The Single Charted

Readers of a certain age will remember the days when come Sunday evening it was almost compulsory to sit down and listen to Radio 1 and the chart show. Many of you will doubtless remember the occasions when you listened to the show with finger poised over the "Record" button  of your radio-cassette player to tape your favourite chart hits. And how many times did Simon Bates or Tony Blackburn, or whoever, talk over the intro or as the song faded out? How many songs did you record where the beginning or end was cut off to avoid the DJ's chatter, or was accompanied by a loud "clunk" as the recording began or ended?

Time was when this was the most important thing in the record industry.

Aside from the fact that cassette recorders and the cassettes themselves have pretty much gone the way of public phone boxes and taking film to be developed at the chemist, can you really imagine today's teenagers sitting patiently in front of a radio and recording songs onto tape? No, me neither. Back in the day when taping music from the radio was commonplace we still went to Woolworths, or WH Smith, or any of the numerous chain or independent record shops and bought a single or two when we had the cash. Now the 45rpm, vinyl single is no more and record shops are few and far between. People still buy "singles" but the thrill of waiting for your favourite artist to release a new song, dashing down to your local record shop and hot-footing it home with seven inches of aural pleasure have gone. I'm not sure that downloading a song from iTunes and playing it on your iPod provides the same degree of satisfaction. Yes, you can download a song and play it immediately, on a whim almost, but there is no tangible disc to relish, no anticipation.

Fifty years ago most towns had innumerable record shops; thirty years ago they were still plentiful, but a combination of factors have reduced their numbers drastically. When I was younger, Romford had several independent record shops, Downtown Records, Silcocks and Wells Music Stores to name but three who supplemented the chain stores and record departments of other shops. Today Romford has a branch of HMV and not much else, although Sainsbury's and ASDA sell CDs, but little apart from the top twenty albums.

The decline in the number of record shops on our High Streets reflects the changes in the habits of the record buying public over recent years. Although the vinyl LP still has its aficionados, it is very much a niche product having been supplanted first by the CD and more latterly by the digital download. Fans of vinyl maintain that the quality is better than other formats and there is evidence to support this view. There is also a certain amount of comfort and ritual associated with listening to a vinyl LP that a CD or an mp3 cannot replicate, but for convenience there is no contest, particularly if you like your music to be portable.

In the days when the choice, if you wanted to buy an album, was between the twelve inch vinyl disc and a cassette, most people's preference would be for the LP and it wasn't entirely about the music either. Those glorious album covers and the gatefold sleeves made records works of visual as well as audible art, to the point where coffee table books were devoted to album covers, particularly the work of Roger Dean. Then in 1982, came the Compact Disc and although it was not until three years later, when Dire Straits sold one million copies of Brothers In Arms that it could truly be said that the CD had become a viable alternative to the LP, this was a landmark in the evolution of the way we listen to music. The Walkman made music on the move possible and the CD promised a better sound experience, although this argument is moot, but undoubtedly it removed the time limit that vinyl imposed allowing the sixty or seventy minute album to become the norm rather than the exception.

Roger Dean's art work for the cover for the Yes album Relayer.

Naturally CD players and the discs themselves provided manufacturers and record companies with a new income stream to exploit. Early CD players were expensive and so were the CDs themselves and there was a certain mystique created around the production of the discs. I remember being in the Virgin Megastore in Oxford Street during the early days of CDs and in the basement was a supposed CD production area. Built apparently as a "clean" room, it featured men in white coveralls appearing to be producing discs in a sterile atmosphere, subliminally creating the idea that this was a very technical process requiring the very highest standards that justified the fact that a CD could cost more than double the price of the LP equivalent. This was given the lie when newspapers began giving away free CDs at the weekend and by the fact that your average home PC now burns CDs in conditions that are rather less than  sterile without any apparent harm.

Since their early days our CD buying habits  have changed in more ways than one. If you are like me you rarely buy a CD from a shop; personally I buy the vast majority of mine online but there again I find it quite difficult to find music by the bands that I listen to in mainstream record shops. This week the postman delivered me albums by Anathema, IQ and Dream The Electric Sleep and a quick visit to my local HMV yesterday suggested that I would not have been able to buy them there. Many people now download music rather than purchase the actual disc and although I have done so, I tend to do this only when the music I want is not available in physical format, or the CD is hideously expensive. I still like being able to flick through the booklet that comes with the CD, to read the lyrics and see exactly who played what instrument on what track.

I splurged a bit on CDs this week.

