10 Reasons Why Rock Music Might Be Dead

This could be what a new fan of rock music looks like. But who is it?

Last week found me sitting in a ubiquitous coffee chain in Central London talking to the Saul Galpern ahead of him guesting on the podcast. Saul was on to discuss the Mercury Prize and as we went through the nominees it was clear that there wasn't much in the way of guitar music represented. Saul was telling me about a recent conversation he'd had with the son of a singer from quite a famous band and how this young fella - himself a huge fan of music - uttered the immortal words, "rock is dead."

So while I don't necessarily agree with him, here are some reasons why he might be right. As my seven-year-old daughter would say, "Just putting' it out there."

Rankin took this picture. I'm undecided as to whether it does the album justice.

1) The Mercury Prize
There are only three Mercury music prize nominations which you could describe as guitar rock  but while each has its own merits, are any of them really taking the genre forward? In fact has rock been redefined by anyone since, say The White Stripes, Arctic Monkeys or The Libertines. Wolf Alice have got some tunes and good vocalist but there's something relentlessly ordinary about them.  I'm fond of Slaves, but it's a concoction which most people over 30 will be very familiar with. One disclaimer to this point might be that I am relentless old so I am clearly not the target audience. As Saul wisely said, if he was 15, he would never have heard Buzzcocks or The Fall so Slaves would be a clarion call. The third nomination is my favourite of the entire Mercury shortlist: Gaz Coombs' Matador. Arguably Coomb's has never wanted to break rock's mould but with this album he has definitely swerved off Supergrass Boulevard into something more interesting. Perhaps he could keep rock alive for a bit longer.

Sleaford Mods in their state of the art recording studio

2) Sleaford Mods
One band who are getting championed  as doing something interesting and showing genuine passion are Sleaford Mods. But these guys are almost old enough to remember punk rock the first time around. As a boy, singer Jason Williamson was a huge Jam fan, which led to his disillusionment with recent Weller output. As well as this, the audience at Sleaford Mods shows would appear to comprise of ladies and gentleman of a similar age to the band who have - like me, I admit - found angry kindred spirits in the band. Great, yes. Keeping rock alive by inspiring young kids? Not sure.

3) Archivisation
Dylan's label started this back in the 90s with the Bootleg Series, which is now on its 12th volume with The Cutting Edge, a trawl through the outtakes of his 1960s big hair period featuring, I kid you not, 20 versions of Like A Rolling Stone. Again, the old fellas like me, especially the ones who like packaging (again: me) will be adding this on their lists for Santa, but it's more nails in the coffin for the plan to convince 'the kids' that rock is about exciting, rebellious new things. Oh, and there's another Beatles package for Christmas too.

4) Bedroom Strumming
Bands are expensive. To keep going with no art school grants or any of the other financial support networks that used to exist (in the UK at least ) in the past is hard. Who pays Paying for rehearsals, equipment, petrol for gigs and all the other stuff you need to do to keep a band going? Clearly it's the greatest fun in the world playing in a room with other musicians but wouldn't it be quicker and cheaper to do it in a bedroom with computers and shit? Well, ask Ed Sheeran, Laura Marling, Villagers. And these are just names I'm plucking from the forefront of my brain. These days it's easier to cite solo artists or duos than bands. This doesn't necessarily make for less effective music - the previous three artists are at the forefront of my mind because I like them - but are they rock? I think the answer is no.

Sheeran archived.

5) It's Everywhere
How good do your favourite records sound after you've been starved of them? I remember coming back from holidays when I would only have so much room for CDs and experiencing the physical pleasure of satiating myself on missed music. Now we can take everything everywhere. And if that wasn't enough we're also exposed to it in shopping malls, hold music while your call is being valued, in taxis, and while we wait for planes to take off. Even when you're on a flight there is no escapge from Classic Rock - which now means Ride, apparently.

Virgin Atlantic's current choices of All Time Greats.
Incidentally, I just found a copy of There's a Riot for one dollar. Result!

6) Books Books! BOOKS!.
First sign of something being over is when it gets its own shelf of books. Books on Rock used to be tucked away in a corner of Waterstones. Recently in Foyles in London I was confronted with the sight of three bowing shelves full of rock minutiae. And still they keep coming. Peter Dogget has just written another 720 words about 125 years of pop music. Like so much modern art, I suspect the main achievement here is really to say I Have More Time Than You.

