So, having done four Clip Joint shows in Camden Town’s theatre bar The Camden Head, it’s now time for a change of venue, to London’s glittering West End no less. It does feel rather fitting though that the new venue for the show is in the only independent cinema left in the London’s theatreland, The Prince Charles. The ethos of the show remains the same, we show clips of things we think deserve and indeed need to be seen by a wider audience whether they be films, documentaries, music videos or anything else deemed appropriate. Some of my choices so far have included a somewhat unintentionally funny documentary on the making of the film The Longest Day entitled D-Day Revisited and hosted by the films producer Darryl F. Zanuck. I’ve also gone for scenes from the Leonard Cohen documentary Bird On A Wire which sees Cohen having to deal with groupie requests rather uncomfortably on camera and also the superb 1976 short film by John Smith, The Girl Chewing Gum. It’s also interesting and highly entertaining to have our special guests bring along a clip they are passionate about and want to show. So far, we’ve had Miles Jupp screen a short film starring himself and Kevin Eldon, Josie Long playing her favourite Hammer Horror clip, Iain Morris opting for a scene from John’s Not Mad, a documentary on Tourettes and Bob Mortimer choosing a sketch from Monty Python and a scene from Breaking Bad. We also invite the audience to bring along clips and so far we’ve had a delightful range of the weird and wonderful. I already have my clips selected for the next show on February 19, our first of course at the new venue. At the moment I’m not sure what Iain or our special guest Danny Wallace will be showing but I look forward to finding out nearer the time. The very reasonably priced tickets can be purchased here and while you do have a gander at the website, it’s rather dandy. In this age of austerity we still need some laughs and a night out, let us cater for both.

Practically, having a record player in your car may not be the greatest move, especially if the suspension is not up to par. My knowledge of car suspensions, especially on vehicles from the nineteen sixties is limited to say the least but regardless, I think this is a pretty good addition to any automobile. The person in the photo is former Manchester City forward Mike Summerbee. He also appeared in Escape to Victory with Sylvester Stallone, Michael Caine and John Wark. The record he is about to play is Ruby Tuesday by The Rolling Stones which was on the b-side of Let’s Spend The Night Together. I think this goes some way to disproving the notion that footballers have rubbish taste when it comes to music.

Image – mcfc.co.uk

1. The Middle East – I Want That You Are Always Happy

Quite simply, this album contains some of the most beautiful, melodic and at times haunting songs I’ve heard in quite some time on the same album. This was obviously a band with great musical ambition and it seems rather strange to speak about them in the past tense as shortly after this release, the group disbanded. One can’t help and wonder what might have been if they had stayed together, it seems a real shame to produce something this good only to call a halt to proceedings. It is a great epitaph though.

Click here to watch the video for Jesus Came To My Birthday Party

Click here to listen to As I Go To See Janey

2. Jeffrey Lewis – A Turn In The Dream-Songs

I went to my first Jeffrey Lewis gig this year in London and I hadn’t experienced a show like it in a long while where I was hooked from first song until last. His opening number that night was Time Trades from this album and displays brilliantly his lyrical dexterity. Some of the set was also accompanied by a backdrop of Lewis’s own cartoons leading to a mixture of DIY music making and almost Harvey Pekar-esque story telling. An intoxicating concoction to witness live, a great album in its own right.

Click here to listen to Time Trades

Click here to watch The Guardian How I Wrote Session for Try It Again

3. The Phoenix Foundation – Buffalo

I really do think that is as strong an album as has been released by anyone this year. This is actually the fourth album by the Kiwi band as well as two soundtracks so they could never be labelled as workshy at least.  Their live shows, two of which I’ve been in attendance at in 2011 comprised music from all four albums and certainly helped to showcase a band with expert musicianship and an ear for a nice hook even in the more psychedelic parts of the show. Weirdly at times,  the percussionist seemed to act as if  he’d won a competition to play on stage with a signed band if his dancing like a loon was anything to go by but regardless, this album is quite magnificent and has yet to achieve the wider acclaim it deserves.

