You Want Noodles With That?

On the face of it, it is difficult to see any similarity between the Eurovision Song Contest and prog rock. On the one hand  Eurovision makes us think of artists like Cliff Richard, Dana and Engelbert Humperdink; when we consider prog rock, we associate it with bands like Genesis, Yes and Pink Floyd. Not much commonality there, except that of all music's genres (and I think that we can call Eurovision a genre all of its own), these two come in for more derision than most others. While I'm no fan of Eurovision, it appears that plenty of people enjoy it, so who am I to knock it? Those who dislike prog seem to have no such qualms, however.

I know what I like............

Critics of prog, and there have always been many, will mock it for concept albums with pretentious or incomprehensible lyrics; for long, complex songs replete with self indulgent guitar, keyboard and drum solos. They will sneer at the live shows where the caped keyboard player is hidden behind banks of instruments and the lead singer wears some outlandish costume; they will scoff at the extravagant stage performances, complete with laser light show and other assorted pyrotechnics and effects. Throw in a Roger Dean or Hipgnosis album cover and the critics have all the ammunition they need. In the days when I read the New Musical Express, some music critic or another would periodically throw all of these criticisms and more into a review of an album or live show, but when the critics of prog get desperate they call it boring and they usually mention the noodling. Technically, noodling in a musical context is to improvise music on an instrument in an idle, haphazard fashion, for instance when talking to the audience between songs when the guitarist may play some fairly random stuff, but in a prog context it is sometimes used to describe some of the more complex instrumental pieces that its critics so abhor. Personally I rather like the noodling.

.........and I like what I know.

My introduction to prog rock was not particularly auspicious. I was at school when I first heard Close to The Edge by Yes on the record player in the sixth form block and the first time I heard it I thought it was messy, noisy rubbish[1]. It didn't improve when I heard it a second time, or a third for that matter, but by the time I had heard it once a day for about two months it was growing on me! It was here that I was also introduced to albums such as Wish You Were Here, Foxtrot, Selling England by the Pound, Fragile and In The Court Of The Crimson King. From then on a major proportion of my record collection was prog and the first live show I saw was Genesis on their Wind and Wuthering tour.

Not an album by Gilbert O'Sullivan

Over the years my musical tastes diversified and then in the 1980's, when bands like Yes and particularly Genesis took a more commercial, poppy route (they were heavily criticised for that, both by their detractors and by many fans) it appeared that prog had gone the way of the dinosaurs. Or had it?

Fast forward to the early years of the 21st century and my music collection appeared to have become stuck in a time warp. I went through a period of at least two years when I bought no new music at all; indeed if I bought anything it would be really old stuff that I had owned on vinyl before my record collection went off to a charity sale to be replaced by CDs. I still had my old prog music, but hadn't bought anything new for years, frankly I didn't think that there was any new prog until one day, idly rummaging around MySpace (remember that?) I came across a section labelled "Progressive." I took a look out of curiosity and the first thing that struck me was that I didn't recognise the names of any of the bands. One name in particular stood out, so the first new prog song that I had heard in perhaps a decade was Arriving Somewhere But Not Here by Porcupine Tree. It was like an epiphany and from that moment my interest in prog rock was rekindled. Then I saw Porcupine Tree play live at the Indig02 on their Fear of a Blank Planet tour, and just to prove that prog rock is not all middle aged men in Yes t-shirts, the audience comprised a wide range of ages and in fact included my elder daughter (then just seventeen).

Since that moment I have discovered a whole host of other bands that I was previously ignorant of, like Riverside, Spocks Beard, Big Big Train, The Watch, Beardfish, Kino, Frost*, Galahad and RPWL to name but a few and Muse, who are pretty mainstream in most people's eyes, but have often been described as prog. Most of the new music that I have come across I have enjoyed immensely, although inevitably there has been a clunker or two (for instance I could not get into The Mars Volta {just plain weird} and some of the American bands that are more metal than prog in my view). And that is where prog is much more diverse than it was in 1975; nowadays there are whole sub-genres such as prog metal, symphonic prog, neo-prog and the like.