7) Brand extension.
My brother now has a pair of Motörhead headphones. Why not? The Motörhead logo is arguably the finest part of their legacy; it should be on more products. Extra Mature Motörhead cheddar, anyone? I'd buy that. Iron Maiden have just marketed their own beer Trooper which looks like this:

You can buy Clash notebooks, Sex Pistols iPhone cases, Rammstein steel lunch boxes and... well, I don't need to list them all here. You know what I'm talking about - and don't get me wrong, I am tempted. My favourite purchase is the punk rock coaster set:

8) Heydays
Think about classical music. Or Jazz. Every music genre has its heyday. Yes, classical is still immensely popular. But here the clue is in the name. Those going to a classical concert will more than likely be listening to music written hundreds of years ago. Just like those of us going to see Iggy Pop. As for Jazz, it's been a heritage industry for all of our lifetimes and is still going. Yes, practitioners still write new jazz music but it's the great artists and albums which attract young fans. Having just seen the movie Amy, it was clear that Winehouse was not queuing up to listen to Courtney Pine or John Schofield, she wanted Tony Bennett and Billie Holiday. So perhaps Rock will soon just be another canon of work which new artists interpret. But will anyone be reinterpreting Catfish And The Bottlemen in 50 years?


9) Reforming reforming.
Recently I saw a bunch of posters on a wall in a market in Bristol. For a moment I thought it was a collectors stall with lots of original posters from the late 70s: The Rezillos, The Ruts, The Cockney Rejects. Then it became apparent that these were freshly produced posters for artists who were on tour and playing at a nearby venue. It's now hard to pick a band from this period who haven't reformed. The original artists reinterpreting their old work. Can't see the kids queuing up for it.

10)  The ruddy music!
I'm desperate for a new innovative band to come along like The Libertines, Arctic Monkeys, The Strokes or The White Stripes. But they all emerged over 10 years ago. Yes, I am old and jaded and possibly not worth trying to engage with new music, and I know that it's the same for every music fan to chase the thrill of discovery first felt when they heard that band or that record for the first time. But I'm open-eared and I know lots of people male and female just like me who have not given up looking for new acts which excite them.  Please someone direct us to them!

So is it dead? I think I'm with Pete Townshend.

Oh yes, that new rock fan up at the top of the page. That's my daughter Maddy. She likes Rockaway Beach by the Ramones and Bad Blood by Taylor Swift. On vinyl of course.

Along For The Ride

An apologetic, yet simultaneously confident voice greets the crowd at the Academy. Like Hugh Grant in a Humphrey Bogart hat, holding a Fender. ‘Hello Brixton, we’re Ride. Thanks for coming.’

Mark Gardiner (the man in the hat - who'd have thought?) seer into a song that I’ve not heard for maybe two decades but it sounds… well, it sounds fantastic; absolutely up to date and somehow not of its time at all.  Loz, Steve, Mark and Andy are ripping through Leave Them All Behind. Possibly their finest moment. They're back together (again, who'd... etc.) and it’s a good thing that they’re back together; good for them, good for fans, good for those who were born the year they first played. I wonder what Taylor Swift would make of them. 

Ride were a good group. Notice I didn't use the word great. Somehow, the apologetic air haunts them still, although as I stand watching them this October night 26 years after first seeing them, I think maybe that adjective might start getting used. They were Creation Records’ first popstars, a band on the cusp of greatness when they got swept away on the tidal wave of Grunge then crushed swiftly by the red double decker of Britpop. 

Don't be fooled by the Starting Out (1988 - 1989) entry on Ride's Wikipedia page.  This is how it happened: 

By rights, they would have been the first band I signed. I got my first music business job working as a talent scout at East West in 1989. Within days, I was coursing through boxes of unsolicited demo cassettes that had been abandoned by my predecessors and the rest of the A&R department. Dutifully, I listened to the first few bars of each of the standard three tracks on each one and then packaged them up in pristine Jiffy bags to be returned. Such were the pre-Internet days of the record business: Tanita Tikaram, Enya and The Ginger Prince provided us with the funds to spend on the R&D and I felt we were almost offering a public service. My rejection letters were masterclasses of tact and evasion “Thank you for making the effort to send us your material… It always boils down to a personal opinion so if we’re saying no that doesn’t mean you should give up – somebody else might love it!” Or words to that effect. I’ll try and dig out a rejection letter but for now here’s a collection of all the misspellings of my name on demos sent to me, which I made into a complements slip.

Ride were, as you might expect, not discovered via an unsolicited demo cassette. I heard about them from a local Oxford music paper called Gig. I believe Ride’s future manager, Dave Newton, had something to do with Gig but anyway, it was he I spoke to at the paper. Nobody tells you how to be a talent scout so I just did the things I imagined a private detective would do: I phoned up a lot of people who I thought might know something and asked lots of questions. Without hesitation, Dave  recommended Ride and a couple of days later a tape arrived which was and remains the best-presented demo I ever came across. Ride started as they meant to go on – everything had been thought through: 

The block capitals logo, kept for their entire career, was there from that very first demo; the solid, defintive colour; the minimalism; the iconography. 

