Rabbit.

This song brings back unpleasant memories of Audio Bullys [sic] molesting Nancy Sinatra’s Bang Bang a year or two back. So, to make it all better, here’s a far superior version.

Mmm… Jessica Rabbit. Err, where was I?

Oh, right. Number 5. Does this one, by any chance, sound familiar?

That’s right. The most overplayed song in the world by the most overplayed band in the UK now has the most overrated babbling twat spouting chavvy nonsense over the top of it. I don’t think anything else needs to be said.

Just time to stop off at number 3, and Jason Derulo’s In My Head, whiney black man number 3.

Pro tip for Mr Derulo: Singing your own name at the start of a song wasn’t cool when Craig David did it. It still isn’t now. Plus, your song is shit and sounds like every other whiney black man out there. Shut up.

And finally – I’ve saved the best for last – it’s the current UK number 1, the appallingly spelled Tinie Tempah and Pass Out.

I’m going to say nothing about this song… but I am going to share the lyrics with you after the jump (if you’re on the front page, click this post’s title or the “Read More” link below to read the full thing in all its… err… “glory”), and you can make your own mind up. Bear in mind this is the current number 1 in the charts. Once you’ve listened to it and read the lyrics you might understand why I mourn the UK music scene’s sorry state. So without further ado, I leave you with Tinie Tempah. The twat.

Continue reading “#oneaday, Day 50: Old Men Rant At The Hit Parade” →

#oneaday, Day 49: End of the Week

Hello! Short entry tonight as I have, despite spending most of the day thinking “I should write my blog”, ended up in bed. Oh well.

This weekend I have: tidied up, washed up, completed Miles Edgeworth: Ace Attorney and finally got around to watching a DVD from New Zealand that my parents got me a while back.

The DVD is worthy of further attention. It’s called Seven Periods with Mr Gormsby and is a comedy-drama about the titular supply teacher coming in to a rather difficult school and finding his traditional views are rather at odds with the touchy-feely nature of modern education.

Gormsby is a wonderful character, and frequently comes out with some of the most offensive things I’ve ever heard, which seem even worse in the high school context. My favourite has to be his nonplussed attitude after finding a drawing of himself on his blackboard with the slogan “Mr Gormsby takes it up the arse”.

“I would like the boy who did this,” he says, “to come forward and take his punishment like a man. I’m not going to give you detention and I’ve been forbidden to use the cane, so the one who is responsible for this defamation… I am going to fuck. And this won’t be that namby-pamby buggery you’d get from your music teacher. No, boys, no-one who gets rogered by Gormsby comes back for seconds.”

The humour is incredibly rude throughout – so much so that I’m not surprised I’ve never seen it over here. But it is hilarious and, in the words of my wife, “they should show it on teacher training courses”.

There. Done. Good night!

One A Day, Day 48: Freewriting #2

[Here’s another in my occasional series of “Freewriting” articles, where I start the clock for ten minutes and write without stopping – or really thinking as I go along. As a result, the output produced is sometimes not of the finest quality, but it can offer some interesting insights into my own brain.]

Start the clock!

I’m in Costa Coffee. Does the place you’re in when you’re writing affect what you write about? Well, of course it does – the proof is right there. I said “I’m in Costa Coffee” and then started to write about being in Costa Coffee and whether or not that made any difference to what I write about. So yes, yes it does.

I’m having the same trouble as last time with this freewriting lark – being too well-trained means that any time I make a mistake, be it typo or clumsy word formation – I automatically backspace and correct it. It’s an automatic reflex action. I can’t help it. I actually can’t stop myself from doing it. I suppose in so far as bad habits go, there are worse ones to have than an anal attention to detail when it comes to spelling, punctuation and grammar.

I wonder how much I’ll write today? Last time I believe it was in the region of 800 words, which would be consistent with my semi-inhuman typing speed of 85wpm. Can you be semi-inhuman? I don’t know. I’m sure that inhuman things might have more difficulty typing, though, unless they’re intimately familiar with the English language.

