Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Monday, December 18, 2006
My First Award
Well I am very pleased to announce that I have won my first award, and it’s a big one too - Time Magazine’s Person of the Year. And I’m not joking!
The only downside is I’m not alone, as they have awarded the award to “You”. Who? You. Me? No, you. You who? Anyway us, including me. The citizens of the new digital democracy as they call it. Anyone who had written a blog, posted a video on YouTube, or who has a profile on My Space. So I’m a treble winner.
I don’t want to be ungrateful, but I'm not that happy about sharing the award with quite so many reprobates, ranging from the (as at today) 140.2 million plus profiles on my space, to the Israeli dancing girls to the newly censorial The Latte Days to whoever it was who posted this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_1QyOQDx6w
And as I endeavour to prove on a regular basis, I am not part of a digital democracy, but a digital mediocracy.
So I say, enough power to the people; give the power to the pixies!
The only downside is I’m not alone, as they have awarded the award to “You”. Who? You. Me? No, you. You who? Anyway us, including me. The citizens of the new digital democracy as they call it. Anyone who had written a blog, posted a video on YouTube, or who has a profile on My Space. So I’m a treble winner.
I don’t want to be ungrateful, but I'm not that happy about sharing the award with quite so many reprobates, ranging from the (as at today) 140.2 million plus profiles on my space, to the Israeli dancing girls to the newly censorial The Latte Days to whoever it was who posted this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_1QyOQDx6w
And as I endeavour to prove on a regular basis, I am not part of a digital democracy, but a digital mediocracy.
So I say, enough power to the people; give the power to the pixies!
Sunday, December 17, 2006
Gig Review: Circulus v Chrome Hoof
And as a year of strange and unique gigs draws to a close, probably the strangest gig of all…
To give it its full title: “Come closer I have something to tell you – An evening of music with Circulus and Chrome Hoof.” Purcell Room 16/12/06.
Who what when why?
Circulus describe themselves as “a gentle fist fight between a group of under nourished sixteenth century court musicians and an acid soaked bunch of hippie rockers from the early seventies.”
Chrome Hoof describe themselves as – well they go on a bit but here’s an extract: “the sound of a radio dial snatches fragments of disparate musiks, the remorseless warrior charge of doom, abstract gasses that hiss and mingle, a distant piano ripples a melancholy refrain, wind instruments hail a clarion call to arms, motorik bass and wild drums rear up to create a vortices of dust and fire And LO, The Hoof is on the Rise!” You get the picture. One of their fans describes them as a “jazz infused doom disco death knell” which is probably a bit closer to the mark, although this is metal jazz in the Norwegian style – dark heavy and malicious (reminded me a bit of Supersilent to those who know them.)
But the evening begins with Wyrewood, a boy/girl combo playing medieval instruments with samplers to create added textures. They play the sort of instruments not seen since Howard Goodall’s “How Music Works” such as those drone producing boxes you play by rotating a handle. The boy wears a very smug self-satisfied smile throughout in that Nigel Kennedy / Gary Rhodes kind of way. Some ruffians talk all the way through.
A man in a cassock comes on stage, accompanied by a boy and two girls in golden tinfoil spacepeople costumes, and begins the narration. The evening is themed around the teachings of the Aetherius Society, in particular the book “Contact With the Gods From Space” by George King and Richard Lawrence, which tells how man is the reincarnation of aliens who blew up their own planet, founded and destroyed Atlantis, and are now hell bent on destroying the earth in nuclear armageddon. A sad tale is best for winter.
Worryingly, this is not my first contact with the Aetherius Society – I attended a gong recital / guided meditation / kundalini yoga session given by the great Gongmaster Don Conreaux at the Aetherius Society’s hq off the Fulham Road early last year. It was held in a chapel like room dominated by a huge photograph of George King.
Circulus come on first in Blackadderish tunics and play a couple of jaunty numbers; then the Hoof arrive, in full length shiny silvery cloaks and face masks and a pounding ominous song called “Nordic Curse.” I fear I am about to have a panic attack.
Things settle into a kind of routine: narration, Circulus, a woodwind/string interlude with some members of both bands, Chrome Hoof, then the cycle repeats.
Factionalism emerges amongst the fan base, with swathes of Circulusties heading for the exits whilst the Hoof are on; swarms of Hoofsters chanting “Hoooofffff” heading for the bar whilst Circulus are on.
There is a kind of amateur dramatics do pantomime feel about the whole thing; the video projection pixellates and dies (but is restored for the second half); Circulus take on the role of the innocent earthlings while the Hoof become the dark alien magi; the lead singer of Circulus gets his cue wrong and is stuck on stage with two flimsy cardboard scimitars before being molested by the Hoof and made to wear a 5 foot silver hat with circular saws for eye pieces before being banished from the stage with what feels like real venom; the Hoof’s singer reads lyrics pasted on the back of a large hat.
The second half takes the feel of Man United v Chelsea. Circulus wear spangly red shirts with white details and have the flair players; at the back the superlative Parfitt Brothers stand firm under the onslaught. The Circulusties are prettier, better dressed and more sophisticated. The Hoof play the Chelsea role, loutish beery fans, they don’t play pretty but you have to admire their dogged almost brutal determination to grind out a result. Circulus take the lead with a triumphant anthemic “Power to the Pixies”. The Circulusty Pixie People go wild. The Hoof look to the bench and bring on a twenty foot silver demon with glowing green eyes. Young children and old people run screaming from the hall (quite what they were doing there is another question entirely). It has the desired effect. Scores level. Circulus’s lead man recites “Alas, will this night go on for ever?” and I know how he feels.
Decorum in the audience has now broken down gloriously under the onslaught of booze and bass. The narrator is heckled as he begins his final plea to save the earth. The Hoofsters in the audience are winning the clash of civilisations. Some hairy bloke who may or may not be called Thogdin Ripley, co-conceiver of the evening, attempts to finish the story but is too pissed to speak and is forced to concede that yes he is reading a load of bollocks. Someone hands him a popper which he sniffs with a flourish.
Injury time and the bands combine in a shambolic finale; the pixie people dance like wild things, the hoofsters hoof, and Ollie Parfitt turns up his synth to sprinkle fairy dust sine waves over the chaos.
Both sets of fans seem happy with the result and all that is left is to look at the match stats:
1. Coolness of crowd: Circulus attract a surprising number of attractive looking women in flowery dresses – 4/5; Hoof bring loutish beer boys and grungy hairies 0/5; overall 4/10.
2. Bob quotient: 3/10, you can guess which side the good hair was on.
3. Annoyment factor: 9/10 – the initial talking during Wyrewood is annoying, but the developing shambolic waves of comings and goings and hoofing and dancing badly add to the atmosphere.
4. Sound quality: 8/10 – well its certainly loud; but it all gets a bit mushy with so many musicians on stage.
5. Comfort: 7/10 – nice seats in the Purcell Room.
6. Sexytime: 4/10, courtesy of the pixies.
7. Percussion / sound effect function: 8/10 for use of medieval/ Elizabethan instruments, lots of tambourine action, and some power drumming.
Overall: 43/70 – a curate’s egg, a game of at least two halves, and jolly good fun.
Merchandise: A nice if tatty souvenir programme, a Circulus LP (vinyl)
Visuals: A feast for the eyes – sparkly costumes, dancing girls, a twenty foot demon.
Gruff Rhys?: Nah.