There is still a place for the old stuff however and to prove it, Steve Hackett has been touring and playing old Genesis material under the banner of Genesis Revisited 2013. I saw the show at the Hammersmith Odeon recently (yes, I know it's the hmv Apollo now, but to me it will always be the Hammersmith Odeon and remains my favourite music venue) and from the opening chords of Watcher of the Skies to the show closing Supper's Ready and the encore of Firth of Fifth and Los Endos, it was brilliant stuff. It has to be said however, that the audience was all of a certain age and the only surprise was that there were no Zimmer frames in evidence! Still, we all remembered the acapella opening to Dancing With The Moonlight Knight, which was sung with gusto by the whole audience. Not everyone agrees however; there is a pretty spiteful review by Ian Gittins in The Guardian that reinforces all the prejudices people have about prog rock.

Steve Hackett and band at Hammersmith, May 2013

Although the critics may feel that prog takes itself too seriously, I don't believe this to be true. In fact I think that it has sufficient sense of humour that a UK prog rock entry in next year's Eurovision Song Contest might be fun; in fact it might be even more fun if there were a prog rock version of Eurovision, say with Riverside representing Poland, The Flower Kings for Sweden, The Watch for Italy and in keeping with the ages of the UK's last two Eurovision contestants, the seventy seven year old Engelbert and the sixty two year old Bonnie Tyler, perhaps Steve Hackett and Chris Squire could reprise a song from their recent album Squackett as our entry. Since I doubt that either Terry Wogan or Graham Norton are particularly fans of prog, I suggest that Whispering Bob Harris could compere.

The more I think of it, the more I like the idea of a Eurovision Prog Rock Song Contest, and let’s face it, it would delight many music critics too, their two most detested genres together in one package!

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[1] We had three other albums in permanent residence, Led Zeppelin IV, Abbey Road by The Beatles and a Gilbert O’Sullivan LP. I’ll leave you to guess which one was played the least.

Wigan..... Keeping Romance Alive.

Whether it was by innocent coincidence or mischievous design, Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement as manager of Manchester United last week deflected attention from last Saturday’s FA Cup final involving United’s “noisy neighbours” from the Blue half of Manchester. In fact the FA Cup final had been so little on my mind that it was only on the morning of the game that I realised that it was taking place that day. In years gone by there would have been no chance of my not realising that it was cup final day, but these days a combination of factors have made what was once such a significant date in the football calendar now little more than a footnote in the season.

Traditionally, and we football fans love our traditions, the FA Cup final took place after the conclusion of the league season. Moving the date so that a full Premier League programme was scheduled for the same weekend and moving the kick-off to 5.15 has marginalised the final and while in days of yore the fact that the final was one of a very limited number of games that were televised live, the fact that there are now just so many live games on television means it simply doesn’t have the impact that it once did for the neutral.

The first FA Cup final that I watched was in 1968 when West Bromwich Albion beat Everton. In the following years FA Cup final day had a particular routine. Television coverage began at ten o’clock, a full five hours of build up on both the BBC and ITV, who both showed the game. Pre-match analysis interspersed with cup final themed editions of It’s A Knockout, Mastermind and the like, I watched it all. The teams leaving their hotels, highlights of their games en route to Wembley, the cameras on the coach, flicking from one channel to another to catch the best bits, football fans of a certain age will all have their memories of it. Then the game itself, which I habitually watched on the BBC because then as now ITV really don’t do sport as well as the Beeb, no matter how hard they try, with the match programme (purchased in WH Smith) on my lap. Often the game itself didn’t match the build up; I saw a number of somewhat tame matches, but the novelty of live football on TV meant that that didn’t really matter.

The programme for the first FA Cup final that I watched.

As I got older, cup final day routine changed to meeting friends in a pub before watching the game itself at someone’s house, those being the days when the pubs closed at half past two so no chance of watching the game there.

Nowadays I rarely watch the cup final. The fact that the game itself is often disappointing and the fact that I have other things I ought to be doing mean that I’m more likely to content myself with the highlights later in the evening.

So, has the FA Cup lost its magic? Certainly the final has (for me at least), although despite the best efforts of the FA and some Premier League clubs, the earlier rounds still retain the qualities that make it the best domestic club competition in the world. Although the requirement to finish ties at the end of the first replay at the latest is understandable, the old days when two or three, or more replays were required to decide a winner were part of the romance of the competition which I for one miss. Memorably, Alvechurch and Oxford City needed six replays in 1971 and five were needed by Arsenal and Sheffield Wednesday in 1979. Imagine the consternation that number of extra games would cause among Premier League managers today!

