Why Rock Band matters

I know a lot of people reading this blog don’t care about video games, but you might find this interesting

My copy of Beatles Rock Band arrived today, to go with the dirt-cheap 360 I got yesterday. Don’t care overly for The Beatles but it’s the only way to get the far superior Rock Band 2 drums in the UK at the moment. I loved Guitar Hero on the PS2. I remember loving it as a concept with Guitar Freaks on the PS1, where all you could play was bizarre j-pop on import. It’s a fun party game, and I’m not going to deny I’ll happily spend an hour of the evening playing it on my own to try get five stars on some song or other. But there’s more to it than that.

Guitar Hero and Rock Band have been huge success, especially with the ‘youth’ of today, and that’s something that really matters and is really worth thinking about. It’s generalising for sure, but young people today engage with music differently to even my generation. It started with Napster, it currently ends now with Spotify and Bittorrent: there’s so much music out there, legally or otherwise, that the music collections of young people today are ridiculously huge. I’ve spoken to people that download every top 40 album, most get listened to once, if that, but they have a massive archive just sitting there. People will listen to random playlists on Spotify instead of the radio. Taken together with the loss of Top Of The Pops and Later turning shit, this has an interesting effect. Young people, these days, are exposed to far more music than we ever were. In some ways, this is a great thing. But it’s also a great loss. Remember those ‘difficult’ albums? You bought them as you loved that one single but really didn’t get the rest of the songs on the CD? But dammit we paid £12.99 for it we’re going to listen to it at least nine more times. Sometimes it turned out that it was shit all along, but many times the songs were hiding their true beauty and brilliance behind an off-putting façade that you had to work past.

But would we have done all that if we didn’t pay for it and every other song ever released was available to us? And so many young people today exist in this world of ephemeral musical tourism, never listening to a song more than once, letting the music wash over and through them but never truly engaging with it. It’s a pretty sad state of affairs to be honest.

But on the other hand, there is Rock Band.

Rock Band says “you’re not going to pass this song on Hard on the first go, you’ll need at least three. And if you’re even thinking of getting five stars on it be ready to spend at least half an hour playing it over and over again.”
And suddenly these people that wouldn’t normally listen to a song twice are listening to a single track on repeat for ages in an attempt to master playing the guitar solo on a plastic instrument. They’re listening to it. They’re engaging with it. And what’s more they’re even more engaged with it than we were. When you’re playing Rock Band, it’s just you and the music. You can’t play Rock Band and cook dinner, or play Rock Band and browse the web. On harder songs it’s difficult to play Rock Band and have a conversation. All those usual distractions when you put a CD on are gone, the game demands you engage with the music.

And of course, what you are doing in the game impacts upon the music itself. Unless you’re a musician, there’ll be certain things in songs you just don’t pick up on. You won’t realise how elegant a certain guitar solo is, or spot a lovely bit of symmetry between two riffs, or a strangely different drum beat. But the Rock Band player will. Because he has to learn how to play them, albeit in an abstracted way. He’s not only now paying attention to the song, but also to it’s structure, it’s form.

I really wish I was a massive Beatles fan because if I were, Beatles Rock Band might be the single greatest thing ever. I’d be happy for years if a James Rock Band was ever released.

Yes, Rock Band is a fun game, and a laugh with mates. But it’s also an entirely new way of experiencing music, and one that stands apart from MTV-isation of modern music, of it’s relegation into a background track for our lives, one that says “no, you will fucking pay attention to these songs because music fucking well matters”.

Dean Love : 29 Oct 2009 23:29 |  Tags: Games Music |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

On White Poppies

None of these thoughts are really original, but a few people asked me about it and so, a blog is born. I don’t wear a red poppy at this time of year. That’s the main reason you won’t see me hosting Have I Got News For You or Buzzcocks this series, coincidently – because the BBC mandate that everyone who appears on TV for most of October has to wear one. This annoys me. For an organisation that have to be entirely unbiased in everything political and social, that don’t let their newsreaders wear any other symbol, this yearly obsession with the British Legion is unseemly.

It annoys me. But that’s not why I don’t wear one. After all, anyone that knows me is quite aware that my non-conformism is limited at best, and a façade hiding a ridiculous truth at worst.

My problem with the red poppy is two-fold. Firstly, especially over the past few years, with the war in Iraq, it’s become a symbol representing a certain level of jingoism, nationalism and pro-war sentiment that I’m uncomfortable with. Now, that’s not the fault of the British Legion. Yeah, they’re a big organisation and some of them are bound to be a little warmongery, that’s just numbers. But the majority of them do good work. Alas, the symbol and the cause have been co-opted by certain elements to help with support for blowing up Iraq. Couple that with the fact that it’s pretty much compulsory for members of the media to wear one, as it is in some offices, and it all becomes a little icky: “You must support this charity, even if it represents something you’re hugely uncomfortable with”.

Which leads on to my second point: the British Legion do a brilliant job, they’re sorely needed, and the money raised each year by the poppy appeal goes a long way towards that.

And that’s why I fucking hate the British Legion.