You can watch very poor footage taken by me of the shambolic finale here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glN3cFfgltY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vo4l94SB2-Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWM8qs9ia0s
To give it its full title: “Come closer I have something to tell you – An evening of music with Circulus and Chrome Hoof.” Purcell Room 16/12/06.
Who what when why?
Circulus describe themselves as “a gentle fist fight between a group of under nourished sixteenth century court musicians and an acid soaked bunch of hippie rockers from the early seventies.”
Chrome Hoof describe themselves as – well they go on a bit but here’s an extract: “the sound of a radio dial snatches fragments of disparate musiks, the remorseless warrior charge of doom, abstract gasses that hiss and mingle, a distant piano ripples a melancholy refrain, wind instruments hail a clarion call to arms, motorik bass and wild drums rear up to create a vortices of dust and fire And LO, The Hoof is on the Rise!” You get the picture. One of their fans describes them as a “jazz infused doom disco death knell” which is probably a bit closer to the mark, although this is metal jazz in the Norwegian style – dark heavy and malicious (reminded me a bit of Supersilent to those who know them.)
But the evening begins with Wyrewood, a boy/girl combo playing medieval instruments with samplers to create added textures. They play the sort of instruments not seen since Howard Goodall’s “How Music Works” such as those drone producing boxes you play by rotating a handle. The boy wears a very smug self-satisfied smile throughout in that Nigel Kennedy / Gary Rhodes kind of way. Some ruffians talk all the way through.
A man in a cassock comes on stage, accompanied by a boy and two girls in golden tinfoil spacepeople costumes, and begins the narration. The evening is themed around the teachings of the Aetherius Society, in particular the book “Contact With the Gods From Space” by George King and Richard Lawrence, which tells how man is the reincarnation of aliens who blew up their own planet, founded and destroyed Atlantis, and are now hell bent on destroying the earth in nuclear armageddon. A sad tale is best for winter.
Worryingly, this is not my first contact with the Aetherius Society – I attended a gong recital / guided meditation / kundalini yoga session given by the great Gongmaster Don Conreaux at the Aetherius Society’s hq off the Fulham Road early last year. It was held in a chapel like room dominated by a huge photograph of George King.
Circulus come on first in Blackadderish tunics and play a couple of jaunty numbers; then the Hoof arrive, in full length shiny silvery cloaks and face masks and a pounding ominous song called “Nordic Curse.” I fear I am about to have a panic attack.
Things settle into a kind of routine: narration, Circulus, a woodwind/string interlude with some members of both bands, Chrome Hoof, then the cycle repeats.
Factionalism emerges amongst the fan base, with swathes of Circulusties heading for the exits whilst the Hoof are on; swarms of Hoofsters chanting “Hoooofffff” heading for the bar whilst Circulus are on.
There is a kind of amateur dramatics do pantomime feel about the whole thing; the video projection pixellates and dies (but is restored for the second half); Circulus take on the role of the innocent earthlings while the Hoof become the dark alien magi; the lead singer of Circulus gets his cue wrong and is stuck on stage with two flimsy cardboard scimitars before being molested by the Hoof and made to wear a 5 foot silver hat with circular saws for eye pieces before being banished from the stage with what feels like real venom; the Hoof’s singer reads lyrics pasted on the back of a large hat.
The second half takes the feel of Man United v Chelsea. Circulus wear spangly red shirts with white details and have the flair players; at the back the superlative Parfitt Brothers stand firm under the onslaught. The Circulusties are prettier, better dressed and more sophisticated. The Hoof play the Chelsea role, loutish beery fans, they don’t play pretty but you have to admire their dogged almost brutal determination to grind out a result. Circulus take the lead with a triumphant anthemic “Power to the Pixies”. The Circulusty Pixie People go wild. The Hoof look to the bench and bring on a twenty foot silver demon with glowing green eyes. Young children and old people run screaming from the hall (quite what they were doing there is another question entirely). It has the desired effect. Scores level. Circulus’s lead man recites “Alas, will this night go on for ever?” and I know how he feels.
Decorum in the audience has now broken down gloriously under the onslaught of booze and bass. The narrator is heckled as he begins his final plea to save the earth. The Hoofsters in the audience are winning the clash of civilisations. Some hairy bloke who may or may not be called Thogdin Ripley, co-conceiver of the evening, attempts to finish the story but is too pissed to speak and is forced to concede that yes he is reading a load of bollocks. Someone hands him a popper which he sniffs with a flourish.
Injury time and the bands combine in a shambolic finale; the pixie people dance like wild things, the hoofsters hoof, and Ollie Parfitt turns up his synth to sprinkle fairy dust sine waves over the chaos.
Both sets of fans seem happy with the result and all that is left is to look at the match stats:
1. Coolness of crowd: Circulus attract a surprising number of attractive looking women in flowery dresses – 4/5; Hoof bring loutish beer boys and grungy hairies 0/5; overall 4/10.
2. Bob quotient: 3/10, you can guess which side the good hair was on.
3. Annoyment factor: 9/10 – the initial talking during Wyrewood is annoying, but the developing shambolic waves of comings and goings and hoofing and dancing badly add to the atmosphere.
4. Sound quality: 8/10 – well its certainly loud; but it all gets a bit mushy with so many musicians on stage.
5. Comfort: 7/10 – nice seats in the Purcell Room.
6. Sexytime: 4/10, courtesy of the pixies.
7. Percussion / sound effect function: 8/10 for use of medieval/ Elizabethan instruments, lots of tambourine action, and some power drumming.
Overall: 43/70 – a curate’s egg, a game of at least two halves, and jolly good fun.
Merchandise: A nice if tatty souvenir programme, a Circulus LP (vinyl)
Visuals: A feast for the eyes – sparkly costumes, dancing girls, a twenty foot demon.
Gruff Rhys?: Nah.
You can watch very poor footage taken by me of the shambolic finale here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glN3cFfgltY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vo4l94SB2-Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWM8qs9ia0s
demon days
spangled carnage
Trouble with the Neighbours
I live in a three-storey 1960s town house. It is the middle one of a block of five.
Well I have to tell you, the neighbours on the left, Tommy and Sue, they were making a terrible racket last night, singing at the top of their voices and banging around ‘til gone 3.30. Well I thought, it is Saturday night and maybe they are having an X Factor party. One has to be tolerant and all that, but they could at least have warned me.
But then I was woken up at 9 this morning and it was all going on again. A terrible commotion. I peered out of the front window, and there seemed to be a lot of people milling about. Then I noticed that on the end house, the one on the other side of Tommy’s, in their front garden had appeared one of those pub style wooden tables with attached benches, and there were four Hassids, black hats, beards, the lot, sitting at the table stuffing their faces.
I went downstairs to investigate. My hallway was packed with people and the front door was open. ‘What the hell is going on?’ I thought. I went out the front. There was a man standing outside Tommy’s with a fluorescent sleeveless jacket, like the ones fire wardens and building site workers wear. “If you would just like to wait in there please” he said pointing at my house to a couple coming down the garden path.
“What the hell is going on?” I said to him.
“We’ve opened a sushi bar” said the man.
“What?” I said.
“We’ve opened a sushi bar.”
“But you haven’t got planning permission” I said.
The man in the yellow jacket shrugged.
“I demand to see the manager” I said.
“I am the manager” he said.
“Where’s Tommy?” I said.
“He’s in the back” said the man, looking towards Tommy’s house “trying to get some work done. He’s locked himself away.”