Danny Blanchflower memorably said, "The great fallacy is that the game is first and last about winning. It is nothing of the kind. The game is about glory, it is about doing things in style and with a flourish, about going out and beating the other lot, not waiting for them to die of boredom." If there is one competition that epitomises glory it is the FA Cup (or should that be “The FA Cup with Budweiser” as it is now almost an offence not to include the sponsor’s name when talking about the FA Cup, another example of the way the game has changed that may be pragmatic but is nonetheless saddening).

The FA Cup

A bottle of beer

The history of the FA Cup is littered with glorious giantkillings; the names of clubs like Yeovil Town, Hereford United and Altrincham are as synonymous with competition as those of Manchester United or Arsenal. Sutton United beating cup holders Coventry City, Colchester United beating Leeds United, Wrexham beating Arsenal, the glory of those victories for those clubs outweighed anything else; the fact that we remember them so many years later shows how significant they were.

If Blanchflower were alive today, he might more cynically say that the fallacy is that the game is about winning; rather the game is about money. Winning the Premier League is worth £15 million; just staying in the division is worth £3 million. Manchester City’s cup run was worth £2.4 million, not an insignificant sum, but to put it in perspective that just about covers the gross pay of someone like Carlos Tevez for three and a half months. Little wonder then that some Premier League sides are happy to field under strength sides in the FA Cup and shed few tears on elimination when the riches of the Premier League, particularly if Champions League qualification can be gained, are so great.

There is still magic in the FA Cup in the early rounds. When the competition begins the cricket season is still in full swing and while the clubs who start in the Extra Preliminary Round know that they have no chance of ever getting to Wembley, there is still glory to be had in any win in the competition, particularly against a club from a higher standard. And then, as the competition progresses the dream for all non-League sides is the opportunity to play Football League, or better yet, Premier League opposition. For supporters of clubs in Leagues One and Two, there is the dream of a draw against Chelsea, or Arsenal, or Manchester United. The day that those dreams lose their lustre will be the day that the FA Cup dies.

If for no other reason than the fact that it maintained the FA Cup’s allure, it was wonderful to see Wigan Athletic beat Manchester City last Saturday. A non-League club as recently as 1978 and a Premier League side only since 2005[1], The Latics did their bit to ensure that Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement was not the only headline in the papers last weekend, despite the best efforts of Manchester United and the media, AF still could not quite upstage the FA (Cup)!

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[1] Wigan’s tenure in the Premier League came to an end three days after the cup final when they lost 4-1 at Arsenal and were relegated to the Championship.

Derren Brown is Infamous

in·fa·mous  [adjective]

Notorious, disreputable, ill-famed, of ill repute, legendary, fabled.

In his new stage show, Infamous, Derren Brown claims that he wishes to be exactly that, infamous. Not one assumes as disreputable or of ill repute, but certainly legendary or fabled, although if he were to put his talents to nefarious use I'm sure he could do so quite easily! I was fortunate enough to see the show recently and although this is a review of sorts, I won’t be going into detail on what the show comprises as the audience were especially asked not to do so and I’m sure that if any of you intend seeing the show, you wouldn’t want me to.

What I can tell you is that even having seen Derren on television, both some of his recorded stage shows and experiments, I was unprepared for how good this show would be. As you are probably familiar with his work I won’t try and describe it, though he says himself that his act combines "magic, suggestion, psychology, misdirection and showmanship,” which sums it up nicely. His shows frequently see him reveal information about members of his audience which make him appear to be psychic, although however he does it he is not a psychic; in fact he is possibly an anti-psychic, claiming no such powers and he is in fact a frequent debunker of those who claim such talents.

A common theme that runs though all of Derren Brown’s work is the power of the mind. On stage that is his mind, controlling and misdirecting to achieve his illusions but it is also the power of the minds of his subjects in which he is interested. He is clear that he does not wish to manipulate people's real-life decisions or belief systems; rather how can they alter the way their minds work to achieve more positive outcomes.

