Older Guys

Well, here it is; the final cultural comment blog of the year. With only Euros Childs live at The Mining Institute on December 10^th to go, it’s more than unlikely I’ll have any other reason to delineate my consumption of artefacts, other than the usual best of year tables, due late December. Since I last spoke with you, there have only been 2 gigs for me to visit and 1 album to buy, as well as a trip to an art gallery in Leeds and one solitary book.

If we deal with that sole tangible musical item first of all, you’ll not be surprised to learn it is the latest wholesome, understated pop gem from that man Euros Childs. After last year’s solo and mainly instrumental Eilaaig, he has returned to the tried and trusted Roogie Boogie Band line up of Stu Kidd, Marco Rea and Laura J Martin that served him so well(greens?) on 2012’s Summer Special and the year after’s Situation Comedy, though it’s the more serious elements of the latter than the knockabout fun of the former that sets the prevalent mood here. The particularly poignant interplay between Euros’s piano, Julia’s flute and the sweet Scotch harmonies of Stu and Marco gives the album a pure and pastoral quality, on such numbers as Christmas in Love and Lady Caroline. However there are a couple of bona fide good time mid 70s rockers , in the shape of notional single Fruit and Veg and what is fast becoming my favourite album track, Julia Sky. I really can’t wait to see the fella and his pals next week.

The annual Euros album is not the only thing to set your watch by, as autumn fades to winter; there are the compulsory live appearances by The Wedding Present and Vic Godard to look forward to. This year, The Wedding Present broke from recent custom and practice, by not doing an album in its entirety, but rather by playing a set containing several new cuts from 2016’s impending release and a rake of old classics, in an 80 minute set that was presumably an extended warm-up for their performance at some Butlins indie weekender in Minehead the day after. Next year, they’re doing a short tour of Saturnalia, which we hope to see at Brudenell Social Club (Ben’s exams notwithstanding), which explained the presence of the gorgeously sordid Skin Diving in the set. There were plenty of other classics too; Dalliance, Kennedy and My Favourite Dress when the band were on superb form. Rather unexpectedly, there’s another chance to see them in Newcastle next spring, as they’ve accepted the support slot for The Wonderstuff. I’ll be there for them, but out the door long before Miles Hunt takes the stage. Really looking forward to the album and hoping Gedge has got the less than inspiring Cinerama project out of his system again.

Vic Godard; what can you say? Well, the annual Newcastle show came round again. Last year was possibly the worst time I’d seen him, not that the gig was bad, just that the endless problems with technological malfunctions, late running sets and an element of drunken bores in the audience who seemed to think we’d all turned out to see them dance left a sour taste, especially as it was Ben’s first time of seeing him since he was 9 (Ben, not Vic). We left early last year; not this time though. It was the best I’ve seen Vic and a brilliant night in the ever adorable Cumberland Arms. First support were El Cid; youngsters who would love to be Buffalo Springfield; Martin Stephenson’s daughter on bass and Taffy Hughes’ lad on guitar, vocals, fringed suede jacket and winklepickers. Nature versus nurture? You decide, but I loved them and can’t wait to see them again.

Next up, about half an hour late, were Post; featuring a lad from The Sexual Objects and someone who appeared to be David Luiz on guitar. They started off in a kind of Krautrock meets Fire Engines groove and then switched, seamlessly, to 3 set closers that were almost undiscovered demos from Howdy era TFC. I enjoyed them enormously, but not as much as I loved Vic. A superb band that reads him telepathically (and can tune his guitar for him between numbers) and a brilliant set that ranged across the 40 years of his career kept the whole audience enthusiastically on message. No Chain Smoking or Different Story tonight, but Nobody’s Scared, Best Album in the World and Ambition all deserved Oscars. The whole evening helped along by a superb DJ set by Johny Brown. Who’d have thought we’d all have ended up on the dancefloor cutting a rug to L’il Louis’s French Kiss at the end of the night? A wonderful night with wonderful people.

I love Joan Cornella’s cartoons; they’re sick, disturbing and utterly hilarious in the way they endlessly break the barriers of taste, decency and social etiquette. On a day trip down to Leeds to take Ben to Bradford City v Crewe Alexandra and to eat curry, we started our day with a visit to the Cornella exhibition at the Leeds City Gallery. In point of fact, I’d seen every one of the cartoons on display before, but did not expect the intense effect of seeing them full size and up close. Dazzling colours, the depth of the painting and the sheer expanse of his vision in one place, made for a wonderful, disorientating, slightly queasy experiment. The eyes of that chicken will haunt me forever….

In contrast to the quality and quantity of music I’ve been exposed to, I’ve only read one book since last time, Aidan Williams’ Worst in the World about countries that have languished at the bottom of FIFA’s international rankings since the system was devised. It’s fair to say this is an American Samoa of a book.  One of the main problems with any factual work, other than academic texts of course, is that the facts are already in the public domain, however obscure the subject. As regards football writing under such circumstances, authors are generally faced with an insurmountable problem when attempting to find new angles on a particular subject; the famous ones have been done to death and the hitherto unknown ones, probably justifiably, don’t present enough information for evaluation, analysis and interpretation beyond the superficial level. Consequently, the best football writing seeks to get under the skin of the subject and present it with unflagging, brutal honesty, such as Eamon Dunphy’s account of his time with Milwall, Only A Game?, or Roddy Doyle’s masterfully ghostwritten book on Roy Keane, that put the sound of Mayfield’s most notorious son, right in your head from the opening sentence.

Alternatively, great football writers may seek to find a way of putting themselves into the work, almost like an amalgam of the naïve, self-reflexive, narrator as facilitator, persona used to such effect by Louis Theroux and Nick Broomfield. This is certainly true of some of my favourite football books; Harry Pearson’s The Far Corner, Tim Parks’ A Season with Verona, the late and much-missed Joe McGinniss’s superb The Miracle of Castel di Sangro and, most presciently, Charlie Connelly’s I Just Can’t Help Believing, a study of relegation and its effects on supporters, and Stamping Grounds, a history of football in Liechtenstein.

What makes Connelly’s two book so successful is the personal touch evident; he attended games and met people, talked to them, introduced the reader to them. As a reader, you could picture the sounds, the smells and the sights of games he depicted, from Vaduz to Brunton Park and back again. In many ways, these books became quasi-autobiographical as Connelly’s enthusiasm and compassion for his subjects, changed and improved him as a person. His conclusions were as much for himself as the clubs and countries he visited.

Sadly Aidan Williams has utterly failed to engage with his subjects. While the idea of following the fortunes and travails of the various countries that ended at the very bottom of FIFA’s international standings: American Samoa, San Marino, Bhutan, Monserrat, is both laudable and intriguing, the actual end product is an unengaging trawl through games and statistics, augmented by some Wikipedia level historical and cultural contextualisation. What becomes blatantly obvious, without even consulting the 160 references that add flesh to the paltry 140 pages of text, is that Williams neither attended any of the games he describes, nor did he talk directly to any of those he quotes.

Worst in the World is not plagiarism, but it is synoptic precis masquerading as research. On finishing the book, my instinct was to seek out the films The Other Final (Bhutan versus Monserrat on the same day as the 2002 World Cup final) and Next Goal Wins, the story of American Samoa’s attempts to recover from their infamous 31-0 battering by Australia. I feel it must be on celluloid rather than the pages of this book, where the true account of life at the bottom of FIFA’s rankings is to be found.