lovelondonscenes – 39

Posted on January 6, 2014 by John S

Back to work – walking through a damp Green Park on the way. Nothing compared with some other parts of the country, but still a bit wet for my newly shined shoes. Specially for the New Year…

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Sportsthoughts (91) – What now for West Ham?

Posted on January 6, 2014 by John S

The FA Cup has been battered and bruised by the money and power of the Premier League and the Champions League, but it still has a kick, and still matters, especially when things go wrong. Like today, when West Ham lost 5-0 to Championship team Nottingham Forest. Now, Forest have a more illustrious history than West Ham, having won the European Cup twice and the First Division championship once in the late seventies, under the greatest manager, Brian Clough. And right now they are are in good form, with a decent chance of promotion to the Premier League. Nonetheless, for West Ham to go to the City Ground and lose 5-0 was inexcusable.

The game was excruciating viewing for any Hammers fan. Big Sam put out a reserve team, throwing a load of youngsters together, with only a couple of regular first teamers in there to provide some leadership – which they didn’t. They played an unfamiliar 3-5-2 formation (actually more like 5-3-2) which was in vogue in the 1990s. And not for long. It was a complete mess. For two thirds of the game, there was some hope, but the team then folded and were an embarrassment.

Big Sam, as ever, blamed injuries and the impending League Cup semi-final  against Man City for his choices. But really, it must have been because he regards the FA Cup as a distraction to the main job of surviving in the Premier League. Percentages, always percentages. Low expectations. Survival. Target key games against fellow strugglers. Joyless, pointless football. No room for entertainment, self expression… fun.

And that targeting hasn’t worked either. In the last two Premier League games, against West Brom and Fulham, fellow basement travellers, we picked up one point out of six.

Injuries are the excuse, and certainly a lot of players are out, notably the talismanic Andy Carroll, around whom Sam wanted to organise the team. Up to the Big Man! He hasn’t played all season. Slight problem – we have no other decent fowards. You might have seen my blog jokingly likening Sam and the Irons to Pep Guardiola and Barcelona, as they beat Spurs 3-0 at White Hart Lane with a 4-6-0 formation. That, as we expected, was too good to be true. Apart from another victory in the League Cup against Spurs, little has gone right since.

So what to do? The transfer window is open in January – a chance to spend some money. The main rumour involving West Ham is that we’ll get a 6ft 8 inch striker, Lacina Traore, from Monaco. Guess what the tactics will be with him in the team. Maybe he could be paired with Carroll, on return, and the whole team can launch balls up to them…

It has all gone horribly wrong. Can Sam retrieve things, or has he lost the dressing room? Looking at the way the team is playing, I can’t see that they have a lot of belief in what he is telling them. Why does anyone really want to play a game that went out of fashion about twenty years ago? I suspect the team just listen without really taking it in. Their hearts aren’t in it. As professionals they do their best, but there is no passion, no direction.

I was struck when watching the game against Arsenal on Boxing Day that at one point the striker (yes we had one!) Carlton Cole broke free and was heading towards the Arsenal goal. Only ONE player, Mo Diame, ran up in support. Only one – at home. There was no ambition, only fear of losing the ball and being hit by Arsenal on the break. And yes, against Arsenal, that is a big risk. But what is the point of not even trying?

There is no belief.

That leads me reluctantly to conclude that it is time for Sam to go.  In saying so I seem to join the ranks of fans who see sacking the manager as the solution to all things. But no, it’s not that. I just think we are now in the same place as three years ago, when Avram Grant had also lost the team, the fans, everyone but the Board. He stayed on and we were relegated.

There is no guarantee that a new manager will turn things round. But for me it’s more than that now. It’s about the whole philosophy of football at West Ham. Sam Allardyce does not play football the West Ham way. He is all about pragmatism, percentages, long balls, physicality. Entertainment, creativity, enjoyment is incidental. Give him credit, he got us out of the Championship and to 10th place last season. But the limited game plan has been exposed this season. Most Premier league teams are becoming increasingly sophisticated. West Ham are heading in the opposite direction.  Trying to play football from twenty years ago, which wasn’t even that successful then.