Streaming services like Spotify, Deezer and Google Play make it possible to listen to music you choose without even buying it (although generally you pay a subscription for the best options with these suppliers) and this week it was announced that streaming data would be used in the compilation of the charts along with data from the sale of physical CD singles and downloads. I confess that I did not realise that CD singles were still being released; certainly I have not seen them in shops for years and when I looked at the prices of them on Amazon I wonder why people would buy them as they are hideously expensive compared with downloads; even some albums are cheaper.

Spotify and iTunes are how many people now listen and buy their music.

I accept that I no longer fit the target audience for the Top 40 (I took a glance at the chart this week and while I was surprised to find that I have actually heard of about half the acts, I have only knowingly heard one of the songs (Happy by Pharrell Williams in case you are interested), but I wonder if the Top 40 still has any relevance to the majority of the music buying public? Times change and music formats change but it appears that the charts go on forever, although with the advent of streaming contributing to the Top 40 I suppose it is now technically possible for a song to reach Number One without anyone actually buying it!

A Midland Odyssey Part Two - Shot Coin and Cash Dispensers

A few weeks ago I was in the Romford branch of HSBC with my younger daughter, Sarah. "I used to work here when it was Midland Bank," I told her. "I usually worked on the counter, right there," I went on, pointing to a spot opposite the front door that is now just part of the banking hall. The counter has now been moved to the far corner and whereas when I worked there in 1980 there were half a dozen tills there are now just two.

Today the banking hall of any branch of any bank is light and airy; a sea of plastic, steel and glass. The front door is usually glass and automatic or opens at the touch of a button. In the days when I sat at the counter of Midland Bank, Romford working as cashier number three, the decor was dark, highly polished wood. The counter was wooden as was the heavy front door. My father, who among his numerous and various jobs was for many years a French polisher, would frequently regale me (and anyone else who was in earshot) with tales of the bank counters and front doors that he had polished, including Midland Bank's head office at Poultry.

The banking hall at Midland Bank, Poultry, parts of which my father polished.

A typical banking hall today.

In the days when I sat at the counter in Romford, serving a procession of publicans and market traders (including the fishmonger Charlie Fancourt, whose takings had a particularly pungent aroma, as you may well imagine[1]) as well as regular members of the public, going into a branch to cash a cheque or pay in money was the normal way for a customer to conduct their business. Today banking halls are full of machines to withdraw money, to pay in cheques or cash and the average customer rarely needs to join a queue and transact with a live cashier. For many people a trip to the bank is a rarity as ATM's are to be found everywhere and a great deal of banking is automated or can be done on your PC, your tablet or your phone. In 1978 when I started work at Gants Hill our concession to automation was a cash dispenser; sophisticated it was not! Today we are used to ATM's that give us our balance, or a mini-statement and most importantly, variable amounts of cash; in 1978 the cash dispenser did one thing, it gave you £10 a day. Yes, the Midland Bank cash dispenser circa 1978 was a one trick pony. You inserted your card, typed in your PIN and a plastic clip was fired out of the front of the machine. Inside the clip were ten one pound notes folded in half. After putting the cash in one's wallet, the clip was returned into the machine via a small slot.

An early Midland Bank Cash Dispenser

Today we are used to our banking transactions taking place on-line, we have become used to contactless cards, Chip and PIN, internet banking and the like but the early cash dispensers, while projecting an air of automation, needed a high level of manual attention. Yes, today's machines still need bank staff to fill them with money, but in the 1970's they needed so much more. For a start the cash card was not a multi-purpose card (well not at Midland anyway). It was separate from the Cheque Guarantee Card[2] (limited to guaranteeing cheques up to a whopping £30); the cash card could only be used ten times before a replacement was needed. Each time the card was used it would be physically "punched" inside the machine. You could tell how many times a card had been used by the number of indents on it; yes, it really was as unsophisticated as that! Card jams were frequent and each day when the machine was serviced it would be common to find two or three cards in the bin behind the slot. Then there were the transactions themselves. Today you insert your card in an ATM, draw out £50 or whatever amount and your account is instantly debited; not back in the seventies. Then your £10 withdrawal required a physical voucher, a bit like a cheque, to be taken out of the machine (often as long as 24 hours after your withdrawal or longer over a weekend) and passed through the clearing, debiting your account three days later. This was quite handy for customers (and staff) who were a bit short a day or so before payday!

Filling the machine required someone (normally the first cashier) to take a pile of clips and a large bundle of one pound notes and put £10 in each clip; these were then loaded into the machine. Every day the machine would be tested by making a trial withdrawal which would debit a suspense account; the cash would then be paid back into the same suspense account. On one occasion when I did this I found that the clip contained £11; some poor customer obviously ended up with just £9 and when you consider that in 1978 one pound would buy you ten pints of milk, or five loaves of bread, or two packets of cigarettes, that was an amount you would miss. On another occasion, at a different branch where it was my job to balance the suspense account, I found that the previous day's withdrawal had not been re-deposited and that my colleague had accidentally paid the cash into his own account!