One of the toilets here at the coffee shop is closed. The barista has just asked for a “wet floor” sign. One can only imagine the terrors that have undoubtedly been unleashed in the lavatories here. To quote Simon Pegg from Black Books, “One of our valued customers had blocked one of the toilets with Monster Munch! How can we, as a team, get that sorted out?”

Not sure why that popped into my head. I think it’s the sight of a smug Simon Pegg handing a bucket and rubber gloves to a bemused-looking Bill Bailey that is the thing that stayed with me from that episode. Black Books is excellent, incidentally, if you’ve never seen it. It’s completely off-the-wall batshit crazy (and Americans don’t seem to get it, or at least my American sister-in-law didn’t quite seem to get it) but I find it completely hilarious. It’s a very different kind of humour to something like Spaced – absolutely my favourite TV show of all time – but it’s still great, and it introduced me to Dylan Moran, whom I’m constantly confusing with Chris O’Dowd from The IT Crowd. I can’t help it – angry Irish man with curly, wayward hair? Roy from the IT Crowd and Bernard Black have a fair bit in common.

I pressed Shift five times while I was thinking (and typing) there, and Windows decided to do that helpful popup about “StickyKeys”. It’s ironic, really, isn’t it, that the so-called “Accessibility” features of nearly every operating system I’ve used are actually inconvenient to the people who don’t need them. I guess that’s not so strange really.

Three and a half minutes to go, and I haven’t touched my coffee yet. I can’t really touch it while I’m typing though, can I? Not unless I did a very undignified “bend forward and slurp it” sort of manoevre (or however the fuck you spell it – it’s one word I always forget) – but I’ve decided against doing that. Besides, it’s probably too hot anyway.

Hot coffee. Wasn’t there a story a few weeks back about some chav in this country spilling tea over their crotch from McDonalds and attempting to sue, much like the case from America a few years back? Why would you bother to do that? Actually, I know the answer – to get some “free” money. I wouldn’t sue someone if I’d poured hot tea over my balls having been holding the cup between my thighs (as this person had) – I’d be screaming in agony, probably, and refusing to do anything useful for a few weeks, but there’s no way I’d think it was the fault of the person who sold me the damn tea. If they didn’t throw it in my face, it’s my fault for anything that happens once I’ve taken hold of that cup.

Under a minute to go. I wonder if I’ll finish a sentence, or indeed a paragraph in time? I’m up to 734 words… No, 742. WordPress’ word count doesn’t update immediately, so that figure may be off. But still, that’s not bad work for ten minutes non-stop typing, is it? Ten seconds to go. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Bye bye!

One A Day, Day 47: And… Collapse

How I made it through this week without suffering a complete nervous breakdown I’ll never know, but here I am. I am exhausted though, so this entry is going to be rather short.

Just got back from another game of Dungeon Lords. Fun game, but we’re clearly still learning the ropes. Like Space Alert, though, it remains quite entertaining even when things are going horribly wrong. And that’s good – games where you get behind and are then stuck there are less fun. To me anyway. Probably because I’m usually the one in last place!

I’m so knackered I can barely keep my eyes open. Time for bed now I feel, and a well-earned lie-in tomorrow morning.

One A Day, Day 46: Dungeon Lords

One of the group of friends I semi-regularly play board games with shared a new acquisition tonight – a game called Dungeon Lords. It’s a fairly lengthy game to play, but it’s bursting with character and fun, despite it being a self-confessed game for “hardcore gamers”.

Dungeon Lords casts you in the role of one of the titular evil overlords. It’s your job to build a dungeon, populate it with monsters and traps and then settle down to watch the heroes try their hand at fighting their way through it. If it sounds like Bullfrog’s ageing PC game Dungeon Keeper to you, you’d be about right.

The game is split into two phases, each of which you play through twice. The premise is that you have two years to prove yourself as a Dungeon Lord and acquire your Dungeon License. To do this, you spend each year building and populating your dungeon, followed by a period of defending it against a party of adventurers who have gathered to face your challenges. In the second year, the adventurers are tougher, but you have slightly different options at your disposal for building.

