My Cultural Life - Nothing Really Matters

What's Up?

The problem with fascism isn't obvious to most people who look at it as being the solution to their woes. Nationalism and fascism walk arm in arm because they play on weaponizing pride, therefore many of the supporters of Reform, especially, are not interested in what they're going to get from them as a government, only that they've promised to rid the country of the things (and people) that are making lives so much worse than it need be.

Of course, what happens (and quickly) is five years on from a Reform government they will have solved [some of] the problems the people believed they would, but everyone is far worse off than they were before, in so many ways. Despite restrictions on internet access (for our own safety) the anger and despair of the people is loud and unmissable. As we approach the 2034 General Election, as well as their standards of living, the people start will losing their freedoms and the country will lurch to a far more blatantly authoritarian look and your leftie neighbour, who is a thoroughly decent chap but votes Green and is tolerant towards migrants, will suddenly disappear for sending a humorous meme of President-elect Farage on their phone. The government will use the military to enforce law; begin recruiting huge numbers of police - all without appropriate checks, because this is a National Emergency... Oh and they can't hold a General Election just yet because it isn't safe. Left wing extremists are making people's lives a misery. This will be what happens in less than a decade.

All those people who backed Reform, who truly didn't believe that the new laws, lack of Human Rights and isolationist position would affect them, will become either an employee of the state or an enemy of it. "I didn't vote for this," is a facile comment at the best of times, but I will take some comfort from the schadenfreude I shall feel when that happens. 

Because this is happening. We can kiss goodbye to the NHS (Farage supporters don't believe this). We can kiss goodbye to employee rights (Farage supporters don't believe this). We can kiss goodbye to equality (Farage supporters don't believe this) All Reform will bring is richer rich people and less for everyone else (but that's just Labour and Conservative bullshit to scare people away from real change). The incredible thing is Farage is just a Pound Shop Trump. People seem to be drawn by this obnoxious frog-like Lesley-Phillips-on-acid white supremacist and I think it's because he lets them wear their prejudices on their sleeves. Populism is a great short term pressure valve, it would save Reform a lot of money if we let mobs rule the streets, dispensing their own kind of justice, before clamping down on everything and everyone. 

What I'm trying to say is Reform voters aren't interested in politics, they're not interested in hearing what's being said. They want to hear about solutions and fixing problems (that were created to anger them). Many of those things, these beliefs, are abhorrent but I'm sure it's how they feel because that's how they've been conditioned to feel. They need someone to blame. 

You cannot condense in few enough words a way to make them think about it, let alone convince them they are making bad choices. Not because they're stupid [necessarily] but because they're tired of long winded explanations and political platitudes that don't mean anything to them. They want to see the changes yesterday! I said a few weeks ago about TL:DR, but we've gone beyond that now. Convincing them isn't going to happen because they don't want to be convinced of anything but what they believe in; we have to brace ourselves for the new hell that is coming or learn how to goose step. 

Proportions

A quite small 0.45% of the British population is Jewish. The Muslim community in the UK is 6.1%. Why is it more important for Jewish people, most of which could walk down the street and never be identified as Jewish, to have extra protection and different privileges than it is for any other race or culture who have been subjected to violence? If there are examples of antisemitism being reported, why are there not examples of Islamophobia - of which there is considerably more - being reported about? Where is the balance in our media reporting? Why is there no balance in the media's coverage? It's like one culture is considered 'more important' than the other...

Or maybe British Jews should be directing their ire at Israel because that is the reason they are targeted by loony Muslims. It doesn't matter how many Jews died in this 50 year conflict, many more Muslims, Christians and other religions have also died as well; one death should be no more tragic than another, unless we're talking about babies. Obviously Israel is simultaneously responsible and a victim here - a kind of Schrödinger's Arsehole?

The Golf Days Are Over

Last weekend, we had my brother-in-law up for a visit and to take in some of the Book Festival. He, like me, is a big fan of golf (don't hold it against us) and this weekend was the bi-annual golf fest known as the Ryder Cup; a competition between Europe and the USA. Once it was simply the UK and Ireland, but since the 1980s it has incorporated Europe and since 1985 it has always been a close run competition with both sides of the Atlantic taking victories. After looking like Europe would romp to a record breaking win on US soil, the match ended much closer than you would have guessed, with a Europe victory deserved. Right, that's the sport out of the way...

The American supporters have always been partisan, belligerent and offensive - it's part and parcel of being American, I believe - but over the last decade or so the behaviour of fans of Team USA, especially in a gentle game full of etiquette and rules, has been appalling and the levels of abuse are just wrong. It came to a head last Saturday afternoon when Rory McIlroy (the guy in the picture) was verbally abused by the crowd with the MC - the woman responsible for introducing the players - leading a chant of 'Fuck you McIlroy.' All through the weekend there was abuse aimed at European players; shouts and cat calls as players were about to make a shot and their wives - McIlroy's wife had a beer thrown over her. It was a disgusting spectacle even if the golf ended up being one of the most exciting tournaments seen for many years.

This is the problem with that shit stain of a country. Americans, generally, are just rude, offensive, without manners and have an entitled air about them that suggests because they are American they are already better than everyone else. To put this into an ironic context, recently a US university sent a questionnaire out to thousands of High School graduates asking a series of questions, many of which would be considered stupid or pointless if they were in a pub quiz. One of the questions was "Where does cheese come from?" Amazingly, 18% - almost ONE in FIVE of the respondents - said that cheese was a plant. For some context 7% thought that Washington DC was in the state of Washington (which is on the opposite side of the country to the capital).

Just what have Americans got - apart from lots of weapons - that they should be proud of? I mean, they really can't make cheese, which might explain a few things and they couldn't pronounce aubergine so they renamed it eggplant. They think guns are more important than children - but, hey, the world seems to have slightly turned against children - are they expendable now? Haven't you noticed how the death of a child is utterly tragic but almost a normal event now in that country? I found the behaviour of the crowd at Bethpage Black to perfectly show the world where the USA as a civilisation is now...

The Net Closes

I think the most pertinent thing to say about Task is how inconsequential and unriveting it is. It has a good cast, the story doesn't seem that bad, but it's grim, gritty and devoid of any levity. What's worse is the secondary story, with Mark Ruffalo's family, is as dull as beige. There's a good two hour movie in here somewhere, but as a seven-part (therefore almost 7 hour) TV show, it's like a pair of socks that are almost threadbare.

Drugs

Has there been another film where everything happens and by the end nothing has changed at all? I'm sure there has, but with Steven Soderbergh's Traffic (an adaptation of a C4 series, apparently) what we get is a visceral and quite scary at times look at the drug trafficking business from all sides - the cartels, the local police, the DEA, the users, a politician who is the USA's new drug tsar and the family of a big time drug dealer. It's a clever film, especially as you notice that all these disparate sides of the story have links, both in the story and visually - many of the characters cross each others' paths without them realising it. Obviously I've given the plot away, but this was made in 2000, so... We start at a certain point in the story and loads of things happen before we end the story at a position where everything had changed, but nothing was any different - the perfect analogy to 'The War on Drugs'. 7/10

For the Love of God, Stop!

But why? Why is this here? It had the perfect ending to a series that had been on a catastrophic decline since the end of season two. At the end of the last series, the Brassic gang were left in an Italian Job scenario, dangling over a cliff. It was the perfect place to call it a day, but no, they only went and saved the coach, so that 8 weeks later everything is back to normal, except most of Vinnie's crew no longer want to be criminals. Fortune dumps some new 'kids' on him and basically who gives a fuck? This is a foul mouthed, ineptly plotted, childish bunch of bollocks now. I laughed once in 50 minutes, the rest I sat stony faced wondering how Joe Gilgun managed to con money from Sky to make this? This is a show that should have been put out of its misery; I get the impression that a lot of the people who were in this just wanted to go away and be forgotten about... I have the second episode to watch but I might just forget about it.

A Shit Night...

We gave Ethan Hawke's new series The Lowdown twenty minutes before switching it off. It didn't grab us and felt a bit too kooky and with a character who doesn't really belong in 2025.

We didn't even watch a minute of Wayward because before I put it on I checked IMDB and saw that it had dropped to 5.9, which for a current TV series is pretty disastrous. The Guardian recommended this, so it was almost a fait accompli.

