Inflicting your music on the public

Further to my post about the annoying tendency of people to be oblivious to the impact their overly loud conversation has on those around them at gigs, I feel I should also condemn a practice which is borne of a similar lack of courtesy but with the opposite effect. I went to an event in London last week, and on the way there I was treated to the sound of some child, around 10 or 11 I’d guess, with his mother, who was definitely old enough to know better, playing some kind of MP3 player out loud on the train! I was gob smacked – I am aware that the yout’ love to whip out an MP3 player loaded with crappy R ‘n’ B, lame guitar bands and the latest ring-tones, but I have never seen one with parents in tow. Do they really think that everyone in the train carriage wanted to listen to their choice of music? Are they the only people who are unaware of fact that all those other people would have brought their own MP3 player had they wanted to listen to music on the train? Is it legal to kill someone for inflicting some warbling half-wit on me while I’m trying to read? I remember when the Sony Walkman was the height of sophistication, and there used to be signs on public transport asking people to ensure that they weren’t listening to their music at such an ear-splitting level that the leak from the headphones would disturb other passengers. It didn’t occur to me that one day, I would be held to mental ransom by a child deciding that what they want is more important that anyone else’s desire for a quiet ride. I am well aware that my main problem is really a public lack of consideration – they could have been playing music I love, and I would still have felt that it was an inappropriate place and time to share it. I also feel very hard done-by that I am considerate to the point of stupidity and if others aren’t going to play fair then the system doesn’t work. I recently spent a frustrating five minutes walking behind a man who was dithering his way to the station because there wasn’t quite enough room for me to pass him without (in my mind) implying that he was slow. I once ended up crying because I had gone round the corner to buy croissants for breakfast, and then I let someone go first at the bread display because I didn’t want to reach across him (even though I had been there before him), only to then watch him take every last croissant in the shop. In the latter case, it was more the rudeness of him that upset me – I am not that pathetic that I get croissant withdrawal – because I was trying to be nice, and he went a ruined it and made me feel like an idiot for doing so. And what’s the point? If I am nice to someone who not only doesn’t appreciate that I have been nice to them, but also breaks the chain of niceness, then it all stops working. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on how you look at it, I was brought up too well to stop saying thank-you to surly sales assistants, holding doors open for people and helping old ladies get their shopping off buses. But one day I really will snap, and if you are the twat with the box of shit music forcing it on me in a public space, then expect pain to rain down upon you, or at least a couple of warning stares, a discontented huff and then a polite request to turn it down.

‘Easy’ cookery shows

Wasting a bit of time last night, the Boy Wonder and I watched a bit of ‘Delia’ in which she claimed to be demonstrating recipes for people who are ‘afraid to cook’ or ‘don’t have time to cook’. Supposedly showing people how to cook ‘on busy days, or if they lack confidence’, her first dish was a salmon and quails’ eggs pie, featuring cornichons, capers and fresh dill. Excuse me? I thought this was supposed to be for busy people who don’t have time to cook, so who are these people who don’t have time to cook anything fancy, but somehow have plenty of time to pop to the shops for quails’ eggs and fresh dill? The element of the show which seems to be designed for a busy chef is that she’s using ready-made mash and ready grated cheese, but I think a recipe involving stuff you can’t buy from your local Spar is probably not a winner for the busy or underconfident, even with two slightly easy ingredients flung on top. Other dishes from last night’s efforts included Peruvian potato wedges with boiled eggs, olives and peppers, which involved using a food processor to make a sauce containing 9 ingredients, one of which was walnuts (who hasn’t got them hanging around in their cupboard?), so already the time saved by using pre-prepared potato wedges has been (pardon the pun) eaten up by making the sauce, boiling the eggs and messing around with peppers and olives. There was also some rather disturbing looking (by which I mean it had the appearance of cooked sick) bread, which seemed a needlessly complicated way of ‘saving time on busy days’. She may as well have called it ‘cooking for the lazy middle classes’, although she did in fact save me and the Boy Wonder plenty of cooking time last night – shortly after her assertion that everyone has a jar of roasted peppers in their cupboard we decided to go out and get fish and chips.