That leaves the question of who should take over. The fans at Forest today were chanting for Paolo di Canio. After his Sunderland fiasco, and with the taint of fascist leanings, I don’t think that’s tenable. Harry Redknapp is the bookies’ favourite, but I’m not sure Harry’s got much left in the tank. I’d give a call to Glen Hoddle, out of the game for a while, but a sophisticated thinker, a success at a number of levels as a manager (including England) and burning for another chance in the Premier League.

I just want a manager who has the team playing proper football. Passing football. Entertaining football. Football to be proud of.

Football fitting for The Academy.

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Brighton West Pier

Posted on January 4, 2014 by John S

Happy New Year to y’all – hope you had a good Christmas and that 2014 will be a successful year for you.

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Just spent a week with family and friends in Brighton, on England’s south coast. It’s a great town: so much going on, so many good pubs and restaurants – and shops that take you back to your youth. And still a youthful, vibrant place. It’s often cast as London-on-the-sea, and there’s a bit of that;  but it has its own distinctive character. It’s a classic setting for films, especially of the gangster variety. Brighton has always been a combination of the posh, the arty and the seedy and sinister.

But above all, Brighton has the sea, the sea. The stony beach, the promenade. The piers. And this week it had the wild wind. Bracing.

I say the piers, in plural. There’s one still in good working order. And then there’s the West Pier. Now derelict, but once a thriving centre of entertainment, with its heyday in the 1920s. It fell into decay in  the 50s and 60s and was shut down to the public in 1975. Over the years there were various projects mooted to restore it to former glories, but in 2003, it fell victim to an arson attack. There are plans to build a tower called the i360 near to it, but no evidence of that happening just yet.

The coast faces south, so the sun shines on to it most of the day and creates a silhouette effect for most things when when you look onto the sea. I walked down to the West Pier on one of the few days when the sun was shining this last week – through some expressive clouds. Here are a few shots. I love the forlorn sense of what is left, and the way it has become part of the natural landscape. There’s a mystery and a resilience about it. Gone are the glory days, but it’s still a place for stories…

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lovelondonscenes -38

Posted on December 24, 2013 by John S

Where else to spend some time on Christmas Eve than the new temple of consumerism that is Westfield, Shepherds Bush…

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Wishing you all a great Christmas, however you celebrate it!

 

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The Glass Spider Band at Under The Bridge

Posted on December 23, 2013 by John S

Not content with just the Ultimate Bowie band, featuring Ed Blaney, at Latititude, I went last week to see The Glass Spider Band with a few friends in a club bizarrely situated in Stamford Bridge, home of Chelsea Football Club. I always get a frisson of entering enemy territory when I go to the Bridge, even though it’s usually for an enjoyable meal or a game courtesy of my good friend dc. Just that football rivalry. Time was when I really liked Chelsea. 1970-71 I think!

Anyway, six of us assembled, had an excellent meal at the Marco Grill – there are couple of hotels and a few restaurants in the Bridge complex – and then headed to the Under The Bridge club for a bit of Bowie nostalgia.

The Glass Spiders are fronted by a singer called Simon Westbrook who, according to the band’s website, has also done a stint as George Michael in a band called Club Tropicana. Versatile! A couple of the band – Erdal Kizilcay (bass) and Rich Cottle (sax) – played with Bowie in the eighties. As the band’s name suggests, the focus is on eighties Bowie, but also the electronic and dance tunes of the seventies. So we didn’t get any Ziggy, but we did get “Young Americans”, “Fashion”, “Fame”, and “Heroes”. We also got “Rebel, Rebel” and “Jean Genie” to keep us rocking. There was an intriguing version of “Heroes” track “Sons Of The Silent Age”.  Naturally “Let’s Dance” got a good look-in, not only the title track, but “China Girl”  and “Modern Love”. There were a couple of less well known eighties songs thrown in too. An adventurous selection.

The club was quite full, but not packed to the rafters. But the lighting and decor, along with the music, made for a really good atmosphere. There was also a brilliant photo exhibition, of rock stars from the seventies and eighties, with a strong focus on punk and new wave.  Perfect for us!