I'd had Marvel Zombies for a week and not really felt like watching it, but as we'd had two blow outs, we gave it a try. The animation was better than I expected. We lasted eight minutes. Not my cup of tea, especially as the last Marvel product I actually spent money on were the Marvel Zombies trade paperbacks and immediately realised I'd wasted money I could have just thrown away.

So, desperate for watching something that would salvage the evening, we put on Mitchell and Webb Are Not Helping and got through to sketch number three before checking on IMDB and seeing it has been royally panned and scores, currently, 5.7. We switched that off and still had an hour and a half to kill...

... And the Winner Is?

Sports comedies are big business thanks to Ted Lasso, but very few have been any good. I mean, even Ted Lasso wasn't as good as everyone reckons, it was just good enough. However, there might be a new hit in the form of Chad Powers, starring current heartthrob du jour Glen Powell. He plays Russ Holliday a brilliant American footballer, but also an absolute arsehole who dumped a potentially brilliant career after a bad mistake followed by some bad judgment calls saw his future get totally trashed. Eight years later and he's still an arsehole but he still wants to play ball, the problem is he's bad news and probably cursed, so he steals the plot from Mrs Doubtfire and with the use of prosthetics turns himself into Hicksville, good old boy Chad Powers and tries out for the team that last tasted glory when they beat the team Russ was playing for when his career died.

This is funny. It's satirical and it works on two levels - the intelligent and the Redneck. Powell is brilliant as Russ the wanker, but equally quite the person to root for as Chad - quite a dilemma. The opening two episodes are worth looking at. Steve Zahn might finally have found the role to define him and I like the balance this show is already showing - huge potential.

Good Morning, Good Morning

The Morning Show is one of my favourite shows, but sometimes it does things that I can't quite fathom. The first two seasons' main subplot was about an unrequited love, which by season three was seemingly never going to happen. We're three episodes into season four and the thing any die hard fan of this show wanted, happened. It could end up being like Moonlighting, once Cybil and Bruce made the beast with two backs all of the chemistry fizzled away. Fortunately, there are some other rather juicy subplots going on this season, one which Bradley and Chip are tracking and the one where Alex ends up having a very heartfelt conversation with someone she didn't realise was so important to her. There is also a really unexpected resignation, the return of a familiar face and the subterfuge of adultery begins to really fuck with Cory's protege's head... 

Generation Contrived

I suppose the biggest problem I have with Gen V is that events in this show must have links to The Boys, so presumably you have to watch this to fully understand what has happened during the season break of the other, or something like that. Some of the stupidly contrived plot elements have started to look not so stupid or contrived, but that positive point doesn't necessarily mean I've changed my mind about this show. I have to admire the great lengths the special effects team put into this and there is a part of me that is mildly interested to see what is happening, but I also think I know what's going to happen over the next three episodes. The wife, it appears, has even less patience for this than me, but we will see it through to the end.

A One-Off

Whitehouse and Mortimer have a lot to answer for, but in this case specifically the idea of male bonding programmes. In Perfect Pub Walks with Alexander Armstrong you have the perfect format for an hour of bimbling and lightweight frivolity. The ubiquitous Armstrong, who appears to be on telly more than its on has somehow found the time between being a DJ, a singer, a host of a daily quiz show, actor and a few other things (although he's called a 'comedian' by the narrator of this and one needs to question whether he really is one of those any more), to wander around lovely bits of the UK with a guest of his choice. The reason we watched this opening episode was because his guest was the always erudite and often amusing James May, who was maybe a little more... open... than he likes to be. They built a den in Yorkshire, had several pints, talked a lot, did man things. 'Appen. 

We won't be watching that again.

Facebookishness

Obviously part of my culture is the internet and social media. The fact I don't write about it that often is testament to my ability to simultaneously be part of it and yet detached enough to remain relevant, to and for me and therefore not want to bore you with it. I have mentioned Tube of You things I've watched; Trailer Trash is actually what I've seen on the PC. The 'net is a little like breathing, it's there in the background, happening, while you get on with something else, but are aware of it. Anyhow...

Facebook Memories, I've talked about them before, can be extremely illuminating in regards to one's memory, but also quite revealing. I think most people I know are being far more guarded with their lives than they were, say, 15 years ago. Facebook is over 17 years old now for many of us and Status Updates from then are far more personal, chatty, conversational and informal; we were all quite open, it was 2008 and the world, in general was far better than it is now and the internet wasn't anywhere near as dangerous as it is now; but that was another blog. There is stuff in my Memories section that I am absolutely and thoroughly embarrassed by, horrified I posted and none of it was the slightest bit offensive. There's a sweet naivety in them, for sure, but Jesus in a dodgem car...

If you don't, you should start revisiting your past. It isn't always how you remember it.

Harry Potter's Massive Snake

The special effects were better and the general feel of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets was one of taking it a bit more seriously. Of course, this was the last film with Richard Harris's Dumbledore and the last film by Chris Columbus; the next movie changes things quite a bit cinematically, if I remember correctly. This is the one where Voldemort almost comes back via a memory of himself he put in a book. It's also the one with the bad CGI snake thing and the creepy spiders. Compared to the first film this is way better, but the bar is set pretty low. 6/10

The Unforgettable Fire

Paul Greengrass makes a lot of docudramas, probably his most famous was the story of United 93 on 9/11. He's made Bourne films and other action thrillers, but he seems happiest doing true stories and The Lost Bus is his latest. Starring Matthew McConaughey and America Ferrara, it tells the true story of how a school bus driver, who was struggling to hold his job down becomes a hero for saving the lives of 22 school children and their teacher. Set against the backdrop of the 2018 fires (were they that long ago?) which resulted in the town of Paradise, California, being razed to the ground and took almost 100 lives. This is a slightly overlong but dignified biopic which, if you are like me, did nothing to make you feel that the USA is a country with any kind of stable infrastructure and that it is waiting for the next disaster to come along. We know that California is the most liberal of US states, but even here the biggest problem it has are the Americans living there. I actually said to the wife that I need to stop watching American films because the people often leave a bad taste in my mouth. If you watch The Lost Bus you will hope many of the assholes in it could have been victims...

Pissmaker

We're finally coming to the end of the most disappointing second season of a show I can remember in a long time. Peacemaker has struggled and I have struggled to give a shit about it. This has been James Gunn at his most self-indulgent and believing a series about the characters was going to be more interesting than a series about characters acting in an actual story. It backfired, for me. Maybe it won't for you, but I gave up caring about any of the people in this after the season opener. John Cena has been great, but he only has so much he can work with and when he has to work with a knock off Gunn script and a bunch of actors who seem hoisted by their own success (from the first series), he's always going to look second best. This series ends next week and I kind of hope it isn't renewed for a third season because that really would be overkill. Unfortunately, I think it's already having the groundwork laid for exactly that. Hugely disappointing series that now has a finale to try to right all of its wrongs... 

What's Up Next?

This week I no longer care. Apart from the obvious, who knows what we'll watch between now and next Friday night. One thing is for sure, it probably would be different to what I would list here anyhow.

My Cultural Life - Take Two

What's Up?

It's never nice to speak ill of the dead, but there was this guy in my past who really did me a disservice. It was around 1992, either my shop had closed down or it was in its last throes of life. I had started writing again, after a what seemed like years since I last sat in front of a typewriter (or old PC). Because I had started writing stuff for Comics International it had ignited my desire to write a novel again (having written a couple of first drafts previously) and I was about six months into something I called Succubus. It was a story of a happily married man whose wife disappears without a trace and instead of the police and friends doing everything they could, everyone began to forget his wife completely - telling him events that he'd lived through either didn't happen or didn't happen the way the man thought they had. Gradually, his wife disappeared from video tape, from photographs, from everywhere... Until one day he meets someone who had the same thing happen to them.

I was using an old PC with 60meg of hard drive - yes, you read that correctly - 60megabytes; not big enough to take a single video off of my phone. It was Windows 3.1 OS and I knew my way around my PC and I was having a problem with it that I couldn't solve. I can't even remember what it was, only that it was getting worse and needed looking at. A friend of a friend who I had become familiar with through making relationships in the shop was, apparently, a wizard with PCs and I took it round to his place and he said, 'Yeah, no problem' and said it would be ready the next day...