I went back into my house.
“Get out of my house” I said to no-one in particular, but no-one moved.
I went into the kitchen. A hole had been knocked through in the wall separating my kitchen from Tommy’s. I have to say it was a neat job, but the cheek of it; they hadn’t even given me any warning. On Tommy side I could see gleaming spotlights in the ceiling and a shiny silver counter with a couple of chefs working feverishly away.
I called the police. The woman who answered chastised me for calling 999 when it was not an emergency, and said I should ‘phone my local station. It took a while to find the number. There was a recorded message saying that they were shut - well it was a Sunday - and that out-of-hours police work had been outsourced to a private sector service provider. I called them and got another recorded message – “to help us deal with your enquiry please choose from one of the following options… for physical assault press 1, for burglary and theft press 2”. I pressed # “for any other enquiry”. There was a crackle and a hiss and a lady in a thick Indian accent asked how she could help. There was a disconcerting delay on the line. I explained what had happened and the lady told me that it was a civil matter not a police matter. She suggested that I contact the “relevant regulatory authority.” I asked her where she was based and she hung up.
I rang the local council but they were also shut.
I squeezed myself a fresh grapefruit and orange juice and went to sit down, but there were people sitting in all the chairs.
“This is my chair” I said to a young man with overly slicked hair.
“Oh is it” he said, carrying on reading my paper.
“Yes it is. Can you please get up.”
“Gonna make me?” he said.
“Yes, if needs be” I said.
He ignored me.
I pulled the chair back and lifted him up by his armpits. I landed a hard hook to his midriff with my right hand and, as he hunched forward, swung a beautiful upper hook with my left, catching him clean on the chin, following up with a right cross.
Somebody grabbed me from behind. I elbowed him, swivelled around and swung a left jab, followed by a left back hand and a quick right.
That was the last thing I remember before waking up here.
Well I have to tell you, the neighbours on the left, Tommy and Sue, they were making a terrible racket last night, singing at the top of their voices and banging around ‘til gone 3.30. Well I thought, it is Saturday night and maybe they are having an X Factor party. One has to be tolerant and all that, but they could at least have warned me.
But then I was woken up at 9 this morning and it was all going on again. A terrible commotion. I peered out of the front window, and there seemed to be a lot of people milling about. Then I noticed that on the end house, the one on the other side of Tommy’s, in their front garden had appeared one of those pub style wooden tables with attached benches, and there were four Hassids, black hats, beards, the lot, sitting at the table stuffing their faces.
I went downstairs to investigate. My hallway was packed with people and the front door was open. ‘What the hell is going on?’ I thought. I went out the front. There was a man standing outside Tommy’s with a fluorescent sleeveless jacket, like the ones fire wardens and building site workers wear. “If you would just like to wait in there please” he said pointing at my house to a couple coming down the garden path.
“What the hell is going on?” I said to him.
“We’ve opened a sushi bar” said the man.
“What?” I said.
“We’ve opened a sushi bar.”
“But you haven’t got planning permission” I said.
The man in the yellow jacket shrugged.
“I demand to see the manager” I said.
“I am the manager” he said.
“Where’s Tommy?” I said.
“He’s in the back” said the man, looking towards Tommy’s house “trying to get some work done. He’s locked himself away.”
I went back into my house.
“Get out of my house” I said to no-one in particular, but no-one moved.
I went into the kitchen. A hole had been knocked through in the wall separating my kitchen from Tommy’s. I have to say it was a neat job, but the cheek of it; they hadn’t even given me any warning. On Tommy side I could see gleaming spotlights in the ceiling and a shiny silver counter with a couple of chefs working feverishly away.
I called the police. The woman who answered chastised me for calling 999 when it was not an emergency, and said I should ‘phone my local station. It took a while to find the number. There was a recorded message saying that they were shut - well it was a Sunday - and that out-of-hours police work had been outsourced to a private sector service provider. I called them and got another recorded message – “to help us deal with your enquiry please choose from one of the following options… for physical assault press 1, for burglary and theft press 2”. I pressed # “for any other enquiry”. There was a crackle and a hiss and a lady in a thick Indian accent asked how she could help. There was a disconcerting delay on the line. I explained what had happened and the lady told me that it was a civil matter not a police matter. She suggested that I contact the “relevant regulatory authority.” I asked her where she was based and she hung up.
I rang the local council but they were also shut.
I squeezed myself a fresh grapefruit and orange juice and went to sit down, but there were people sitting in all the chairs.
“This is my chair” I said to a young man with overly slicked hair.
“Oh is it” he said, carrying on reading my paper.
“Yes it is. Can you please get up.”
“Gonna make me?” he said.
“Yes, if needs be” I said.
He ignored me.
I pulled the chair back and lifted him up by his armpits. I landed a hard hook to his midriff with my right hand and, as he hunched forward, swung a beautiful upper hook with my left, catching him clean on the chin, following up with a right cross.
Somebody grabbed me from behind. I elbowed him, swivelled around and swung a left jab, followed by a left back hand and a quick right.
That was the last thing I remember before waking up here.
Friday, December 15, 2006
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Thursday, December 07, 2006
The Grebson Family History
I’ve been doing some research on my lineage – nothing new there, and I have discovered quite an extraordinary article on the Grebsons called “The Greystoke Lineage” By Philip Jose Farmer - http://members.aol.com/kickaha23/grebson.html. Extracts of that article are reproduced here with gratitude and a flagrant disregard for copyright.
The article is about the lineage of the original Tarzan, namely Lord Greystoke, but the Greystoke family appear intimately connected with the Grebsons. Now I cannot definitively prove that these are my Grebsons, but as you will see what a wonderful thing it would be if I were.
Farmer begins by saying “the lineage herein is as if taken from the pages of Burke's Peerage. The real coat of arms and lineage of "Lord Greystoke" cannot be presented here, of course. But over half of the people and almost all of the places in the lineage are true. The others are not really fictional; they are just disguised.” Hmmm Interesting.
The lineage begins with WESTERFALCNA, b. ca. 578, son of King Aelle of Deira by Osburgh, a Wessex woman, claimed descent from the God Woden through Waegdaeg, of south Denmark, c260 A.D. The present monarch of England also claims descent from Woden.
Westerfalcna, who called himself Graegbeardssunu (Old English for "The Son of The Grey-Bearded One," an epithet for Woden) fled after Aelle was slain and Aethelric, king of Bernicia, seized the throne. In what is now the North Riding of Yorkshire, Westerfalcna erected on a peak a wooden fort, GREBSON’S HOLD.
Next up is GODWULF OF GREBSON who married a daughter of Komak Sigurdsson, Irish-Norwegian lord of the neighbouring holding eventually known as Sigerside.
His son, GODWULF, married a daughter of the lord of Greystoke, Cumberland.
GODWULF, Godwulf's grandson, married a cousin, and fell at Stamford where the invading Norwegian, King Harald Haardrada, was killed. Godwulf's brother, Westerfalcna, who had married a sister of his brother's wife, was also present at Stamford. He marched with King Harold of England to Hastings and was slain.
BEOWULF, Westerfalcna's son, was born posthumously with his cousin, Godwulf's son.
The lordship of GREBSON then passed into the hands of RAINULPH FITZGILBERT, brother of Richard FitzGilbert, or De Clare, who received 176 lordships after accompanying William the Conqueror into England. Rainulph married Westerfalcna's widow, and, his six children dying in infancy because, it is said, of a curse, adopted Beowulf as his son and heir on the condition he change his name to Rainulph FitzRainulph (an early sign of the Grebson ability to disappear up oneself?).
