(Please don’t be put off by the length of this, I promise you, like me or hate me, you won’t be disappointed and you’ll not have to read anything by me ever again)

I made a lot of mistakes in my first week, I caused a lot of upset and put a few noses out of joint and generally made an ass of myself, and for that I sincerely apologise. But that’s the thing.

I’m sincere.

If any of you have listened to the songs on my MySpace site and wondered why I never made it in the music industry, it’s chiefly because I’m guileless and I lack the self-confidence & hucksterism required to swim with sharks and work with weasels. In the 80s the band I wrote and played guitar for were approached by all the majors; we had a big live review in the NME, we appeared on Rock Around The Clock, the Whistle Test’s 24 hour rock extravaganza which was hosted by a couple of very handsome men whose names I cannot recall (though, I heard that the BBC had to employ extra security to subdue the crowds of squealing teens! Tee-hee! And believe me, this is the last joke I will ever crack). Everyone thought the band’s future was assured. But I had to drink heavily to overcome stage-fright and deal with the sudden attention (I spent all my teenage years in my bedroom learning my trade, so I was very green) and I was mess. I wasn’t a pleasant drunk, either; the downside of Dutch-courage is the over-ebullience, the aggressiveness, the don’t-give-a-shitness that liquor inspires in an innocent – so the record companies, my bandmates and my management bailed before their reputations sank with mine. All told, I was quite a bad boy, but it was a psychosis born of social inadequacy and crippling shyness, not an innate misanthropy. After 25 years of such abuse, your nervous-system calls time, your vital organs can’t take it anymore, and when they take the baby’s bottle away, he has to deal with those demons he drank to drown, in a body wracked with myriad maladies.

Cont'd below

Seinfeld Series 4, Episode 3; George & Jerry are in the coffee shop having just left a commissioning-conference with NBC TV executives. George stormed out of the meeting in a huff when the assembled execs told him that they were less-than-impressed with his pitch on a ‘show about nothing’, so Jerry is giving him what-for:

Jerry (extremely peeved, but somewhat resigned): “What was going on in your mind...?!! Artistic Integrity? Where did you come up with that? You’re not ARTISTIC! And you HAVE NO INTEGRITY.... You really need help. But a regular psychiatrist couldn’t help you – you need to go to like... Vienna or something! Y’know what I mean?! You need to get involved at the university level - like where Freud studied - where there’s people looking at you, and checking up on you - that’s kinda help you need! Not the ‘once-a-week-for-80-bucks’ – no - you need a TEAM! A team of psychiatrists working round-the-clock... thinking about you... having conferences... observing you - like they did with the Elephant Man! That’s what I’m talkin’ about. That’s the only way you’re gonna get better!”

Pause.

George (sheepishly): “I thought the woman was kinda cute...”

I am George Costanza. Read the full entry...

Before you start wailing, rattling yer sabres and gnashing yer teeth, hear me out...

Gothic: Gloomy or horrifying (OED)

Bob Dylan: Goth; Syd Barrett: Goth; Velvet Underground: Goth... See what I’m getting at?

Forget fashion-sense -I’m not talking about ashen faced, raven-haired, black leather clad snake-bite- swilling, Sisters Of Mercy clones, but that essence of darkness that pervades some of the best music ever made. Think Cry Baby Cry by the Fabs or Lady Eleanor by Lindisfarne, or Famous Blue Raincoat by dear old Lenny Cohen; catch my drift? Minor chords and horizontal melodies that send a glissando down the old spinal xylophone. I’m prepared to call a melody steeped in melancholy & moodiness: Goth.

Got it?

Don’t blame me, blame McCartney. Aside from the fact that Siouxsie & the Banshees covered Helter Skelter on their first LP, his best work has a tinge of the macabre: take Eleanor Rigby. A two-chord triumph of atmosphere and chilling cadences, written over a descending E Dorian chord-sequence (also employed by Brel on My Death and Bowie on After All), I’m prepared to call that Goth. Lennon’s dalliances with The Darkside are well documented. Likewise, the most successful bands of the last 40 years, in spite of the clothes they wear or the genre they inhabit, are essentially, Goth.

Take The Smiths. If Moz & Johnny Marr (my hero) had opted for leather duds (yes, I know they’re veggies, but stay with me on this) and crimped their quiffs, they would’ve been classed as Goth – the music fits the criterion. Marr’s guitar sound wasn’t that far-removed from Bob Smith’s on the Cure’s Seventeen Seconds LP. U2‘s (love ‘em or hate ‘em, they conquered the world) primary influence (check Boy & October) was my beloved Joy Division, a band so dark, light couldn't escape their surface. So we come to New Order, a band who went on to inject a hefty dose of doom & gloom into dance music - which leads us nicely to hip-hop: Portishead, Massive Attack, both as Gothic as get-out. Pixies, Nirvana, Radiohead: Goth, Goth, Goth.

REM’s Fables of the Reconstruction; PIL’s Metal Box...Dark Side of the Moon, Rumours, Tilt...

I could go on and on, but I’m sure to be burned as a witch...

I love all the greats – Porridge, Dad’s Army, Likely Lads etc and I think a studio audience is essential to invite a feeling of inclusiveness in the comedy I watch. But since the advent of Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Office, studio based comedy has lost its attraction for talented comedians too fearful of a critical backlash to grace the oldest and best format.