What this 'wizard' did, but neglected to tell me he was going to do, was wipe my hard drive and reinstall none of my programmes! It solved the problem, but lost me six months of work. He didn't tell me he was going to do this drastic measure and therefore I hadn't backed up any of my writing on floppy disks. When I expressed a mixture of heartbreak and apoplectic rage at him he said, 'Well you should have backed it up.' I know, I should have, but, I didn't know he was going to wipe my drive...

I'd written a little over 27,000 words and it was probably riddled with bad grammar and shit sentences. It probably wasn't the best thing I've ever 'written' but it was much better than anything I'd ever written before and structure isn't a problem; the me of 33 years later is a better writer and editor and things can be fixed in the editing room. Now, anyone who has ever had writing ambitions will look at this story and say, 'But, you just had to write it again, you would have rewritten it several times on the way to a finished novel, surely?' The thing was, I sat down determined to catch up on lost time, but nothing came out the way it had and it all felt like a school homework project about writing something from memory alone. Suffice it to say, it never really happened and I've harboured a deep resentment to the guy who fucked me up my hard drive even though he's been dead for nearly 20 years.

On Wednesday night, after a binge-a-thon of current TV, I came up to my office, a little after 10pm, and proceeded to search Bing for images relating to what I'd seen - you know how the blog looks. Because I had three things to write about, I wrote the sub headline and dropped the picture where it goes. However, the second picture didn't drop in the right place - but I didn't realise this - so I did it twice again before discovering something was up. This has happened before, so the way of solving it was to simply delete the pictures, shut down Chrome and start again from the last saved point. I hadn't lost anything so it was the logical thing to do, except I tried to cut and paste the second image into its proper place and it worked, but it wouldn't align. I should have stopped there, but instead I ctrl-z to undo the previous action and I ctrl-z again to go back to where I was before trying to cut and paste my way out of trouble. 

Something bad happened...

There was nothing in the blog. Nothing at all. Six, maybe seven, reviews I'd done since last Saturday were gone! My immediate reaction was to redo my last two actions, I did and still nothing was there. I might have been able to save myself at that point by simply opening Blogger into another window, going to my active blogs page and reopening it, but instead I panicked and shut Chrome down, hoping [HAH!] that all would be fine when I reopened it. There was nothing. Nothing at all. I'd lost all the work I'd done and it wasn't coming back...

It's Thursday morning as I type this and I have to start again. I'm not suggesting the lost blog was the best one I've written, because it probably isn't, but it was cleverly linked because of the way it's written. Because this is essentially a weekly diary of my cultural life, I have a general continuity running through it and I write my best reviews when I've just got out of the specific bath I've just taken - figuratively speaking - which is the best analogy I can think of. I can't even remember everything I've watched, if it wasn't for IMDB on my phone I would have overlooked at least one film, I think there might still be one missing.

So... this could be much different than normal...

Family Affair

My original review opened with great praise for the entire feel of the opening 30 minutes of The Fantastic Four: First Steps before slicing much of it apart or questioning the reasons behind why, at times, this felt like a much longer movie had an axe taken to it. This is a film that promises so much and delivers... only so much. It felt devoid of a place anywhere. The style is faultless; the cod-science is brilliant; the general personality building was just about adequate, but the middle and end felt like it was a subplot taking place behind the main act. 

I don't really get Pedro Pascal's ubiquity and yet he makes a reasonable Reed Richards; but he's not my Reed Richards, not by a long chalk. Vanessa Kirby was much better than I expected, but she's still far too old to play Sue Storm if they wanted to stay faithful to the comics - which on the whole they did. The twist with Johnny Storm is he's not as stupid as you thought he was, but in general Joe Quinn's character felt as though he was there to drive another, ridiculously contrived, sub plot along. However, the woefully underused Ebon Moss-Bacharach as The Thing was a delight; he lit up every scene he was in and captured the essence of Lee and Kirby's Ben Grimm to a tee. 

We heard about an entire subplot which was removed from this film, one involving John Malkovich's 'villain', who was actually Reed's father Nathaniel, who had travelled from the future to steal baby Franklin, but this entire section, which used Julia Garner's Silver Surfer as a foil might have explained her character's sudden volte face in the film's denouement, never got used or was finished. Therefore there are some gaping holes in this movie, but despite this it isn't bad, it just isn't as good as I expected it to be. As a cosmic horror film it's pretty good but it always felt like it was knocking on the door of corny. Julia Garner's Silver Surfer was not as bad as I expected, but equally her character felt underused, with little done to explain why she should betray her boss. Someone at Disney looked at the original film and said it was too long and convoluted and as a result we have a film that promises much and simply doesn't deliver. 6/10

The Evolution of Man

The concluding part of Alien Earth probably wasn't what many expected, except in many ways it was exactly where we were going, albeit with the finer details aside. There was some death and destruction, but in general this was about control as the ones who were being controlled take back control, with some help from a couple of xenomorphs. The overall theme of the show was never really the aliens - they were the smoking gun - it was about what was being created alongside the alien bugs and bogeyman. The 'Lost Boys' were a general annoyance throughout the series, with only Wendy exhibiting a purity that perhaps omnipotence brings, but if you have a smoking gun, you need the hand that's holding it...

The Boy Kavalier has been an excellent antagonist, but even that is brought into question when you understand the true meaning of what he's been doing on his version of Tracey Island. There have been some interesting weaknesses in this series, but like most things Noah Hawley, the ending is usually something you've had loads of clues about, but never managed to piece them all together. Even if the ultimate message of this show was realised, it annoyed a lot of viewers with the journey to get there.

Season two, I expect, will be set many years after this. 

Fake News

One of the great things about The Morning Show is how the story sometimes feels as though it's getting bogged down only for you to realise that it's actually whizzed ahead of you and  is waiting for you to catch up. This second episode felt like there was too much time but not enough detail spent on the idea that Alex (Jennifer Aniston) has been deep-faked and not enough time on Bradley (Reese Witherspoon) and Chip (Mark Duplass) looking as though they're going to work together again.

It felt a little like an old episode with so many of the original cast being involved in things that will ultimately tie everything together, but again it's Billy Crudup's Cory Ellison who gleefully wipes the floor with the other actors as you realise that his smile is there for a reason. It's a great show and while some issues seem to have been conveniently forgotten about, I'm okay with that.

Like a 60s Superman Comic

We're halfway through the second season of Gen V already - woo! Did you know that probably between 1956 and 1969 you could pick up just about every issue of Action Comics or Superman and you probably wouldn't have found much different. Whatever happened in the previous issue was forgotten about so Superman could save Metropolis from this month's threat. This is how this season of Gen V has felt, contrivances like what has happened before can be forgotten about on the conveyor belt of popularity that is this show's underbelly. It really is a massively poorly scripted heap of a mess.

Just because Hamish Linklater appears to be something of a god and has his own agenda - which I'm sure we'll discover what it is and how he's got to the position where he is to be able to enact it - doesn't make this good. He makes a great psychopath/scientist/tortured soul, but he's simply not carrying this patchwork quilt of disgusting ideas and lacklustre plotting. It feels like it was written by a 12-year-old at times and the superpowered pubes was this week's WTF. It simply doesn't feel like a TV drama any longer, but like a puerile comic that has been adapted, dialogue and all.

LA Lives

The search for films made between the mid-1990s and the late 2000s continues - a period when we would have rented films from the video shop so there would have been loads of films we never watched because I didn't want to spend money on them. I remember when Paul Haggis's Crash came out, it was a snap shot film, following the lives of a group of people as they go about their daily lives but end up becoming entwined by circumstances - a kind of six degrees of connection. A racist cop, a black producer and his abused wife, two criminals, a rich woman and other disparate folk who cross each others paths one weekend in LA. It is also the film that has two James Rhodes - War Machine - in it; Don Cheadle and Terrance Howard.

It was an enjoyable movie, which felt like it was a homogenised - PG13 - look at the lives of different people in the Valley. From Sandra Bullock's snobbish, lonely, bitter and angry housewife to Michael Pena's hard working locksmith always labelled by others as bad. My biggest problem with it was I found it tough to focus on the story; maybe the editing didn't agree with me, but it was just an okay thriller, with little of anything special. 6/10

Weird and Pissed Off

This opened the original blog; it was our Saturday night classic for this week (in a series of how many we can find) and as always it was a treat to watch. Ignore some of the cod science, the convenient plot contrivances or the complete chaos of the story, this is a quality cosmic horror story, possibly one of the best. Kurt Russell plays MacReady, who always is, and he's aided and abetted by the likes of Wilfred Brimley (as his career was about to peak), Keith David, Richard Dysart and Donald Moffat - all actors you would have seen in small supporting roles in TV and TV movies.