Why do you have to talk there?

Last Friday, the Boy Wonder, some friends and I all went to see Dr John and the Lower 911, supported by John Fohl from the Lower 911. Needless to say, the music was awesome, but the breathtaking rudeness of certain people there astonished me. While we were watching John Fohl we stood just in front of the seating area, with an area of about 50 square meters in front of us with nobody in it (the venue wasn’t full so we didn’t want to stand right at the front as that seemed a bit intense!). After a couple of songs, three people came and stood directly in front of us, to the point where one of them was almost leaning on me. With an entire venue almost empty they couldn’t have at least considered one of the many spots where they wouldn’t have been standing right in someone’s way. However, this poor behaviour is nothing compared to the girl with the squeaky voice who stood behind us (we were right at the front) and shouted constantly through about 3 songs in a row. In the end, I asked her to be quiet, very politely considering how annoying it was to listen to her, and she said ‘Oh, was I shouting?’. Now, I would have thought that the fact someone who was actually leaning on the stage could hear her would have indicated that, but I, again politely, nodded and smiled. Three minutes later, our friends heard her start talking again, only this time she was saying ‘I can’t believe that girl at the front could really hear me’ (as though I would ask her to be quiet for any other reason!), to which they all turned round as one and made it clear that, indeed we could all hear her. But we survived and the next day went to the 02 to the festival of New Orleans. This was a free festival, which it would have to have been because the main stage was in the outer circle of the 02, which, ironically is a little like the 9th circle of hell (where Dante put the Sowers of Discord). We saw some awesome people including Kermit Ruffins, Buckwheat Zydeco and Alan Toussaint who were stupendous. I had to move during Kermit Ruffins’ set because the guy behind me was singing along, badly, and I again had to ask a group of people to stop talking during Alan Toussaint’s set because they were shrieking at one another all through the music, and raising the volume during the solos, as though the band were being quiet to facilitate their conversation. Now, I am sure that people who go to gigs to talk loudly to their friends think that the Boy Wonder and I are terrible bores, don’t know how to have fun, and, worse, want to stop others from having a good time. But, what they fail to understand is that a shrill conversation with your mates can be had anywhere, anywhere in the world, but on Friday night, the only place to see Dr John playing was in St Albans. Why would I pay money (incidentally the tickets were a wedding present to the Boy Wonder) to stand in a room where Dr John’s playing, make my way right to the front and stand next to the stage if I just wanted to hear some squeaky voiced twat failing to appreciate the music that people have come all the way from New Orleans to play to those who want to hear it. Even at a free gig such as Saturday’s, there is no excuse – people have fought their way through crowds of unpleasantly slow-moving people to see a band who ooze funk through their very pores and to have it ruined by people who clearly don’t really appreciate what they’re hearing is an insult to the musicians and a complete pain in the arse to those who just want to get down and enjoy the sound of the music.

