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Archive for the ‘Bloodlust’ Category
David Cronenberg Retrospective: Scanners
February 25, 2012
Scanners! You were far sillier than I remembered!
20 SECONDS...YOU EXPLODE! Awesome.
Cronenberg’s next film after The Brood lacks its gravitas. Scanners actually differs from almost all Cronenberg films in that there is far less emphasis on psychological and physiological irregularity, and almost none of the skewed sexuality that permeates his other films. Scanners is, dare I say it, a pretty straight horror/sci-fi flick.
Following on from reflective ruminations of our time in the BBC Scanning Room (see previous post)... “We’re gonna do it the Scanner way. I’m gonna suck your brain dry!”
BBC 6 (Music) Of The Best
February 13, 2012Anyone who actually reads the irrelevant dross published on this website might be aware that a character who only semi-pretentiously named himself as The Main Protagonist – well, aren’t we all the main protagonist in the story of our own lives? – has a chance of being conscious of his, or, er, my love for radio, music and in particular the best radio station on the planet: BBC Radio 6 Music.
And 6 Music is ten years old. I only started listening to 6 in 2003, when my employer (coincidentally the BBC) happened to permit me to listen to it whilst working.
I had neither a DAB radio of my own, nor broadband internet. It was a different era. It was like the 1950s of the Internet compared to now. Social media hadn’t been invented. There was no Facebook or Twitter.
As a recent graduate of an arts-based degree I wasn’t hugely employable, so whilst I was working at the BBC, it was in the highly confidential and sensitive “Scanning Room”, document managing high profile employee paperwork and seeing all sorts of naughtiness.
My favourite memory perhaps being the opportunity to read about a disciplinary for one member of staff who’d been having an affair with another and doing all sorts of sneaky, saucy, kinky devilry whilst in the office/studio. Names are forgotten so the Data Protection Act is null and void in writing this. I think. I hope.
I’d always adored music and had been rather fond of radio for years. I loved John Peel’s shows. I never knew I’d get the chance to hear an entire radio station inspired by his ethos of openness, going mostly against the grain of commerciality.
Vic McGlynn‘s afternoon show was a revelation. Hearing Daft Punk Is Playing In My House for the first time was a glimpse into genius. An indie punk rock band playing dance music about a dance band playing at their house. Which also SOUNDS as if it’s a live band playing Daft Punk.
Unfortunately a lot of our time working in our jobs at the BBC was spent “on standby” as opposed to doing actual “stuff”, so we were told to listen to the radio and watch telly and generally chat to kill time. We weren’t allowed out of the Scanning Room. We were guards of the dark information, in a dark place. No windows. Literally no windows.
As for us BBC scanners – myself, Vanessa and Bonnie (later of Electricity In Our Homes infamy) – we became fast friends before the management realised how much money they could save by selling off the entire HR dept to a third party, albeit a third party which would run it really quite terribly (Capita, aka BBC HR Direct), and thus give the management lovely big bonuses to buy big houses in Holland Park and Notting Hill.
6 Music is very much a part of this writer’s present, and remains one aspect of the BBC he adores. And so he felt compelled to respond to this challenge:
As part of 6 Music’s Birthday celebrations we want to hear 6 Of The Best from you.
Just select six songs that most represent 6 Music to you by filling out the form below.
You’ll be able to hear a different listeners’ selection each week on the Liz Kershaw show on Saturdays, 13:00-16:00. We’ll also be compiling a chart of all the entries that are sent in.
I’ve replied. I bit on the bait. Here’s my first of the 6:
Guillemots – Made Up Love Song #43
The wife and I played this at our wedding for the first dance. Our Auntie Pam in a broad Manchester accent is on video yelling, “WHAT THE BLOOMIN’ HECK IS THIS?” in response to the wonky Hammond intro to which my newlywed wife and I did a close dance. We pulled some delightful dancey twirls out of the bag in the song’s climactic second part, much to the surprised cheers of onlookers who hitherto had only ever seen me raving sketchily in muddy fields.
Can you resist a few dancey twirls, dear reader?
Like this:
Sonic Astronic
January 25, 2012If you’re available in London this Saturday, 28th January, 2012, the Main Protagonist has a cheeky little recommendation if you fancy a GIG:
Sonic Astronic meld electronic soundscapes and live humans.
It’s been suggested they sound like Four Tet – albeit with Mick Jagger on vocals, Hooky on bass, and with a world music percussion section.
Sonic Astronic bathe their audience in audio: shimmering guitars; delicate but intense hypnotic rhythms; a fusion of electronica, earthy beats, tremendous crescendos and tender moments.
GET HERE. LISTEN HEAR.
TOWER TAVERN – Saturday 28th January – 8pm
Very near the BT tower.
21 Clipstone Street, W1W 6BA
Warren St / Goodge St tubes
CLICK HERE TO VISIT FACEBOOK EVENT PAGE, HERE. OR HERE. TAKE CARE TO HEAR.
Like this:
Trick or Treat?
October 31, 2011
Trick or Treat?
Halloween. Don’t get it.
Makes me… want to… trick the kids trying to trick me.
Who’s tricky now, eh?
HI KIDS. Meet friendly Mr Bosh Drill.
nnnnnyyyyyng nyng nyng nyng
Bad Thing
May 29, 2011
Ever feel like there’s not much to say?
The mind is a terrible thing to taste.
As we march through the terrifically lonesome darkness.
Like this:
Melbourne Uni life
December 12, 2010Edna has recently enrolled at the University of Melbourne as a “mature” (yeah, right; Oh Cheers) student and has a some bollock to report on.
- Edna is NOT the oldest student there, indeed there is someone ancient with white hair and not just a few gray in otherwise red locks.
- Edna does have the finest beard in the uni, even amongst religio-minorities, geology professors and unwashed socialists.
- Almost everyone aside from Edna appears to have an iPhone or iPad and are constantly tapping away on them. She now wants one or the other.
- No one interacts with each other at all; isolated individuals, all looking scared of slacking off to the non-existent student pub for excessive booze and a casual shag.
- Oh, there is no student pub/bar.
- She now understands “modernism” in a literary context.
- She has a new found appreciation for Catcher in the Rye, and Arundhati Roy.
It’s the end of semester now, and Edna can get back to all this.
At least she made a friend…
Edna and Mary: New Best Mates.
Considering a WAR? Oh Cheers.
September 19, 2010Some of us humans are hungry peoples, aren’t we?
And when we’re hungry, yet already full of belly-food, our innate intuition leads us to want more than we have: a manifestation of greed, an instinctive desire to grab more than we already have, to enrich ourselves and our families and maybe our allies too.
Hungry peoples are never truly sated. It’s the fear-driven desire for security innit?
Yes, folks, we’re discussing the justification for our land-grabbing and wealth-stealing proclivities.
And, as Mr Tony Blair has so respectfully and correctly apologised for going to war in Iraq in his deliciously sexy memoirs, this seems the perfect opportunity to leak this hitherto unpublished picture of Commodus, a cowardly and incestuous Roman, who is displaying his “bloodlust” face as he shakes the Blair’s mitt.
BLOODLUST: But look at Hoon's face in the background. He's wondering how he's going to explain all this to his wife.
Oh Cheers
beak
ednamakepeace
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