Click here to watch the video for Pot

Click here to watch the band perform Buffalo on Later With Jools Holland

4. Stevie Jackson – (I Can’t Get No) Stevie Jackson

The most surprising aspect of this debut solo release from Belle&Sebastian’s Stevie Jackson is that it took until 2011 to see the light of day. It was worth the wait though, for the albums title alone.  Thankfully the music is also a joy to behold. I’ve always been a huge admirer of Stevie’s songwriting in Belle&Sebastian in songs such as Jonathan David, The Wrong Girl and To Be Myself Completely and this craft is exemplified superbly on this album.  From the lush Gretsch driven melody in Richie Now, a song concerning the dreams shared with a school friend about one day becoming rock stars to the humourous stresses of sending an e-mail to someone you’re attracted to in Press Send,  this is a most accomplished debut album, albeit by someone with more than a little previous experience in music making.

Click here to watch Feel The Morning performed at Dr Jimmy’s in Glasgow

Click here to listen to Kurosawa

5. The Warm Digits – Keep Warm… With The Warm Digits

The first time I heard The Warm Digits was when Andy Weatherall played the song A Warm Front, Coming From The North as part of a mix he was doing for BBC 6Music.  I mistakingly  thought I was listening to a great lost Nue! or Tangerine Dream song. As it turned out they are from Newcastle which isn’t in Germany, not even close really. Whatever the case, their take on krautrock and electronica works very, very well indeed.

Click here to listen to A Warm Front, Coming From The North

Click here to watch a live performance of Keep Warm

6. AgesandAges – Alright You Restless

This is the debut album from the Portland band and has been described in some circles as “raw choral pop”. There certainly seems to be a “less is more” philosophy to the music making which is something I’ve always been drawn towards. Having said this, it never sounds too sparse, just beautiful and rather uplifting. The musical equivalent of someone you fancy complimenting you on both your dress sense and bone structure.

Click here to watch the video for Navy Parade (Escape From The Black River Bluffs)

Click here to listen to No Nostalgia

7. Thurston Moore – Demolished Thoughts

Hearing this album again after the news of Moore’s split with Kim Gordon certainly makes for a more poignant listen but regardless of relationship status it’s still a winner. With no new Beck album this year (I hope he does another soon) I was interested in this long before it came out as Beck was producing and he does so with aplomb. I imagine some still immediately associate Moore with loud, feedback driven guitar music but this is a far more acoustic effort with violins taking prominence over the more traditional harsh guitar sounds of Sonic Youth.

Click here to watch a short Thurston Moore documentary with performances from the album

Click here to listen to Illuminine

8. The War On Drugs – Slave Ambient

I imagine this record will be popping up in a quite a few other end of year lists and with good reason. They have been compared to everyone from Spiritualized and Bob Dylan to Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen. To be honest, I see more Jason Pierce in here than any of the others but that’s just my take on it. I sometimes in moments of ponder, think that along with the melodica, the harmonica is a somewhat underused instrument in modern music. Thankfully, the use of it on this album, albeit subtley at times, is most welcome.

Click here to watch the video for Baby Missiles

Click here to listen to I Was There

9. The Shivers – More

Based in New York and signed to Fence Records in the UK, the first song on More is only thirty seconds long and features a piano and nothing else, no bad thing. The theme of love seems pretty prevalent throughout the songs contained or more precisely lovelornness, but it certainly isn’t a morbid listen. As a slight aside, I think that a Transformer-era Lou Reed would have done a terrific cover of Love Is In The Air. If an album on this list benefitted from repeat listens more than any other I would say it was this one, sometimes immediacy takes a bit time.