Simon Westbrook didn’t try to look like Bowie, though his voice was a good fit. I’m not sure his all-red outfit really suited him, but credit for trying. The band were slick and the dancing girls looked like a throwback to Bryan Ferry’s halcyon days. I did wonder if Roman Abramovich had had a hand in their selection, given our location….

Definitely a band worth checking out if you like Bowie’s dance and eighties incarnation. We had a great night.

A few of my hastily shot iPhone 3 pictures…

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The band’s website has a few videos from the gig, if you are interested. Here’s “Fashion”.

http://glassspiderband.com/video/fashion-live-bridge/

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Sportsthoughts (90) – The perils of Premier League management

Posted on December 22, 2013 by John S

There was an intriguing table in The Observer today about the longevity of Premier League managers (as managers, not people!). It ranked the current 18 – two clubs, Spurs and West Brom, don’t have a “permanent” manager, having recently sacked the incumbents.

There’s one outlier: Arsene Wenger, who joined Arsenal in September 1996. Now that Fergie has retired from Man Utd and David Moyes left Everton to replace him, (oh, and Tony Pulis left Stoke) Arsene is truly left in splendid isolation.

It is staggering that second in the table is Alan Pardew, at Newcastle. Appointed in December 2010. Second longest, with three years service. And every time Newcastle suffer a dip in form, people are calling for his head. They are doing well at the moment, so maybe he’s safe for a while.

And then, even more amazingly, third is Big Sam at West Ham. Appointed in June 2011. After we were relegated. A mere two and a half years ago. Mind you, it feels like an eternity… of grim, percentage football. I dream of a future West Ham manager who restores the club tradition of attractive, attacking football.

So far this season five Premier League managers have lost their jobs. 25% of the total. Mostly near the bottom of the table (Big Sam is the exception amongst all the teams around him), but now including Andre Villas-Boas at Tottenham. What is this all about? Partly it is power-crazed owners from abroad who know little about English football and care even less. But the root causes are MONEY and FEAR. Intertwined. The fear of relegation is what drives 10-12 of the 20 clubs in the PL each season. The only objective is staying in the league and continuing to get the massive handouts from Sky and now BT. It’s big money and they just can’t imagine life without it. The economics of most Premier League clubs is highly risky. You pay high wages to attract the best players. You pay absurd transfer fees for some pretty average players. All in the hope that they’ll keep you in the division, and if you are really lucky, get you into the top four, where the lucrative Champions League beckons.

Money, money, money, money, money….

In fairness we get some very good football these days. Watching some of the world’s finest players. But there is almost no patience. Dip in form, whispers start. Run of three or four losses, future questioned. Much more than three or four and you are out.

The January transfer window concentrates minds too. You are the owner – or on the Board – and your club is struggling in December. You have twenty or thirty million which could be invested in the Window. The fans are turning against the manager. Do you want him investing that money in players that fit his vision, when you have gone off his vision? Of course not.  Taxi for the manager!

And the risks of sticking with the manager are there for all to see. West Ham, in the 2010-11 season, had a discredited manager, Avram Grant, at the turn of the year. The fans wanted him out. The Board sniffed around other managers, rather too publicly, which further undermined Avram. But they didn’t apply the axe. He hung on and the Irons were relegated.

So we are all complicit. We quickly tire of managers if they are unsuccessful – or even if they are playing the wrong kind of football. We want change, hope. And then add on top of that the megalomaniac owners…

Wanna be a Premier League manager? You’ll get two years if you are lucky.

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lovelondonscenes -37

Posted on December 20, 2013 by John S

Views from Tower Bridge on the way home after a great send off for a good colleague going back to Australia. iphone 3 style, so making a virtue of the not great camera.

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Primal Scream at the O2 Academy Brixton

Posted on December 15, 2013 by John S

I went with my friend Jon G to see Primal Scream at Brixton Academy last Wednesday, 11 December. 90s nostalgia in large part, but also to enjoy what they are still doing. The new album, “More Light”, is a good one, and the tracks from it were well received at the concert. It wasn’t just 40 and 50 somethings wanting “Screamadelica” (although it was great when we got it… read on).

