Morning folks. Sorry to report that it was announced on Mick's web site last night that he has advanced stage cancer.

In recent years Mick has been struggling financially — a large part of the reason why he left the UK some time ago for Cyprus — so an appeal has been set up on his website to allow people to make a donation, post comments etc.: http://www.mickkarn.net/

To remind us of happier days here is Mick in his prime, performing with fellow alumni from Catford Boys School on the Old Grey Whistle Test, a performance that was introduced by one David Hepworth. That rhythm section of Karn and Jansen really was quite something.

All for now
Kevin

Following on from David Hepworth's podcast observation that decent song titles tend to be an accurate indicator that the album will also be good (mentioned in connection to how deflated he was by the titles in Springsteen's latest lp), I would contend that the album of the year will shortly be upon us:

http://www.play.com/Music/CD/4-/11314365/Manafon/Product.html

1. Small Metal Gods
2. The Rabbit Skinner
3. Random Acts Of Senseless Violence
4. The Greatest Living Englishman
5. 125 Spheres
6. Snow White In Appalachia
7. Emily Dickinson
8. The Department Of Dead Letters
9. Manafon

Even those of you who, up till now, have resisted the charms of David Sylvian (you fools!), surely can't help but be a little intrigued as to what that collection of crooned, post-rock improv ditties might sound like? Who knows, even Word magazine might finally acknowledge his existence, although I won't be holding my breath on that one.

Kevin

Went out last night and so taped BBC's coverage of Glastonbury. I was looking forward to sitting down to watch it this afternoon. Now I should say I wouldn't count myself as a Springsteen fan. I do like some of his stuff quite a lot, but generally speaking it's not really my kind of thing. However I thought he was an inspired choice for Saturday headliner and it was one of those rare times I wished I was going there; surely it would be great, The Boss (even if not really my Boss) up there with the E Street Band on the Pyramid Stage. Guaranteed to be great, surely?

Well having just watched it on the Humax, no, actually. I really wanted to like it. Perhaps I wanted to like it too much. Ever since reading a Tony Parsons review years ago of Bruce at the Madison Square Gardens in the 70s in which Parsons declares it by far the best gig he's ever been to I've been intrigued by the idea of Springsteen as a live performer, even if I didn't exactly 'get' his music. But this afternoon I found his Glastonbury performance to be turgid, worthy and deeply tedious. It only seemed to come to life during 'Born to Run' and 'Dancing in the Dark', when, finally, the audience woke up. The contrast to how the audience related to McCartney's great performace in Somerset a few years ago was stark.

One positive thing was that Bruce did look genuinely happy to be there, but, aside from a Joe Strummer cover in tribute to the ex-Clash man originally encouraging him to play the festival, there didn't seem to be anything special about the show. The impression given was that it was just another date on a summer tour. Yesterday: Glastonbury; today: Hyde Park; tomorrow: A N Other field some place else. At times I thought someone was going to have to prod Clarence Clemons to prevent him from nodding off, so disinterested did he seem in proceedings.

I'm sure it's all supposed to be about the music, man, but you know what, that doesn't mean you can't give a bit of thought to such things as lighting and staging. Anything that would have deflected my attention from the tedious proselytizing coming from the stage (did that man really just refer to his own band as "history making"? Let others be the judge of that, pal) would have been a respite.

After the show there was the inevitable post-match commentary in which Jo Whiley and the usually wonderful Mark Radcliffe were breathless over what good shape The Boss was in and how long he played for. Well, sorry, but whoopty, fucking-do! I'm glad for his sake that Springsteen is fit and considerably healthier than was a recently deceased American entertainer ten years his junior, but by focussing on this aspect of the Bruce mythology (he's got the pecs of a working man, despite the fact that, as he admits, he's never done a day's regular work in his life) it detracts from the core questions: were the songs well chosen? Was there a good arc to the performance? Did it flow as a set? Did the audience seem to be 'digging it'? The answer to all of which, from where I was sat on the sofa, was no. For excitement and a sense of event it just didn't come close to Jay-Z's Saturday night Glastonbury set last year. It was just yet another show featuring laudable endeavour by a well oiled American rock band; nothing more, and a whole lot less.