This remake of the 1951 film The Thing From Another World, which was based on a short story called Who Goes There, is about paranoia, a virus-like alien lifeform and nowhere to hide except everywhere. Set in Antarctica, it is a timeless movie that absolutely barrels along like a contemporary film and has some extraordinary special effects, for 1982. It also has some of the sharpest dialogue you can imagine, with exclamations fitting the real world if anything as crazy was to happen there. So many quotable lines my favourite being the incredulous 'You've got to be fucking kidding me!' When one of the crew sees a head sprout legs and run away. 10/10

Alternate Peace

The latest (or rather last week's) episode of Peacemaker was another almost instantly forgettable instalment. It's been nearly six days since I watched it and I'm struggling to remember much of what happened. It was in places quite compelling and in others 'get the fuck out of here' and the flimsy story - is there actually one? - ends with Chris leaving his reality in favour of the alternate one where he's treated like a hero. This has been a bit of a let down, but it's still far better than Gen V, which I think might stand for Vomit.

First Day Blues

I finally got around to watching Training Day with Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke, looking so young. It came out during that period of time when I watched films that were on TV or on video and it never really appealed to me back in the Noughties. This is the story of a newly promoted beat cop to detective in drugs, except that's the premise of the story, what it is turns out to be a carefully planned attempt to either use the rookie and turn him into a bad cop or lose him in the subsequent fallout. Except, it never feels like that when you're watching it; it feels like a slightly puzzling series of instalments involving Hawke and Denzel, but they all end up being of consequence to the overall story. It's a watch it carefully and you can see where one of the cops' life is far more fragile than he thought it was. A complex and enjoyable film 7/10

Wizard Number One

We decided recently to watch the entire Harry Potter series of films from the beginning, mainly because it's been years since I watched them and to be honest I remembered so little about Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone I could have been going in a virgin. What a load of shite it is. I mean, it isn't, but you can see how the studio behind it maybe weren't as convinced at its budgetary potential as you might have imagined knowing now what we do now. The special effects were shoddy, I mean really poor; yes a few were okay, but everything from the ghosts to the Cerberus (Fluffy) looked like they were knocked up on an old Amiga consul using codes found in Computer Weekly.

The three kids, Daniel Ratcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint were all thoroughly annoying and startled by everything, but not in a 'dramatic' way, none of the other characters had any real screen time for you to remember anything but the fact you've just been introduced to them and the story was based on a lot of supposition, gut feelings and the need to drive the plot forward. Don't get me started on Voldemort's nose or the bad, switcheroo, plot devices the baddy and Alan Rickman (looking like he was going to enjoy the pay cheque) were forced to endure. But, it was a film for 11 year olds, like the next one will be for 12 years olds and I'm 63. It's just not aged well and I can see why Amazon want to do it again. 5/10 for the kids.  

The Task Master

Frankly, the new Mark Ruffalo TV series Task has felt like a remake of Dope Thief but with less humour and more incompetence. The crew knocking over the drug dealing biker gang are now running out of options and through trying to shift their 12kgs of Fentanyl they finally fall onto the radar of the FBI, which suggests with more than half of the series having not aired yet that there is going to be some kind of unexpected wrinkle about to happen. The interesting development is that while the biker gang deals with the distinct possibility they might have a rat in their ranks, the man in charge of the Task force discovers one of his team might be tipping off the biker gang - which we suddenly realise could be at least two of Ruffalo's three man team, suggesting it will be neither of them and the person we least expect.

Peace Off, Man

I'm really struggling with the overall lack of quality in this second season of Peacemaker. The decision to not have a story and just see if they could develop the characters has backfired and while we finally discover the downside of Chris's preferred new reality it felt like a so what moment rather than something important. This was really a low point in quality, in acting and in general; a slapstick episode with naff comedy and a contrived set up. Even the sudden appearance by Lex Luthor, tying this in with the Superman film, didn't do anything to enhance this at all. This has been a massive let down and it has only helped with the demise of superhero shows. I'm bitterly disappointed that this could jump a shark with such gusto and do it so badly. This episode especially felt like it was made cheaply, which considering it was written and directed by Gunn doesn't auger well for the coming years...

What's Up Next?

Hopefully not a week like this one. The Wigtown Book Festival is on for the next week and a bit, so it'll be interesting to see what time we get to even watch anything. Not that we're going to be attending - the wife is working and I'm doing everything else for the next nine days. We also have a house guest for the weekend and with the exception of this Saturday, the weather forecast doesn't look too bad. 

Viewing is going to be much of the same, TV wise, and will include some things you might not typically expect me to watch; plus there's a new series of Slow Horses which I'm not watching until at least five episodes are in the can. 

As usual, blah de blah de blah...

Album Review - LSD by Cardiacs

LSD by Cardiacs

This band caused a schism in my musical tastes about ten years ago, I discovered them and for a while everything changed. Despite getting into them after they'd ceased to exist is immaterial because Cardiacs will always be Tim and Jim Smith, but mainly Tim, because he was the musical genius pulling the band's strings. Not only was he good at his own music, he was also a natural arranger and that's what made Cardiacs unique. This is a new album that contains both Tim and Jim Smith, but I don't necessarily think this would have sounded the way it does had Tim been in a position to have been able to complete it. His own cardiac problems put paid to that scenario, so what we have is maybe 50% of an album that is Tim Smith and might not have had much changed from when it was recorded. We also get what feels to me another 50% of this album that feels, in itself, like two things - the need to sound as Tim like as possible and to do something that would have made him happy.

The schism I mentioned in the opening paragraph was the day I listened to Dirty Boy from the Sing To God album, which came out in 1996. The thing is Cardiacs had managed extremely successfully to stay off my radar from the late 1970s all the way until around 2012 (if my Facebook memories are anything to go by) when a friend posted a link with just the word 'this' written on it. It was the aforementioned Dirty Boy and I listened to it and it grabbed me. It was a remarkable thing because based on one song I became a disciple - a pondy - and I went out of my way to get everything they'd ever done...

But here's the thing; while I still believe that Sing to God is the greatest album ever made (not the best, or my favourite, or anything subjective, just the greatest album ever made) and I also like playing a lot of the stuff from 1988 thru to 1999, I don't play it very often. The rest of the stuff, old and live I don't ever listen to any more and many of the side projects, solo stuff and experimental music Tim was putting out between 1990 and 2008 varies in quality. Occasionally I'll listen to Tim's solo (and often not remembering much about it and realising how generally meh it was). Despite feeling like I'm a huge Tim Smith fan, I'm very selective with my Tim Smith tracks. There are maybe four albums and then an album's worth of tracks that I'm a huge fan of, the rest... meh not so much. A hugely inventive musician and songwriter, but he often wrote songs I wasn't keen on. I kind of think if he was alive and well today he would be making music I'd want to listen to though.

Which brings us to LSD which finally has arrived 16 years after it should have. I actually gave it a couple of days before listening, which maybe says more about my general personal realisation that Cardiacs possibly aren't musical deities and I've been hoovered up by the romance and tragedy as much the music. The thing is I think that proved to be a benefit because this morning when I realised it was there, I put it on and my expectations had levelled off. What I was treated to was what I said way up at the beginning of this - 50% Tim Smith and 50% homage, copy or imitation of Tim Smith. I felt that maybe 10 of the tracks sounded like the band I love and those tracks are quite divine, in varying degrees. Some of it borrowed a little too much from previous albums, which instead of continuity felt like patches or homage themed fixes to a production problem. Then there's the three, maybe four, tracks that sound like someone else singing a Cardiacs song and it doesn't matter what it sounds like, if it hasn't got Tim Smith's voice it ain't Cardiacs. Except... Volob changed my mind on that by how brilliant it is.