Click here to listen to Irrational Love

Click here to watch the video for More

10. Primal Scream – Screamadelica (re-issue)

I felt obliged to include this re-issue not so much for the original album but for all that came with it. I re-bought this on iTunes for £12.99 and I think it may have been the bargain of the year, all the more so if I didn’t already own most of it on vinyl but now isn’t the time for nit picking. As well as a re-mastered version of the original “classic”, the price included the Dixie Narco EP, various remixes and a quite brilliant live show from the Los Angeles Palladium. I went to see them play Screamadelica at the Manchester Apollo and while it was a great show, Bobby Gillespie seemed intent on asking the crowd if they were ready to “testify” before launching in to Movin’ On Up at the start of the show. This led to some confusion on my part as for a second I was unsure if I was at a gig or a bystander at the Salem witch trials. As it turned out I was at a gig. Either way, it’s hard to better this re-issue on value for money at least, but the music is rather good too.

Click here to see Bobby intent on the crowd testifying

Click here to see the band perform Come Together live at Glastonbury

I managed to get to the final screening of Lawrence Of Belgravia at the London Film Festival last week. As a fan of the Lawrence’s work going back to the Felt days I was looking forward to learning more about him but must admit that when the director of the film Paul Kelly stated in his introduction that the film didn’t rely on archive footage or talking head interviews to help tell the story I was slightly unsure if it would work. Happily it did, in fact, a non-reliance on traditional musical documentary techniques simply served to add a freshness to the genre. What comes over strongly is the idea of a man with his own artistic vision and a complete disinterest in re-treading past glories. Although it would probably be fair to say that Lawrence comes across as a slightly oddball figure, he is also funny, self effacing and a genuinely interesting artist clearly at odds with the commercial music business. This film deserves to get at least a limited cinematic release but it remains to be seen whether it will. A review courtesy of Screendaily can be found here and one from The Guardian here.

Image: The Perfect Kiss

I heard Andy Weatherall playing this track on a mix he did for BBC 6Music and it blew me away. The album Keep Warm With the Warm Digits is a bit of a mix of krautrock/electronica and well worth the purchase if you are in to that sort of thing and really, why wouldn’t you be?  For more information the bands web site can be found here. Herein ends this latest public service announcement.

Since I visited my first in 1983 as a very young boy, I have been somewhat in awe of football stadiums. It’s not something I’m particularly proud about nor ashamed, it is simply the case. I was taken along with my father and grandfather to see Hibernian play Aberdeen at Easter Road Stadium in Edinburgh on a cold October afternoon but before the teams even took to the field I was already marveling at the massed banks of terracing, floodlights and even the electronic scoreboard which didn’t work and would never work on all my return visits, of which there were many. It was actually a strange introduction to football as Hibs won 2-1 against an Aberdeen side managed by Alex Ferguson and who were at the time, the European Cup Winners Cup holders. As I was to quickly find out, seeing Hibs win wasn’t a regular experience but you have your team and you stick with them through thin and thinner. As I always say, being a Hibs and Scotland fan from an early age helps to harden your skin for the inevitable disappointments later life can throw at you. There is some tremendous archive footage of Easter Road taken in 1980 and can be seen here, the fact that it’s soundtracked by the Mogwai classic Hunted By A Freak is somewhat of an extra bonus.

Only two years later I would again see the two teams play one another but this time it was in the League Cup Final at Hampden Park. As far as the the actual game was concerned, it could only be described as an unmitigated disaster. Inside the first 12 minutes we were two nil down and would go on to lose three nil. This was obviously extremely disappointing for me and the many, many thousands of others who had travelled through from Edinburgh. However, on the plus side, the national stadium was a breathtaking sight to behold. It was no longer the biggest in the world as it had been before the Maracana was re-developed in Brazil but to a small child’s eyes and I’m sure a great many adult ones it still looked mightily impressive. It was huge, foreboding even, but totally captivating and the details all around intrigued me. The height of the floodlights, the massive roof covering one terrace behind the goal, the press box on top of the main stand which seemed to hang there regardless of the laws of gravity, the crush barriers on the terracing and the stanchions attached to the goalposts. I didn’t know at the time but I was in a city which at one point could claim to have the three biggest stadiums in the world (the other two being Celtic Park and Ibrox) and which was also the birthplace of Archibald Leitch, the pioneer of British stadium design. I didn’t need this extra information at the time to make the visual experience any more exhilarating however.