Apparently the Grebsons were suspected of being secret worshipers of the pagan god, Woden, and, indeed, for four centuries thereafter, many Grebsons were burned or hung for witchcraft, though none in the direct line of descent.
Lord FitzGilbert and Rainulph swore fealty to King William Rufus, son of the William the Conqueror, and perhaps related to Rufus of Rufus and Chaka Khan fame. This giant Norse king, one of the great warriors and travellers of the Viking age, is said by William of Malmsbury to have been thrown down to a lion while a prisoner in Constantinople but to have strangled it with his bare hands.
Next up is Sir John FitzJohn of Grebson born 1145 – he had a natural son by a Welsh slave (I’ve always had an affinity for the Welsh) was one of the few Englishmen who accompanied Richard I, the Lion-Hearted, on his crusade. John, knighted outside Acre, returned in 1199 with a Saracen bride, Ayesha, daughter of the half-Persian Abdul el Dehshetli, cousin to Saladin and descendant of both Mohammed and Zarathustra. Do you see where this is going?
Farmer tells us that the sinister crest of the Grebson coat of arms is "a spear or transfixing a Saracen's head gules." That is, a golden spear stuck through a red-hued Mohammedan's head. A Saracen's head usually commemorates an ancestor who has been on a crusade to the Holy Land. The Grebson crest is coloured gules instead of the proper, or natural, colour because of Sir John's use of the severed head of a Moslem while escaping from Acre. After cutting off the head, Sir John threw it, knocked another soldier off his horse, and fled with Ayesha through the momentarily opened gates.
Farmer says it is worth noting that Tarzan's ancestor, Mohammed, belonged to the Qoreish, the dominant tribe of Mecca since 440 A.D. These claimed descent from Qosaiy, whose ancestors were, supposedly, Abraham and Ishmael.
So if I get all this right, not only could I be descended from the pagan God Woden and share lineage with our Royal Family, but I could also be descended from one of the original crusaders and from Mohammed. Maybe that’s where I get my Jewish self-loathing and general identity confusion from? The Viking connection might also explain my love of Scandanavian electronica! Oh yeah, and me Tarzan.
Farmer goes on to list a load of other famous Grebsons including…
RICHARD "THE BLACK LION," 1st BARON GREBSON, so declared by a writ issued by Henry III in 1222. Richard married Catherine O'Brien and returned from Ireland with her and her brother, Finn O'Brien, "The Red Bull of Munster," exiled for having killed his cousin in a quarrel. He lived on the Grebson estate until he married Rebecca, a daughter of John Griffin, ancestor of the Barons Griffin of Braybroke Castle of Northants. This was the first recorded connection between the Grebsons and the Griffins (later known as the Olis)
In Italy he eloped with Alessandra, daughter of Alessandro de Parco, Count of Scarlassi-Longobardo. This illustrious family, now extinct, could trace its ancestry to Julius Caesar, who, in turn, claimed descent from the goddess Venus. The 1st Baron and his wife died in 1238, presumably of poison administered by an agent of Alessandra's father.
JOHN CALDWELL-GREBSON, 3rd BARON, a landless knight claiming to be of Scots descent. The 3rd Baron being slain during an encounter with the officers of Edward I in 1280, his son assumed the lordship of Grebson. There is little doubt that the 3rd Baron was, in actuality, Richard, son of Henry III and Eleanor of Provence, known at one time as Norman of Torn. Richard. Kidnapped at the age of three, Richard was raised as "Norman" of (the ruined tower of) Torn in the hills of Derby by De Vac, a Gascon who hated Henry III, and who taught Norman to hate Englishmen.
JOHN CALDWELL, 4th BARON OF GREBSON. The 4th Baron, outlawed in 1296, fled with relatives and retainers into the hills of Derby. A great bowman, and dressed in Lincoln green, he became known as The Green Baron, or The Green Archer. The story of his long fight against Edward I and Edward II has, according to some, been incorporated into the legend of Robin Hood, along with that of Robert Fitzooth. The 4th Baron was pardoned by Edward II in 1325. The baron died in an attempt to rescue his king, who was imprisoned in Berkeley Castle and was murdered there on 21 Sep 1327.
ROBERT, 5th BARON OF GREBSON. Married Katherine Drummond. The Drummonds, according to unvarying tradition, are of Hungarian origin, Maurice, the first of that family who settled in Scotland, having come from that country in 1066 with Edgar the Atheling and Margaret, his sister, afterwards wife of King Malcolm III of Scotland. Maurice adopted the name Drummond from the Gaelic "druim" and "monadh," that is "back of the mountain." Maurice was the son of George, a younger son of Andreas, King of Hungary. Andreas could trace his ancestry to Arpad, the Magyar king who conquered Hungary (died 907). The 5th Baron's wife disappeared during a visit to her father in 1340, it being presumed that bandits had murdered her and buried her and her cortege. The 5th Baron died a year later of a broken abscess in his ear.
SIR JOHN MALCOLM, 6th BARON and 1st EARL OF GREBSON. Sir John accompanied Edward III's son, The Black Prince, into France and was knighted on the battlefield of Crecy. Sir John sickened of the Black Death in 1348, but, recovering, built a chapel at Grebson and founded a priory outside Macclesfield, where he had recovered. Sir John was made 1st Earl of Grebson in 1357. His lordship died choking on a fish-bone in 1359, and was succeeded by his daughter, Joane, 7th Baroness and 2nd Countess. Lord and Lady Grebson were murdered by their vassals during the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 and were succeeded by Thomas Ralph, 8th Baron and 3rd Earl, born 1366. His lordship died of infection from a foot crushed by a horse.
As you can see, the lineage goes on and on and I won’t bore you with all the details but other noteworthy Grebsons include…
Captain John Dermod Caldwell-Grebson became immensely wealthy through privateering (actually, piracy).
Captain John Charles Caldwell-Grebson, killed 5 Jul 1643 while serving with Sir John, 1st Baron Byron, at Roundaway Down, and succeeded by his second son, Ralph Arthur, famous for his strength and reported to have been able to lift a full-grown bull above his head. Ralph Arthur died of a bee sting.
His son, John Charles Conyers, 12th Baron, born 1668, married the daughter of Dolores Maria Salvador. Dolores's family could trace their ancestry back to Rodrigo Diaz (b. 1043), known as El Cid.
Their daughter, Elizabeth Gracia, Baroness Grebson of Grebson, married the grandson of Harold Cecil, the only child of the 3rd Earl Staveley of Staveley Hall, Islington. The 3rd Earl was descended from George Clayton of Grimsby, ancestor also of Lord Tennyson, the poet, and from John, or Thomas, Horner, steward to the last Abbot of Glastonbury. When Henry VIII dissolved the monastic orders and seized so much church property, the abbot sent deeds to twelve manorial estates to the king to appease him. These were baked into a pie to fool robbers and were delivered by the steward. On the way, Horner opened the pie and appropriated the deed to the estate of Mells. Hence, the nursery rhyme of "Little Jack Horner."