Musically too, it was amazing. Both future classics Chelsea Girl and Drive Blind were included as well as a third (and first in the running order) I'm Fine Thanks (later available on the box set, completist chums!)

I went to see them live and it was clear they had been blessed: It all. That’s what they had. A great guitarist, a charismatic, hurricane of a drummer, a stoic, monolithic bass player and a ludicrously handsome lead singer. They were young, they were intelligent and they played a cover of Tomorrow Never Knows.

I couldn’t get much interest from the rest of the A&R department but Cally (a legend who I have written about here before  and had the pleasure of interviewing earlier this week for the podcast) loved it as much as I did.  He had signed a kind of UK version of Jane’s Addiction called Underneath What who despite being signed to our multinational powerhouse, had just released their debut single Firebomb Telecom on a small label called One Big Guitar for credibility’s sake. Cally suggested we convince Ride to do the same – we wouldn’t even sign them, just put it out for goodwill and see what happened. Again, the public service nature of how some of us viewed the job is apparent. Cally told me recently that he never thought the band would happen if they signed to East West and he may have a point. But then again Geoff Travis had done the Blanco Y Negro deal with WEA and Jesus and Mary Chain were doing quite well thank you very much.

The Reed brothers as it turned out, were Ride’s favourite band.  Cally and I found this out when we travelled to Oxford to meet them. They were hugely polite and well behaved but genuinely inspiring. We suggested doing some recording with them. One thing major record labels did all the time in the 80s and 90s was offer artists ‘demo’ time. Normally budgeted at around £500 it was both a gesture of goodwill (public service!) and a way of avoiding making a foolish A&R decision by simply signing a group because you’d seen one exciting gig. Looked at another way, it was a way of avoiding making an actual decision whilst keeping your options open. 'Umming and Erring' as the perenniel  A&R joke used to go.  I did it a lot at East West because I couldn’t get my boss interested in most of the things I brought in. But that’s another blog.

The band quickly agreed to us recording them so we could put out a record. I can’t remember any other record companies sniffing around. Major labels were all looking for the next Deacan Blue or U2. Even a handful of years later, the kind of scenario where a band this good, building a fanbase locally would be able to exist without their every show being rammed full of industry chancers. But back then, when Taylor Swift wasn't even 1,  it was just me, Cally – and one other person I’d told about them, Mike Smith who was at MCA Publishing. He couldn’t get any interest from his boss either.

Cally and I paid for some demos and recorded them in Oxford at same studio where they had recorded the demos. If you look back to the pic of the demo you can see Cally's distinctive writing in pencil '16 track Oxford'. My scrawl is next to the phone numbers, where I've put Mark and Steve's names next to the numbers (I've obscured the numbers just in case). You see the slick way we worked: proper grown-up A&R man and trusty scout. We mixed it in London at a studio called Arkntide of which I have a vague recollection. There is however one crystal clear memory.  

Crucially, when it came to the final mix, the band and manager trusted myself and Cally to man the faders to get it sounding how we thought would best show off the band's brilliance. It was the first and as it turned out, only time that a band let me get my own mucky paws directly onto their work. All respect to Ride, they knew we loved them and perhaps did it out of thanks. In addition to that Cally and I got a credit for remixing it. Not in our actual names, mind but in alternative monikers based on that favourite band of Ride's you remember from earlier. They switched Jim and William Reid's names to James and Bill and lo! Cally and I were immortalised. 

What happened next happened fast. Dave sent us transparencies of the artwork, the beautiful roses artwork that I'm sure you remember if you're bothering to read this:

Cally, being an artist and sleeve designer himself helped with all this and we started setting up the release with One Big Guitar. Then suddenly...

Nothing.

We were nowhere. 

What had happened was inevitable. Just like a girl in the tentative early stages of a relationship, Ride stopped returning calls. Eventually, we were told. It was obvious really, and we should have known all along: the band had been seduced by Alan McGee at Creation. Who could blame them? If you were 19 and in love with Jesus And Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine and then their manager and record label offered you a deal, would you sit around waiting for a a pair of blokes who worked for Tanita Tikarum and Chris Rea's label? 

Ride rose swiftly after the release of the Ride EP. Cally and I wished them no ill because they were great and deep down we kind of knew that Creation was a better label for them than us. As well as this, Dave and his charges remained very loyal: we got our credit on the record and even a decade later they credited us on the OX4 box set and indeed sought us both out to give us a copy each.

And now here I am watching them on stage. They play two sets, one comprising the imperial period from Going Blank Again then they return and give us the whole of Nowhere. They've just returned from the US and they're going back again after they finish in the UK. The signs of this relentless touring are not that they seem jaded and exhausted but rather they have become the band they always threatened to become in their heyday: Loz's drumming is tighter, the harmonies are more strident, the playing simply better. They are as muscular as the block capitals behind them:

Added to this the audience are not, it must be stressed, just a bunch of old blokes like me, but a healthy mixture of male and female. This makes sense because Ride were after all, the thinking women's early 90s totty alongside the Charlatans and before Blur. 