Although I've not included specific references to the content of Infamous, in the following paragraphs these is some detail of some of Brown's previous works by way of examples, which I don't believe should spoil these shows for anyone as they've been on TV and on DVD for some time, although if you've not seen The Assassin or Fear and Faith, and want to keep them as a surprise, you might want to skip to the penultimate paragraph, but please come back and read the rest once you've watched the shows!

Of all of Derren’s  TV “experiments” quite my favourite is The Assassin in which an unsuspecting member of the public “assassinates” Stephen Fry but is completely unaware that he has done so. To describe the technique which is used to achieve this as hypnosis does not do it justice, this is programming a human being. The show tests the conspiracy theory that Sirhan Sirhan assassinated Senator Robert Kennedy under hypnosis on orders from the CIA or similar agency and was further programmed to have no recollection of the events. It appears to be compelling in proving that this is possible, although it is in no way proof that Sirhan Sirhan was hypnotised. Like all good conspiracy theories, any denial of the fact that Robert Kennedy was assassinated as a result of CIA activity will be assumed by the supporters of the theory as evidence that their ideas are correct.

In Fear and Faith, Brown takes a group of people with various fears and phobias and tells them that a new wonder drug will conquer these fears and phobias. The drug, Rumyodin (Your Mind) is a placebo; the participants overcome their fears and phobias, such as fear of confrontation or phobia of heights, through the power of their own minds. It is powerful stuff and there is no doubt that Derren Brown’s techniques worked, although some of it left me uneasy. The participant who had crippling social anxiety and a fear of conflict and confrontation was placed in a variety of situations in which such confrontations occurred. The other participants in these situations were actors; obviously their reactions were predetermined by Derren Brown himself whereas in real-life situations the actions of others would be unpredictable and potentially violent. My fear was that the young man who was participating in this part of the show could have become involved in some dangerous positions in real life where no actors were involved. There being no evidence that this did happen, I hope that my fears are ill founded.

Our minds are like muscles; they need to be exercised but the ways in which we tend to exercise them are predictable; our minds like to find patterns in randomness. In Fear and Faith a young woman is told she has been selected to take part in a TV show, Intervention and that actors will interact with her. She keeps a video diary and describes these interventions, but as you probably guessed, there is no show, and there are no actors. The woman ascribes the random events that occur as part of her normal life to her interactions with these fictitious actors. Her mind has found patterns where none exist; the mere suggestion that these would occur caused her to look for things that simply were not there. The challenge here is to dispute the evidence of our own minds and to look beyond the obvious.

And that, challenging the evidence of our own eyes, is how to approach Infamous. Much of what Derren Brown does on stage is explicable; in fact much of it he explains for us. The rest however much it must have an explanation, is unfathomable (well it was to me at least), but what is required is a dose of realism as Brown himself says, “I happily admit cheating, as it's all part of the game. I hope some of the fun for the viewer comes from not knowing what's real and what isn't.”

Ultimately Infamous is entertainment, and excellent entertainment at that. The show is currently touring and comes to London in June, running till the end of August. If you have got tickets I am sure you will enjoy it and be entertained, mystified and awe struck by turns; if you haven’t got tickets I seriously recommend that you try and get some!

Virgin on the Ridiculous - Part Two

Regular readers, and it's gratifying to note that I have some, will recall the trials and tribulations that I had last year when I foolishly (as it turned out) signed up for Virgin Media. To recap, after a number of visits from various engineers, it was concluded that my address wasn't serviceable because there was no cable actually running into my property. To install the cabling the engineers would require access to my neighbour's garden and he expected to be paid £1,000 to give permission for that. As neither I nor Virgin were prepared to pay, that appeared to be the end of the matter. Having abandoned the idea of Virgin, I explored the idea of BT's fibre optic product Infinity, but it wasn't yet available in my area, so we struggled on with our existing broadband and its snail paced speeds of less than 2Mbps.

Then in March at the Ideal Home Show, my wife and I visited the Virgin Media stand, more out of devilment than anything else really. We gave them a cut down version of our experiences to date, but they were quite insistent that there would be no problem in our having Virgin Media installed. One of the ironies was that like us, one of the chaps working the stand told us that he regularly received mail from Virgin urging him to sign up, but he couldn't because his street had no cable at all. Anyway, we signed up and were given an installation date of 13th April. The absence of any cable running into our property was dismissed as a mere bagatelle; engineers would call on the preceding day to make good that omission (allegedly).

