Just like a magnifying glass can focus the suns rays to create a spark, so the sun's rays , or more precisely the heatwave currently burning up Europe and North America, can focus creative sparks to offer a ray of hope in this climate change hell. Take electric fans and air conditioning - we want, we NEED more of both in this oppressive heat that, according to some forecasts, could be an annual occurence by 2040. Unfortunately, most air con systems contain CFCs and both they and fans require an awful lot of power, which, in the current electricity generating regime, means more fossil fuels being burnt. Solar powered air con exists - the first solar powered recording studio in the world recently opened in London (everything from the air conditioning to the mixing desk runs on the sun's energy) - but it has limitations. Surely it is imperative that more money is invested in developing such technologies. Ditto for solar or perhaps clockwork powered fans. Air con is a rare luxury in Europe, but one that increasingly feels like a necessity. In the US, it is already standard in many homes as well as offices, but the environmental impact of those air conditioning systems has been largely ignored by lawmakers. The carrot of new business opportunities for inventors and entrepreneurs could be effectively combined with the stick of legislation that restricts the use of sytems that harm the environment.
This article on the BBC website about the demise of Top of the Pops got me thinking about an appropriate memorial to the show. If the idea of Bob Marley and The Wurzels rubbing shoulders sums up the essence of ToTP, why not create soundclashes inspired by specific episodes of the show? '22nd October 1977' (or whatever the actual date of the Marley/Wurzels confab was) could feature a roots reggae rendition of 'I've got a brand new combine harvester'; an episode from 1991, Bryan Adams remixed in the style of Altern 8. One track for every year of the show, Bill Bailey to coordinate the project. How's about that then?
Thursday evening: Arrive at London Waterloo on the Eurostar from Brussels. Take the 188 bus to Bricklayer's Arms. 'Check in' to my mate Steve's apartment in the Jam Factory, a housing and office complex on the site of the former Hartley's Jam factory in Bermondsey. Cross to the other side of Tower Bridge Road for dinner in The Hartley, an award winning gastropub. I have a prawn cocktail followed by a lamb and parmesan burger with a side serving of old English mustard. The grub is nice but not spectacular, the venue trendy, but not achingly so. Two criticisms: no air con (a complaint that applies to 90% of venues in London) and a rather bland selection of beers (Boddingtons is the only ale and there are no artisanal brews).
Friday: Stroll from 'Sobo' - as estate agents and style mags have taken to calling the gentrified, bohemian edge of hard-as-nails Bermondsey (the acronym stands for 'South of Borough', don't you know?) - via the remnants of the antiques market on Long Lane to Borough Market. Walking round the place that launched the farmer's market revival on a beautiful sunny morning is a lovely experience. Pick up some Red Leicester cheese straws, a Melton Mowbray pork pie and some freshly squeezed orange juice before popping into the Monmouth Coffee Company for an ice filtered Sumatran brew. The market backs on to Southwark Cathedral, a charming early 12th century gothic building that contains the tomb of king Henry IV’s poet laureate John Gower. Crossing the road and walking past Vinopolis, the remains of Winchester House and the replica of the Golden Hinde, I follow the Thames Path westward before crossing into North London via Southwark Bridge, taking in the view of Docklands, Tower Bridge, Swiss Re and St. Paul's. Reaching the Millennium Bridge, I cross back over the river and take a detour round the third floor of Tate Modern. Surrealist films from the 1920s and the sculptures of Louise Bourgeois were the things that connected best on this visit - next time, who knows? Continuing along the South Bank, I pause for some lunch at a cafe attached to the National Theatre. My arrival coincides with one of the events in the Watch This Space season - a performance by Moya (African-jazz-folk and roots rhythms from Swaziland). The sweet voices of the two female singers aid the digestion of a cheese sandwich washed down by a dandelion and burdock flavoured drink. After lunch, I head over the Thames again via one of the Golden Jubilee Footbridges and make for Fitzrovia, where I have a five o'clock rendezvous with some old friends. Passing through Trafalgar Square, I pay the National Portrait Gallery a brief visit. A BP sponsored portrait competition is on display. Works by Gregory Cumins, Jon Jones and Andrew Hilling stand out. I head through Leicester Square and China Town, followed by a spot of browsing on