After the gig I decide not to go backstage and shake hands with them all 26 years later. It would be lovely of course, but I suspect it being a London show that there are many folk like me who will be forming an undignified queue outside the dressing room. 

I say goodbye to the friends I came with and walk back through Brixton humming Drive Blind and Chelsea Girl. After everything, those two songs from that first demo are the songs they save for the encore.

Haven't you got enough records already?

Walking to my mum's house last week I did a double take. Outside the door of the house a couple of doors up from her was a small box

My mum, AKA Granny, lives in a narrow one way street with tiny pavements lined with pretty cottages and  full of people who sculpt and paint and have summer garden parties where lutes might get played. It's just the sort of street every grandmother deserves to live. But what about the box sitting there taking up space on the already cramped pavement?

Naturally, being a reader of this blog, you've spotted exactly what I spotted. Not the cat books leaning desperately against the door (take me home!) , nor the collection of small plastic knick knacks. No, the Apple Records logo on a 7" which in turn fronted a wodge of more records behind it.

Who could resist having a rifle though?

I don't know about you - and I really wish I did - but I love nothing more than looking through second hand records. The joy of serendipity; the thrill of finding a record I've wanted for ages, or finding something I never even knew existed, or never knew that I wanted or... Well, those of you who love pop music will hopefully know what I'm talking about. Refreshingly, there are many people in the music industry who are still like this. My friend David Laurie, for example, who, not content with running his own record label Something In Construction, has just published his first book DARE ...

Relax, I only have the one copy; this is one of David's snaps, I think.

In the introduction to this book (which is excellently researched, lavishly illustrated and a breeze to read), David freely admits that he remains incapable of walking past a record shop without going in. I very much hear him. It is a common problem amongst music fans - there are simply so many tempting records and there is actually a simple answer to the perennial rhetorical question posed first by parents then later by spouses: haven't you got enough records already? That answer, my friends, is NO.

So did I find a copy of God Save The Queen on A&M? A Beatles Love Me Do promo disc? An

unreleased John's Children 7" ? Read on and I'll let you know.

There is something tantislising about singles, isn't there? In the 60s, 70s and 80s albums were a big pocket money investment and generally only purchased by committed fans or people with jobs but the single had an entry level price; besides what else was there to spend your money on back then? Because of this, charity shops are now clogged with them, which means that in terms of finding a interesting or rare one, you have to sift through an awful lot of Doolies. You may have already seen this pic I took a couple of weeks ago for my ongoing game Charity Shop Fruit Machine:

Whole lotta Shakey going on.

These days the price is not so entry level: If you want to hear music on 7" by new bands they are made in such small quantities that you'll end up paying close to ten quid for one single. But a couple of months ago a mate of mine told me about a way of getting 7" vinyl from brand new bands delivered to your doorstep. He sent me the first batch from the Flying Vinyl singles club. Inside a doorstep of a box came five seven inches from bands I'd never heard of. Inevitably some of them were better than others but crucially they were all lovingly housed in unique picture sleeves, one of them was on purple vinyl and there was a handy booklet about the artists. I've just received the third batch:

I love cardboard.

There, I've said it - and the folks at Flying Vinyl seems to understand the importance of the tactile experience. After all, I could listen to all these bands on Soundcloud, couldn't I?  But these guys have chosen who to release (a spot of A&R) and then gone to town on the packaging. Even removing the outer shell of the posted package is a little bit exciting. Yes, yes, I know. I should get out more:

Ooo, what's in here?

Argh, mustn't tear it, the pressure, the pressure...

Phew, we're in.

The club charges you £20 every month for the singles including the postage, which isn't bad even if you only like a couple of the singles. This month is a vast improvement on the first month in my opinion: Here's a snapshot of my thoughts as I played the records:

Beach Baby
A lovely purple coloured vinyl record (each month one artist gets a coloured release - not sure how they decide this) Four piece who've got a vocalist reminiscent of Babybird's Stephen Jones and a pair of cracking tunes. I wish their logo was better but you can't have everything.
Kid Wave
Signed to Heavenly already and sounding not unlike the wave of Thames Valley bands from the early 90s. Big tunes sung by shy people. I'm not going to the Sh word which ends in oegazing. And lovely artwork too.
The Big Moon
A really great A side (Sucker) from this all girl band  - the B side isn't so good but the singer's got a very convincing voice. Either they're not interested in artwork that much or Flying Vinyl ran out of pantones for their sleeve.
Theo Verney
The least convincing of the bunch - the booklet tries to persuade me that he's 'the artist that the psych-rock genre has been long-awaiting". I hope their wait is over.  Sounds like Kasabian demos to me but maybe he's great live.
Oh So Quiet
Undeniably a terrible band name but it does at least encapsulate the gentle, mellifluous sound they make. The Argentine-born female singer has a voice which touches on Nina Pearson from the Cardigans, but that doesn't quite rectify it for me. A great sleeve though.