There is a pause in the album after the aforementioned Volob, but that doesn't pause on the overall quality. The trouble with the tracks that didn't feel right to me was that they were still good songs - the album is really stuffed full of excellence, which given its length further makes me think this could have been lighter, maybe left something to go on the album of rarities that will eventually be produced with members of New Cardiacs! I'm not convinced Tim would have allowed the extremely full and deep sound much of the production has especially with the progtastic Busty Beez, which wouldn't have been out of place on a Genesis album - it's a great track though. I think it would have been edgier or spikier had it been produced by Tim circa 2008, but it works and doesn't take away from the actual tracks, including three we've known for 17 years, which feel warm and welcoming; bundles of happy anger or angry happiness. I feel as though this doesn't deserve a 9 but equally is never a 7, which suggests an 8 is the perfect score, but one moment that feels both too little and too much. If this is all Tim, even if it's played by someone else, then it is an absolute banging way as a note to end on.

It's a good album hindered by this nagging feeling that with the exception of a few tracks it probably shouldn't exist at all. I don't know why that bothers me, but it does. Finality, I suppose. It has a way of reacting in the least expected way. 

My Cultural Life: 10 (and Other Ratings)

What's Up?

My monthly pub quiz at my local was last night. Yet again it was plagued by technology issues and that was after I'd got very stressed out about the sudden changes to the seating plan and my own stupid mistake that left one team without a table. We got there in the end but it does raise serious questions about Wi-Fi, routers, and all the other connectivity based operations we have our homes and businesses linked into. If it goes down, everything goes down and that can be from a break in internet coverage to what happened last night, a sudden fault that seemingly had no reason to happen which took 45 minutes to sort out. Ten years ago I would either have laughed or exploded.

Anyhow, it wasn't my most professional of performances, but it turned out to be one of the best - one of my contestants came up to me and said I was like Jack Dee but more honest, which I'll take over a certain dead 'comedian' who I was always likened to when I was younger. I had a few new teams, but in general I pretty much knew the other teams, even if I didn't know the people personally. Therefore I seemed to morph into a wannabe comedian hosting a pub quiz. The quiz would have overrun even if it hadn't been for the other issues because everyone was having a good time even though some of them were getting ribbed by me for some of their answers.

The wife thinks I suffer from stage fright, because until I put that mic in my hand I'm a bag of stress and anxiety, which tends to set off breathlessness, which I then have to handle and when I have a 45 minute delay... That's where my usual, polished spiel went out of the window and I was just me. I toned down the swearing, because I do swear a lot and it's a 'kids' show for adults, at least that's what a good pub quiz should be; camps of extremely sociable people having banter and laughs and even though they're playing for £200 the quiz is second to the fun. So, yeah, if I suffer from stage fright, it brings the best out in me.

Anyhow, it was a close run thing in the end with only about 6 points separating the top 6 teams and even the teams scoring low thanked me for a good night. It costs them £2 to spend three hours listening to someone talk and doing some thinking for yourself. I bloody love a good pub quiz; I just miss not being able to do one.

Oh, and I stood in my first ever election - as a community councillor - and finished last with 44 votes. That's really all I have to say about it, really. I know I have a reputation for being outspoken and anyone that knows me here will tell you I am passionate about where I live; two things you would imagine would be ideal for being on a council. But it was not to be and my brief flirtation with local politics is over as quickly as it started. I'm glad I did it. I'd like to thank the 43 other people who voted for me, even if they never see this. I think it's time, with my health and anxiety issues, that I retired from this kind of stuff and aimed for a stress free rest of my life.

The Greatest?

Our plan for our wedding anniversary was to go to the pub and watch the live band with many of our friends. However, as afternoon turned into evening, the storm clouds gathered and by 7pm we were in the middle of a series of thunderstorms and it was freaking at least two of the dogs out - kind of in the same way as fireworks do. The wife, concerned about two of the dogs, suggested we didn't go out and as we'd been out for a nice meal the night before, we decided to sit in and watch The Shawshank Redemption, a film that is now regarded as the greatest film ever made, or at least the world's favourite movie. The big question for all... Is it?

It is an adaptation of Stephen King's Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, a novella the horror writer penned in the 1980s, which was one of the first stories without anything ghostly or supernatural in it. It is one of King's greatest stories and perhaps the reason why the adaptation is so good is because, while it does take a few liberties, it remains pretty much as the written story. Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman are the stars; a tale of rights and wrongs, patience and virtues and friendship in the face of extreme adversity. It's about crooks on the inside and even worse ones on the outside and it is worth every one of its 9.3 rating on IMDB. It's maybe not as... magical as I remember it when I first saw it, but it is something very special and if you've never seen it, you should. 10/10

The Biggest of Hearts

The big fear now is after two nights of brilliant films we're obviously headed for some real shit for the rest of the week... I know Tom Hanks is an acquired taste; there are people out there who hate him - my eldest brother irrationally dislikes him and I really don't understand why. We've seen a lot of Hanks films, but A Man Called Otto has lived a charmed life in our house. I originally recorded it off of Film4 and it sat on the hard drive for about six months, then one day I deleted it because I couldn't see us watching it. About a month after that I caught five minutes of it on Film4 (again) and decided to download it, which I did, in May and it has sat on the Flash Drive of Doom ever since, being ignored, like it was when it was on the TV's hard drive. We finally watched it on Sunday night and... well... if we'd have watched it sooner we wouldn't have had such a fabulous Sunday night.

Otto is a curmudgeonly old bastard; he lives in a gated cul-de-sac and he used to be chairman of the residents' committee. Now as a grumpy old widower with nothing better to do with his life than be a miserable old git, he rules over his street with an iron fist (not that many people take him too seriously, which, if you watch carefully gives you some clue to what Otto might have been like before his wife died). One day, Marisol and her family move in over the road and in a really unfriendly way, Otto is very neighbourly and Marisol decides she likes him and from that moment on Otto's life changes. Very slowly at first, but soon he rediscovers how to live and it is such a lovely, funny, tender, moving story that the wife blubbed like a baby when it finished and I felt like joining her. It is a truly wonderful film that I thought they'd stopped making in the 21st century. 10/10

Spanish Send Off

The film that has been on the FDoD for the longest time has finally been watched. Pan's Labyrinth has been sitting unwatched for over three years until tonight (Monday). I've never really known what I would expect from this; the wife has seen it but a long time ago and she was worried it would be impenetrable and difficult to comprehend, but in reality it's a Spanish Civil war drama with a fantasy subplot, which may be, but probably isn't, happening to the young girl in the story.

Ofelia and her pregnant, but unwell, mother have been moved to the foothills of somewhere in Spain, to be with the Captain of the guard, the mother's new husband who is a cruel and ruthless man hunting rebels and communists. The young girl is desperately unhappy but learns about a fairy tale involving a princess from a different realm who is reborn on Earth and has one chance to return to her home. To achieve this she must brave the labyrinth belonging to Pan, a faun who is guiding the young girl. What this more probably is showing are the allegorical parallels between what is actually happening and what Ofelia believes will happen. The special effects are stunning for a 2006 film made with a small budget in Spain and it has gone on to become a cult classic. It's not a difficult film to follow, although it does leave a lot open to interpretation and scepticism. 7/10

Team Work

The second episode of Task at least propelled the story forward a considerable amount. The first episode seemed to focus on the grim and while this is no different it at least answers some questions and explains certain motivations. It is a TV show full of dysfunctional individuals on both sides of the law. Mark Ruffalo's newly put together team are getting used to working with him and each other and we discover the big thing hanging over Ruffalo's family, which I guessed but felt no real joy at guessing right. This was a much better, intelligently paced episode and while the similarities to Dope Thief are strong, it feels like this has even more menace and unpredictability. If they'd dropped this and episode one at the same time or sewn them together as a feature length opener, then this would have been much better.

Alien Language

The craziest thing in Alien Earth has to be the octopus eye creature, which has been pulling all the strings since it first got taken to 'Tracey Island' - this super intelligent eyeball has been responsible for the majority of alien security breaches throughout the life of this show and finally the Boy Kavalier has realised this and plans on trying to talk to it, especially now it has comically shown him that it understands everything that is said to it. However, while the eye that has hijacked a sheep is the most fascinating thing going on in this series, the rest of it has actually started to make some sense, even if it's all a bit too far-fetched. But, hey, having a synthetic human being with the mind of a real child being treated like an alien's mother and two other synthetic humans with real children's minds doing something catastrophically stupid... I'm going to stop, mainly because I don't want to get into it. This has been a below par series so far, but this penultimate episode was by far the ... I'm loathe to say... best. I still think the end of this series is going to end in some kind of weapon's grade carnage, but we might have seen that already and the finale might surprise us all.

