Far Beyond the Pale Horizon

There’s an excellent new rock-documentary series, in seven parts, currently running on BBC Two, on Saturday evenings, appropriately entitled “Seven Ages of Rock”! Last weekend, it’s repeated on Sundays on BBC One, the second instalment moved forward from the rhythm and blues of the Sixties, featured in the first programme, to the era of glam and progressive rock under the title “White Light, White Heat: Art Rock”. It essentially covered the work of five acts, Pink Floyd, Genesis, Velvet Underground, David Bowie and Roxy Music, exploring the links, as the episode-title suggests, between art and rock! Bryan Ferry read Fine Art at Newcastle University, for example, while Andy Warhol managed Lou Reed’s band, the Velvets, in the States. During the Peter Gabriel era of Genesis the movement became increasingly surreal as Gabriel donned a red dress and the head of a fox!! This harked back to the days when Pink Floyd boasted Syd Barrett as their lead singer, detailing the release of their first single, “Arnold Layne”, about a transvestite stealing women’s underwear from washing lines!!! Controversial, for the time, whereas today he could just pop into Primark’s!

Keeping a sharp eye, and ear, on the career of Syd was a young man named David Jones who, after changing his surname to Bowie, picked up where Barrett left off, scoring a novelty hit in the late Sixties with a song called “Space Oddity”. It wasn’t until 1972 that Bowie became a major player, however, with the release of hit single “Starman” from the album “Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars”. He would later cover Floyd’s second single, the exceptional “See Emily Play”, on his album “Pinups”. Supporting Bowie on a couple of major concert dates in London was an up-and-coming glam-rock outfit called Roxy Music. Again in 1972, they released what became a seminal rock single based on one of Bryan’s paintings, “Virginia Plain”. In my opinion, there hasn’t been a single to top the inventiveness of this recording in the last 35 years. Its strengths lie in the instrumentation and sonority of the track rather than melody and harmony. Chromatic bass line, synthesiser treatments, oboe ostinato coupled with Ferry’s voice and lyric, pulling together an extraordinary list of references, make this song unique in the annals of rock. Programme three, next weekend, documents the rise of Punk in the late Seventies!

To Serve Them All My Days

Season three of new “Doctor Who” reaches its middle two-part story, that portion of a series, previously established initially with “The Empty Child” and latterly with “The Impossible Planet”, containing most substance! This year seems to be no exception judging from the opening episode, “Human Nature”. It’s a more interesting and complex tale than writer Paul Cornell’s previous offering two years ago, in the opening season’s “Father’s Day”, which I enjoyed on first viewing but disliked thereafter. “Human Nature” actually predates that Christopher Eccleston episode, originally appearing as a Seventh Doctor novel in the mid-Nineties, now updated by its original author to accommodate the current Doctor and latest companion. Speaking of Martha, and as I indicated in a comment posted on Old Cheeser’s blog before the recent report published in “The Sun”, I’m beginning to wonder if she will survive beyond this season? I haven’t heard that she’s had her contract renewed for next year! And, I’m pondering whether or not Kylie Minogue might fill the part of stopgap-companion, as did Catherine Tate, in the forthcoming Christmas special?

As good as “Human Nature” undoubtedly is, there’s one gaping plot hole that occurred to me on second viewing. Why on earth was something as important as the Doctor’s fob watch left lying about on the mantelpiece for all to peruse? It’s quite possible the Doctor as John Smith would open it himself, having no recollection of its function. Or, maybe Joan might’ve become curious and taken a peek. It’s essentially a homing device for the Family of Blood, for goodness sake, and would’ve surely been better concealed, undisturbed, on Martha’s person! As it is, my namesake Tim is the one who eventually unlocks the device which could bring about the possible demise of the man he has hitherto regarded as his teacher. The Family need to trace the Doctor in order to extend their own lives beyond a month. Regarding the Scarecrows, do any fans of the original series find their lollop reminiscent of the Marshmen in “Full Circle”?!! And, finally, what is it with the current production team and wedding dresses?!! Two dummies, wearing them, attack Jackie in “Rose”. Then, two weddings feature in “Father’s Day”. Last December, Catherine Tate donned one, appropriately enough, in “The Runaway Bride”! And, next week, Joan will appear in one in the concluding episode, “The Family of Blood”!! Stay tuned…

Absolute Garbage

You might think that with a Post-title such as “Absolute Garbage” I’d be writing about government plans to ensure we spend the rest of our lives separating card from the rest of the rubbish! At least five different-colour bins should keep kids happy and a £20-fine if we so much as throw out one Mars bar-wrapper too many!! Then there’s the news that the public may be charged for the use of roads, a sample cost being that a single journey from Bristol to London will come in at £160.80!!! And, what about the new forms to fill in before you can sell your house at between a hefty £400 to £700?!! Film director and former “Monty Python” animator, Terry Gilliam was right in “Brazil”, almost a quarter of a century ago, when he suggested that one day we would be paying to breathe fresh air!!! I don’t know about you but I don’t believe politicians “breathe the same air” as I do. Anyway, enough of this twaddle on trash! This piece isn’t about waste disposal, throwing out the junk, refusing to collect the refuse, it’s about the imminent release of the greatest hits collection of that super-charged Anglo-American beat combo known as Garbage!! Absolutely!!!