I have no doubt that today's ATM's are pretty reliable and comparatively trouble free, but in the days when I worked in branches, even after the original cash dispensers were upgraded to Autobanks, it was commonplace for an engineer to be called out to deal with some breakdown or other. On those occasions two keyholders would have to loiter at the back of the contraption while the man from IBM rooted around in the bowels of the machine and it was not unusual for a customer to try to insert their card into the front of the Autobank while he did so. These customers would be startled to hear a voice from the machine yell, "It's not working!" when they tried to poke their card into the slot.

After the Cash Dispenser, the AutoBank (with optional Griffin).

It's fairly rare for me to queue up in a branch and be served by a cashier these days and I normally only ever do this when I have accumulated a load of loose change, bagged it up and taken it to pay in. Bagging up even £20 or £30 of coins reminds me of the days when apart from serving customers I would be expected to count out and bag up several hundred pounds of shot (loose) coin every day[3].

Take one of these...

...and decant the content into twenty of these.

The last time I took my modest amount of change and paid it in I asked the cashier if they still had to do shot coin. Oh yes, she replied, we do. I was quite pleased to hear that because while so much else has changed in banking, bagging up shot coin by hand apparently has not!

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[1] Charlie Fancourt's was never given to other customers unless we were really short...or the customer was someone we didn't like!

[2] The Cheque Guarantee Card was trialled in 1965 and fully introduced in 1969, with a limit of £30, increased to £50 in 1977 and £100 in 1989. The scheme closed in 2011.

[3] For the uninitiated, bagging up shot coin consisted of taking a £20 bag of loose bronze and putting it into bags of a £1 each or £100 of silver and putting it in bags of £5. On a typical day that meant two bags of bronze and five of silver.

1966 And All That

In 1966, when England won the World Cup for the first and so far only time, I was eight years old and had no interest in football. I recall that my Dad watched the Final against West Germany and that I was in the room at the time, but I was more interested in a Batman comic than the match.

While Geoff Hurst was doing this, I was reading Batman.

By 1970 I had become fanatical about football and the Mexico World Cup was my first opportunity to watch the tournament properly. Perhaps because it was the first World Cup that I saw I still regard it as the best that I have witnessed. This was the first tournament covered by television to the point of saturation but it was also the tournament that produced the team that many regard as the finest international eleven of all time, the Brazil side that featured Pele, Rivelino, Tostao, Carlos Alberto and Jarizinho. Almost all of the games in which Brazil were involved in were classics. Stand out moments included Pele's duel with Bobby Moore in the England game and Gordon Banks' save in the same match; Pele's audacious dummy in their match with Uruguay and his long range lob against Czechoslovakia and of course the final itself and the Brazilian's 4-1 demolition of Italy in which captain Carlos Alberto scored a goal of exquisite grace and power that epitomised his team.[1]

Bobby Moore and Pele in the days when football was about the sport.

Four years later and I would dash home from school to catch the afternoon matches in the 1974 World Cup in West Germany. Despite England's failure to qualify for the finals there was much to enjoy with the emergence of the Dutch as a force in international football, the charismatic Johann Cruyff and their brand of "total football." If subsequent tournaments did not quite reach the heights of Mexico '70, I still pored over fixtures and television schedules to make sure I caught as many games as I could, with the 1990 finals in Italy being a particular high point. England so nearly repeated their win of 1966, losing to Germany in the semi-final on penalties, an outcome we seem destined to repeat with monotonous regularity. Over the years I have watched World Cup matches in pubs, on tiny portable TV's at work, rushed home from the office to see the second half of games and stayed up late to watch matches from the other side of the globe. There was a time when I would have moved heaven and earth to watch a game, especially an England game, but times change.

Forty eight years after that England triumph, forty four years after that brilliant Brazil team enchanted the football world, another World Cup kicks off today in Brazil with the hosts playing Croatia. Whereas back in 1970 and 1974, and to some extent in 1990, I was eager to watch as many games as possible, I now find it difficult to get excited about the competition. I know that England play their first match on Saturday against Italy, but other than that it is all a bit vague; I certainly have not made any special arrangements to watch any of the games. Sadly my enthusiasm has waned over the years and whereas I would once not contemplated missing the final and certainly not an England game, how many games I see will depend upon what else I might have to do by way of alternative[2] and as for the final, well I've seen too many disappointing matches since 1970 to get excited by the prospect. 