Although the stadiums I once visited no longer exist in their previous form due to vital modernisation they still hold a special place in my heart and I believe, an importance for society as a whole. Of all the buildings in the public realm, stadiums enjoy the highest profile – millions of people across the world worship at them every week, far more than can be found attending churches. But what do we really know about them and what makes a stadium special? Today the football ground can be regarded as among the most important buildings a city possesses. The stadium is much more than just steel framework, bricks and mortar – it embodies a club’s history, many of its major triumphs and disasters and is often as familiar to the fan as his or her local high street whilst providing a focus for the community. On a global scale, they act as symbols for a nation. Their architectural features can be viewed in the same light as a cathedral and can cause as much controversy as the latest modern sculpture to be discussed and dissected in the media. In recent history such celebrated architectural feats as the “Gherkin” building in London, the Scottish Parliament building in Edinburgh and the Millennium Centre in Cardiff ultimately lack the profound effect the stadium architects continue to have on the Britons who inhabit their structures. They are seen by many more on television in all corners of the planet while a game is being played but there are still many areas of interest to unearth long after the whistle has blown and the spectators have gone home.

Firstly there are the architectural and historical factors to take in to consideration such as the fact that some stadiums, or at least certain parts of them have acquired the status of listed buildings. Therein lies the reason that although Arsenal no longer play at Highbury the two main stands have been converted in to housing as opposed to being demolished. Then there is the sociological, why did certain areas of certain stadiums produce better atmospheres than others? Aside from perhaps the most obvious example of The Kop in Liverpool there was also The Jungle at Celtic Park and the Shelf at White Hart Lane to name just two more, there are countless others of course. Next there is the psychological, the idea of grounds as fortresses and the intimidation factors generated. It is perhaps unsurprising but not widely reported that the design of a ground can help or hinder the affect of the referee. This is examined in a Salford University research paper entitled “How stadium design affects football results” and details that if fans are further away from the pitch due to a running track, they are unable to exert as much psychological pressure on the referee than if they were closer. Lastly there is the political. The recent arguments over who should occupy the Olympic Stadium after the 2012 games in London ended up going straight to the heart of government. Before this and due to the disasters at Heysel, Bradford and Hillsborough, political legislation has had huge affect on the stadiums of the UK and beyond.

All areas of the UK have their own individual stadium stories and histories. To take one such area as an example, the north west of England, it becomes evident that the stories are as interesting as they are varied. For instance, Manchester United‘s Old Trafford has appeared in more feature films than any other British club ground. These films include  Charlie Bubbles starring Albert Finney (1968), Hell Is A City, with Stanley Baker and Donald Pleasance (1960), Billy Liar, starring Tom Courtenay and Julie Christie (1963) and The Lovers with Richard Beckinsale and Paula Wilcox (1972).  Less favourably, and going back a little further, this was also a club who in 1910 were christened “Moneybags United” due in part to other peoples jealousy as the ground contained a billiard room, massage room, a gymnasium, a plunge bath, a capacity of 80,000 and attendants to lead patrons to their five shilling tip up seats from the tea-rooms.