At times I had to take a breather from Bruce; I needed some light and shade, some humour, some glamour dammit(!), so I switched over to my recorded coverage of the BBC3 broadcasts. There I was as pleasantly surprised by Franz Ferdidnand's performance as I was mightily disappointed by Springsteen's... And don't even get me started on the snore-fest that was Neil Young sententious effort on Friday night which, and I say this in all honesty, was not a patch on the energising offerings provided by Lady Gaga, Regina Spektor and The Tings Tings, a band I'm not a fan of but who at least seemed to have some understanding of where they were and what was expected of them.

There, rant over, can I now have those two hours of my life back please Mr. Springsteen. And can someone please provide me with a safe house to protect me from The Word Massive who may now be baying for my blood for daring to speak ill of the Jersey Messiah and the Winnipeg Whiner.

Kevin

In the Spare Room column in the last issue of Word (63) Giles Smith stated:

"Bruce Springsteen has a line on his most recent album about driving home through "the last lone American night". It's not easy to imagine a UK-born lyricist singing, without sniggering, about "driving through the British night". If they did, it would probably be raining. Maybe we simply lack the geography - the vastness of America, the aching intimation that if you drive, and keep driving, you will eventually arrive at yourself. (In Britain, if you keep driving, you will eventually arrive at Truro.) But more likely we don't have the aptitude for it."

As evidence to the contrary I would like to highlight It's Immaterial's sublime driving paean 'Driving Away From Home (Jim's Tune). Another would be Billy Bragg's 'A13' "take the A road, the ok road, that's the best!' Whilst both are a bit tongue in cheek (the 12" version of the former includes a terrible pun to Kerouac and On the Road) neither are sniggering; indeed in their own way they are deeply heartfelt and, what's more, they make me want to get in the car and drive along the M62 and the south Essex arterial road! No mean feat.

These songs are perhaps the exception that prove the rule, but it does seem to me that in the past travel has been quite a prevalent theme in British pop. What's more it has often been far removed from the American idea of travelling to find oneself, nut rather, as in for eaxample 1979/80, has been more concerned with a seemingly willful desire to embrace alienation and isolationism in bleak foreign environs just across the channel. Examples I'm thinking of here include Simple Minds' 'I Travel', Human League's 'Travelogue' album, John Foxx's 'Europe after the Rain' and Japan's 'European Son' and 'Nightporter'.

By the early 80s people had clearly had enough of such middle-distance staring miserabilsm (the fools!) and the emphasis on place in pop seemed to largely revolve around hedonistic escapism (Duran's 'Rio' and Wham's 'Club Tropicana' being the exempla). However come the mid 80s and a closer to home sense of place ran through the works of bands like The Smiths (you couldn't move for references to Whalley Range, Salford, Strangeways etc.) and Aztec Camera (eg Killermont Street about unemployed Glaswegians boarding the coach on K. Street and heading south).

At the end of the 80s two albums came out that were wonderous attempts to express musically a sense of British 'city-ness' (particularly as experienced at night) and at suggesting movement/lives/loves within the city limits: It's Immaterial's 'Song' and The Blue Nile's 'Hats'. It's Immaterial's 'New Brighton' (the opening track) is a magnificently evocative song about a little known corner of Merseyside and as for the Blue Nile, virtually every other song of theirs is about the road, although they are usually more about staring late night AT the road rather than being ON the road. Looking at the cars rather than being in them.

There is a beautiful stasis about Blue Nile/It's Immaterial songs, in which the immobile subject gazes longingly into the moving headlights, the halogen triggering thoughts of romance (and as Giles guesses it is always raining, though since I imagine most of their songs to be about Liverpool and Glasgow perhaps this is unsurprising).

The only current British artist I can think of who imbues his songs with such a love of place is Richard Hawley, with the Sheffield of his youth being almost the dominant character on Coles Corner, and to a lesser extent, its follow-up.

So to summarise perhaps road songs don't dominate British pop in the way they do American music, but that isn't to say they don't exist. And whilst Brits may be shy about explicitly singing the praises of 'Britain' in songs, that's not to say they don't wax lyrical about their own local patch; for me The Blue Nile's 'Hats' is every bit as much a love letter to Glasgow as Woody Allen's 'Manhattan' is to New York.

Kevin Milburn
p.s. If any of you have not read Giles Smith's 'Lost in Music' you should do so straightaway, it's one of the funniest books you'll ever read about being a teenage music obsessive. A subject that's been written about to death, but rarely with such charm.