On drinking too much and loving it

On Friday the Boy Wonder and I went for a day of sponsored fun in London – we started on a boat up the Thames having some very nice food and an entirely insufficient commentary about the surroundings, but as we were there for the fun, not the learning, it was fine. Then we went on the London Eye, which is something the Boy Wonder had expressed an interest in, and although the ponderously slow pace of the thing put me off originally, I have to say it was certainly an experience. There was a wedding going on in the pod next to us, which was quite fun to watch, and a woman in our pod who was clearly not keen on going too close to the edge, so was shuffling around the bench in the middle apologising to everyone. We then progressed down the South Bank and did some wine tasting – after a brief talk on how to taste wine (where I had some serious issues with listening to everyone else slurping their wine in the traditional style, and also swirled my glass a bit too hard and got wine all over my jeans) we romped around the various rooms tasting Champagne, more wine and some rum – all for free! Having managed to maintain my sobriety for most of the evening, we then met up with one of our most special friends, Ronnie, after whom we have named a fish, and partly because of whom, the Boy Wonder has to keep his phone on silent when we go to bed otherwise he calls up at odd hours of the day and night to discuss things such as whether James Brown really did work very hard in the entertainment industry. So having maintained a sterling grip on sobriety for an entire afternoon, we then started drinking Bow (is there a rule about never mixing grape and apples? It certainly felt like I was getting my five a day) with Ronnie and his ‘very good friend’ before heading off for a rather loud curry where Ronnie made an impact on the waiting staff, the other diners and us with his unique views on all kinds of topics, mostly involving large amounts of swearing. Having survived that, we then headed back to Amy’s and in a fit of inspiration decided to watch R Kelly’s Hip Hopera ‘Trapped in the Closet’. I have to confess that I only saw chapters 1 – 14 before I succumbed to the call of the wine, more wine, rum, Bow, more wine, more Bow and sundry other substances and passed out on the sofa. However, I saw enough to know that this is one of the finest works of cinematography in the known universe, and is fully deserving of an entry all of its own. However, given that I have already admitted that I didn’t make it to the end, I should probably experience the rest (‘watch’ is such an inadequate word) before I pass comment. The Boy Wonder dragged me off the sofa and into bed at about 4.30 and while I was surprisingly resilient in the face of his attempts to get my jeans off, I then felt a little tiny bit like absolute hell on Saturday. Having vetoed the café breakfast in favour of some Lucozade and then a rather fragile journey home on the train, I was then reminded of one of the many reasons I married the Boy Wonder – we came home, he installed me on the sofa, where he allowed me to lie on him feeling peculiar and encouraged me to drink tiny sips of water and snooze. He then (and this is the heroic part) went out and got me a McDonalds, which has always been my staple hangover cure, and which perked me up sufficiently to actually move from my prone position and attempt a little light wandering around and more telly watching. The Boy Wonder would have lived up to his name was it not for the fact that I was physically incapable of experiencing wonder, stuck as I was in a state of slight nausea and a headache. However, he is the perfect hangover nurse, so I might consider hiring him out to those less fortunate than myself, although only on days when I can actually move on my own…

Is it acceptable to have a genre of music in existence named after the only venue in which you can fit enough people to absorb the appalling blandness

