Today, a friend and I were having a conversation about that there 80s hair metal and also about the fact that, come next Monday, Van Halen will be releasing a new album, A Different Kind Of Truth, again replete with Dave Lee Roth. Both of us being geeks, he sent me back a facebook post which simply read:


if ( $i->getup() && !getsmedown('anything') ) {
$this->jump('might as well');
}


Now, this got me wondering what other famous songs can be represented in alternative formats (not necesarily snippets of program code). And who better to ask then The Massive?

First I've really heard of either of these guys (doubtless members of the Massive will have done), but this is lovely. A bit like Vangelis moonlighting with Kraftwerk

If the rest of the forthcoming album's like that I may have to make a purchase.

A propos of nothing, I got a bit miffed yesterday when all the news outlets seemed to be intent on talking about the wonders of the "Higgs Bosun". At least, that's how they were all pronouncing it.

Finally, when I was listening to Tony Livesey's 5Live show last night, I finally got hacked off at the fact that this was being trumpeted as a great thing and they couldn't even get the name of the actual object right, so I texted the following:

"Higgs Boson: It is pronounced bow-zon, not bosun. It doesn't work on a boat."

And they actually read it out. And listened. After that point they were very careful to get it right for the rest of the show, even corroborating it with one of the physicists they were speaking to at the time. Frankly, I got a disproportionate sense of satisfaction out of getting someone in the national media to get just a tiny, tiny thing right.

How sad am I? (this is rhetorical; I know what the answer to that is)

It takes a special kind of idiot to make world football look even more corrupt, risible and out of touch with reality that it might already be.

Sepp Blatter is exactly that kind of idiot.

Answers on a postcard, please...

UPDATE: some readers have not yet seen that everyone's favourite corrupt comedy foreigner has opened his mouth and said, quoting the BBC Sport web site:

Asked whether he thought racism on the pitch was a problem in modern-day football, Blatter told CNN World Sport: "I would deny it. There is no racism.

"There is maybe one of the players towards another - he has a word or a gesture which is not the correct one.

"But the one who is affected by that, he should say 'this is a game'. We are in a game, and at the end of the game, we shake hands, and this can happen, because we have worked so hard against racism and discrimination."

Don't get me wrong, I love a good cover version. I yield to no one in my conviction that ZZTop's barnstorming Viva Las Vegas is actually an improvement over the Elvis original; I will happily debate the relative merits of Joe Cocker's version of With A Little Help From My Friends. There are lots of other cases where you think the cover was an inspired move.

But there are some covers where you think: why did you even bother? One of them came this morning for me, when I heard Manic Street Preachers' version of The The's sublime This is The Day on Radio 2. I'm not a Manics hater by any stretch, but this version is limp: the sound of a band soundchecking a favourite song and having a wizard wheeze to commit it to whatever passes for tape now*. There was no really no need thanks, lads. The original had a grace and an easy flow that has been roughly manhandled and crow-barred into the Manics' own sound. When I heard they were covering it I hoped (rather than expected) things would turn out well, but it's a major disappointment. Sometimes, some things should just be left alone.

I've just realised that the thing that jars me most is the trampling on the scan of "you've been reading some old letters; you smile and think how much you've changed". Clunk.

Here's the original, not for any other reason than it's a beautiful, beautiful song (one of my very favourites, in fact)

*probably a file on some hard disk somewhere

It was a quiet Sunday. We'd been out for a nice Sunday lunch (Jolly Sailors Inn nr Moorsholm in N Yorks, on A171 to Whitby, if anyone's in the vicinity) and after popping into my parents' house happened to spy Inspector George Gently starting on the TV. So, down I sat with a cuppa and thought I'd have a few minutes of cosy Sunday night viewing...

Within 3 three seconds of the show starting (yes, literally three seconds) I was chewing the cup. The very first scene faded in with the caption "Teeside, 1966". Not a great start. I wonder where exactly one might find the River Tee, I thought to myself. But then two young hooligans break into a special school. As soon as they opened their mouth I wanted to scream: they were from the BBC central casting for "young Geordie lads". They sounded like they should've been on Geordie Shore.