I have to say that I wasn't entirely filled with confidence, but hey ho, what was the worst that could happen?

A few days later, with immaculately poor timing, I received an email from my existing ISP (Plusnet) offering fibre optic broadband, which had just become available in my area. This created a dilemma; cancelling Virgin would cost me £25 but if I did nothing then either I would get Virgin, whose advertised speeds in my area weren't quite as good as Plusnet or more likely I would get my £25 back when Virgin admitted defeat. In the end I decided to let Virgin come and see what happened.

Events then took a different turn when we came back from a few days in Spain to find that our broadband had given up the ghost. I tried the usual remedial technique, i.e. turn the router off and on again, but with no joy. I phoned  Plusnet who went away and did some checks. The next day our broadband connection was spontaneously restored, although it crept along at speeds reminiscent of dial-up. To cut a long story short, it then gave up on us again and an engineer called, identified a problem on the line, which he fixed and we were up and running again, albeit still pretty slowly.

Virgin Media were still due to call just three days hence, but after some discussion we decided to cancel them and opt for Plusnet’s fibre optic broadband. When we phoned up to place the order we were offered their phone package too, and with that and the broadband together, it works out cheaper than our existing broadband and line rental with BT. And here's the thing with BT; I pay an extortionate amount each month to them so I phoned them recently querying this and having checked my bill later, find that I am over £100 in credit. This is one of those drawbacks of paying your bills by monthly Direct Debit; budgeting is easier but you often end up with large credit balances which is good for the company, but not so good for the payer!

I have to say that despite cancelling the appointments with Virgin, I had a sneaking feeling that they would still turn up and sure enough they arrived on Friday at half past five in the afternoon to install the cabling. Well that was their plan although quite how they intended to do this wasn't something they were very clear on. I was only slightly surprised that they didn't return the next day to actually try and install the TiVo box and broadband hub.

Having burned our bridges with Virgin, I had a horrible feeling that the engineer would arrive to install our fibre optic broadband, only to find some insuperable problem that would leave us stuck with the existing connection. As you can tell, I am not the most optimistic of people!

Fortunately the installation went ahead and I ran a speed test for the hell of it. Monday, pre fibre optic, download 1.6Mbps, upload 0.4Mbps; Tuesday, post fibre optic, 65Mbps and 15 Mbps respectively, somewhat surpassing the speeds offered by Virgin in my area. (See footnote). If my fascination with, and the pleasure I take in the speeds I am now getting seems a little immature, then I can only say that this is because I have been struggling these last few months with broadband speeds that have been positively antediluvian.

Of course it's early days and could yet go horribly wrong (I told you I wasn't an optimist) but I've been a Plusnet customer since dial up days back in the 1990’s and they've always been pretty good. This year they picked up the “Best Customer Rated Broadband” award from uSwitch, but if you search for reviews of their services on the Internet you will find lots of customers and ex customers complaining about them. Mind you, if you look for reviews of most service providers, be they energy companies, banks or media companies including ISP’s you will find plenty of negative comments. And there is the rub, because apparently when people receive poor service they tell, on average 19 people but tell on average fewer than three people when they receive good service. 

Human nature being what it is we relish the opportunity for a good old moan; when things go well we keep quiet for fear of jinxing it and inevitably expect this not to last so that soon we will have something to jolly well moan about!

Reviews and other people's experiences are valuable to a point, but ultimately the moral of the story with most things you have to trust your own judgement and experience; if it works for you, stick with it. If it doesn't, then give it the old heave ho.

And now I'm off to watch BBC iPlayer on the television, sans buffering, simply because now, I can!

Postscript: I originally intended publishing this piece a week ago, but held it back for two reasons. Firstly, the Luis Suarez incident suggested itself for a more topical blog, but secondly after my initial euphoria at the download speeds I was getting, they dropped to under 2Mbps. My pessimism appeared well founded. The cause was apparently a stuck speed profile which has been fixed, although at any sign of pages being slow to load, I am running a speed test!

Footnote: These speeds were gathered from uswitch.com, who apparently are a tad unreliable in this field. My ISP told me (when I was experiencing some difficulties), that the best broadband speed test is to be found here at BT Wholesale which showed me my speeds were 40Mbps download and 10Mbps upload; still not too shabby.