This refers of course to the horror that is ‘stadium rock’. Pretty much every band I want to see comes under the heading of ‘the smaller the venue the better’ in my book. I don’t want to watch Tony Joe White on a screen on a stage from half a mile back, and even the Corn Exchange here seems a little cavernous for some bands, so why you would pay £50 a head to stand amongst 65,000 other people being distracted by the fact that the music and the images don’t synch up because it’s all happening SO far away? It’s not that I haven’t been to gigs in these venues – when I was 12 my Mum took the unprecedented decision (probably based on lies that I told) to allow me to go to see Metallica at the Milton Keynes Bowl, supported by Megadeth and Diamond Head. But my friend Annabel and I were right at the front, in an area presumably reserved for blindingly underage pre-teen girls who would otherwise have been crushed in the melee, so there was no need to watch the screens. The Boy Wonder and I did also see BB King at Wembley arena, and whilst we were really glad to be there as it was his last gig in this country, it was all seated and we weren’t that close (which was a blessing when Gary Moore was parading his unfathomably ugly mug around, playing for too long so that BB King had to cut his set short – a desperately poor show for a support act and something for which he will never be forgiven), and we were in no doubt that if we could see him in the US in a smaller venue, the atmosphere would be awesome more on its own merits rather than the pleasure we personally got from seeing him at all. Thinking about it though, I think I can understand the appeal of going to see a band like U2 in a stadium as it reduces the chances that the crushingly identical sound of every song won’t actually embed itself into your very pores like skunk stink. If I was forced to go and see U2, I would be grateful for every extra yard that I could be away from the stage, and I can’t think of a better use for a U2 fan than a human shield. I know that stadium rock originated with bands like Boston, Foreigner and Journey, who have now reached the point of almost cult status amongst people who accept that ‘More than a Feeling’ is a classic of its time but wouldn’t really buy a Boston album. But I am talking about the middle-of-the-road aural fluff that now bears the name as though there needs to be no other information about the music than that thousands of people are stupid enough to like it. Throughout the years genres of music have been named to give some idea of what you can expect – the blues was the blues before it even became synonymous with a musical style, country and western needs no explanation, and if you can’t form a rough idea of what to expect from a death metal band, then you probably shouldn’t listen to any. But ‘Stadium’ or ‘Arena’ rock seems such a low standard to reach for musically – the idea that a genre exists because the music buying public are too lazy to really listen to music and make up their own minds, a music buying public who can tell you their favourite song (a test I always find separates those who really have an interest in music from those who only own albums by top 40 artists), and those who buy the output of an artist they like indiscriminately and will like whatever they get. The very notion of classifying an act based on the kind of venue they play is ridiculous and surely shows that those who enjoy that kind of music are by nature crowd followers. (Please note, this does not apply to circuits – they are genres within genres, and should be considered separately). This is not to say that I think that the kind of music I like is the ‘right’ kind – for a start there is a very wide gap between some of the genres that I would choose as my favourites – just that if you like music, you should like it for more than the fact that everyone you know likes it, for more than the dreaded ‘you should see their stage-show’ lameness, it should be about making you feel something, not involving you in conspicuous displays of success on the part of that band. Whenever I have said that I don’t like U2, I am met with incredulity: ‘How can you not like U2 – everybody likes U2’ but nobody has ever come up with any real reason why they like them. When the Boy Wonder expounds his thoughts on The Grateful Dead, he can give you a million reasons why he likes them, with no minor reference to the fact that a lot of their output was toot as well, and then, if you’re still awake he will give you a million more, and then play you some of their songs, and if you don’t like the first one he plays, he will find another one which might be more your thing and so on until one of you falls asleep usually. But we, and most of our friends have reasons for liking every song, not necessarily logical reasons, but if someone can’t understand what you mean by ‘it’s so funky it hurts’ then the chances are you need to move on. In conclusion, I am mostly annoyed by the identikit blandness of the music available at the moment; I would like to be able to go to one good gig in my local area a month, rather than having to fork out to go to London every so often just to see someone half decent; I would like to have conversations with people about music that don’t end up with me saying ‘You can’t say Guy Clarke’s * crap just because you haven’t heard of him’; I would like to see an episode of Jools Holland where the acts are actually new and talented and interesting and not just a hideous preview of what we can expect from every ‘new’ band we’ll hear in the next 18 months. Is that too much to ask? Possibly… *Insert suitable alternative here

Words only Mums use

Snazzy Natty Cronies Dither Crumbs Bother Nifty Swish Jazzy This is not exhaustive, but if you find yourself using them and you have no known children, you should probably check whether you're up the spout or not...

Who came up with the two day weekend?

As far as I am concerned, the entire notion of a ‘working week’ is misguided – surely there’s work and there’s time to do it. Splitting everyone’s life up into time when they should be working and time when it’s alright to do all the things they actually choose to do, seems perverse and wrongheaded. Especially if, like me, you think that really the only purpose of working is to be able to afford a house to live in and things to do with yourself when you’re not at work. Plus, when I was a kid, we were told that robots and computers would be doing all the work (apparently even the creative input required for certain roles) and that we would have to come up with new ways to amuse ourselves in ‘the future’. As it stands, I think that there is a mismatch between the work week and our ‘leisure time’ allowance – if I am feeling dynamic enough to do something on a Friday night, it feels like I’ve had a bonus weekend night, but then want to stay in bed until Saturday afternoon, meaning that if we then have plans for Saturday night, the chances of actually achieving anything before Monday morning are pretty minimal. The drawing in of the evenings draws attention to the fruitlessness of attempting meaningful achievements on a weeknight (other than trying to eat everything in our freezer which is a challenge by which I have found myself surprisingly inspired), although I am not sure whether that is because the lack of heating in the house means the Boy Wonder and I are confined to the living room if we are to maintain circulation in our extremities. All in all, less work and more play would suit me fine, and I cannot for the life of me imagine who devised the current system.