Regardless of the single in it, though, anything that keeps 7"s on the turntable is a good thing. Even without it, though, I don't think I'd have any trouble. I can smell the magic of a copy of Janet Kay's Silly Games a mile off. Even my eleven year old daughter is now asking to put "the small records" on because they're more fun. Yesterday she found my copy of Rockaway Beach (picture sleeve, of course) and she, her younger sister and I danced to it for its duration, as we watched it go round and round.

And as for that box in my mum's road, it turned out to be, well, a bit of new wave treasure trove, albeit with the former owner's name making its way onto the artwork a little too much. Ah well, that's 7"s single for you, they all tell a story.

A different way of doing things.

My wife joined the Labour party yesterday.

It's really easy to do online apparently, literally a matter or minutes. I've got other friends who've joined recently too. I'm excited about this. Not because I'm not the most political person - you'll know that if you read this regularly -  but I do find it exciting that the ostensibly 'comfortable' 'middle class' and 'middle aged' or whatever other social groups I and my friends fall into... that these people are not being complacent.  They are  inspired that there genuinely appears to be an effort from Jeremy Corbyn to do away with the PR of politics and try to talk frankly about the issues that affect everyone apart from a small proportion of the wealthy. Of course that's been made into a PR slogan itself now:

But I like the idea that we might return to a country or indeed a world where people are interested in more than just going to Westfield shopping centre or how much their house is worth. I love the fact that Corbyn has more important things to think about than wearing an expensive suit and is quite happy getting on with things dressed like this:

This movement towards a rejection of 'The way things have always been done' is a GOOD THING. I genuinely think people are angry and increasingly motivated. With the help of the Internet, they are beginning to form communities that work for them without having to put money into the pockets of large corporations.

Here is a short list of things that I am viewing as part of this move away from being told what to do :

1) The explosion of craft beer and the return of local breweries.

2) Local Sell or Swap sites preventing needless throwing away or giving eBay more commission.
3) The rejection of car culture and return to cycling after Bradley Wiggins' made it cool again.
4) The debate about home ownership beginning to move towards the realisation: there is no longer a Property Ladder.
5) Actual empathetic human beings with social skills on reality shows.

6) The recognition of vinyl as the best way of communing with recorded music.

Obviously, this being A&Rmchair, it was inevitable that I'd slip that one in.

The point about all this is that it is something of a step back in time, to pre-globalisation when we weren't all supposed to buy and do the same things. I hope you will definitely have things that you've spotted about our lives changing. And those of you with children may say that you try and battle with the corporate stuff but give in to pleas for iPhones or McDonalds. I know I do. But small steps...

Of course, what is also going on is that many of the above 'middle class' people are a) having to find alternative ways to make a living and b) maybe a bit righteous about that. The fact that the creative industries have been changed out of all recognition in the last fifteen years means that a lot of the jobs in print journalism, TV, radio, publishing and music now no longer exist.

I'm finally reading Gone Girl (don't tell me who Dunne it!) the protagonist of which, Nick Dunne, is a longhand version of the sort of journalist who is no longer allowed to write about popular culture because there is no paid media for him to do it on. I'm also reading How Music Got Free which is a brilliant, forensic study of the events which led to the MP3 revolution which decimated the record business. What are all the people who lost their previous living doing now. In the book Dunne opens a bar (hello craft beer!) and the people in the music business are either managing artists or have reinvented themselves (hello, everybody!)

And now there's a book about the overall situation called Crash: The Killing of The Creative Class. The author, an American called Scott Timberg, himself a journalist laments the disappearance of culture in the climate of corporate domination. I confess to not having read it yet but apparently after the catalogue of misery that the book largely is, he finds some solace in the fact that creative people have always found a way to be creative.

Here's hoping. Now where was that Labour party url...

Rocks off in Dismaland

We've slalomed around the maze of cattle gates in front of the building and are now standing inside it,  in another queue facing CCTV cameras, metal detectors and baggage screening machines.

Everything is made out of cardboard.

The girl in the paper inspector's hat glares at the couple standing in front of us:

"Wipe that grin off your face," she says to the guy,"and take that hat off."

Perhaps not wanting to enter the spirit of the thing or maybe because he's a bit chilly in the austere vestibule, he fails to remove his wooly hat. 

"You heard what I said, sir, take the hat off!"

I can't see the expression on his face but his girlfriend is now looking up at him with now only a half smile. 

"Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to step to one side and assume the position."