Oxford Street. Feeling peckish I recall a fish and chip shop close to Pollock's Toy Museum on Scala Street. The food tastes good, although it is just too hot to really appreciate battered cod and chips. Meeting my mates on Mortimer Street, we have a few pints outside the Crown and Sceptre on Great Titchfield Street, an old after work haunt and one of the nicest pubs in the area, especially when the sun is shining. I'm staying overnight in Guildford, so my friend Nick and I decamp to the Surrey commuter town. It's a surprising place: "A bit of a Jekyll and Hyde town" as one of Nick's pals put it. By day, a well-heeled piece of archetypal Middle England, by night, a pissed-up regular on security cam documentary, 'Booze Britain'. Appropriately, while sitting outside the Royal Oak pub I take the opportunity to sup a Cheeky Vimto for the first time. Known as a favourite of Charlotte Church, this combination of port and the Vodka-based alcopop Blue Wkd does indeed taste like the fruit-flavoured drink Vimto, long a favourite of children in the north of England. Guildford is also popular location with film and TV location scouts. The town's appearances range from 'The Omen' (the final scene takes place at Guildford Cathedral) to 'The Bill' (the plodding feet of the famous end title sequence were filmed on Guildford's cobbled High Street, hard to imagine given the steepness of the gradient - it always looked flat to me on the telly).
Saturday: Heading back into London around midday I meet up with another old pal at the Duke's Head in Putney. This charming riverside pub does a very tasty Ploughman's Lunch and still charges only 30p for a pint of lime and soda. Bargain. Check in to the Portobello Hotel. I'm offered a discount as the lift is broken. My room is small but very comfortable, with a large Bang & Olufsen TV. I wander down Portobello Road and have a drink in The Duke of Wellington (aka Finch's), an old stomping ground from the days when I worked at the Music & Video Exchange on Notting Hill Gate. Later I decide to take advantage of the evening's membership of the Cobden Club offered to all guests of the Portobello Hotel. The lack of air conditioning in this former working men's club is a drag on such an oppressively humid evening. But the decor is grand and the bourbon-based cocktails I sample (including a house special 'Grape Crush') are, as they say in Ireland, grand too. The upstairs disco (tedious rare groove and men with goldie lookin' chains round their necks) and reading room (with oohh, maybe 10 books!) are not so grand.
Sunday: After an excellent continental breakfast I check out and head into Hyde Park. It's still very warm and very cloudy, so I take a break in a deckchair (£1.50, pay when asked) next to the Round Pond. I carry on towards one of my favourite London spaces, the Serpentine Gallery. Thomas Demand is the featured artist. I was previously unfamiliar with his work (photographs of domestic and office interiors that upon closer inspection reveal themselves to be photos of sculptures made from paper and cardboard) and am impressed. Demand has also decked the gallery out in wallpaper with an ivy motif that he designed in collaboration with a manufacturer that uses a traditional block printing motif. Demand's wallpaper also finds its way into this summer's Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, a bizarre clear plastic and white fabric dome created by architect Rem Koolhaas and structural designer Cecil Balmond. This temporary building is the sixth to be erected outside the gallery since the pavilion concept, a scheme that enables some of the world's leading architects to build a structure in Britain for the first time, was launched in 2000. After enjoying a '99 Flake from an ice-cream stand, I round off the weekend by buying some books ("A short history of tractors in Ukrainian", Jared Diamond's "Collapse" and, for my fiancee, Alison Weir's "Isabella") and DVDs ('Peep Show - series one', 'The Machinist', 'Glengarry Glen Ross' (only £2.99!) and some episodes from 'Minder' (series four, natch)). Having shopped, I drop to the ground in Soho Square, enjoying sandwiches (Wensleydale and caramelised carrot chutney) and crisps (salt and vinegar squares) from Marks & Spencer in the sunshine and the shadow of the British Board of Film Classification and the headquarters of the Football Association.
Saw this fascinating report on the BBC website revealing that evidence from the gene pool suggests that the Anglo-Saxons may have instituted a form of apartheid in what is now Great Britain between the 5th and 7th centuries AD.
The nominees for the 2006 Mercury Music Prize have been announced. A pretty good selection, although I would have liked to see Goldfrapp and the Mitchell Brothers getting their dues. Nice to see Scritti Politti in the mix however - 'Boom, Boom Bap' is a great song.