Meanwhile, Back in The Boysville

I'm growing a little tired of The Boys universe and I didn't fawn over Gen V when it came out, something like three years ago now. Allegedly, almost half of the original season two had to be scrapped after the real life death of actor Chance Perdomo, who played Andre; but whether that's true or not this has always felt like a poor sibling to The Boys and that stopped being essential viewing after season two, when the need to shock overtook the need for a good story. The problem Gen V has, even if they're trying to dupe us into believing otherwise, is that it will always be the spin-off show and it doesn't matter how many characters from the bigger show turn up it's not going to change. The other problem is quite simple, I don't give a fuck about any of the characters, even the cute Emma (Lizze Broadway) is only just about bearable, but is so schizophrenic in her behaviour depending on who is writing her. 

The second season starts with so much contrivance you would have thought the show's writers just said, 'Ah fuck it, let's do what we want, no one will scrutinise it for too long if we have a man who can drink an entire keg of beer through his arse!' So that's what they did. Hamish Linklater joins the cast as the new Dean of Godolkin and my guess is he's probably going to be Godolkin himself or his son, otherwise we wouldn't have been introduced to the founder of the college back in 1967. All the rebel students who got locked up at the end of season one are - unfathomably - back at uni being encouraged to be social media stars again, apart from Andre, who everyone gets damp eyes about because he's dead. 

Amazon dropped the opening three episodes this week; it's not unusual, but equally it whiffs a little, but maybe that's me. However by the end of episode three something happens that you didn't see coming but promises to spice things up a lot.

Bad Morning America

It doesn't seem fair that we have to wait two years for every new series of The Morning Show. I say this because we came to season one four years after it debuted and that meant we watched season two almost straight after, then season three dropped while we were watching season two and now it's been a little over two years and we get to find out what happened to Bradley Jackson (Reese Witherspoon) over her brother's part in the January 7th insurrection and how Alex Levy (Jennifer Aniston) and her conspirators did with their hijacking of the takeover of UBA. 

You have to wait almost 40 minutes before Bradley's name is even mentioned; she's working at a college in West Virginia and is very much 'working' for the FBI or Homeland Security - in a seemingly slightly far-fetched plot wrinkle; but someone wants her back on The Morning Show, while the current hosts and Alex are gearing up for the 2024 Olympics from Paris. There's also the shadow of another Trump election victory on the horizon and Cory Ellison (Billy Crudup) - still by far the best thing in this show - is trying to make a movie in LA, but his name is shit even though he was exonerated of any wrong doing in the UBA takeover or whatever consequences arose from the Bradley Jackson business. This is quality TV and I breathed an inward sigh of relief as I was watching it - grown up TV is back; huzzah!

On the Job Experience

It's been almost 25 years since Training Day hit the cinemas. I'd never been particularly keen on watching it but I can't give you a definitive reason; it's not like I'm not a fan of Denzel Washington and I've seen very few Ethan Hawke films I haven't liked, yet it managed to escape me until it turned up on BBC2 one night a few months ago and I shoved it on the hard drive for a cold autumn night. Well, tonight wasn't cold (but it's coming) and considering this takes place over one working day in the life of an LAPD detective and the new rookie he's taking out, plenty happened. It's a strange movie because the first hour you're not really sure if what you are watching isn't some elaborate test by the detective to best ameliorate Hawke's character into the job, but then it goes off in a direction that you didn't see coming. It's a difficult film to follow at times, especially when there's lots of jive talking and LA slang used, but it has a solid story, some good sequences and an ending that felt all too real, given what we know about US cops. 7/10

What's Up Next

Much of the same. Much of the same. 

 

Crazy Diamonds - A Re-Appraisal of Pink Floyd

Re-appraising Pink Floyd

You know that discussion/conversation; the one where you’re asked, ‘what is your favourite band of all time?’ Well, there have been times when I’ve said Pink Floyd, but the truth is Floyd have always been one of my favourites; up there in the top five, but they’ve probably never inhabited the top spot. I’m sure the surviving members of the band will rest easy about that; my opinion, after all, is just that, an opinion and one that is probably not important. 

Now we’ve got that out of the way, I can explain to you why I’m writing about them. Recently, I’ve seen a lot of retrospectives of the band; articles in papers and on line about their significance to the music industry; critics' favourite tracks and, of course, the acrimonious relationship the band has had with each other since the late 1960s; even if you only really hear about the feud between Roger Walters and David Gilmour which started in the mid-1980s and, apart from a couple of months in 2005, has raged on ever since. I decided after very recently going down a Pink Floyd rabbit hole that perhaps the band’s output needs a 2025 reassessment; they are an extraordinary band, but they’re also fantastic con artists and this breakdown of their studio albums will, hopefully, explain to you why I think this…

I think Floyd can be broken down into four eras.

1) A Brand New Paintbox

The Piper at the Gates of Dawn – With a couple of exceptions, this is a quite extraordinary and whimsical album, which seems to capture an essence of the era it was created in. One of those exceptions is the solitary Roger Waters contribution Take Up Thy Stethoscope and Walk, which really sticks out like a sore thumb, yet so does Bike which Barrett wrote. There are some genuine group aesthetics going on in the two songs they all wrote together, a hint of what might have happened had Syd Barrett not suffered an acid-induced mental breakdown on an already fragile mind. It is a genuine masterpiece of a debut album and has to rank as one of the best albums of that era. What makes it so good is how playful and happy the band sound; yes it was 1967 and even though they had already started to see cracks appearing between them, this album feels like a celebration and there is little here that doesn’t belong. It makes you wonder what they would have done...

A Saucerful of Secrets – There are moments in this album where you have to consider where it came from. It exists in a very psychedelic period of music, but I can’t help think there’s a huge amount of Syd Barrett in this than is credited, but it is most definitely the same band, but different, but in a familiar way. What I think it comprises of is the stuff that the rest of the band had brought along to the original sessions that hadn’t been used or never made it to the being played stage. There’s a familiar feel to this album yet it sounds distinctly more contemporary than its predecessor. Corporal Clegg is Waters trying to be the whimsical but sinister Syd Barrett; it’s like Roger went, “I can write a pop song like Syd.” He didn’t, but it does belong on this transitional album. The inclusion of Jugband Blues was like an afterthought and nod of the head to the band’s founder, but it also sits at the very end, like there was this obligation to have one song by Barrett. Of course, it was a bit more complicated in real life and to go into that too deeply would take the focus away from the music. This is still a worthy album despite the bad taste it might leave for some partisan Barrett fans.

2) Obscured by Sound

More (Soundtrack from the Film) – There’s this story I know, it was told to me by an old friend who is no longer with us, who heard it from someone associated with Norman Smith, who was the band’s original producer. It goes something like this; during a tour after A Saucerful of Secrets was recorded, the band weren’t raking money in, there were a lot of arguments outside of the studio. In the bus on the way to a concert in Germany, Roger Waters had received a message from home and in it was the offer of a really good job with fantastic prospects at an accountancy firm in London. He was seriously considering taking the offer, he had grown disillusioned with music, felt bad about Barrett’s ‘sacking’ and wondered if it was for him, but Nick Mason talked him out of it and, allegedly offered to give Roger his backing on musical decisions.

Whether that had any bearing on More is obviously a debating point, but this is a dull as dishwater album. I know it’s a ‘soundtrack’ but it just feels like a bunch of half arsed songs thrown together. Arguably Cymbaline is the standout and that isn’t exactly a classic by any stretch. This, in a weird way, felt like one of those contractual obligation albums. There was nothing original here and no direction you can see. Knocked off would be a good description.

Ummagumma – A bit of a curate’s egg this; half live performance, half pieces by individual members feels self-indulgent and devoid of group ideas. There are very few good ‘songs’ and each member is given his moment, but if More felt like dishwater, this didn’t feel much cleaner. I don’t know if the money was coming in by this stage in their careers, I expect from what I read that they were never particularly wealthy in the late 1960s, despite all coming from very middle class Cambridge families, but this is an album devoid of artistic passion; what little pieces of inventiveness there are get lost in the meh that fills the rest of it. It really is for aficionados, although the musician who comes out of this with the most dignity is actually Roger Waters.