I’m not entirely a pacifist, but I do feel war should be a very last resort. World War 2 was justified. The Iraq war wasn’t. It’s a dangerous road to go down and it should only be travelled in the most dire of circumstances. And the consequences of war on the government, and the country as a whole, should be huge.

Part of that consequence should be, that if we, as a country, are sending people off to be killed for our benefit, then we sure as fuck should be looking after their dependants financially for as long is necessary. If you’re not aware, that’s what the British Legion do. They look after, as much as they can, those families that have lost people in the war, or those brave men and women that have suffered so badly they’ve lost the ability to work. It’s an amazing charity. But it’s a charity. And it really fucking shouldn’t be. That sort of care, and indeed a lot more than the Legion can afford, should be provided for by the state. By us. Taxpayers.

“But that would be crippling on the economy and require massive tax rises,” shout the imaginary masses. “Exactly,” says I. Two million people marched against the war in Iraq. Can you even imagine how many more that would have been if a declaration of war came with a flat 10% income tax rise for the duration of the war? Can you imagine how many more people would be clamouring to get our troops out now it’s apparent to everyone that we’d can’t do any more to help?

In times of dire need and necessity people would accept it, on the whole. But the government would need to put a far more convincing arguement to the public than they did last time. And even after that they’d not be likely to get another term in office. The cost on all fronts would be huge.

As it is, most of us (my primarily middle and upper-working class readership) won’t even know anyone that died in the war. Those less politically inclined didn’t even have an opinion on if we should go to war or not. It didn’t effect them. The only place the war would really hit us (short of conscription) was in our pockets. But the government just borrowed more money and settled for giving the troops inferior equipment and passing it’s responsibility for the injured/killed and their families on to charities like the British Legion. Who through the poppy appeal do just enough good to take the edge off, to stop the treatment of troops and their families being a completely obvious travesty. And as long as they keep doing that good work there won’t be enough people left to get angry about the fact that they even have to. And so the government can go to war knowing that the final bill will be a lot less than it really should be.

Of course, you can’t fit all that on a white poppy. They just say “PEACE”.

You can buy white poppies here and if anyone local wants one I have a few spare, just give me a shout and throw a few quid towards those guys or any other charity you find worthwhile. There’s also a Facebook group for those so inclined here and for those so incensed by this they want to punch me there’s another one here .

Dean Love : 27 Oct 2009 21:16 |  Tags: Politics |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Mitch Benn & The Distractions, Mill Arts Centre, Banbury, 6 October

Whatever you think of him, it’s fair to say what Mitch Benn is doing at the moment is something entirely unique in the UK comedy scene. And the UK music scene for that matter. Technically, it’s a comedy gig. But there’s a band, and the between song banter isn’t much more than you get from a chatty front-man. The songs are funny, but most of them are musically accomplished enough that they’d be decent songs even without the jokes. And some of them aren’t even that funny: they’re amusing and will make you smile but they’re not the sort of comedy songs that are packed full of punchlines. Not most of them anyway.

The show is also almost entirely divorced from Mitch’s ‘day job’ club sets. African Baby and a certain rock-opera cross over, but even if you saw Mitch headlining the Glee Club the other week this tour show will be an entirely different experience.

It’s taken a long time to get to this point. Mitch has being touring with the band and putting out a new album nearly every year since 2004. The early shows with the Distractions were hit-and-miss: lots of the album stuff worked brilliantly but the shows were fleshed out with awkward re-workings of solo tracks (who remembers Crap Shag – Slight Return? Exactly.). Meanwhile banter was kept to a minimum as working with a band meant sticking to a setlist and keeping things smooth. But it was a bold experiment and five years on it’s matured amazingly.

With five studio albums under his belt, Benn no longer lacks for material in this pretty hefty show that weighs in at nearly two hours. He mixes up a lot of stuff from the new album with the highlights of the old ones to create a show that never loses it’s way and is paced brilliantly.

Now I’m going to talk about the set, so forgive me as I drop in to Mitch Benn – geek mode. Yes, I’m one of them that sits at the front and mouths the words at him. The show opens in an initially disappointing way: The Interactive Song, a bonus track from Too Late To Cancel. Except it soon turns out it’s been entirely re-worked with all the gags being changed, and you get to feel smug if you know who John Cage was. From there we get a bunch of stuff from the new album, a lot of which will be familiar to Now Show listeners. I do wonder exactly how beneficial it is to Benn’s career to do the Now Show. Plenty of people go along to the shows as they’ve heard him on Radio 4, but I know plenty of others who won’t as they think he’s not very good, based on what they’ve heard on Radio 4. And the truth is a lot of his Now Show stuff is either bad or mediocre – there’s a reason that of the 60 or so tracks he’ll write for that show each year, only four or five will make the album. But you try writing three topical comedy songs every week for a few months at a time.