At the end of the BBC Comedy Connections retrospective of Father Ted, Graham Linehan, the series co-creator, says words to the effect of, “it was finished and it was time to put the actors back in their box,” implying that the players had little or nothing to do with the creative process and were merely puppets manipulated by the writers. It was not only insulting to the actors involved, it was also an indicator as to what is wrong with so-called British Comedy at this particular moment in time, and why tripe like The Persuasionists has been commissioned by a BBC desperate for new talent. Every year, the Edinburgh festival spawns a new rash of University educated panel-show fodder (working class comedians having long since been sent packing by production teams more at home with a bunch of Izzard wannabes than the next Billy Connolly. And before you beat me with the old inverted-class-snobbery-bigotry-stick – have you ever considered what it must be like for an uneducated, naturally gifted comedian/comic actor to catch a break these days? ) and these wet-behind-the-ears 'smile-humour' merchants are ceremoniously foisted upon us via BBC3/4/CH4 in half-baked sketch shows and under-developed Office-style sitcoms.

Linehan has taken absurdist-comedy (Big Train, Black Books) to new highs, he's worked with all the modern-day greats, Coogan, Morris, Ianucci etc, he claims to be a great fan of Seinfeld, but fails to see that show's success - and Partridge and The Thick Of It - depend on the interaction of its ensemble players – a group so well integrated and attuned to each other’s quirks that even the most absurd situations seemed believable, if not downright reasonable – in other words, establish character, tone-down the BIG acting, and work on the conversation: John Cleese said, ‘the best comedy comes from two men sitting opposite one-another talking’ – witness those priceless conversations between George & Gerry in the coffee shop – or Dougal & Ted in the caravan. Linehan has tried to repeat this formula with the IT Crowd (such a waste of Richard Ayoade – and while we’re on the subject - Matthew Holness - where are you when we need you most!!?), but the players don’t mesh in the same way, and so to make up for the disparate styles of the individual performers, the comedy has to be crass, shouty and childish: when all else fails, scrape the bottom of the stereotype barrel or just mug (Catherine Parkinson, I’m looking at you). We’ve tuned in every week to be tickled by that same wit that pervaded the best episodes of Ted, but we get another round of office jokes (‘have you tried switching it off and turning it on again’ – please – that was funny 15 years ago) penned by a man who should really go back to his office, seek out a quartet of comedians/players/comic actors whose styles actually complement each other, undergo a long, rigorous rehearsal period to build on the relationships- and include the actors in the creative process. It’s the only thing that’ll work. And please, please write a role for Matt Berry that he can get his teeth into!

I am, of course, well aware that most writers/creators are too pressed for time and cash to undertake any of the above, but unless something is done soon, we’ll be watching shite like The Persuasionists and Horne & Corden from now until doomsday...

Let the bickering commence...

Isn't everybody sick of reading about London bands? Doncha find that accent grating and ugly? Is there one band amongst them who show the depth or passion evident in most of the groups north of the Watford Gap?

Is there one singer who can really belt out a tune that'll have you weeping into your stout? Could London ever produce a front man with the commitment and passion of Ian Curtis or any number of celtic chanters? I'm talking about an original, bona fide, charismatic, card-carrying musical genius that has created - not followed - a movement?

London bands are invariably fronted by watchalookinat singers who confuse lairiness with charisma. Think of any London band and it’s a dead-cert that the members are either frustrated thespians (TV Ad-land child stars, stage school brats), fame-hungry art-students or no-hope thesps who see pop-music as a short cut to fame - look how many of them scuttle off to star in kids shows & soap operas as soon as the pop-career goes tits-up. Bowie (Celt) & Ray Davies (Celt) aside, the London bands are just as creatively bankrupt as they’d ever been. Do you think Pete Townsend smashed-up his equipment in a fit of passion born of artistic frustration? No! It was all carefully choreographed by their management! The Stones were a con too. C'mon - really - what the f*ck? Delta Blues by Neesden grammar school boys? They wouldn't have lasted 5 minutes in Hamburg!

Punk rock? Started in New York, mate. And when McLaren & Rhodes got hold of it, they couldn't resist f**king it up. Take The Clash (two art-students and a public-schoolboy) They spoiled punk for everybody by eschewing fun & sex (Pistols, Damned, Ramones - even The Stranglers were a laugh!) in favour of lyrical agit-p(r)op and a philosophy that seemed to be based on Transcendental Stalinism! London’s Burning with boredom? What the f*ck does that mean? Not racism, hatred or desperation, but boredom?! I don’t know anything that burns with boredom. Hell is many things, but it’s never boring. They went to Belfast and posed like c**ts with the troops on the Falls Road to facilitate an NME cover-story; it was, to misquote John Lydon (another Londoner but also second-generation Irish) Cheap publicity in another people’s misery...

Naturally, the journos lapped them up in the same way they swallowed Dylan whole: Robert Zimmerman playing Bob Dylan playing Woody Guthrie. John Mellor playing Joe Strummer playing… dumb? And so studiedly coarse – witness the recording sessions for the first album - he honks like a seal begging for fish, because he’s pretending to be working class, and we’re all a bit thick and incoherent don’t-you-know?

Madness - the only ska band with no black members? Squeeze? Chas & Dave with Beatle chords. The Jam? Don't get me started on the Jam...

I'll have to stop now... I'm gettin' a nose bleed...

(Before you go off on one - check thread 117. HudD)