Atom Heart Mother – This is a joke, right? Whereas some people claim this is the point when Pink Floyd became the band that everyone remembers, I  now think this was an overblown attempt at making an album of concepts and it feels  very fake. I’d always had fond memories of this album, but  listening to Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast again proved to be quite an insufferable experience now and not at all the whimsical bit of nonsense I once believed it to be. The title track is big and flabby and the rest felt a little like filler – this isn’t anywhere near as clever as the band wanted it to sound, but I suppose their growing following lapped it up. I’m still not sure the band knew where it wanted to go.

Obscured By Clouds – The thing about this album is it comes after Meddle, but where that album heralded a new Pink Floyd, this was like an ending for the old band and the limited ideas they had. Another ‘soundtrack’ studio album, if More felt like an obligation then this felt like all the stuff that didn’t get past the ‘work it up’ stage on Meddle. I look at this album as being all filler; an album that allowed them to take some time, while using all the shite they had left hanging around. Listening to it recently, it is slightly disconcerting that you can get through so much of this album without realising it. It washes over you in a very background noise kind of way.

(Lots of) Money

Meddle – What is good about this album is that it’s what the other earlier albums wanted to be; one side has a big track and then it has another side of interesting rock music with a twist. The four felt like they were working as a band again and interestingly there’s a lot of Gilmour on this and while it’s very similar in format to Atom Heart Mother, it’s like that was a rehearsal and this is what time gave them. One of These Days is one of the best openers on any album ever and Echoes sounded like a confident group toying with new ideas. One of those ideas was giving Nick Mason more free rein to record all manner of things you wouldn't associate with a rock album. I often regard this as an overlooked album in the band’s oeuvre – the one that got away from best of lists.

The Dark Side of the Moon – Is this really one of the greatest albums ever made? The stats would indicate that it is extremely significant, but it’s now been over 50 years since it came out and while it is a fantastic compact album, there’s something about it that has dated more than other Floyd albums. I often wonder why it’s so revered; recently I realised that the two Floyd albums I’ve played the least in the 21^st century are this and The Wall and I think that’s because they are probably the two most recognisable albums for the average person who simply knows of Pink Floyd and isn’t necessarily a fan. Yet this is an album that has more of the band than individual songs – it feels like a period in the group’s evolution where all four members had something to offer and there was an equity here that had been ignored when Barrett departed – and in Floyd terms the band is often better than the individual.

I find this album is very much Richard Wright’s album; yes, the concept might have been thought up by Waters, but Wright’s presence here was essential. I somehow don’t think this would have been the album it became without Breathe, The Great Gig in the Sky and Us and Them, but he also contributed to Time and Any Colour You Like and I often wonder if the emergence of Wright as a writing force in the band might have tipped the often unpredictable Waters into the realms of paranoia – as ironic as it would have been. I expect in 1973 this really did blow a lot of people away; it is a remarkably accessible album with almost hints of genres that made it a gateway album for many people, many of who simply thought of Pink Floyd as some art rock bunch of Cambridge toffs. 

Wish You Were Here – For many years, this was my favourite Floyd album. It stood out like a beacon, but I think it might have had more to do with the fact that everyone I knew regarded The Dark Side of the Moon as their favourite. It was really the end of David Gilmour's writing influence – the era of BIG guitar solos and that distinct 'Gilmour feel' would gradually diminish by the time we reached the 1980s; yet oddly enough this was also the start of Roger Waters’ takeover of all the lyrics. While Gilmour has always been a really competent guitarist, Waters often struggled with his lyrics, like he was never really confident about that part of his abilities. 

However, the tale of the band being visited by Syd Barrett during the recording of this album, I believe is a key element. I know the band all have slightly differing versions of what actually happened the day Syd came to see how his old mates were doing, but one thing is constant – Roger Waters reaction to his old friend… Now, as a fan of the band I’ve read just about everything there is about them, I’ve been fortunate to have spoken to people who knew people close to the band and my journalistic instincts have often made me, maybe wrongly, read between the lines of what people said. I know people who claim that the reason Barrett wasn’t supported by the band more was down to Nick Mason’s desire to be a pop star and his ability to distort the truth; but the actual truth is probably more inane than that. When Syd lost it, it was the late 1960s and people who had mental breakdowns normally got stuck in a mental hospital like Shenley, Napsbury or St Andrews in Northampton; places the families of sufferers could hide their mad family members away. Syd’s apparent mental health issues were exacerbated by LSD, pot and amphetamines; he was open to putting anything into his body that made him ‘feel’. As someone who was probably an undiagnosed bipolar sufferer and other anxiety issues he wouldn’t have even known what the problem was because there was no mental health provision, so the drugs helped him function until they took over. Seven years after he ‘left’ the band, his reappearance probably brought the entire incident back with more clarity for a group of men now entering their late 20s and I think the lyrics on this album reflect that. I see this as more of an explanation than a tribute to Barrett. Floyd were notoriously unfriendly towards the music press but criticism and suggestions they wouldn’t have been where they were without Barrett probably stung; especially Waters who had been huge friends with Syd and was probably the least comfortable with kicking him out. So I expect the lyrics of this album work on a number of levels, but all could equally apply to Barrett and what happened to him. It gave Waters a framework to write to as well.

As far as the album is concerned, musically it is the Pink Floyd album; the one that says more than anything else. It is musically complicated with elements of jazz rock infused throughout it. The addition of Roy Harper singing on Have a Cigar also feels significant, because I wonder if EMI, who the band were with when it was Syd’s band, were maybe the main catalyst in annexing the troubled songwriter from the band and I think the lyrics in this track suggest as much; getting an old warrior like Harper to sing on it might have been symbolic. Aficionados of the band will always include two or three songs from this album in their lists of favourites and that is totally understandable.

Animals – How does a band heavily connected to its own past do something relevant in 1977, when punk had taken over and everyone thought bands like Pink Floyd were just a bunch of old hippies making music for boring old cunts? In all fairness, I was a prog loving young hippie when Animals came out and it was very much my go to Floyd album for many years, with Sheep being the track that made me start putting them on a pedestal. You know how you get into a band through a certain album, well this was mine. I was more than aware of Floyd for years, but this was the first album I went out and bought with my own money. The one I’d gently head bang to with my mates and discuss the finer, political points of Waters distinctly anti-right wing lyrics. Floyd weren't really old hippies (they were barely in their 30s) but this was full of anti-establishment anthems and I knew a few punks who often played this album. Maybe it’s because this is the most ‘rock’ album they ever made; this is angry, angsty and heavy, with big riffs, political lyrics and all Roger Waters, apart from a co-credit for Gilmour on Dogs.  

The band were more than aware that the music world was changing, none more so than Waters, who felt the band needed to be more relevant, so he took his concept album based around Orwell’s Animal Farm and made it contemporary – although his targets feel a little weak and petty nearly 50 years later. It’s an album about a love song, split into two halves, like bread, with a huge slab of angry rhetoric shoved in between, in what does feel like an attempt to at least shake off the bunch of old hippies tag. Waters was 31 when he wrote this, no age really when comparing it to now, but he really did feel as though Pink Floyd were being left behind and becoming irrelevant, when in reality they were at the absolute pinnacle of their careers and actually about to enter the end game of their peak as the world’s best band. This is, arguably, the best stuff Waters ever did, because he was motivated by the world around him; this was Pink Floyd acknowledging that the late 1970s existed and they were part of it.

The Wall – This really is the inspiration for this article. The Wall desperately needs to be reassessed in a world that has radically changed since it was penned. Overblown! Bloated! Not needed! All things said about this mammoth album, which might just be the band’s best album, ever. This tale of isolation, radicalisation and sadness hits so many buttons in 2025 you would have thought it had been written last week. I’m loathe to give Roger Waters a lot of credit for anything – part of me thinks Floyd were always heading south when he became principle song writer because they always worked best as a band mixing ideas to create excellent songs – but this really was a brilliant piece of writing, from the concept, that was relevant in 1979, to the music which is fantastically constructed.

If I had a problem with this album it would be the beginning of the marginalisation of Richard Wright. I don’t believe Waters had much, if anything, to do with Syd’s departure (smart money is on Nick Mason doing that), but there was definitely a problem between the band’s bass player and lyricist and the band’s keyboard player and sometime songwriter. Waters handled it badly and Wright’s inclusion on this album as one of the additional musicians felt spiteful and pernicious. That aside, the rift between the two almost felt fitting that it should happen during the creation of this. However, by this time, Waters had taken over virtually everything and started to view Pink Floyd as his band and the rest of them as his ‘session musicians’. The last album they worked together as a band on was Wish You Were Here, with Animals and this being constructed from sessions with the individual musicians. Waters and Gilmour weren’t getting on and because of the money they’d made from the mid-70s, the members were doing things you wouldn’t associate with a band that always portrayed themselves as relatively socialist - they seemed to become the snobs everyone accused them of being.