Anyway, we get a whole bunch of new and kind of new stuff: Love Handles mocks the fake-ness of celebrity, Motorway Food is about exactly what it says, and Not Bitter is one of those songs with a laugh every line and is all the better for it. Disgustingly In Love is an interesting one for any dedicated fans. The lyrics are different but the song is the Busted parody Don’t Release Us In To The Wild from an old Now Show episode that actually featured Mitch with the band and not a backing tape. Might sound cheap, but it’s actually great as that song had a ridiculously catchy riff but would have made absolutely no sense outside of the very specific context of the news story involved. I’d love to see If We’re All Still Here from that same episode released in some form some day. And besides Scary Weirdos was a Now Show Christmas track. Or the other way around. And now back to stuff that normal people can understand.

The first half of the show also features two songs that deserve a special mention. “Now He’s Gone” features bass/keyboard/backing-vocalist Kirsty Newton on lead vocal. This is great for three reasons: a) she’s awesome (not to mention ‘fit’ as my friend ably pointed out, like I hadn’t noticed), b) it’s a great change of pace and c) you get to see Mitch dance around the stage while playing guitar. “West End Musical” also trades lead vocals between the two of them, ending in this intricate two-way thing that is just brilliant. The fact is, not wanting to denigrate the efforts of drummer Ivan who is fantastic, the whole thing is practically a two-man show. Kirsty’s backing vocals just add so much to the whole thing (she even does the ghost noise in Macbeth) and musically it’s probably fair to say she outshines Mitch. Lucky for him she’s not as good at writing funny songs (although her own, not funny, band Siskin are worth checking out). She’s been playing with Mitch for over five years now and it shows: there’s a level of comfort and familiarity there that makes the whole thing seem so much more natural than at those early shows, and they take the piss out of each other like only friends can. It’s pretty much impossible to imagine the show without her. And she’s better on piano than Rick Wakeman. And nicer to look at. Bad call on that video.

During the interval Mitch goes off to write a song about some topics suggested by the audience. When it works, this is brilliant. I’m spoiled, having last year saw him put together a brilliant Irish jig in relation to their government underwriting the banks during the economic crisis: “Give us your money lads”… this time, not so much. It rhymes and it just about works but isn’t exactly brilliant. Then again, the fact he can come up with anything at all in 20 minutes is impressive.

The second half sees a bit more old stuff, including tracks like Beatles parody Please Don’t Release This Song given a new sense of relevance with all the re-releases. There’s a new Elvis parody (though the old one was enough, really) and semi-serious song Where Next?. I actually like all of the non-funny tracks on the albums, there’s enough now for an EP. Hmm. The show is bought to a close with (My Name Is) Macbeth before a very short gap (“It’s been too long a day to milk it”) leading in to a quick encore of Peel tribute track, A Minutes Noise. It’s a fitting way to end an awesome night.

It’s interesting to note that the ‘hit single’ Everything Sounds Like Coldplay Now is absent entirely, as is I May Just Have To Murder James Blunt, which demonstrates Mitch’s justified confidence in the material he is playing. I’d personally have liked to heard last year’s Alternative Energy Song as it’s just musically so fun, but I think that demonstrates how far this whole thing has come: that I can come out thinking “it’s a shame he didn’t do that one”.

The tour is only just starting; you can see the dates here and I really do urge you to go. It’s an entirely unique night out, an experience you just won’t get anywhere else, and for that reason alone it’s worth giving a go. It also has enough variety that there’s something there for everyone. This year I went with a friend who’s never been to a live comedy show before. Last year I went with my Dad and younger brother, the latter of which hates my taste in music and comedy. They all loved it.
And lastly thumbs up to the Mill Arts Centre in Banbury, who didn’t do what a lot of venues do when faced with a show like this and do the sound like a rock gig so you can barely hear the words. When the words are half the point. Bless you Mill Arts Centre, for having a fucking clue.

Dean Love : 24 Oct 2009 01:25 |  Tags: Comedy Music |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Quick catch up

A couple of reviews I’ve done for 4ortherecord.com

Gavin Osborn’s Meeting Your Heroes

Jim Bob’s Goffam

And if you’re bemoaning the lack of any Edinburgh coverage this year, well I wasn’t there so in short: yay for Peter Buckley Hill finally getting that Spirit of the Fringe award for the Free Fringe, I have no clue about the rest of the winners, I’ve only ever seen one person on the short-list. I can only presume Tim Key is much better live than on Screenwipe – hopefully a tour will be forthcoming later in the year so I can see for myself.

For other stuff, go read Anna who has loads of reviews, video blogs and all sorts. Next year dammit!

Dean Love : 29 Aug 2009 23:15 |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

On Sexton Blake, Jonathan Nash, and 90s Videogames Magazines

I’ve recently been telling anyone that will listen to check out the new BBC Radio 2 comedy series The Adventures Of Sexton Blake. Sexton Blake is a fictional detective once described as the missing link between Sherlock Holmes and James Bond, that’s been around for over a hundred years and written for by over two hundred different writers. Each writer tends to put their own spin on Blake, with no regard for continuity or past stories. Some tales are serious, some are funny, most involve a good punch-up at some point. The latest BBC version is very much on the humorous side, fusing a old-fashioned radio drama style with a very modern approach to comedy, and it’s one of the best things BBC Radio have done in years.