The support band were Temples. They played a good set. A hint of psychedelia, a bit of the Byrds: in recent times, quite like the Big Pink.

Last time I saw Primal Scream was in 1994. It was at the Shepherds Bush Empire, as the band promoted their album, “Give Out But Don’t Give Up”. They came on so late that most people were worse the wear for drink (us included) and some were starting to think about the tube home. That doesn’t happen these days. The main band comes on by 9pm or soon after, and is finished by 10.45. “Give Out” was the Primal Scream Stones and Faces tribute album – and very good it was too. It was an interesting response to the critical success of 1991’s “Screamadelica”, which is one of the great nineties albums. A cross between indie, psychedelia and gospel. It was like nothing else before it, though a song like the Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” was clearly an inspiration.

After the pastiche of “Give Out”, the band made two darkly brilliant albums, “Vanishing Point” and “XTRMNTR”. After that, they went back to the pastiche rock’n’roll, with some great songs here and there, like “Country Girl” and – a personal favourite – “Suicide Sally and Johnny Guitar”. I kept on buying the albums, but never played them much. The same fate befell the new album “More Light”, released this year. Of course, before the concert, I gave it a few listens and started to appreciate its depth, and the variety of sounds. The opener, “2013” sounded like an epic in the making (with some hints of Hawkwind’s “Silver Machine”) and “Hit Void” with its wild sax towards the end, showed a band still pushing at the boundaries.

Glad I did do some preliminary listening, because “2013” and “Hit Void” were the two opening songs. A great start. Then it was the Stones tribute “Jailbird” from “Give Out”, which really got everyone going.  The rock’n’roll noise continued with “Accelerator” from “XTRMNTR” and “Culturecide” from the new one. We then went into a mid-section which was more mellow, meandering, with some good dubwise bass sounds. The audience drifted a bit, chilled, didn’t lose interest, but maybe lost a bit of focus. The songs were mostly from “More Light”. Time to get another beer, go to the loo, contemplate life – and enjoy the sound, but in a less intense way.

Then the engine switched back on to full. “Swastika Eyes”, “Country Girl” and ‘Rocks” took us rock’n’rolling to the end of the set. Brilliant. And then for the encore.

Well, that made a good concert great. First track I didn’t know, but found out later why it worked. Then the final three, the tracks that made “Screamadelica”: “Loaded”, “Come Together”, “Movin’ On Up”. Singalong anthems. The time when gospel and indie made a match in heaven. “Loaded” and  “Come Together” aren’t conventional songs, but really just big long choruses and outros. Inspiring at the same time. During “Come Together” I got shivers down the spine, it was just so good. And so communal. “Movin’ On Up” was such an upbeat way to finish. We all went away happy.

As we were leaving the crowd spontaneously broke out into “Come Together”. Now maybe that happens all the time at One Direction or the Capital Radio jingle bell ball, but  not that often at the concerts I go to. It was another spine-tingling moment.

That first song in the encore was called “I’m Losing More Than I’ll Ever Have”. I know this thanks to the brilliant Setlist fm. The song is from the band’s first album, “Primal Scream”. I listened to it on Spotify and realised that it ends with the same musical motif that was then expanded on “Loaded” on “Screamadelica”. So they segued perfectly in the encore, and for the truest Primal Scream fans, would have constituted a perfect passing of the baton. Bobby Gillespie and the band were acknowledging, celebrating their history.

As well as, with “More Light”, and the concert tonight, demonstrating that they are still in excellent form and still pushing the boundaries of rock’n’roll.

(No photos tonight. The poor old iPhone 3 just couldn’t cope with the lights. Bobby looked cool from the distance in his silver shirt and cowboy tie. The close up photos on Google Images show he’s not a young man anymore – check them for yourself.  But he sure knows how to keep the rock’n’roll candle burning.)

 

 

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My Top 10 Albums of 2013

Posted on December 11, 2013 by John S

OK, so let’s just spell them out, then explain.