As for the album, it is concept album like no other really. Floyd were big on concepts but this truly felt like the ‘rock opera’ it was called. Almost every track segued into the next; the story was clear and the styles added to the contrast. Bob Ezrin played a large part in the construction of this album; as a producer he brought a different kind of clarity to the table. Probably the only thing that lets this album down was the mammoth success it had; not only did they have a #1 single, the album spawned a tour that was bigger and more brash than anything they’d ever done and then there was the film adaptation, directed by Alan Parker, which was the catalyst for the end of the band as we knew them.

The Endless Wibble

The Final Cut – I try to like this; there are moments in it (which I later discovered were songs written for The Wall but which never made it), but in general it was self-indulgent psychobabble bullshit about Waters’ dysfunctional upbringing and about his absent father. It also showcases Waters disdain with Margaret Thatcher, the Falklands Conflict and how veterans are treated; the problem is it’s largely dull and uninspiring and you can see why Gilmour and Mason had problems with it (especially as both were now wealthy enough to not give a fuck about social equality) and the missing Richard Wright leaves a bad taste in many people’s mouths.

It has its moments, but it also feels like an attempt to make Floyd relevant to the mid-1980s. Not Now John felt like a song with its roots in Alexei Sayle and The Young Ones, while the best song, the eponymous, The Final Cut feels as though it would have been better suited as the closing track on The Wall. Recent reappraisals have The Gunner’s Dream and Two Suns in the Sunset as songs that need to be considered amongst the best of the band’s oeuvre, but neither are that good. This is a Roger Waters solo album with Gilmour and Mason appearing as guests.

A Momentary Lapse of Reason – I was almost orgasmic when this album appeared. The first new Floyd album in almost FOUR years! It seems like a joke now, but when we were younger four years felt like an age. It was still a Pink Floyd album even if there was no Roger Waters on it, but there were all the familiar sounds which I was always drawn to. Sometimes I found Waters a little too harsh and preferred the rounded corners and slick guitar solos of David Gilmour – I even liked his first two solo efforts. It wasn’t until many years later that I discovered that, in reality, A Momentary Lapse of Reason was in fact simply a Gilmour solo album with Mason and Wright on it (and Wright was originally listed as – again – an additional musician, until 2014 when subsequent pressings redressed the balance).

As a Gilmour solo project with added Floyd members it really isn’t that bad and writing that feels like I’m being petty and slightly bitter because I really rated it when it came out and I still listen to it now and get enjoyment out of it. I mean, compared to The Final Cut it’s a fucking masterpiece. I suppose the biggest problem this album has is there’s not a lot to say about it. It’s full of songs that sound like Pink Floyd; there’s little in there you’d call classic, although I’ve always been a fan of One Slip, but the 2014 remaster and subsequent 2019 remix have managed to turn a crisp little song into a slightly murkier one with the subtle backgrounds disappearing.

One thing which I will always remember is the 1987 film about the making of the album’s cover. This was the summer of 1987, an era before the mobile phone became synonymous with everyone and when many people still looked like they’d wandered blinking from an earlier time. The album cover shoot took place on the east coast and needed to be done as quickly as possible because of the tides; this was an era before digital and Photoshop, so the beds you see in the cover photo are all there, as was the green sand. The shoot probably cost as much as the album did to put together and was the first album cover since Animals that used Storm Thorgerson as the principal art director. I have a fondness for this album that transcends the problems I have with it and how it was made, but frankly issues I personally developed about this are mine alone…

The Division Bell – Now this, to me, felt more like a Pink Floyd album even if I didn’t enjoy it as much as I anticipated. If I thought a four year wait between albums was long, there was a seven year one between this and A Momentary Lapse of Reason and it arrived in the mid-1990s, during a period in my own musical odyssey where Pink Floyd may not have featured any longer. That said, if you can get past the turgid lyrics, musically it feels more …complete, but only in places. This is an album that at times feels like the end and really it was because it would be 20 years before another Floyd studio album appeared and that in itself was more of a coda than anything to get excited about.

My biggest problem with The Division Bell is probably more to do with David Gilmour than anything else. I felt he was trying to rediscover the past rather than do anything new or even contemporary; so it’s full of Wright’s keyboards, Gilmour guitar riffs that wouldn’t have seem out of place in the 1970s, the use of female backing singers with the gusto of The Great Gig in the Sky, but nothing that felt at all 1994; in fact in places this is a turgid album that sounds like musicians who have run out of ideas. To be fair, the band were now all approaching their 50s and there are very few musicians who produce their best stuff at this age. The thing is David Gilmour was a guitar god in the 1970s and by 1994 he felt as relevant as Eric Clapton does in the 21^st century; although maybe not as racist or right wing. There is also this thing about him as a lyricist; he wasn’t that good at writing songs, music yes, but his lyrics were always a bit 'teenager', so much of this album was co-written with his wife Polly Samson and to be honest I think this irked many Floyd aficionados; I know it did me because... ‘Who was she?’ A perfect example of the poor writing on display was Poles Apart which wandered around before ending in a crescendo of mud.

Of course, by the mid-1990s Floyd were such rock gods that they could work with anyone they wanted to, so instead of doing something with the huge number of contemporary musicians making a mark, they chose to work with Stephen Hawking, or rather a Stephen Hawking sample from a BT advert. There was a certain amount of derision (so much so this album could have been called The Derision Bell) because it did feel like a going through the Floydian motions. It was, of course, a monster hit for the band and regardless of what Roger Waters thought and said between 1984 and with this album's release, he couldn’t stop Syd’s replacement from becoming Pink Floyd.

The Endless River – I’m not really sure why Gilmour decided to release this. Perhaps he and Nick Mason needed the cash, because it might be a tribute to Richard Wright but it’s a relatively piss poor way of doing it. Maybe if they’d assembled all of Wright’s classic Floyd moments and had them remixed or remastered by someone like Steven Wilson it would have served a better purpose, possibly including the one finished track on that just to bring it up to 2008 when Wright died.

It really is, for the most part, a bit of a dirge – which I suppose was what it was planned to be. But before we spend as little time as possible talking about this final studio album, I want to point out that between The Division Bell and this, Floyd or their record company released a shit ton of greatest hits albums, boxed sets, rare and unreleased tracks and probably noises made in the toilet recorded by Nick Mason. Pink Floyd might have pretty much ceased to exist as an extant band, someone, somewhere was milking their back catalogue like there was no tomorrow. I appreciate that some of these things needed to be released; the early recordings that had been switched to digital to get the best from them, but everything was remixed, remastered and redone for 20 years to the point where there was a distinct drop in quality. As I said before, A Momentary Lapse of Reason was remixed in 2019 and it took all crisp production work out and replaced it with a mushy sound that had no distinctiveness.

The album itself is more of a compilation of snippets and half-finished stuff than anything else and even the one actual song on it feels like a contractual obligation – which Gilmour suggested was the true motivation behind the album, in that the record company wanted another album and this was the easiest way to do it and honour their fallen bandmate.

I’ve played The Endless River about four times in the last eleven years; I don’t even think of it as a true Floyd album and while the two most recent listenings have made me feel a little more connected to it, it sits alongside many of Floyd’s ‘meh’ albums in that it will only ever get an airing when I fall back down that Pink Floyd rabbit hole…

In Conclusion

There was a period between 1971 and 1979 where Pink Floyd was the best band in the world. You could never accuse them during this period of selling out or losing their souls (like, say, ELP or Genesis), but trying to find excellent stuff by the band from other times is a tough ask. The Syd Barrett ‘era’ was a different beast, a different band and had mental illness and drugs not fucked up the genius that was Syd then maybe this would have been a completely different retrospective.

I love Pink Floyd’s music; it’s always a band I will return to, especially if I don’t feel like playing anything specific, so they’re always there ready to jump onto whatever player I’m listening to them on and continue a love affair that reached the peak of its passion on a sofa in the Crown pub, Hardingstone, in the December of 1979 – but that’s another completely different story. Everything after that was a decline, and in many ways outside of Floyd’s music too.