So with all this eulogising, I have something of a confession to make. I’d never heard of Sexton Blake until around a month ago. And I still haven’t heard, seen, or read anything outside of this new series. See, what got my attention wasn’t the name Sexton Blake, but the names Mil Millington and Jonathan Nash. You might have heard of the first one: there was a rather successful book and Guardian column called Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About that you might have heard of. Millington is very good, hence my mentioning him here as I’m about to completely ignore him in favour of talking about Jonathan Nash.

Firstly, no, he’s not the mathematician that Russell Crowe played in A Beautiful Mind. There’s a small chance you might be aware of his work (with Millington) on The Weekly , a short-lived website best summed-up as the British version of The Onion. And when I say ‘British’ I mean quintessentially British in a hugely stereo-typical way, and a great example of the sort of hugely stylised work that Nash does best.

But for me, I first encountered his work when I was about ten. I owned a Sinclair Spectrum computer, and I liked to read. So my parents bought me a subscription to Your Sinclair magazine, which in its later years was edited by Nash. After the magazine closed I finally threw out the Spectrum and bought an Amiga computer, and this time the magazine was the games-focused Amiga Power. It was here, in my teens, that the first few written voices really started to stand out for me. Amongst all the hugely competent but straight-forward games reviews, I started to notice the names of a couple of writers that did something more. First was Stuart Campbell, who’s bile-filled dismemberments of any game that dared to be mediocre also managed to be hugely funny. Secondly there was a writer who was equally funny but in a far more subtle way. Jonathan Nash’s reviews would always give you something different. He practically invented the notion of the concept review in video-gaming. To give you some examples, here’s space shooty game Alien Breed reviewed as a movie pitch, this is top-down adventure Dreamweb reviewed mostly with the words “Oh dear”, a review of vampire adventure Bloodnet where he uses the phrase “it looks like a row of spikes on a tachycardiac sugar-fiend’s electrocardiograph machine”.

The point being, it was the first time I’d ever encountered genuinely stylised writing. It introduced me to the idea that words could be entertaining through form as well as a function. Many aspiring writers of my generation talk about their passion stemming from reading their favourite NME writers in their teens, or discovering Hunter S Thomson at the local library. But for a small sub-section of us, the most nerdy of the nerds, our inspiration lay in the words of Messers Nash, Campbell, Farragher, Winstanley, Davis, et al. And of those, Nash’s voice was always the most distinct. I haven’t even touched on the non-game related features he worked on the later days of both Amiga Power and Your Sinclair. Or the fact that he was so unhappy that the page count of the latter magazine started to shrink to nothing in its final years that he started writing pages and pages of extra copy to put on the cover tape to be viewed teletext style on your Spectrum.

One of the strangest things of all is that he’s almost impossible to track down. Finding those examples of his work took an age. His own website, The House of Nash, used to host a bunch of stuff, but was taken down almost as soon as the internet started to get popular, and is strangely inaccessible on Archive.org. He’s left all the publicity for Sexton Blake to his co-writer, Mr Millington, who despite working with him on a number of projects, has never met him in the real world, and claims he doesn’t ever want to. Millington also calls him the “funniest living Britain”, and while I’m not sure I agree with him, it’s certainly a claim worth considering.

Dean Love : 29 Aug 2009 23:08 |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Booth Babes, Lust and The Online Ultra–Gent

Or: Tim Minchin Said It Best (And He Normally Does)

Well, this entry may well get me labelled as misogynist, but hey, I’m already a racist and a heathen so why not go for the set? Besides, I haven’t blogged for nearly a month so some controversy will get the hit count back up.

So the other week there was this thing called Comic Con, a big geek-o-palaza, the mecca for fans of comics, video games, TV and movies. At these sort of conventions, companies will often employ “booth babes”: hot women dressed in skimpy costumes designed to draw the attention of the masses to whatever product they’re promoting. To do this, some times the “babes” are dressed as characters from the anime show or comic, and other times they’re just wearing small bikinis because it’s mostly a male audience and if one thing will get a man’s attention, it’s boobs.

The use of booth babes (sorry, I’m going to stop putting it in quote marks – I know it’s a derogatory description but I have to use it another ten times or so and it’ll just get messy otherwise) is most common in the promotion of video games, and they’ve been used at video games industry shows like E3 for years. So it’s no surprise that the following flyer came from Electronic Arts to promote a game called Dante’s Inferno (no, really, but that’s an entire other blog entry).

Let’s get one thing clear. The wording on the flyer is unfortunate. Specifically the phrase: “commit acts of lust”. But it’s fairly clear if you take more than a cursory glance at said flyer that this phrase is just a section heading, and the “act of lust” it refers to is taking a photo of yourself with a booth babe. This is something that happens all the time anyway, and is part of what these women are employed to do.

The online media went nuts, and said that in fact what the flyer was doing was encourage attendees to grope the models in an attempt to win prises. Now, okay, I can see how you could possibly misinterpret the meaning of the flyer, but would you not think twice and maybe look again? Who would think, upon reading and misinterpreting it “Oh, look, we just sexually assault a few women and we can win a prize, lets go!” Okay maybe some Comic Con attendees would. Bad example. But the vast majority of well adjusted people would realise that it wasn’t an open invitation to grope booth babes.

