All entries for October 2009

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