While all this is going on, Robyn and I have been keeping tabs on the queue adjacent to us and now there's a gap, which we could jump into. But just as we're about to move, the other security guard , an equally fearsome piece of work, bars us with an upright palm. 

"Don't even think about it! I'm not being your second choice. Get back in line!"
We return to our original place and watch at the man finally removes his hat to reveal stylish, shoulder length hair.
"Disgusting!" says the security guard, "now put it back on."

We are, of course, in Dismaland. 

The entrance to Banky's Bemusement Park

For those of you who've been asleep or drinking too much in the last month, Dismaland is the temporary "Bemusement Park" set up by Banksy showing work by over 50 contemporary artists from around the eorld all of whom have a similar anger, humour and energy to the legendary street artist. If it was based in London or another one of Britain's cultural capitals, it would be another great must-see modern art show; another thing to tick off in your Time Out weekend attractions.

The view at night from the rather splendid bar - note the Disney-style castle actually looking quite fairy tale-like as opposed to its usual day time burned-out shell makeover.

But it's not happening there, it's happening in Bank's old seaside stomping ground up the road from Bristol, Weston Super Mare. The old Tropicana lido on the seafront has abandoned by the city council since the early 2000s much to locals ire and disgust. There are no municipal pools in the town and despite it being a picture perfect seaside resort, it has the reputation of being the ultimate Btitish summer holiday let-down location: crying children, rain, squalid hotel.  It's the perfect location for a state-of-the-nation contemporary art show.

Another bonus for us is that, now that we live in Stroud, it's very near. We came just after it opened

on a bright, blue-skyed day and stayed until chucking out time. Indeed closing time at Dismaland manifests as the incongruous Hawaian steel guitar soundtrack being interrupted on the tannoy by a gruff voice saying, "Dismaland is now closed. Go home. We don't want you here anymore."

And now we're here again on a Friday night in September. Partly because we wanted to come again before it closes at the end of this month (Boo!) but mainly for Sleaford Mods, a band almost too perfectly suited for such a venue.

Jason Williamson has some pointers for David Cameron.

Like Dismaland itself, Sleaford Mods don't need any introduction unless you've been hiding under the stairs got the last two years. In the picture above you can see frontman Jason Williamson in full on rap rant towards a handily placed canvas of David Cameron in dress suit, dicky bow, champagne flute aloft. Unfortunately my photograph has caught Cameron's suit and shirt but obliterated his face. Something which Williamson pretty much achieved over the course of the show: anticipating today's #piggate PR nightmare, he continually punctuated the tunes with shouts of "Piggies! Oink oink!"directly to the Cameron artwork.

Here's a pic I took the first time we went so you can see what the PM's face looks like in the day - if you look closely you can see a Banksy figure pushing the PM's poster off the wall like so much unwanted graffiti.

The Dismaland stage during this year's day of summer.

I love swearing. It's big and it's clever but only when it's done by the masters - think of Harold Pinter's sudden 'shit cake baker' exchange in No Man's Land, the best of  Derek and Clive, or more recently The Thick of It. It's funny and powerful and achieves the very opposite of when it's used by teenagers at bus stops or drunk cricket fans in pastel shirts. Sleaford Mods unleash a torrent of abuse in every song and you find yourself smiling, laughing outlaid and nodding along in agreement at what a mess we're all in.

And than's exactly what you do at Dismaland too. I don't want to come across as a sales representative for the place (indeed there would be no point as it comes to an end this week, no doubt before Disney's lawyer's can get their teeth into it) but there is so much fun to be had here (not least to see the old, witty and playful Damien Hirst back in full effect after years of investment banking and see some really great new art.

Finnish artist Jani Leinonen's modified cereal boxes. He also collects beggars' signs which he plans to exhibit in gold frames apparently.

Here's a great image gallery of some of the best exhibits put together somewhat ironically by arch lefty newshounds, The Daily Express.

There's also a tough politcal edge to the exhibition too - stalls highlighting how landlords are hiking up rents and forcing people out of their homes (it's happening a lot in Banksy's hometown), an ACAB stall and a self-contained exhibition space called Cruel Bus, which highlights the way urban design increasingly tracks, controls and manages us like cattle. It's a haunting 10 minutes and one that on both of our visits produces the longest queues. Also, it's put together by Jonathan Barnbrook who amongst other thing is Bowie's sleeve designer.

Robyn leaves the bus early, upset by a Morrissey-esque montage of pigs being slaughtered. I stay on, examining various pieces of police riot gear and some cute freebie sweets given away at fairs by weapons manufacturers. Suddenly a voice booms into the bus, startling everyone:
"Ben... Ben! BEN"
I turn round and see a member of the Dismaland staff in distinctive hi-vis DISMAL jacket.
"Er... yes, that's me..."
"Sort it out, Ben! You your wife's waiting for you outside. You might get your rocks off if your lucky."