More specifically, I’m writing to let you know that the new single and video, recorded especially for inclusion on “Absolute Garbage”, will be aired twice this coming Bank Holiday Monday (technically on Tuesday morning) just after midnight on Channel 4. It’s called “Tell Me Where It Hurts” to which I would answer “in the pocket” if all the complaints of the previous paragraph come to fruition! Garbage are a four-piece, the lead singer, Shirley Manson, hailing from Scotland while the three guys, Duke Erikson, Steve Marker and Butch Vig, originate from Madison, Wisconsin, in the USA. They’ve been in existence since 1994 and have produced four studio albums that have yielded a string of hit singles. Most of them appear on their new compilation, the release date for which is uncertain though possibly June 4th. I’m thinking the title, “Absolute Garbage”, is post-modern irony because were Westlife to release a “Best of” collection it would, quite blatantly, be a lie! So, I assume “Absolute Garbage” is anything but that which the title literally suggests!! Perhaps the band are simply being honest in that anyone remotely cultured knows that, even though one may enjoy it, all pop music is absolute garbage!!! However you view it, here’s the track-listing…

Queer
Only Happy When It Rains
Stupid Girl
Milk
#1 Crush
Push It
I Think I’m Paranoid
Special
When I Grow Up
You Look So Fine
The World is Not Enough
Cherry Lips
Shut Your Mouth
Why Do You Love Me
Bleed Like Me
Tell Me Where It Hurts
It’s All Over But The Crying

A living nightmare of black magic… and unspeakable evil!

You may well have noticed in my recent list of top ten movies a distinctly British feel to the compilation and that’s because, these days, I have some difficulty equating the American way of life with my own, despite both nations speaking the same language! At least, we speak the same language to a certain extent but the connection between the two countries doesn’t really go any further than that. Even in my choices involving US participation, such as “Alien”, there is also a strong British contingent. “Alien” has a British director in Ridley Scott, who almost designed the Daleks whilst at the BBC in the early Sixties, as well as a couple of Brits in the cast alongside the five Americans. “Lifeforce” may have been directed by an American but it is set predominantly in London with a mainly British cast.

In the Nineties, in the absence of any new British science fiction or fantasy series, with the exception of “Bugs” (curiously broadcast at the same time of year, on the same channel and evening, and in the same timeslot as new “Doctor Who” is now), I watched a fair amount of American television, predominantly the various spin-offs of “Star Trek” and “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer”, together with its spin-off “Angel”. How times change! I no longer watch any US telly. I’ve seen but a few minutes of “Battlestar Galactica”, never watched “Ugly Betty”, and not even a few minutes of Englishman Hugh Laurie, playing American, in “House”. For the most part, when Brit actors work in the States they tend to produce inferior work. I best remember Alan Rickman as Slope in “The Barchester Chronicles”, for example, rather than the baddie in “Die Hard” or as the Sheriff of Nottingham!

The behaviour of Americans does at times seem, to me, to be extreme and excessive. From twenty years ago, I remember an American character in the second series of “A Very Peculiar Practice” describing the UK as a “pissant little swamp”! This was, of course, writer Andrew Davies telling his audience the way he thinks the citizens of the US see us and so is, perhaps, something of a generalisation. My father has worked with Americans, though, and has told me they sometimes commented on the smallness of everything over here! Does bigger automatically mean better, then? I think the marketing machine of Hollywood, representing its country both at home and abroad, would have us believe that it does! Many, if not most, people nowadays derive their viewing pleasure from films, nay movies, made from wads of cash thrown at each project, the result of which is usually nowt more than forgettable throwaway fluff.

I dare you to watch the opening three-and-a-half minutes of Seventies’ horror film “Blood on Satan’s Claw” and not be hooked by the cliff-hanger! Wallow in the Britishness of its direction and creative use of camera angle. Listen to the haunting score by Marc Wilkinson with its inclusion of one of Stravinsky’s favourite instruments the cimbalom, an east-European instrument a little like a piano, but played with various types of mallet. Enjoy the initial appearances of Barry Andrews, as Ralph Gower, who a few years earlier had appeared in “Dracula Has Risen from the Grave”, and Wendy Padbury, as Cathy Vespers. She well-and-truly leaves “Doctor Who” behind her in this film. Then, there is our beautiful English countryside to gaze upon. Yes, the pace is slow. It’s so slow you can even read the credits! But, as when listening to Bach, you appreciate with a cleansed soul, free from the Romantic syrup of Rachmaninov!!

Sun Probe

“Doctor Who” has no internal logic! In “42”, Francine Jones remarks upon the fact that she has received three calls from her daughter in one day, the implication being that she’s usually lucky to hear from her at all. Yet, it was established right at the beginning of this series that the Jones family are always on the phone to one another! Martha’s Mum could only feel this way if a great deal of time has elapsed, between the end of the events of “The Lazarus Experiment” and the start of the deep space epic that is “42”, during which the Doctor’s new companion hasn’t phoned home at all. Up to the beginning of “The Lazarus Experiment”, despite experiencing four adventures over five episodes, we know Martha has only been away from home for about twelve hours. Her life during this period has therefore been greatly elongated compared with the passage of time on Earth. All of a sudden, in the latest story, it seems that new rules apply. From her mother’s remark, it can now be assumed that time is running concurrently between home and abroad! To be even more precise than Chris Chibnall’s script, Francine has actually received three calls in the space of three-quarters of an hour!!