Like I said, the wording was unfortunate, but I haven’t seen one confirmed (or even alleged) case of a girl being touched up because “the flyer said it was okay”. I have seen reports of women, both booth babes and just regular convention attendees, being groped at Comic Con. It’s not okay, but it happens every year, and is a result of the lack of understanding of basic social decency possessed by a sizeable majority of Comic Con attendees. Likely the same ones that protested the coverage of Twilight at the convention, on the basis it attracted too many teenage girls. Because girls smell, natch. And when I say protested, I mean that literally. Something should be done about this, but I’m not sure what exactly. My point is only that I somehow doubt a badly-worded flyer would be the catalyst in turning someone who wouldn’t ever grope a girl in a crowded public place in to someone who would.

So that’s the background. Mass online media hysteria ensues, but it’s in the comments threads of posts like this that things get really interesting. Because there’s a whole host of people, generally men, decrying the whole idea of booth babes altogether, and saying they should be banned entirely. Again, let’s put aside the fact that, at Comic Con, they may have a point. It’d be sad if everyone else had to suffer because of the socially retarded, but until we can figure out a way of filtering them out it might help matters. Instead let’s stick with considering booth babes where they’re most often used: games industry trade shows. Because these commentators want them banned everywhere. They feel that they objectify women, that the women involved won’t enjoy being gawped at, and that it puts off women from getting involved in gaming.

We’ll take those in reverse order. There’s a point to the latter one: gaming is a hugely male-dominated hobby, and the industry itself is even more gender-biased. But there’s a chicken and egg situation here. Is the industry male-dominated because booth babes put off women? Or are booth babes such an effective marketing technique because the industry is so male-dominated? Honestly, there probably is a small causal relationship, but there are far more compelling reasons that the industry is so male-focused: it’s origins in the early computer scene, the fact that it’s easier to make games where you go around killing stuff than interesting narrative-driven pieces, and so on. It’s another thing I could write an entire blog on. Suffice to say, if you did a study to find the top fifty reasons there aren’t many women in the games industry, I doubt “booth babes at conventions” would even make the list.

The next point is my favourite. That while some of the booth babes might be models who enjoy the attention and the chance to improve their portfolio, in an attempt to break into the serious modelling business, others are just hot college girls trying to earn a bit of money. These girls, we’re told, will hate having to spend the day in tight fitting bikinis so men can gawp at their boobs. My response to this is clear and considered: boo-fucking-hoo. So they hate their job? Who doesn’t? And for a pretty college girl, it’s not like standing on a convention floor for the day is the only way to earn a bit of money. Yes, there are issues at higher levels with businesses taking pretty girls less seriously making it hard to get ahead. But at this level? At the “I just need a bit of cash for tuition fees / text books / beer” level? The pretty people have the advantage. Bar work, waitressing, even working the tills at Tesco – sure, they all require some simple skills to do, but beyond that an employer is more likely to employee the prettier person, because most of this part-time stop-gap work is customer facing, and customers prefer to be served by a pretty guy or girl. Employers know this, and act accordingly. In fact, bar work is almost identical to being a booth babe: both jobs involve being charming, chatty and appropriately flirtatious towards customers you might not be able to stand the sight of. The difference is bar work means getting to wear a lot more clothes and getting paid a lot less money. And pulling pints.

See, the booth babe that hates being ogled at a convention will equally hate spending days scanning barcodes at Tescos, and she’s smart enough to figure out that if she’s going to be doing something she hates, it may as well be one day in a bikini than twenty sat the supermarket tills, since they’ll pay the same. Other girls will decide that showing off their body isn’t worth it and go for the waitressing job instead. Which is fine, but let’s not delude ourselves in to thinking that booth babes are booth babes because they have no other options. Booth babes are booth babes because they’d rather do that than the alternative. The alternative being what the vast majority of us who don’t have stunning good looks and massive boobs have to do anyway.

So to the final point, it objectifies women. Well yes, it does. Though let us also remember that, while less common, there are also booth hunks, dressed up as Conan or whatever. And they are there to be objectified. In that context, at that point in time, they’ve basically entered in to a contract for their bodies to be exhibits of art. And they’re very pleasant to look at, and I’ll enjoy the view. I won’t act inappropriately but to be frank, nor will I try and connect with them on a human level. Because for every creepy guy that goes up there and just asks them out, makes a filthy comment or propositions them, there’s another creepier guy that goes up to them and makes a light-hearted joke like “don’t you get cold?” because that way they think they’ll come across as sympathetic and nice and not a slobbering oaf and so might get to fuck them. It’s two sides of the same coin. There’s probably one or two genuine people there that really are just trying to be nice, but there’s no way the girl can tell them apart and so no booth babe is ever going to end up making friends with a convention attendee. It’s far too much of a mine-field; given the vast majority of men talking to them will just want to get in to their pants. Especially the ones acting like they don’t.