Gameplay is based on players simultaneously choosing actions by laying cards face down. Two of your possible actions per round are laid face up as “forbidden” actions that you can’t do. At the end of each turn, two of your actions that you took become next turn’s “forbidden” actions, meaning a degree of forward planning is required for success. The actions allow you to do a number of things – collect resources, manage your reputation, hire imps (who are used for building the dungeon, mining gold and staffing the various rooms in the dungeon), hiring monsters or building rooms. All of these things are important – resources are needed to extend your dungeon and hire creatures, your reputation affects how powerful the adventurers who attack you are (a more evil reputation leads to tougher adversaries, leading up to an almost-invincible paladin as the ultimate challenge) and everything has the potential to score you points.

Once actions have been chosen, they are resolved in turn order. Up to three players can take the same action in a round, but the precise nature of the action varies slightly depending on who gets there first. Sometimes it’s the cost of things that vary according to turn order, sometimes it’s how effective the action is. It’s an interesting system that forces you to consider what your opponents are likely to do carefully, as well as prioritising your own needs for victory.

Eventually, you’ll have a “working” dungeon featuring a collection of corridors and rooms, and some monsters and traps to put in them. At that point, combat starts. Adventurers attack you as a traditional RPG party, with a tanking warrior at the front and rogues, wizards and priests at the back. Each type of adventurer has a particular special ability – warriors always go at the front, rogues reduce damage from traps, wizards can cast rather inconvenient spells and priests can heal the damage you’ve caused to the party. It’s up to you to carefully use the monsters and traps you’ve collected to try and slow their progress through your dungeon. It’s pretty much impossible to halt their progress altogether, but it is possible, with careful planning, to minimise the damage they cause. The game has some excellent tutorial scenarios to play through that are more like logic puzzles, and these give you an opportunity to see the sort of tactics you should be considering in the game proper.

Similar to farming sim Agricola, Dungeon Lords is a game where you mostly focus on your own efforts, but have to pay attention to what others are doing. There’s no direct interaction with other players, but your own actions can indirectly influence their success. For example, carefully managing your reputation to ensure you always get weak adventurers attacking can cause other players to take a beating. After one game, it’s clear that there are a lot of tactical considerations to learn.

It’s a really interesting game, and I’m looking forward to giving it another shot. It took a good few hours to play, but it didn’t drag – while actions are resolved one player at a time, there’s not much downtime before someone else gets a chance to do something. Plus the theme of the game coupled with the excellent artwork gives it a huge amount of character, encouraging a bit of improvisatory storytelling about what’s going on in the players’ respective dungeons. Check it out if you’re looking for something a little bit different.

One A Day, Day 45: The Golden Snitch

Read this, including listening to the audio clip of the complete twat.

I heard this on the news the other day and I was actually a little bit shocked that it was even being discussed. One sound bite from someone with a similarly obnoxious accent as “Adam” came out with the golden line “well, like, you just don’t do it, innit?”

Sorry, rewind a little there. Since when has it been not okay to talk to the police about… what’s that thing they deal with again? Oh, right. Crime. Since when has it been something you “just don’t do, innit” to inform the police about knife or gun violence?

The growing gang culture in the UK is something I find rather troubling. While in some ways it is amusing and pathetic that these groups of tracksuit-clad white English teenagers put on that ridiculous accent to try and sound like a tracksuit-clad black English teenager putting on an accent (do keep up) and acting like they’re “in the hood”, in other senses the culture of “casual crime” is an unpleasant blight on our society.

I realise I sound rather Daily Mail about all this – but I’ve seen it happening. Fortunately I’ve never been the victim of a crime myself, though some friends and I were chased down the street and into a shop by the “Bassett Boys” once for no reason other than we were walking on what was evidently their “turf”. And, remember, I’ve worked in schools, where I’ve seen a number of kids slowly descending into that kind of culture because they’re “bored, innit”. And in my last job we were regularly confronted with hoodie-wearing, attitude-giving morons who think that 50 Cent is God.

But this recent news about the stigma attached to actually informing the police about extremely serious crimes – violence and murder in some cases – is possibly the most troubling. Supposedly, the police are there to protect us, so why should people feel threatened? I certainly wouldn’t have any qualms about phoning the police if I happened to witness something going on – and, in fact, have on a number of occasions. Fortunately, none of them have been that serious (although the guy trying to kick down our neighbours’ door was a bit scary) but I just find it bizarre to think that so many young people find the idea of talking to the police to be a complete no-go area.