The only son of this union, John, was stolen at the age of two, his abductors proposing to sell him, a criminal practice quite common at this time. The authorities being close on their trail, the abductors disposed of John to a beggar woman who, in turn, sold him to a gypsy woman. She named him Bob (not "Robert") Singleton, the only name he knew during most of his life. The gypsy woman being hanged when Bob was six, he was raised by various parishes. At twelve, he was taken to Newfoundland as a cabin boy on a ship. Much of his life is detailed with more or less validity by Daniel Defoe in the biography Life, Adventures, and Piracies of Captain Singleton, published in 1720. The narrative, however, ends in 1711.
At the age of 18, Singleton, marooned on Madagascar, sailed with 24 other seamen to the coast of Africa near the mouth of the Zambezi River. From there he began a three-year odyssey which ended at Cape Coast Castle in what is now Ghana. This feat, covering a total of more than 5,000 miles through unexplored jungles and deserts and mountains inhabited by lions, leopards, poisonous snakes, and cannibals, and infested with malaria, tsetse flies, and diseases of many and terrible sorts, is unmatched in history.
General Sir William, V.C., K.C.B. [1st Bt.], author of many book and much poetry, born 1 Jan 1799; due to his somewhat colourful life he was the object of much gossip and even caricature in the newspapers, being called "Wandering Willie," "Billy Banns," and "Marrying Bill," or, because of the tendency of his wives to die, "The Bluebeard Baronet" or "Gruesome Grebson." He was buried in the family cemetery by the ruins of Grebson's Hold below the inscription of the family motto, Je suys encore vyvant -- I Still Live.
So in summary I could well be descended from a line that includes:
Woden
Mohammed
Julius Caesar
Venus
Henry III
Numerous North European kings
Tarzan
Robin Hood
The Queen
Alfred Lord Tennyson and
Little Jack Horner.
Respect!
The article is about the lineage of the original Tarzan, namely Lord Greystoke, but the Greystoke family appear intimately connected with the Grebsons. Now I cannot definitively prove that these are my Grebsons, but as you will see what a wonderful thing it would be if I were.
Farmer begins by saying “the lineage herein is as if taken from the pages of Burke's Peerage. The real coat of arms and lineage of "Lord Greystoke" cannot be presented here, of course. But over half of the people and almost all of the places in the lineage are true. The others are not really fictional; they are just disguised.” Hmmm Interesting.
The lineage begins with WESTERFALCNA, b. ca. 578, son of King Aelle of Deira by Osburgh, a Wessex woman, claimed descent from the God Woden through Waegdaeg, of south Denmark, c260 A.D. The present monarch of England also claims descent from Woden.
Westerfalcna, who called himself Graegbeardssunu (Old English for "The Son of The Grey-Bearded One," an epithet for Woden) fled after Aelle was slain and Aethelric, king of Bernicia, seized the throne. In what is now the North Riding of Yorkshire, Westerfalcna erected on a peak a wooden fort, GREBSON’S HOLD.
Next up is GODWULF OF GREBSON who married a daughter of Komak Sigurdsson, Irish-Norwegian lord of the neighbouring holding eventually known as Sigerside.
His son, GODWULF, married a daughter of the lord of Greystoke, Cumberland.
GODWULF, Godwulf's grandson, married a cousin, and fell at Stamford where the invading Norwegian, King Harald Haardrada, was killed. Godwulf's brother, Westerfalcna, who had married a sister of his brother's wife, was also present at Stamford. He marched with King Harold of England to Hastings and was slain.
BEOWULF, Westerfalcna's son, was born posthumously with his cousin, Godwulf's son.
The lordship of GREBSON then passed into the hands of RAINULPH FITZGILBERT, brother of Richard FitzGilbert, or De Clare, who received 176 lordships after accompanying William the Conqueror into England. Rainulph married Westerfalcna's widow, and, his six children dying in infancy because, it is said, of a curse, adopted Beowulf as his son and heir on the condition he change his name to Rainulph FitzRainulph (an early sign of the Grebson ability to disappear up oneself?).
Apparently the Grebsons were suspected of being secret worshipers of the pagan god, Woden, and, indeed, for four centuries thereafter, many Grebsons were burned or hung for witchcraft, though none in the direct line of descent.
Lord FitzGilbert and Rainulph swore fealty to King William Rufus, son of the William the Conqueror, and perhaps related to Rufus of Rufus and Chaka Khan fame. This giant Norse king, one of the great warriors and travellers of the Viking age, is said by William of Malmsbury to have been thrown down to a lion while a prisoner in Constantinople but to have strangled it with his bare hands.
Next up is Sir John FitzJohn of Grebson born 1145 – he had a natural son by a Welsh slave (I’ve always had an affinity for the Welsh) was one of the few Englishmen who accompanied Richard I, the Lion-Hearted, on his crusade. John, knighted outside Acre, returned in 1199 with a Saracen bride, Ayesha, daughter of the half-Persian Abdul el Dehshetli, cousin to Saladin and descendant of both Mohammed and Zarathustra. Do you see where this is going?
Farmer tells us that the sinister crest of the Grebson coat of arms is "a spear or transfixing a Saracen's head gules." That is, a golden spear stuck through a red-hued Mohammedan's head. A Saracen's head usually commemorates an ancestor who has been on a crusade to the Holy Land. The Grebson crest is coloured gules instead of the proper, or natural, colour because of Sir John's use of the severed head of a Moslem while escaping from Acre. After cutting off the head, Sir John threw it, knocked another soldier off his horse, and fled with Ayesha through the momentarily opened gates.
Farmer says it is worth noting that Tarzan's ancestor, Mohammed, belonged to the Qoreish, the dominant tribe of Mecca since 440 A.D. These claimed descent from Qosaiy, whose ancestors were, supposedly, Abraham and Ishmael.
So if I get all this right, not only could I be descended from the pagan God Woden and share lineage with our Royal Family, but I could also be descended from one of the original crusaders and from Mohammed. Maybe that’s where I get my Jewish self-loathing and general identity confusion from? The Viking connection might also explain my love of Scandanavian electronica! Oh yeah, and me Tarzan.
Farmer goes on to list a load of other famous Grebsons including…
RICHARD "THE BLACK LION," 1st BARON GREBSON, so declared by a writ issued by Henry III in 1222. Richard married Catherine O'Brien and returned from Ireland with her and her brother, Finn O'Brien, "The Red Bull of Munster," exiled for having killed his cousin in a quarrel. He lived on the Grebson estate until he married Rebecca, a daughter of John Griffin, ancestor of the Barons Griffin of Braybroke Castle of Northants. This was the first recorded connection between the Grebsons and the Griffins (later known as the Olis)
In Italy he eloped with Alessandra, daughter of Alessandro de Parco, Count of Scarlassi-Longobardo. This illustrious family, now extinct, could trace its ancestry to Julius Caesar, who, in turn, claimed descent from the goddess Venus. The 1st Baron and his wife died in 1238, presumably of poison administered by an agent of Alessandra's father.
JOHN CALDWELL-GREBSON, 3rd BARON, a landless knight claiming to be of Scots descent. The 3rd Baron being slain during an encounter with the officers of Edward I in 1280, his son assumed the lordship of Grebson. There is little doubt that the 3rd Baron was, in actuality, Richard, son of Henry III and Eleanor of Provence, known at one time as Norman of Torn. Richard. Kidnapped at the age of three, Richard was raised as "Norman" of (the ruined tower of) Torn in the hills of Derby by De Vac, a Gascon who hated Henry III, and who taught Norman to hate Englishmen.