The nicest thing we can do is objectify them. That’s what they’re there for. That’s their job. Be polite, be courteous, treat them the same way you would anyone else, and enjoy the view. They’re wearing that skimpy bikini because they want to attract your eyes: first to their boobs, then hopefully to the product. This crazy idea espoused by some that we shouldn’t enjoy what’s being shown to us, and that they will avert their eyes in the face of cleavage, I find frankly unbelievable. I like looking at boobs. So does every other straight male on the planet. I don’t apologise for this, and when presented with a situation were boobs, legs, and pretty faces are all being presented to catch my attention, with a clear invitation to view, I’ll have a good look. So will everyone else. Even if it doesn’t work in getting us to look at a product we’d have otherwise passed by.

This is what annoys me the most about these male internet feminists that have cropped up in all these comments threads. All men like looking at attractive women. They all like it more when said woman is wearing skimpy clothing. That’s not objectifying women, that’s normal. The aesthetics of it make us smile and the sexy element turns us on just enough to be pleasant but not embarrassing. It’s if we start judging women only on those looks, outside of this very limited context, that makes it objectification. The vast majority of us can tell the difference.

It worries me that some men seemingly find it necessary to emasculate themselves, to refuse to look at booth babes, to argue that they should be covered up. To me, that sounds more like misogyny – to deny a woman from profiting from the fact that she’s hot. I wonder if they’re the equivalent of the guy that pretends to be nice and friendly to pull the booth babe. But it’s an internet comments thread on a gaming blog; I doubt any booth babes are reading.

I like to see myself as something of a feminist. There are clear issues, even in the western world, with male-female equality. In less developed countries it’s far worse. We should draw attention to this and do something about it. But if being a feminist means cutting of my penis and pretending I don’t enjoy looking at hot girls in skimpy clothes then I have to pass, as I can’t bring myself to be that much of a hypocrite.

Minchin said it best
Dean thought this was a lot of text, but felt that putting up a bunch of booth babe photos to break it up would undermine his point somewhat

Dean Love : 16 Aug 2009 19:47 |  Tags: Comedy Games Politics |  Comments (3) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Dublin Travelogue

A strange thing happens when you travel somewhere with a different currency (so for us in the UK, anywhere). You might know the exchange rate, but you can’t quite do the maths exactly in your head, so when you see something you want, your brain is able to convince you that it’s a bit cheaper than it is. It automatically rounds down, to make you feel better about it.

Thing is, the current exchange rate of Euros to Sterling is around 1:1. It’s closer to 1.1:1 but once you factor in commission it may as well be the same. That’s bad enough in itself: it means everything is about 30% more expensive than it is back here. But it also means the cost of everything is easy to work out: if it costs €4 then it will cost £4. There’s no fooling the brain: not only is everything more expensive, but you’re quite acutely aware of the fact.

Arriving into Dublin airport on Ryan Air from Birmingham, we head over to the town centre. It’s an oddity of Dublin, that despite an extensive tram system, coupled with good rail-links and specialised rail services like the DART, to get from or to the airport requires a bus.

We’re staying at the City Centre Apartments which are run by the Browns Hostel and located around the back of the Hostel itself. The apartment is wonderfully spacious, with a balcony (with a view of… other balconies), lounge/kitchen, large bedroom… the whole place is really nice and clean, and staying there Monday to Thursday we got a really good deal on it. Far, far better than a hotel if you don’t want (or can’t afford) luxuries like room service or on-site restaurants. It also meant we could prepare our own food which cut down on costs a lot, even if Tesco was still expensive-ish. Also, the fridge was broken, we had to put stuff in the freezer section to chill it, and we couldn’t freeze anything at all.

One oddity of Dublin was that it was nigh on impossible to find fruit cordial. That is, fruit juice that you dilute with water. I drink massive amounts of it, but it took searching about seven Tescos and Spars to find any, which was a little bizarre.

Our first few days were spent wondering Dublin town and finding interesting shops and things. Butler’s Chocolate Cafe seems to be the Ireland equivalent of Thorntons, but with nicer chocolate. Mmm. We were also ripped off at a bar, but then saw a comedy show for free there which was good, though I can’t remember his name.
We also had a look at the archaeology museum, which had wonderful classical mosaics on the floor, which the museum had seemingly gone to great lengths to cover up. That is, most of the visible floor was just blank filler, then every time there was a scene it was covered up almost entirely by a display case holding pots or such.

Wednesday was the reason I justified the whole trip in the first place: a James gig. At a small venue called the Academy (thankfully nothing to do with the UK Academy venues), we turned up at 7 and had to wait two hours for the band to come on, with no support act. Considering you could have got a local acoustic act to play for about the price we paid for two tickets to the show that was pretty bad form. Still, the band were great, even if the soundman seemed to have turned the volume up to 11. We got a new song (Shine), an old song (Dream Thrum), Johnny Yen to open, nearly all the hits and Stutter to close. They were certainly good but it really felt like a re-tread of last years arena tour. The lack of new tracks was understandable: as a festival warm-up they’d be practising the hits. The real disappointment was that none of the old tracks had been re-worked, no new arrangements, etc. That might seem like a strange complaint but the reason us fans go back to gigs year after year is because the band generally change things up so much. Still, it was fun, but not the highlight of the trip.