I do not think that I am alone in becoming disenchanted by the World Cup. It may be a function of age (I think we all have a tendency to look at the past through rose tinted spectacles), but there is now so much that is wrong with the competition, so little to admire and enjoy, too much controversy and alleged corruption. The World Cup has become a soulless money making machine. Perhaps I am being naive; the 1970 World Cup that I look back on with such affection was not without its controversy. The decision to give the tournament to Mexico was made against a backdrop of lobbying and political posturing while moving kick-off times for some games to mid-day for the benefit of European TV was an early example of broadcaster's unhealthy influence at such events. Furthermore the arrest of England skipper Bobby Moore in Columbia for the alleged theft of a bracelet was seen by some as an attempt to discredit him and wreck England's chances. Controversy has not been far away from the tournament in subsequent years; from allegations of match fixing to charges of bribery and corruption, the World Cup would be incomplete without some scandal or another.

Preparations for Brazil's hosting of the tournament have been marred by the deaths of eight people working on the construction of the stadia between November 2013 and May 2014 and there have been protests among the populace about the amount of money being spent on the tournament as well as concerns about safety and transport[3]. And it isn't just the 2014 World Cup that has been troubled; the decision to award the 2022 tournament to Qatar is probably the most contentious in World Cup history while the choice of Russia as hosts of the 2018 competition has not been universally popular either.

Construction of stadia in Brazil has been marred by accidents.

An artist's impression of a proposed stadium for Qatar 2022

My disenchantment with the World Cup is threefold. Firstly the bloated nature of the competition. It used to be about the sixteen top footballing nations competing to see who was best in the world; now it is about thirty two countries, many of whom are just making up the numbers, playing to make Fifa, their sponsors and various hangers on oodles of cash: the glory of winning the World Cup itself seems to have become a secondary consideration. Where once a nation could take pride in hosting the World Cup they now do so certain in the knowledge that they will be left with a legacy of debt and derelict stadiums (South Africa was a prime example[4]). Then there is the blatant exploitation of the public who national football associations, kit and souvenir manufacturers expect to pay outrageous prices for tickets and merchandise.[5]

One of the stadiums built for South Africa 2010 that now lies idle and almost derelict.

Thirdly, this year we have had the English Football Association's public relations own goal that came when Greg Dyke announced the ill conceived idea for a third division in the Football League to include Premier League B teams.[6] For once the preparations for England's World Cup campaign this time appeared to have avoided the usual jingoism and spectacularly misplaced optimism that usually typify their appearance at World Cup finals (even if this was replaced by an undertone of hoping against hope that the Three Lions might emerge triumphant). The average fan might have been inclined to look sympathetically on Roy Hodgson and his charges, until this was totally undone by Greg Dyke's pronouncements, made with the apparent belief that football supporters, particularly those of lower Football League sides and those in the Conference, would happily sacrifice the integrity of their clubs and the competitions they play in on the off-chance that the national team might be successful.

Sepp Blatter

Add to this the increasingly outrageous, extravagant and outlandish behaviour of Fifa, an organisation who are apparently accountable to no one, and sadly I find it hard to warm to the prospect of this World Cup tournament. No doubt I shall watch some of it, but certainly not as much as in days of yore.

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[1] In case you have never seen it before, Brazil's fourth goal can be viewed here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/27005795

[2] I have just noticed that the date and time of England's last group match clashes with a radio show I have tickets for, so that is one game I may not see much of for a start.

[3]  How immoral is it that Fifa spent £10m on the draw alone in a country where 16 million people live in poverty and earn less than £27 per month?

[4] Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-27758767

[5] http://rulesfoolsandwisemen.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/ninety-quid-youre-having-laugh.html

[6] See http://rulesfoolsandwisemen.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/b-is-for.html and http://www.againstleague3.co.uk/

Museum Piece

When I was young  one of the things that I looked forward to most eagerly when the school holidays started in July were the day trips to London, at least one of which would include a visit to a museum. Over the years my parents and I visited most of London's museums; the Imperial War Museum, the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert (pretty low on my list of favourites), the Natural History Museum, the London Transport Museum and my all time favourite, the Science Museum (although it must be said the London Transport Museum runs it pretty close!)

At the London Transport Museum.

In those childhood days a trip to London began with a visit to Rex Travel in Collier Row, a low slung, shed like building adjacent to what was once the Rex Cinema but was then a Victor Value supermarket (it is now a Tesco), to buy Red Rover tickets for our expedition. A long journey by bus and tube would end at South Kensington and the Science Museum. Admission was free, which made the visit both a bargain and educational, although the educational element was coincidental to the entertainment and wonder of the exhibits. Perhaps my favourites as a child were the models, some of which were interactive; I loved turning the handles and pressing the buttons and seeing things happen, but the whole of the Science Museum was filled with wonder.