Spent Sunday close to the French border at "Europe's alternative music event" - the 18th Dour Festival. Baking hot weather may have turned the site into a dustbowl, but the atmosphere was mellow and the six-stages offered nuggets of gold among the pans of silt. My itinerary took in The White Birch, Constantines, le Klub des 7, Guerilla Poubelle, Absynthe Minded, Les Wampas, Gravenhurst, Brakes, Andrew Tosh, Luciano, Two Gallants and Bell Orchestre (featuring members of Arcade Fire). The highlight was Two Gallants, a really fantastic live band (Tyson Vogel could well be the best drummer I have ever seen). Luciano's uplifting roots dancehall reggae (and his handsprings) brought the crowd to life in the late afternoon, while it was sweet to see Andrew Tosh and his long-lost brother duetting on their father's anthem 'Legalise it'. Les Wampas were bizarrely affecting and surreal as only French rock can be (a singer who invites women from the audience to dance on the stage then encourages them to all jump on top of him, calling out (en francais) from beneath the pile of bodies, "What a beautiful death, crushed to death by girls!"). You had to laugh. Gravenhurst offered a drop of that very English afternoon tipple, psychedelic Indie rock. Distilling two parts (Syd Barrett's) Pink Floyd with one part Flying Saucer Attack, the group's mellifluous drones and feedback reminded me of watching Sunday League Cricket - long swathes where you are happy to snooze or read a newspaper, interspersed with the occasional runmaking stroke. The polite applause that greeted the end of each number would not have sounded out of place at Lord's as a David Gower cover drive sped off into the outfield.
The Guardian's critics have selected their shows to watch at this year's Edinburgh Festival. As with any such list, it's a bit of a curate's egg and probably not intended to be definitive. Nevertheless, it's interesting - and a little disappointing - to note that the theatre picks consist of adaptations of hit books ('Platform', 'My name is Rachel Corrie') and of cult classic movies (the 'cinema on stage' of 'Get Carter' or 'Midnight Cowboy'), with a bit of Shakespeare ('Troilus and Cressida') thrown in for the traditionalists. Is the stage so devoid of powerful new voices of its own? I don't believe it for a minute, but the proof of the pudding will be in next month's eating. I'm at the festival from August 19th to 28th: I'll let you know how it tastes.
Miss your ferry and steal a fisherman's trawler! Boat owner Paul Jones's OTT reaction is also priceless: "I couldn't believe it. The police are giving a green light for people from Ireland to simply grab the nearest boat and try to sail home if they miss the ferry." Yeah, right, like everyone will be doing it next weekend, Paul!
If Morgan Spurlock is stuck for inspiration for a follow up to Super Size Me, he should take to the road. Using this journey planner on the McDonald's website he could take a trip from the site of the firm's original hamburger stand in San Bernadino, California to its head office in Chicago, Illinois, stopping at every one of its burger joints en route. If that sounds a little dull, how about a coast-to-coast trek from the headquarters of the National Rifle Association in Fairfax, Virginia to the Museum of Creation and Earth History just outside San Diego, driving in an SUV and stopping at every McDonald's on the way? Can Michael Moore mapread?
News from the Midlands: The work of James Donaghy of Aerial Telly infamy will soon be gracing the pages of Arena magazine. At last Jim is getting the audience his talents deserve (and no, that isn't a snide putdown of the Arena readership, it's a compliment, wiseass!)
Looking forward to the first mountain stage of this year's Tour De France tomorrow (sorry, later today now). With all the pre-race favourites barred, injured or unable to ride, who knows what might happen. For a good, opiniated take on the race, check out Cosmo's Cyclocosm blog.
... To catch the tram up to Laeken for an afternoon of folk whimsy at Brosella (lovely venue - the Theatre de Verdure, a landscaped amphitheatre with space for 500+ people to sit) and then take the metro downtown in time for Milleniums (lots of energy) and Baba Zulu with the Mad Profesor (fab music, risible lyrics) ay Klinkende Munt. Jolly fine it all was too.