The next day we hopped on the Dart down to Dalkey, a small coastal village with an old castle. The castle gave ‘living history’ tours, so we were guided around by characters from medieval history, including an archer, cook and barber-surgeon.

We were grouped with a whole part of French people, and think at times we were the only ones with any clue what was going on, but nevertheless it was a great experience and well worth the €6. We then wondered along the coast to Coliemore Harbour, where on sunnier days you can get a boat over to Dalkey Island. We were content to just admire it from a distance.

Friday we first visited Dublinia , an interactive Viking exhibition. It’s laid out somewhat strangely, with a basic introduction on the ground floor that doesn’t cover things in much detail, but gives a brief overview. Then on the second floor the same things are covered again (albeit with a greater focus on historical Dublin) but in more detail, with smaller text on the info boards and a lot more writing.

There’s also a fun Viking fair where you can play games and dress up or wear a big chain mail headpiece. Then on the next floor up there’s a seemingly entirely unrelated archaeology exhibition which wasn’t all that interesting.

From there we head over to Dublin Castle. Dublin Castle is an odd one, as there’s not much of a castle left standing, and the buildings built in its place are still used today as rooms of state. The guided tour starts with a trip around the interior rooms, opulent bed chambers, dining halls and such. That they are so big, beautiful and impressive is less amazing than the fact that they’re still being used today for state visits, meetings and so forth.

The tour then moves under the castle to look at an excavation of the old castle foundations, with the remains of an old river still running through them, which was fascinating. We also had a look at the tax office museum, one of the strangest museums I’ve ever been too, that featured an interactive video-game where you had to search a boat for contraband. Bizarre.

From here we headed to Swords, as we were booked into a Travelodge closer to the airport for the last night. Swords is another strange place. We wondered into there at about 8pm at night to look for cheap fast food, and it was pretty quiet along what appeared to be the main high street, but we noticed a shopping centre that was still open. It looked new, with most of the units unoccupied, until we rounded a corner and it opened out into a huge shopping centre, with all sorts of shops, about three supermarkets, a cinema, and what could well have been the entire residence of the village, as the place was still open at 9pm, and pretty busy.

We didn’t stay out long, the net effect of four days walking around and standing up only a week after spending five days walking around and standing up in a field in Somerset being that our legs and feet were complaining quite loudly. The Travelodge at Swords was fine, and a nice enough place to spend the last night before heading over the airport on Saturday and flying back to Birmingham. We narrowly avoided having a long walk from the airport to the train station, as the monorail connecting the two had just been re-opened after the rather nasty weather of earlier in the day.

A great trip, marred somewhat by the huge expense of everything, meaning some more interesting looking things were out of our price range, but given we got 5 nights accommodation and flights for about £120 each it was pretty good value.

photos by Hannah Ross

Dean Love : 18 Jul 2009 19:47 |  Tags: Music Travel |  Comments (5) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Off to Glastonbury

Right, I’m off to Glastonbury, well, today I guess. I’ll be updating via Twitter on that side bar over there JUST LIKE I DID LAST YEAR before every other Tom and Mary started tweeting. I can’t follow Twitter from my phone though, it’s so old. So if you have something pressing to say @deanlove just text me directly.

Dean Love : 24 Jun 2009 02:04 |  Tags: Festival |  Comments (12) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Glastonbury Caberet Tent Preview

Cabaret Tent Preview

Wanted to write this once the full line-up was out, but it’s Monday night and we still only have the ‘highlights’ from the Guardian Guide, so I’m going to have to write it off of that. Full listings will be in the programme but do drop by the tent every morning and check the chalk-boards outside for up-to-date times and any changes, as it tends to be pretty fluid.

Friday:

Early Edition – Marcus Brigstocke, Andre Vincent, Phill Jupitus and Carrie Quinlan. They generally talk about current affairs, but with this being Glastonbury there’s a good chance they’ll be talking about the festival instead, given most of us are cut-off from newspapers and TV for five days. Could be a lot of fun, definitely recommend this.

_Attila the Stockbroker _ – Lefty poet and singer/songwriter. He’s good but can be a bit heavy on the rhetoric and full of himself sometimes. Still worth checking out though. Don’t be put off by the word ‘poet’ – he’s genuinely funny with it.

Steve Gribbin – Ace musical comic. Also quite left wing but in a sillier way.

Robert Llewellyn – Yeah, Kryton off of Red Dwarf. Haven’t seen his stand-up though.

Ed Byrne – Funny Irish man. You’ve probably seen him on TV at some point. Very funny guy, straight-forward stand-up.

Rhythm Wave – Dancers. Not funny at all but very impressive.

Simon Munnery – Avant-garde comic, very random and clever stuff. If you’re already drunk at this point you probably won’t get the jokes, but if you’re still with it he will make you feel very clever.