While Liverpool FC couldn’t quite boast the material wealth of their great rivals they are a club where the political and psychological aspects of football stadiums are intrinsically linked. In the history of stadium disasters Liverpool have been at the centre of two of the worst – Heysel and Hillsborough. Aside from the obvious emotional ramifications the disasters also had a huge affect on Anfield itself. For one it has meant that the most famous terrace in British football, The Kop, is now all seated.  It is also a terrace with a strange nautical history. When the Kop was extended and covered in 1928, the Kemlyn Road corner of the terrace saw a new landmark installed. It was a tall white flagpole, which had been the top mast of The Great Eastern, one of the first iron ships in the world whose maiden voyage was in 1860 but by 1888 lay broken up in the Mersey docks. When the Kop was completed, the surviving top mast was floated across the Mersey and hauled up to Anfield by a team of horses proving that re-cycling was happening long before the council decided to hand out bags to each household by way of an incentive for green living.

More strange yet fascinating stories can be found across Stanley Park at the home of Everton, Goodison Park. In 1913 the ground became the first to be visited by a ruling monarch when George V and Queen Mary came to inspect local school children there. Soon after the First World War the US baseball teams Chicago White Sox and the New York Giants played an exhibition match at the ground with one player managing to hit a ball straight over the main stand. The club even dealt with the problem of housing in close proximity to the ground in a swift and decisive way. In preparation for 1966 World Cup, they bought and demolished some terraced houses behind the Park End Stand in order to build a new entrance. A quick yet pragmatic action indeed. Famously, at one corner of the ground sits a church, St Luke the Evangelist. Proof if it were needed that the football stadium hasn’t completely replaced the church as the heart and focal point of the community.

The one complaint that some Evertonians may have nowadays is that although their stadium has maintained a traditional appearance, the old fashioned nature of Goodison doesn’t exactly lend itself to comfort and uninterrupted views. Conversely, a club who have seen a monumental volte-face in terms of spectator comfort and environs are Bolton Wanderers. Where now a Bolton Wanderers fan can marvel at the futuristic Reebok Stadium, the memory of the old Burnden Park is still vivid in many of their minds and was also immortalized in the L.S. Lowry painting Going To The Match. Furthermore, this was a ground where in its last few functioning seasons until demolition in 1999 had a brand new supermarket replace the traditional terrace behind one of the goals and begs the question, did supporters buy their groceries before or after taking in a match?

There are of course many more tales to uncover from football grounds not just in the north west of England but all over the UK and beyond. For those  seeking more information I would always direct them firstly to the excellent Football Grounds Of Great Britain by Simon Inglis and his follow up books The Football Grounds of Europe and Engineering Archie: Archibald Leitch – Football Ground Designer. There are also many web sites dedicated to football stadiums old and new with a good first port of call being The Football Ground Guide which contains information on existing stadiums, pictures and retrospectives on old ones and a message board for users to discuss all aspects of football ground culture. It was while browsing this busy message board some time ago that I realised I wasn’t alone in my secret passion, not alone by a long stretch.

Image – Football Ground Guide

This new phraseology in relation to festivals has increasingly crept in to the public vernacular over the last few years but certainly wasn’t prevalent when I attended my first festival, Reading in 1994. Not only was it my first festival but also the first time I had been to London, albeit to pass through on the way to the site. I remember thinking on the trip back to Edinburgh after enjoying sets by Pulp, Radiohead and countless others that in a few weeks time I would be going to college as I had finished my schooling that summer. At no point did I intend to ‘do’ college.

There are things I can’t help but ‘do’ of course. I do the dishes when they are dirty, I do my tax returns as I’m self employed and if asked I would ‘Do the Dougie‘, which as I’ve become aware is a dance craze sweeping America. However, I would never ask my flatmate if he wanted anything as I was ‘doing the shops’. I would simply inquire if he needed anything as I was ‘going to the shops’. Anyway, as much as I fear there will be thousands upon thousands of people ‘doing’ festivals over the summer, I hope I’m not alone in remaining in the camp who are looking forward to ‘going’ to them. So in essence, in relation to festivals let’s at least try to maintain ‘going’ as our verb of choice. By way of ending on a high, here are The Beta Band playing Broke at Glastonbury in 2002. Stunning.