As proof that music festivals really can have an impact on the 'real world', the announcement by dEUS frontman Tom Barman that he would be organising a day of concerts for tolerance and against racism in Belgium later this year (dubbed 0110 after the date they will take place, October 1st) has sparked a full-on campaign of intimidation by the leaders of the far-right Flemish nationalist party, Vlaams Belang. Last Wednesday VB leader Filip Dewinter published an open letter to artists who have agreed to take part in 0110, saying that they are being manipulated and misused by Barman, who has openly stated in the past his desire to organize an anti-VB concert. He also pointed to the timing of the concerts, just one week before local elections in Belgium, as evidence of Barman's political intent. When this letter failed to have the requisite effect (0110 concerts are set to go ahead in Brussels, Ghent, Antwerp and possibly, Charleroi, and will feature many of the biggest names in Belgian pop - Axelle Red, Flip Kowlier, Clouseau, etc) the VB decided to fight dirtier: Francis Van Den Eynde, the leader of the the racist party's parliamentary faction, wrote an open letter to Helmut Lotti in which he revealed that the very popular singer, who is slated to appear at the Ghent concert, was a member of the VRJ (youth wing of the former Vlaams Blok, the outlawed predecessor of Vlaams Belang) and son of a Vlaams Blok activist. Van Den Eynde also accused Lotti of betraying the one million Flemings who vote for Vlaams Belang. One blogger suggests that for the next step in its intimidation campaign, Vlaams Belang could call for its followers to boycott the music of all the acts taking part in 0110. A little tolerance is a dangerous thing it seems.
The Belgian festival season is in full swing, creating some wonderful dilemnas about what to do of a weekend. Today, for instance, do I take the train down to Bruges to catch Buffalo Tom, (Canada's favourite TM) The Tragically Hip and Gnarls Barkley? (The Cactus Festival also offers the chance to throw bottles of piss and shout 'get back to your Berkeley drum circle' at the risible Groundation).Or do I stay here in Brussels and go to one or both of the two free music fests on offer: Klinkende Munt in the New Grain Market - mongrel ('Zinneke' in Brussels dialect) sounds from the likes of local band Millenniums and dub legend Mad Professor with Turkey's Baba Zulu; or the Brosella folk festival in Laeken, featuring Eliza Carthy, Clannad's Moya Brennan and The Wicker Band, a group formed especially to bring the soundtrack of Scottish pagan horror classic 'The Wicker Man' back to life! Choices, choices.
Since it's the Fourth of July, I'm gonna start this post by paying tribute to an American legend: James Brown. "Mr. Please Please Please" and his 20-strong team of musicians, singers and emcees put on a fabulous show at Couleur Cafe last Friday night (preceding the equally wonderful Burning Spear on the main stage). Brown may be in his 70s, but he still has most of his moves and all of his old charisma. Learning his trade during the 'showbusiness' era of the 50s and 60s has stood the 'Godfather of Soul' in good stead: How many other performers today would have the chutzpah to make their stage entrance 20 minutes into their show? How many others have a backing band capable of holding the audience's attention for those 20 minutes? Once onstage, Brown and cohorts ran through most of the man's greatest hits ('Soul power', 'Sex machine', I feel good', 'It's a man's, man's, man's world', etc) as well as covers of 'Soul man'and 'Hold on, I'm coming' during a riproaring hour and three quarters. I can honestly say that I have never seen or heard a better audience reaction at any of the hundreds of concerts I have attended. Quite simply, James Brown tore the roof off the sucker. Rock Werchter the following day could never live up to those heights, but Franz Ferdinand and Goldfrapp certainly gave it their all. Arctic Monkeys, by contrast, seemed a little jaded. And they weren't helped by playing at 3pm on a boiling hot day. Nonetheless, the band still had the audience up and frugging wildly, even if it wasn't quite the 'voice of a generation' experience the hype promised.
Since Victor S has been taking a break from blogging following his move to Amsterdam (a hiatus he assures me is set to end shortly), it falls to me to pass on the latest cultural happenings from the Apostate Windbag. Music: The Spinto Band and Midlake; Political theory: Mike Davis's 'Planet of Slums'; pintage: "Just a Perrier".
Thanks to Stephen from Euro-Correspondent dotcom for drawing my attention to the fact that sixty years' worth of public information films from the UK government's Central Office of Information can now be seen online here. There are some real gems, including my personal favourite, the Pedal Safety Song. Cycling Proficiency Test, here we come!