JOHN CALDWELL, 4th BARON OF GREBSON. The 4th Baron, outlawed in 1296, fled with relatives and retainers into the hills of Derby. A great bowman, and dressed in Lincoln green, he became known as The Green Baron, or The Green Archer. The story of his long fight against Edward I and Edward II has, according to some, been incorporated into the legend of Robin Hood, along with that of Robert Fitzooth. The 4th Baron was pardoned by Edward II in 1325. The baron died in an attempt to rescue his king, who was imprisoned in Berkeley Castle and was murdered there on 21 Sep 1327.
ROBERT, 5th BARON OF GREBSON. Married Katherine Drummond. The Drummonds, according to unvarying tradition, are of Hungarian origin, Maurice, the first of that family who settled in Scotland, having come from that country in 1066 with Edgar the Atheling and Margaret, his sister, afterwards wife of King Malcolm III of Scotland. Maurice adopted the name Drummond from the Gaelic "druim" and "monadh," that is "back of the mountain." Maurice was the son of George, a younger son of Andreas, King of Hungary. Andreas could trace his ancestry to Arpad, the Magyar king who conquered Hungary (died 907). The 5th Baron's wife disappeared during a visit to her father in 1340, it being presumed that bandits had murdered her and buried her and her cortege. The 5th Baron died a year later of a broken abscess in his ear.
SIR JOHN MALCOLM, 6th BARON and 1st EARL OF GREBSON. Sir John accompanied Edward III's son, The Black Prince, into France and was knighted on the battlefield of Crecy. Sir John sickened of the Black Death in 1348, but, recovering, built a chapel at Grebson and founded a priory outside Macclesfield, where he had recovered. Sir John was made 1st Earl of Grebson in 1357. His lordship died choking on a fish-bone in 1359, and was succeeded by his daughter, Joane, 7th Baroness and 2nd Countess. Lord and Lady Grebson were murdered by their vassals during the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 and were succeeded by Thomas Ralph, 8th Baron and 3rd Earl, born 1366. His lordship died of infection from a foot crushed by a horse.
As you can see, the lineage goes on and on and I won’t bore you with all the details but other noteworthy Grebsons include…
Captain John Dermod Caldwell-Grebson became immensely wealthy through privateering (actually, piracy).
Captain John Charles Caldwell-Grebson, killed 5 Jul 1643 while serving with Sir John, 1st Baron Byron, at Roundaway Down, and succeeded by his second son, Ralph Arthur, famous for his strength and reported to have been able to lift a full-grown bull above his head. Ralph Arthur died of a bee sting.
His son, John Charles Conyers, 12th Baron, born 1668, married the daughter of Dolores Maria Salvador. Dolores's family could trace their ancestry back to Rodrigo Diaz (b. 1043), known as El Cid.
Their daughter, Elizabeth Gracia, Baroness Grebson of Grebson, married the grandson of Harold Cecil, the only child of the 3rd Earl Staveley of Staveley Hall, Islington. The 3rd Earl was descended from George Clayton of Grimsby, ancestor also of Lord Tennyson, the poet, and from John, or Thomas, Horner, steward to the last Abbot of Glastonbury. When Henry VIII dissolved the monastic orders and seized so much church property, the abbot sent deeds to twelve manorial estates to the king to appease him. These were baked into a pie to fool robbers and were delivered by the steward. On the way, Horner opened the pie and appropriated the deed to the estate of Mells. Hence, the nursery rhyme of "Little Jack Horner."
The only son of this union, John, was stolen at the age of two, his abductors proposing to sell him, a criminal practice quite common at this time. The authorities being close on their trail, the abductors disposed of John to a beggar woman who, in turn, sold him to a gypsy woman. She named him Bob (not "Robert") Singleton, the only name he knew during most of his life. The gypsy woman being hanged when Bob was six, he was raised by various parishes. At twelve, he was taken to Newfoundland as a cabin boy on a ship. Much of his life is detailed with more or less validity by Daniel Defoe in the biography Life, Adventures, and Piracies of Captain Singleton, published in 1720. The narrative, however, ends in 1711.
At the age of 18, Singleton, marooned on Madagascar, sailed with 24 other seamen to the coast of Africa near the mouth of the Zambezi River. From there he began a three-year odyssey which ended at Cape Coast Castle in what is now Ghana. This feat, covering a total of more than 5,000 miles through unexplored jungles and deserts and mountains inhabited by lions, leopards, poisonous snakes, and cannibals, and infested with malaria, tsetse flies, and diseases of many and terrible sorts, is unmatched in history.
General Sir William, V.C., K.C.B. [1st Bt.], author of many book and much poetry, born 1 Jan 1799; due to his somewhat colourful life he was the object of much gossip and even caricature in the newspapers, being called "Wandering Willie," "Billy Banns," and "Marrying Bill," or, because of the tendency of his wives to die, "The Bluebeard Baronet" or "Gruesome Grebson." He was buried in the family cemetery by the ruins of Grebson's Hold below the inscription of the family motto, Je suys encore vyvant -- I Still Live.
So in summary I could well be descended from a line that includes:
Woden
Mohammed
Julius Caesar
Venus
Henry III
Numerous North European kings
Tarzan
Robin Hood
The Queen
Alfred Lord Tennyson and
Little Jack Horner.
Respect!
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
un-imagine-able
So there we have it. The Beeb’s flagship arts/culture/intellectual programme ‘Imagine’ (appropriately named after the weakest tritest most sentimental nursery rhyme ever recorded) delves into the world of the world wide web and tells us nothing we didn’t already know. All the usual suspects were there – blogs (c.f. girl with a one track mind doing her usual apology about how she is a post-feminist crusader for women expressing their sexual feelings, rather than what I suspect the reality is, which is mild titillation for the dirty apple mac brigade who like reading about how she likes to wank big hard cocks)), wikipedia, my space (c.f. arctic monkeys), you tube, the long tail – and it’s all lovely and wonderful.
The programme finished with Alan Yentob’s Second Life avatar floating into space; very appropriate for a broadcast that was lighter and fluffier than the top of a cappuccino.
Where was the dark side? Porn, chat room grooming, identity theft, scammers and viruses were all absent. There was no discussion of the use of the web by islamo-fascist and neo-nazi propaganderists or the creation of falsified images and news. No discussion of the sociological and psychological effects of online communication and ready access to violent and graphic images. No analysis of the effect of the www on art and literature. No questioning of the reliability of Wikipedia. No mention of how many people’s lives are being ruined by e mail overload and the expectation of instantaneous 24 hour response. This nervous breakdown has been sent to you by my blackberry wireless life-wrecker. Nope, in Yentob’s world, it is all good.
Sporadically Yentob would voice his concern as a TV producer about where the audience had gone, the implication being people no longer watch the telly because they spend all their time watching people eating Jaffa Cakes on You Tube. Sorry Alan but your analysis is rather simplistic. People are not watching TV because most TV is absolute rubbish, as exemplified by your own sorry programme. Build it and they will come, but not if you build it out of feathers and air. Take the Beeb’s current holy artrinity of Imagine, the Culture Show and Newsnight Review. “There is a sense in which” they are all shite. I have tried on three occasions to watch the Power of Art and each time have been forced by rising nausea to switch off after five minutes. These programmes are patronising, dull, and listless. One senses a brooding political agenda, a fear that anything too stimulating will be considered elitist. Heaven forbid that the Beeb should be highbrow.