I sheepishly exit avoiding eye contact with those still on the Cruel Bus.

In which I ask Squeeze an awkward question...

There's a question that I have to ask. I came up with the question but now I'm not sure it's any good and the people I'm asking might not want to answer it and it might be awkward and embarrassing and all that might appear on national radio.

I'm walking down a low-celinged beige corridor with strip lighting and worn out carpet. Despite the austerity of it, it has a comforting, welcoming feel. It's the BBC of old. Not the New Broadcasting House that we're all familiar with from the Beeb's own brilliant W1A but the beautiful old former ice skating rink Maida Vale Studios.

It's a lovely old building that the BBC owned before the original Broadcasting House. But it's a property which I fear will be on the list of things that Director General Tony Hall lets go as part of the corporation's funding cuts. I've been here a few times before many years ago as some of my bands recorded sessions here for John Peel. No doubt there will be plaque dedicated to him on the wall of the luxury apartments that will inevitably be built on the site.

I'm here for the recording of one of Radio 4's Mastertapes. It's a series of interviews with artists about their breakthrough album, which my friend John presents and to which he has invited me. He did this because he knows how much I like the band he's interviewing today: Squeeze. Just like this blog, Squeeze are very much back after a lengthy absence. Unlike this blog however, they're already on the A list at Radio 2. Bet their A&R man is happy. As Pavement once sang: I know him and he is.

The Mastertapes format consists of an A and a B side and during the B side the audience get to ask questions. I'm a lifelong Squeeze fan and South East London veteran. If you search for Squeeze in the tabs on the right you'll find the tale of when I watched them writing a song at my friend's house - or did I? You'll also find how I briefly worked with Chris and Glen when Aimee Mann recorded a song with them. Oh yes, previous form on Squeeze? Tick. So I had confidently suggested some questions for John to ask during his interview but instead of marvelling at my journalistic prowess he's sentenced me to asking one of my own terrible questions. He gives me a card which looks like this with the question written on the back:

It's just Chris and Glen who are being interviewed and the room is full of men and women of a certain vintage - like the ones I described at that Wilko Johnson Rough Trade event in a previous blog: lots of ear hair, jowls and loose fitting black Levis. I've recently turned fifty so I am very much in the same demographic. Fortunately, without those jeans. Glen, as he told the assembled throng is now 57 so he's hopefully leading us all towards a dignified last few decades. Here I am in my own jeans and young person's T shirt in front of the stage in Studio 3:

For my fiftieth birthday last year, I actually went to see Chris and Glen at the Union Chapel in London's fashionable Islington. The crowd there were the same as described in the previous paragraph but with a frisson of media confidence and success. As I sat down on my pew (yes, pop pickers, it is actually a chapel!) I listened to the voices around me chatting excitedly about the imminent show. A voice cut through from behind, a throaty cockney fella with a deadpan delivery: "Blimey, no one's avin' a drink in 'ere! Why can't you get a bleedin' drink? I'm parched!"
A similar voice responded, only it was female and, if possible, throatier, "Calm down, there's a bar upstairs! You can't 'ave everyfink! It's a blinkin' church! You can getchaself a drink upstairs later!"
Were these two for real? It was like they were Mike Leigh characters. I turned round and, I kid you not, it was Paul Whitehouse and Kathy Burke.

This is the only image I could find of Whitehouse and Burke together. It's from the Slobs appearance on game show "Call Me a Wanker".

Back at Maida Vale, Chris and Glen talk about the album East Side Story and play Tempted, Labelled With Love and Is That Love? It is impossible not to get a bit dewy eyed about the whole experience. John points out how many of Chris' lyrics have to do with bathrooms and ablutions and Chris actually looks like it's never occurred to him before. Glen, just like old friends always do, leaps into relentless piss taking: as they stand for another performance his partner's guitar strap is giving him problems  "not clean enough for you?" asks Glen innocently.

And then it's time for the audience to ask questions. I hold my card apprehensively. Other audience members are all starting with an unnecessary introductory bit of flattery about how great East Side Story is ("Greatest album ever made", says one young punter) or how great the new album is (it is actually really, really good, just as good as the Danny Baker inspired series Cradle To Grave it soundtracks). Being a seasoned pro (after all I'm interviewing every week on the Podcast, right?) I tell myself I have no need of this. Be confident  - after all, I've researched it, I already know the answer to my question:

As I read the question to myself I realise that it's been poorly worded and I'll need to change it a bit to make it sound less like Lennon was shot just outside of the building where they were working. While I'm doing this, a married couple are getting loads of laughs with their list of Squeeze urban myths "All true!" laughs Glen. The audience are loving the banter when suddenly John introduces me, "Next question is from former A&R man turned writer, Ben Wardle" And I find myself falling into the flattery trap immediately:
"I just wanted to point out that Glen is wearing a great pair of blue suede shoes that radio listeners sadly aren't going to appreciate..." Actually, this is a good segue, the lighthearted tone is being kept afloat. The laughs die down and I ask the question. The atmosphere immediately changes. Chris and Glen look very serious. Shit.
"Yes, it was a very sad day," says Glen, "We didn't record anything"
OK, I think, now they'll tell the story about producer Elvis Costello suggesting they spend the day playing rock and roll classics and how cathartic it was and how maybe somewhere there are some tapes of those sessions...
"We just went to the pub," says Chris flatly.
"Yes, we were devastated and we just wanted a drink" says Glen.
There's a pause. That's it.
"I think Nick Lowe may have popped in," adds Chris helpfully.
Sound of tumble weed etc.

When the shows go out later this year (December, I think) I suspect my own particular mastertape will end up on the cutting room floor.

We Shall Not Be Moved

So yesterday the band I wrote about in the previous blog just over a month ago (I know, I know, apologies) were sentenced. Two years in a penal colony. Absurd. As Nadia Tolokonnikova's husband, Pyotr Verzilov commented, "What happened now is a clear sign that Russia is moving towards becoming more like China or North Korea".

I'm not going to write up the backstory as I'm sure by now everyone reading this will know about Pussy Riot. There were lots of comments on Facebook and Twitter (but curiously not on my actual blog),  about my suggestion of getting a record deal for them to raise awareness but now I'm sure that would have made little difference to the outcome - after all, if you've got the world's biggest stars like Madonna and Paul McCartney publicly showing support and TV news featuring it repeatedly as a lead story then how much more awareness is a hit record going to make? What I haven't read anywhere is how the verdict was timed nicely to occur just after Russia's Olympics result. Is it coincidence that it was left to the post Olympic back-slapping period when Russians and the world might be distracted by the country's triumphant fourth position? The good news is that nobody was distracted.

I watched the Olympics 2012 opening and closing ceremonies but failed to get swept away by the sport. Yes, I know I am perhaps the only person in London and possibly the rest of the world who behaved like this. Those of you who have read this blog over the years will no that I never write about sport and there is a reason for this. Whilst I enjoy cycling, swimming and the occasional kick about in a park, when it comes to watching sports I am missing a gene: I just can't do it.

For those of you who love watching sport - and judging from the Olympics that's pretty much everyone - it's hard to explain how I feel. One analogy might be a deaf person watching others enjoying music: I understand that it's a sheer rush of enjoyment and excitement but I am still left cold. I sat down with my children to watch the 100 metres sprint that Usain Bolt won and I'm glad I did because I could register their own excitement at  history being made. But I got this at no more that an academic level. Perhaps my inability to engage with sport is comparable to those people who struggle with humour. For example, the literal mindedness of people on the autistic spectrum or with Asperger's means that they struggle with 'getting' jokes. That's me; I am sportistic. Unfortunately, I don't have any of the compensatory levels of high intelligence and sensitivity in other areas that autistic people do.


It occurs to me that there are some unfortunate people who are like this when it comes to music. They hear it and watch others getting swept away by it and yet it leaves them cold. Even music lovers can relate to this because there is always some music which simply does not do it for them. One man's Revolver is another man's No Parlez. One Tweet I read during the closing Olympic ceremony was that it appeared to be a music concert organised by someone who didn't like music. Now whilst I won't have anything said about The Who at the moment (I am currently going through a massive rediscovery of their brilliance, including finally finishing Tony Fletcher's massive and brilliant Moon biography),  I do think that compared to the opening ceremony that this is true: it was a cavalcade of former BRITs winners. At times it felt like I had tuned into one of those I Love The 80s shows. All that was missing was a C-List celeb not born at the time, talking about how much they love the Eurythmics.

There were scant live performances in the opening ceremony but what there was represented a vision  - and the choices of song formed part of a tapestry. Danny Boyle's vision was like Grayson Perry's Walthamstow Tapestry: charged with challenging images and juxtapositions (NHS beds, Pretty Vacant in front of the Queen, the industrial revolution vs ecology), the closing ceremony resembled nothing more than a tapestry your auntie might stitch on a Sunday afternoon. No surprise that artistic director Kim Gavin has previous with the BRITS, Take That and many Cowell-related shows. Whilst clearly someone who knows the power of celebrity and glamour, musically it was something that could have been phoned in by someone who buys two CDs a year.

If there are people who like me are tone deaf to sport, or indeed some who are simply unmoved by music itself, then there are of course those who are unmoved by others' suffering. It's just a shame that  it is frequently those people, like Vladimir Putin, who take the reigns of power and refuse to let them go.