Calling someone from Teesside (see, 2 s's) a Geordie is like calling someone from Bedford a Cockney. So hearing this linguistic bollock dropped so quickly made me wonder just about quality a bit. Someone had clealry spent a lot of time trying to get period stuff right, like the cars and the interior props right, but had completely forgotten toget such basic things like place names and the way people speak. It was really,really, really annoying. It just felt so half-arsed and lazy to me - it doesn't take much effort to check, after all.

So that's my little bugbear for the weekend. Are there similar kinds of things that bug you about other TV dramas (like the ethnographic profile or murder rate in Midsomer that would get a chief constable fired, for example)?

I've just found out that Mike Harding's doing a national tour for the first time in about 15 years. As someone who's loved his recorded shows since I was about 8 (back in the 70s), I'm well excited about this. Here's yer man in action in two clips, playing a fairly odd range of instruments and being rather amusing I think.

Tickets duly purchased. Can't wait for October!

UPDATE: For those interested, check out http://www.mikeharding.co.uk/

Anyone else watching the snooker and thinking that Judd Trump reminds you of someone you can't put your finger on?

Then I realised. The Bastard Son of Nigel Blackwell, the ever constant Bard of Birkenhead.

Maybe it's just me, and it's late...

The Candyman returns

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-12976488

That is all

Pick an option. This woman is either :

a) an incredibly sophisticated and nuanced performance artist, satirising the idiocy and intolerance of the religious right wing of the US and making us see the utter risibility of the hate spewed by extremism

b) A pathetic deluded wakko who really does believe this stuff, in which case, by her own twisted logic, she herself should burn eternally in the hell she seems to spend a great deal of time rhapsodising about sending innocent people to.

Stuff like this truly scares the living shit out of me. What kind of screwed up world have we managed to create?

Imagine, if you will, that your life is a movie, or a Trumanesque TV enterprise, that chronicles your daily life through its inconsequential travails and transient happinesses. Clearly, this would need incidental music and a score, including a theme for you, the protagonist, that a viewer could easily discern as being yours.

In spite of many romantic and rebellious notions in my youth, I rather suspect that this might be mine (because I'm a sucker for the harpischord, you see)

So, what would be your own personal leitmotif?

I just happened to be listening to Chris Evans' Breakfast Show on Radio 2 as I was getting ready this morning, and heard yer man play Stevie Wonder's rather spiffy Sir Duke. But one line struck me this morning:

"Just because a record has a groove, don't mean it's in the groove."

Imagine an eight-year old in the car asking what that means, as you make your way through the early morning commute. How do you explain vinyl? So I got thinking about what other songs contain anachronisms and historical details that you'd need to explain to an eight-year old. Any suggestions?

A friend of mine and I were facebook discussing the George Monbiot Guardian article yesterday about proposed changes in corporate taxation. We wondered whether this was conspiracy or cock-up, It was difficult to tell from the description whether it's a cunning New World Order plan to screw us all, or whether it's just thickie Osborne, who has such a rudimentary grasp of economics that he can't work out what the big multinationals will do with this liberal tax regime. This elicited the following, Brookeresque, response from my friend:

I think he exists in a state of quantum superposition, being both a tremendous shitwallet and a monumental retard at the same time, depending on how you choose to measure him. (In keeping with the theme, the best way to determine his current state would be to stick him in a box with something highly radioactive... and fucking leave him there.)"

This prompted him to give the best description of George Osborne I have yet encountered: Schrödinger's Twat

I'm not expecting a long and involved political debate, I just wanted to share something I found funny. That is all.

I just downloaded the Jake Thackray box set from Amazon today.

It's bloody good. Nice to hear little nuggets like Lah Di Dah, Sister Josephine and Bantam Cock again.

I happened to be flicking through Top Gear magazine and saw a (pretty good) review for Fistful of Mercy's As I Call You Down. How had I missed this?

Bloody hell. I am liking that. Lots