Then, there’s the space freighter’s illogical computer in “42”. During the countdown to “impact” with the Sun, it periodically tells us how long is left before (total!) destruction, not on the minute or half-minute, as you might expect, but at all sorts of random times probably when best-needed to punctuate the drama! “Impact” is impossible, of course, a Sun being a gaseous body!! In “The End of the World”, two years ago, a great deal was made of having Sun shields on the space station as part of a plot device putting characters in peril. Protection from extreme light and heat no longer seems to be an issue as the Doctor, minutes from zero-time, opens an airlock to operate a fail-safe device situated on the outside of the spaceship!!! There are also twenty-nine password-sealed doors between the bridge and the engine room. I would like to know what idiot designed this vehicle? And, why are human beings possessed or killed for what the Captain has done when they’re all about to die anyway? Even dafter, I actually enjoyed this nonsense!! I must have disengaged my brain for the duration as it is all well-and-good being true to the emotion of a piece but not when it defies commonsense!!!

Burn Baby Burn

Former “EastEnders” star Michelle Collins tells “BBC Breakfast” about working on the latest “Doctor Who” adventure “42”, illustrated by a further two preview clips! At this rate, I’ll soon have the entire episode posted!! You can see all 42 minutes of “42” tonight at 7.15pm on BBC One!!!

Next Time is the Best Time

This is the next time trailer for “42” which would have appeared at the end of “The Lazarus Experiment” had it not been replaced by the coming up sequence purportedly created to carry fans over the one week hiatus! I wonder which ending will find its way onto the DVD release, the one shown or this one, as originally intended?

Both Eyes Burning!

This short extract from “42”, lasting just over three-quarters of a minute, was shown at the end of the most recent edition of “Totally Doctor Who”. Designed to give you the collywobbles, it is slightly undermined by Martha’s mobile conversation with her Mother in which Elvis appears to be a password! It suggests the Doctor has tweaked his new companion’s phone, the way he did Rose’s in “The End of the World”!! Hopefully, this won’t dominate the episode but tension and claustrophobia will!!!

The Heat is On…

This excerpt from “42”, running a little over a minute and a quarter and starting eighteen seconds into the clip, was shown during an interview with David Tennant on “Parkinson” and broadcast later the same evening as “The Lazarus Experiment”. The sequence certainly sends a chill down the spine as Martha becomes irrevocably separated from the Doctor! I thought it better than anything seen in the complete episode aired earlier that night!! I’m not biased or anything but “42” is directed by Graeme Harper!!!

Manic Street Preachers ft Nina Persson - Your Love Alone is Not Enough

I’ve never been a fan of the Manic Street Preachers but, much like U2, I don’t dislike them either! I think it’s because I’m attracted more to pop songs with unusual chord progressions rather than the usual bog-standard three or four. But, it hasn’t stopped Bob Dylan from being a revered songwriter and, like Mr Zimmerman, I think the point of the Manics is their politics. I presume the song that springs to most people’s minds, that best represents their ideology, is “If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next”.

Having long been a fan of The Cardigans, however, I was curious to discover how the duet turned out between their lead singer Nina Persson and James Dean Bradfield, lead singer of the Manics. There’s some dodgy word setting but the English language is notoriously difficult to set to music. German is much easier! But Nina’s looking good, not that that has anything to do with how it sounds, and it’s a fun video, in which the two stages are joined together in a show of unity, so I’ve posted “Your Love Alone is Not Enough”, the first single from the Manic Street Preachers’ new album “Send Away the Tigers”, for you to make up your own minds!

Your love alone – is not enough, not enough, not enough
When times get tough – they get tough, they get tough, they get tough

Trade all your heroes in for ghosts, in for ghosts, in for ghosts
They’re always the one’s that love you most, love you most, love you most

Your love alone – is not enough, not enough, not enough
It’s what you felt – it’s what you said, what you said, what you said

You said the sky would fall on you, fall on you, fall on you
Through all the pain your eyes stayed blue – they stayed blue, baby blue

But your love alone won’t save the world
You knew the secret of the universe
Despite it all, you made it worse
It left you lonely, it left you cursed

You stole the sun – straight from my heart, from my heart, from my heart
With no excuses – just fell apart, fell apart, fell apart

No, you won’t make a mess of me, mess of me, mess of me
For you’re as blind as a man can be, man can be, man can be

I could have seen for miles and miles
I could have made you feel alive
I could have placed us in exile
– I could have written all your lines –
I could have shown you – I could have shown you – how to cry

Your love alone is not enough
Your love alone is not enough

La, la, la, la – la, la, la, la–a–a
I could have shown you, shown you how to cry

Your love alone is not enough
Your love alone