As for Channel 4, don’t get me started. I read today that their alternative Queen’s Message will be delivered this year by a lady in a full veil. The phrase “she has a lovely face for radio” springs to mind. I can sum up C4 in one example, their advertising for Downfall. By all accounts Downfall was a superb and serious film about Hitler’s last days. But how did C4 advertise it? With full page spreads with the strapline “it has a happy ending – he dies.” C4 never responded to my complaint. The advertising complaints authority rejected my complaint because they judged that it was not offensive to enough people. What they missed was the reason why it was offensive, which was that it was STUPID. It was a stupid thing to say. Simple as that. And since then I have become aware of just how many stupid things C4 says and does. The lady in the veil is the latest example. It is an entirely meaningless gesture. How will she be miked – inside or outside the veil? Inside will be fakery, outside should guarantee her words are fuddled. It is all surface – ooh a lady in a veil. So fucking what. It is the content that should be the story, not what she’s wearing. Then there was that sorry excuse of a Friday night show “made” by 12 ordinary young people (yeah and the rest of C4’s production team). I caught an interview they did with gonzo porn king Ben Dover. When he said he had fucked over 100,000,000 women or however many it was, the audience gave him a cheering standing ovation. An audience with a majority of young women. They should have asked him how many STD’s he had – that would get them clapping.
TV has nothing to fear from the t’internet; it is being destroyed from within, by the Shoreditch Twats and loft dwelling City Centre Manchester idiots (CF Nathan Barley – the idiots have taken control), by the not-Oxbridge liberal left wing intelligentsia (aka The Guardian’s media wing), by people in silly spectacles and daft haircuts. Watching real-life beheadings, throat fucking or jaffa cake munching (and the last one is not a euphemism) on t’internet is no threat to telly. They need to make stuff that is original and stimulating. Doctor Who anyone?
Even more radically, make stuff that is entertaining. That people want to watch. And I don’t mean footage of real life cop chases, reality tv about really awful dull people, and a million make over programmes. I mean a million love songs.
Yes “troubled ITV”. Pretty much everyone I know and at least six or so odd million other people spent Saturday night watching the X Factor / Take That spectacular. Top telly. Build it and they will come.
Deal or No Deal (C4) pulls in something like fifty percent of the available viewing audience at that time every day. Despite Noel and his shirts and hair and beard.
So there’s old hairy Yentob going on about the democratization occasioned by the www, and he gets a young person in to show him how to set up his my space account and so methinks, I’ll befriend him , tell him where he’s going wrong. Maybe I can save telly and also track down my long lost mate Mad Anne (not to be confused with Fat Ann) who is his cousin or something. But can I find him? Na. There was an Alanyentob but he’s been discontinued. Maybe he was one of them identity thieves the real Alan so studiously omitted. There a million plain old Alan’s, mostly self-deferential types obsessed with how their lives have been ruined by being called Alan. A million loveless Alans. But the real Yentob had vanished. Floated away.
The programme finished with Alan Yentob’s Second Life avatar floating into space; very appropriate for a broadcast that was lighter and fluffier than the top of a cappuccino.
Where was the dark side? Porn, chat room grooming, identity theft, scammers and viruses were all absent. There was no discussion of the use of the web by islamo-fascist and neo-nazi propaganderists or the creation of falsified images and news. No discussion of the sociological and psychological effects of online communication and ready access to violent and graphic images. No analysis of the effect of the www on art and literature. No questioning of the reliability of Wikipedia. No mention of how many people’s lives are being ruined by e mail overload and the expectation of instantaneous 24 hour response. This nervous breakdown has been sent to you by my blackberry wireless life-wrecker. Nope, in Yentob’s world, it is all good.
Sporadically Yentob would voice his concern as a TV producer about where the audience had gone, the implication being people no longer watch the telly because they spend all their time watching people eating Jaffa Cakes on You Tube. Sorry Alan but your analysis is rather simplistic. People are not watching TV because most TV is absolute rubbish, as exemplified by your own sorry programme. Build it and they will come, but not if you build it out of feathers and air. Take the Beeb’s current holy artrinity of Imagine, the Culture Show and Newsnight Review. “There is a sense in which” they are all shite. I have tried on three occasions to watch the Power of Art and each time have been forced by rising nausea to switch off after five minutes. These programmes are patronising, dull, and listless. One senses a brooding political agenda, a fear that anything too stimulating will be considered elitist. Heaven forbid that the Beeb should be highbrow.
As for Channel 4, don’t get me started. I read today that their alternative Queen’s Message will be delivered this year by a lady in a full veil. The phrase “she has a lovely face for radio” springs to mind. I can sum up C4 in one example, their advertising for Downfall. By all accounts Downfall was a superb and serious film about Hitler’s last days. But how did C4 advertise it? With full page spreads with the strapline “it has a happy ending – he dies.” C4 never responded to my complaint. The advertising complaints authority rejected my complaint because they judged that it was not offensive to enough people. What they missed was the reason why it was offensive, which was that it was STUPID. It was a stupid thing to say. Simple as that. And since then I have become aware of just how many stupid things C4 says and does. The lady in the veil is the latest example. It is an entirely meaningless gesture. How will she be miked – inside or outside the veil? Inside will be fakery, outside should guarantee her words are fuddled. It is all surface – ooh a lady in a veil. So fucking what. It is the content that should be the story, not what she’s wearing. Then there was that sorry excuse of a Friday night show “made” by 12 ordinary young people (yeah and the rest of C4’s production team). I caught an interview they did with gonzo porn king Ben Dover. When he said he had fucked over 100,000,000 women or however many it was, the audience gave him a cheering standing ovation. An audience with a majority of young women. They should have asked him how many STD’s he had – that would get them clapping.
TV has nothing to fear from the t’internet; it is being destroyed from within, by the Shoreditch Twats and loft dwelling City Centre Manchester idiots (CF Nathan Barley – the idiots have taken control), by the not-Oxbridge liberal left wing intelligentsia (aka The Guardian’s media wing), by people in silly spectacles and daft haircuts. Watching real-life beheadings, throat fucking or jaffa cake munching (and the last one is not a euphemism) on t’internet is no threat to telly. They need to make stuff that is original and stimulating. Doctor Who anyone?
Even more radically, make stuff that is entertaining. That people want to watch. And I don’t mean footage of real life cop chases, reality tv about really awful dull people, and a million make over programmes. I mean a million love songs.
Yes “troubled ITV”. Pretty much everyone I know and at least six or so odd million other people spent Saturday night watching the X Factor / Take That spectacular. Top telly. Build it and they will come.
Deal or No Deal (C4) pulls in something like fifty percent of the available viewing audience at that time every day. Despite Noel and his shirts and hair and beard.
So there’s old hairy Yentob going on about the democratization occasioned by the www, and he gets a young person in to show him how to set up his my space account and so methinks, I’ll befriend him , tell him where he’s going wrong. Maybe I can save telly and also track down my long lost mate Mad Anne (not to be confused with Fat Ann) who is his cousin or something. But can I find him? Na. There was an Alanyentob but he’s been discontinued. Maybe he was one of them identity thieves the real Alan so studiously omitted. There a million plain old Alan’s, mostly self-deferential types obsessed with how their lives have been ruined by being called Alan. A million loveless Alans. But the real Yentob had vanished. Floated away.