1. The Bones Of What You Believe- Chvrches

2. Settle – Disclosure

3. Amok – Atoms For Peace

4. Dear River – Emily Barker and the Red Clay Halo

5. Tin Star – Lindi Ortega

6. If You Wait – London Grammar

7. Stay True – Danny and the Champions of the World

8. Overgrown – James Blake

9. Machineries of Joy – British Sea Power

10. Ride Out The Dark – Houndstooth

So Chvrches won by a mile. I grew to love them over the year. Saw them at Latititude, bought the singles. Heard the album. Related to the perfection of their eighties sound. Saw them at Shepherd’s Bush Empire. Got to love every song on the album. As close to pop perfection as you can get. Brilliant beats and that voice… Lauren Mayberry. Floating over the dance beats with an edge and a beauty. Amongst all the tracks, “Lies” is my favourite. A punching beat, like Tubeway Army’s “Are Friends Electric”, but with that beautiful voice almost contradicting the rhythm.   I’m still listening to this album – it never ceases to delight.

Disclosure have a retro element too. Their dance beats stray through all the sounds of the last twenty years. It’s so uplifting. Another album I just couldn’t stop listening to for a while. Pure fun. At Latitude, they were good, but not quite as good as I’d hoped for, maybe because none of the guest singers were there. But this was a seriously good album.

 Atoms For Peace are Tom Yorke’s latest side project. “Amok” took up where “The King Of Limbs” left off, with even more electronic loops and blurps. It brought me back to Radiohead’s astonishing concert at the O2 in late 2012. The melodies mashed up with some amazing electronics. “Amok” took the concept even further.

Emily Barker’s “Dear River” is a wonderful, warm folk album that tells stories of the pull of home, which is Western Australia. Readers of this blog will know how much I love Emily’s music. This album simply took it to new levels. The rousing “Letters” is my favourite.

A month ago I had never heard of Lindi Ortega. The Guardian gave her album, “Tin Star” four stars. Suggested she was a country singer with a bit of edge. I gave it a listen on Spotify. The Guardian was right. I really loved the title track. It was the kind of song that Bruce Springsteen might write. That gave me an entry to the whole album. I’ve been lapping it up ever since. Country heartbreak and rock’n’roll. Can’t wait to see her at the Borderline in Soho, late January.

London Grammar was another late entry into the ten. I’d heard a few tracks and liked them. Then I focused. And realised that this is an extraordinarily beautiful album. “Strong” is the best of many wonderful tunes. There’s an element of trip hop, and a sense of melancholy which is truly gripping. This is a true soul album.

Danny and the Champs play a wonderful mix of Bruce Springsteen, Van Morrison and Danny’s original band, Grand Drive. Check my my recent blog about the band to see how good they are live. James Blake was the best thing at Latitude this year. “Overgrown” won the Mercury Music prize. It’s more of the combination of that aching soul and unusual electro beats that characterised his eponymous first album. Not quite as striking, but still wonderful. I went to see British Sea Power early in 2013. They were superb. And the new album featured heavily. Favourite track, the wild “K Hole”. And in tenth spot Houndstooth, a band from Oregon, USA, that I heard on BBC 6 Music. I liked the combination of psych-folk and guitar solos that reminded me of Television – Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd. They only just edged out my favourite ambient band, Boards of Canada, with their new album, “Tomorrow’s Harvest”. So check them out too!

Now I have to acknowledge that my good friend dc  (he eschews upper case) won’t be happy with the complete lack of metal and almost no rock (British Sea Power is closest). Well, I have heard some good rock albums this year – Hookworms, Drenge – and haven’t got around to listening to others yet, like Queens Of The Stone Age. But nothing has made me want to pick up that air guitar and rock. Essentially my ten either made me want to sing along, dance, or wallow in the beautiful melancholy.

And talking of which, I should just mention a track I loved this year. “Let Her Go” by Passenger.

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lovelondonscenes – 36

Posted on December 10, 2013 by John S

Piccadilly Circus, 7.45pm this evening. I hadn’t realised the Eros statue had been encapsulated by a bubble. It’s quite sci-fi…

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