Jeff Green – Again, a very funny, straight-forward joke teller.

Andre Vincent – Crazy stories and such. Not seen him much recently but he’s generally worth a punt.

Andrew Lawrence – A personal favourite. Dark, disturbing stories and songs.

Tom Stade – Funny Canadian man – again, haven’t seen him in a few years now.

Full Mooners – Andrew Maxwell presenting a bunch of comics while wearing a cape and howling at the moon. The idea of Full Mooners is that anything goes, it’s meant to be shocking and crazy and such. Well worth seeing.

Saturday
Aisle 16 – A ‘Poetry Boy Band’. If you think you don’t like poetry, check these guys out. They might change your mind.

Kevin Eldon – Character comedy from the actor Kevin Eldon. You might remember him from the old Lee and Herring shows (or even the recent Stewart Lee show, or Bill Bailey’s last DVD)

Jeremy Hardy – Clever comedy from a Radio 4 stalwart.

Mitch Benn – The king of musical comedy, a Glasto institution, he’s been doing this so long he practically has a set of stories just about Glastonbury to go with the very funny songs.

4 Poofs and a Piano – Jonathan Ross’s house band, they’re actually very good and very funny and worth seeing.

Arthur Smith – A true legend of comedy. Last year he came on and just did Leonard Cohen songs in between telling jokes.

We Are Klang! – I love these guys. The best sketch comedy out there, bar-none. They will have you pissing yourself and singing about a council estate. And they clash with the Boss. Damn.

Phil Kay – A total nutter. Go see him and you’ll get one of two things: an utter shambles that just falls apart, or the best thing you’ll see all weekend.

Phil Nichol – “I’m the only gay eskimo….”. He also does jokes and stories. Very very good.

Brendon Burns – You probably heard the story. Years ago he gave out free magic mushrooms to the whole tent to get a thousand people high in order to prove the existance of god and forgive his ex-girlfriend. These days he tends to mostly stick to doing stand-up instead, and is bloody good at it.

Sunday

Murray Lachlan Young – A very funny poet. Again, you might think you won’t like it. But you will.

John Otway – fuck yeah! We thought he wasn’t going to be on, and it looks like just one show this year (instead of the usual 6 or so, unless he’s doing the outdoor circus stage too). Rock and Roll’s most successful failure, a two-hit wonder that refuses to get old. Watch it. Serious. Watch it.

Robin Ince – Terrific clever stand-up from one of the best acts on the circuit. Shouldn’t be missed.

Get Up Stand Up – I believe they have political activist and comic Mark Thomas (who should not be missed) and Ivan Brakenbury, who’ll be bringing his hospital radio show to Glastonbury. He is also awesome and great for music lovers.

Josie Long – Funny, witty, oddball – and the sweetest act you’ll see all festival. You’ll laugh, then you’ll want to be her friend.

Ian Cognito – The polar opposite – Rude, offensive, shocking but equally brilliant.

Glenn Wool – Brilliant Canadian story-teller.

Spymonkey – Apparently they’re some physical theatre group. I don’t know them, but wanted to moan that the Cabaret Tent isn’t being closed by either Woody Bop Muddy or Phil Nichol by the looks of this. I want to throw rice at someone at the end of Glastonbury or at least sing about gay eskimos…

Also look out for:
Ben Goldacre @ Speakers Forum. He writes the Bad Science column for The Guardian and is amusing as he is enlightening.

Steve Frost Improv Allstars @ Theatre Tent – Phil Jupitus and others make up funny sketches from scenarios suggested by the audience. You’ll be amazed by the speed of their wit.

Dean Love : 23 Jun 2009 02:35 |  Tags: Comedy Festival |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Seetickets – Meet the proffesionals

Anyone that’s ever tried to get tickets for a hugely popular tour or festival will be aware of how awful Seetickets’ system for handling events attracting loads of buyers is. In short, there is no system. You just get locked out and have to keep refreshing. Because why bother creating a system to handle it when it only happens 5 or 6 times a year. It’s the same reason most UK businesses don’t have air conditioning.

But there’s another company out there. They’re a video games company, and they run their own convention. It’s hugely popular, and loads more people want to go every year than there are tickets available. Last year was a disaster, as the sheer volume of people brought down the servers, tickets were allocated unfairly and lots of people got very upset. So this year they’re implementing a new queue system, designed to offer tickets on a first-come, first-served basis without crashing the servers. So far, so pedestrian. Ticket Master have used a queue system for a while but in busy times it’s often difficult to even get in the queue, or it stalls, etc. So why will this be any different?

Well the company involved is Blizzard who just so happen to also run a small game called World of Warcraft, the biggest online game in the world. Few companies have more experience in dealing with large numbers of multiple different connections from thousands of people simultaneously. It’s their raison-detre so I’m fascinated to see exactly how they solve this problem that has plagued companies like See for years, and perhaps we’ll finally get some software that can handle these sort of numbers and be licensed out to other ticketing sites in the future.

Dean Love : 07 May 2009 00:06 |  Comments (3) |  Close comments |  Report a problem