Monday, December 04, 2006
On New Music
Watching Planet Earth last night, I was struck once again by the sonic similarities between the natural and electronic worlds. I have noticed before how some of the bleeps and whistles of electronica remind me of the clicks of whales and dolphins; how the vague and threatening booms of bass wash out of the speakers like deep sea depth charges. In last night’s programme on seasonal forests, a tough beaked bird drilled arhythmically against a tree; leaves rustled with the soft shoe shuffle of predators and prey. Listening afterwards to the Kitchen Motors Compilation, the sounds of the forest echo in my head (even though, with a lovely touch of irony, there are no trees in Iceland).
This, as yet unlabelled and indescribable new music, has for me an acute psychological effect – with Bjork and Múm you roam icy craggy aural landscapes; listening to CocoRosie is like regressing to the womb: with some electronica like Mystical Sun it feels like regressing further to a primordial world. Perhaps this electronic simulation of the natural world is connected to the mechanics of how this effect is achieved.
Of course many of my two and a half readers will be wondering what I am going on about; well if you have sound on your pc it is very easy to find out – just let your mouse roam right and down a bit and click the link to my my space site; stick a bit of mouldy cheese there if you like to tempt the mouse.
But the best description of it comes from the lovely Cibelle, and I leave you with her words (taken from her my space site)…
“on another note, music, the way i put it in the juicer or splash it on the canvas, is not about mixing this with that, or that with the other, the genre, the country where one was born or where one lives, it is not about being from this or that scene or this box or the next. If it's just me then, when that piece was done, with all i had inside of me at that second until that chapter got closed when the lights of the studio go off, taking up poems and embracing them with sounds in layers and punctuations, water, powder, bricks. Even better, is to sculpt out of a big mass of collected particles of sound, sweat, glue, lick, purple, silver, air, wood, wind, anything thats been stuck together by living life and all these and other things accumulating inside of me just like breathing and the only things remaining being the ones that match me at that moment, then letting them out, all merged inside me by osmosis, letting it all come out, all that, is that mass, that will be sculpted until it gives me goose bumps and butterflies. then i know it's ready.”
This, as yet unlabelled and indescribable new music, has for me an acute psychological effect – with Bjork and Múm you roam icy craggy aural landscapes; listening to CocoRosie is like regressing to the womb: with some electronica like Mystical Sun it feels like regressing further to a primordial world. Perhaps this electronic simulation of the natural world is connected to the mechanics of how this effect is achieved.
Of course many of my two and a half readers will be wondering what I am going on about; well if you have sound on your pc it is very easy to find out – just let your mouse roam right and down a bit and click the link to my my space site; stick a bit of mouldy cheese there if you like to tempt the mouse.
But the best description of it comes from the lovely Cibelle, and I leave you with her words (taken from her my space site)…
“on another note, music, the way i put it in the juicer or splash it on the canvas, is not about mixing this with that, or that with the other, the genre, the country where one was born or where one lives, it is not about being from this or that scene or this box or the next. If it's just me then, when that piece was done, with all i had inside of me at that second until that chapter got closed when the lights of the studio go off, taking up poems and embracing them with sounds in layers and punctuations, water, powder, bricks. Even better, is to sculpt out of a big mass of collected particles of sound, sweat, glue, lick, purple, silver, air, wood, wind, anything thats been stuck together by living life and all these and other things accumulating inside of me just like breathing and the only things remaining being the ones that match me at that moment, then letting them out, all merged inside me by osmosis, letting it all come out, all that, is that mass, that will be sculpted until it gives me goose bumps and butterflies. then i know it's ready.”
Sunday, December 03, 2006
Gig Review: Jackie-O Motherfucker
Jackie-O Motherfucker at Cargo. 30/11/06
Ah yes. One of the first alt rock bands I discovered when my musical path forked sharply left a few years ago, JOMF are a low key underground outfit. Their name suggests an angry heavy rock band, but in fact they make heavily textured droney free improvised music. The name was designed to ensure they remained under the counter and far away from the temptations and challenges of the mainstream.
After support from Inca Ore (layers of stoner vocals and flutes) and Alexander Ticker (layers of viola and guitar and vocals) failed to quite do it for me – all a bit flakey and lacking depth, things immediately look better when JOMF fill the room with assortments of bells and tambourines, adding guitars and held vocal notes, until my brain starts to wobble. As always, difficult to describe what is going on exactly, but this is a heavy dubby bad cousin of ambient music; one that is tugging at the coat ends of lunacy and dreaming of running off and joining a free jazz circus. Later tracks incorporate blistering polyrhythms and stabbing percussive effects.
1. Coolness of crowd: 6/10. More weird than cool. Seems to be lots of couples, comprising blokes who want to dig the music and lasses who want to be somewhere else very quickly. Very few of them make it through the JOMF set.
2. Bob quotient: 3/10. Poor.
3. Annoyment factor: 6/10. Yes there is some talking and anxious shuffling about, but somehow it doesn’t seem to bother me too much, such is the distracted and heavy nature of the music.
4. Sound quality: 8/10. Good.
5. Comfort: 7/10. A stand up gig, but as the room never gets that packed, I don’t feel locked into position.
6. Sexytime: 3/10. Just isn’t that.
7. Percussion / sound effect function: 7/10. Not much by way of weird instrumentation but all the acts rely on self-sampling and processing and layering to produce their aural soup – watery with the support, heavy and potatoey with JOMF.
Overall: 40/70, perhaps reflecting that it was all a bit weird and heavy, but in a good way.
Merchandise: None. JOMF reject the commodification of the musical environment.
Gruff Rhys?: He wasn’t there. Maybe he was too scared.
Visuals: Some low key projections.
Ah yes. One of the first alt rock bands I discovered when my musical path forked sharply left a few years ago, JOMF are a low key underground outfit. Their name suggests an angry heavy rock band, but in fact they make heavily textured droney free improvised music. The name was designed to ensure they remained under the counter and far away from the temptations and challenges of the mainstream.
After support from Inca Ore (layers of stoner vocals and flutes) and Alexander Ticker (layers of viola and guitar and vocals) failed to quite do it for me – all a bit flakey and lacking depth, things immediately look better when JOMF fill the room with assortments of bells and tambourines, adding guitars and held vocal notes, until my brain starts to wobble. As always, difficult to describe what is going on exactly, but this is a heavy dubby bad cousin of ambient music; one that is tugging at the coat ends of lunacy and dreaming of running off and joining a free jazz circus. Later tracks incorporate blistering polyrhythms and stabbing percussive effects.
1. Coolness of crowd: 6/10. More weird than cool. Seems to be lots of couples, comprising blokes who want to dig the music and lasses who want to be somewhere else very quickly. Very few of them make it through the JOMF set.
2. Bob quotient: 3/10. Poor.
3. Annoyment factor: 6/10. Yes there is some talking and anxious shuffling about, but somehow it doesn’t seem to bother me too much, such is the distracted and heavy nature of the music.
4. Sound quality: 8/10. Good.
5. Comfort: 7/10. A stand up gig, but as the room never gets that packed, I don’t feel locked into position.
6. Sexytime: 3/10. Just isn’t that.
7. Percussion / sound effect function: 7/10. Not much by way of weird instrumentation but all the acts rely on self-sampling and processing and layering to produce their aural soup – watery with the support, heavy and potatoey with JOMF.
Overall: 40/70, perhaps reflecting that it was all a bit weird and heavy, but in a good way.
Merchandise: None. JOMF reject the commodification of the musical environment.
Gruff Rhys?: He wasn’t there. Maybe he was too scared.
Visuals: Some low key projections.
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