The report is probably skewed somewhat in its perspective (it is on the 1Xtra page, after all), but the fact remains – the police (and indeed, other authority figures) are supposed to be there to provide a sense of security to everyone, and help make things safer. What sort of culture are we living in if you can’t report a bloody crime?

One A Day, Day 44: Music Without Embarrassment

I love Spotify, yet still don’t understand how it can possibly work. The record labels seem to be perfectly happy to keep working with it, though – there’s a ton of stuff available on it now, from the mainstream to the super-obscure. There’s even some movie soundtracks on there – after a throwaway comment regarding the Beauty and the Beast soundtrack the other day, I checked to see if it was on there, and it was. Score. Assuming you like Disney soundtracks.

The best thing about Spotify, though, is it gives you the opportunity to “try out” music you wouldn’t think of walking into a shop and buying. Actually, I’ve been known on a number of past occasions to walk into a shop and buy an embarrassing album simply because I either found one of the songs repeatedly played on the radio just a little bit too catchy, or I quite fancied the singer, or both. I haven’t done that for a while, now. In fact, I can’t remember what the last CD I bought was. It was certainly a long time ago now – if I’m buying music these days, I’ll tend to buy it from iTunes or Amazon.

Anyway, two irritatingly catchy things that have been stuck in my head thanks to the stagnant playlist on Radio 1 are Ke$ha (who needs a slap for doing the “dollar sign as S” thing) and Owl City (who I thought was actually a guy called Al City, and was notable for being a recent UK number one that actually had something approaching a decent tune). Now, neither of these artists are ones I particularly felt the need to rush out and buy the albums for, but the songs they’d released were just the right side of the “catchy/annoying” spectrum to warrant a bit of further investigation.

Ke$ha produces from her mouth not only the most American American accent I’ve ever heard, but also sounds remarkably like what would happen if you took Kelly Clarkson and forcibly inserted her into a NES. From her recent single (the obnoxiously misspelled “TiK ToK”) I had assumed that all of her stuff would be along the lines of the interminable stream of crap R&B that seems to flood the charts these days, but her album Animal was a pleasant surprise, including a number of different styles of music, many of which feature appealingly lo-fi backings that sound like they were produced by a synth that had never heard the term “wave-table synthesis” before. The tunes are catchy and the lyrics are vapid bubblegum fluff (one song is called “Party at a Rich Dude’s House” and is, as you might expect, about a party at a rich dude’s house, where Ke$ha proudly informs us that she was sick in his cupboard) but the thing I actually liked about the album is that it doesn’t take itself too seriously. So much crap R&B (which there are definite leanings towards) ends up trying to sound “dark” or “gritty” but just ends up sounding like an emasculated twat whining about ooh baby girl, I’ma take joo out, oooh, yeah, mmmmm-hmmmm. Ke$ha sings actual words, doesn’t do that stupid Mariah Carey warble and, more to the point, doesn’t stick to the boring R&B sound. I’m not even sure why I keep comparing her to that, as she’s clearly a pop artist.

Anyway, enough of that embarrassment. (She was fun to drive home to, thanks to the Spotify mobile app on the iPhone. I should shut up, as I’m only making things worse for myself, here.)

Owl City – if you haven’t heard of them, you might recognise the song “Fireflies” which hit the UK charts a few weeks ago and proved so popular for a short period that it was even heard on Radio 2 at the same time as it was on Radio 1. It’s a pleasant little song about fireflies (all right, I don’t know the lyrics and don’t really care enough to go and look them up) with a catchy tune and a vocalist with a distinctive voice. The album is much the same – electronic backings, gentle, slightly whiny American voice over the top. It, like Ke$ha, isn’t something I’m clamouring to purchase for keeps, but it was a pleasant enough listen for a little while.

So there’s Half Hearted Music Review Of The Day. If you have a copy of Spotify, why not try out something you don’t expect to like? You might just be surprised.

On a side note, I have three invites to Spotify available, so if you want one, write me a poem including the word “turgid” in the comments and the best three win an invite. No purchase necessary.