One of the Science Museum's galleries.

I have to admit that science is not one of my passions, but then again the Science Museum is not simply about science, it is about the history of the world and particularly Britain, through the instruments and objects, the vehicles and devices, the gadgets and gizmos that man has created through the ages and if there is one thing that small (and not so small) boys love, it is a gadget! Last week I went back to the Science Museum for probably the first time in 25 or 30 years and although the place is much changed, its appeal remains undiminished. Admission is once again free (although some special exhibits attract a charge), but as one enters there is the "opportunity" to make a donation (£5 per adult is suggested), organised in such a way that one would feel guilty for not doing so. There was a time when some of London's museums made a formal admission charge, but these were scrapped in 2001. There is a strong case for museums imposing admission charges; there are equally strong arguments for them not to. On the whole it is preferable that they remain free but that voluntary donations are encouraged if it means that exhibits do not have to be sold off and that the quality and variety of displays can be maintained.

The Exponential Horn is one of the Science Museum's current special exhibits.

The models remain at the Science Museum (although the number devoted to agriculture in general and tractors in particular seems somewhat disproportionate) and the full scale trains, planes and automobiles are as fascinating as they ever were. The computing and mathematics section is absorbing, although several thoughts struck me as I wandered among the exhibits. Here I was standing in front of Charles Babbage's Difference Engine #2, one of the earliest computers, a machine that would fill my living room, and around me there were people with small devices in their pockets and hand-bags that were more powerful than Babbage's, from which they could summon the total sum of knowledge possessed by mankind and yet what would most of them  do with these devices but look at pictures of cats and argue with strangers?[1] Another thought that struck me, and made me feel old, was that in the display devoted to vintage adding machines and calculators there were machines that I had actually used at work! It is somewhat disconcerting to see objects that one has used fairly recently displayed in a museum.

Charles Babbage's Difference Engine #2

The adding machine in front and left looks suspiciously familiar!

The familiar domestic appliances that are on display that are so interesting. The toys and games that we remember vaguely and with affection from our childhood but which have been superseded by more modern contrivances fascinate, but some of the devices from more ancient times are equally captivating. The centuries old microscopes, globes, orreries and clocks are not only practical instruments but objects of great beauty as well.

As much as museums like the Science Museum bring history to life, there is one thing that they lack; they do convey  the weight of history. There are two places that I have visited where I truly have felt that;  one ancient and one more modern. For all that it is a tourist trap, the site of the ancient town of Pompeii is somewhere that it is possible to imagine that the residents have all just popped out for a while and will be back shortly, that the ruts in the roadways will soon have carts rumbling along them again. Pompeii has an atmosphere like no other place I have visited; time travel may be impossible but to walk around Pompeii is as close as we are likely to get.

More modern and even more deeply affecting is Pearl Harbor, which of course is as much a memorial as it is a museum. A few years ago, while on holiday in Hawaii, I took the opportunity to visit Pearl Harbor and the USS Arizona Memorial and found it to be an incredibly moving experience. If you ever have the chance to go I would recommend that you do so but it has to be said that it is incredibly popular and very busy; if you go independently arrive early! There are numerous organised tours that can be taken from Honolulu but when we went we did so by public transport, which I would advocate because the tours are expensive and although admission to the memorial is free, donations are welcomed. If, like us, you have paid just a few dollars bus fare to get there rather than a much larger tour fee, you will be inclined to donate more generously to the upkeep of the memorial. For all that we might imagine commercialisation to be all prevalent in the USA, the USS Arizona Memorial and the other Pearl Harbor sites are part of the National Park Service and not a money making machine. Many of the volunteer workers and guides are Pearl Harbor veterans; it truly is a piece of living history and a place that I am grateful to have had the chance to visit.  

The USS Arizona Memorial

British museums are actually enjoying a period of great popularity; in 2013 the British Museum, National Gallery, Natural History Museum and Science Museum attracted over 21 million people and all saw more visitors than in the previous year.[2] Museums are not just a place to go as a last resort to get out of the rain; they are so much more than that and if you haven't visited one for a while, do yourself a favour and see one soon. For my part I intend going to the Natural History Museum again for the first time in the best part of thirty years!

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[1] Taken from an internet meme, the origins of which are probably lost, but an instance of which may be found here: http://www.themachinestarts.com/read/2013-01-the-promise-of-technology

[2] Source http://www.alva.org.uk/