Where Worlds Collide

If you’ve had problems ordering stuff from Fish recently, here’s why. In the latest email from Fish, he explains why things went pear-shaped.

Up until last week I have been unable to provide details regarding a situation that began to unfold in June this year and which has dominated my life since. Due to a legal action being in progress I was restricted from providing information that would explain the problems I have been encountering with the fan club merchandising service since the beginning of 2004. Problems which have enraged a lot of my fans and badly damaged my business and career in both financial and professional terms. I was very aware last year of the continuing complaints against our mail order service; complaints which grew in intensity in the summer of 2004 and resulted in a total loss of confidence from our business customers. At the time I was informed by my office manager - Kim Waring - that the problems lay with the postal and courier services and trusted her judgement. I backed her, despite a highly vocal outcry amongst the fans on various web sites and forums and publicly denounced those who were attacking our service. I now find my confidence was not only severely misplaced but in fact cynically betrayed by someone I considered not only a valued employee but also a friend and confidante. I am severely embarrassed by this revelation and would like to extend my sincere apologies to those whom I berated during the period concerned. Up until June this year when Kim Waring handed in her notice I had absolutely no idea of what had been going on behind my back while I was on tour and even while I was working in the studio.

I’ve worked for a small company that’s been the victim of fraud by a dishonest employee, and seen from first hand the consequences of such a betrayal of trust. In that case, he got found out early on before he’s had the chance to do too much damage to the company’s finances or reputation. (I’ve also worked for a company who’s CEO ended up in jail for fraud, but that was another story) Fish’s case sounds an order of magnitude worse.

Scott is propagating a book meme: bold the books in this list you’ve read.

The list seems to come from the Guardian’s Geek Novels poll; it’s not really any sort of definitive canon of science fiction or anything else. Three books by Neil Stephenson? I’ve not only bolded but added a few words about the ones I’ve read.

1. The HitchHiker�s Guide to the Galaxy � Douglas Adams

Not only that, I’ve read all five of the trilogy, despite the fact that the last two really aren’t very good.

2. Nineteen Eighty-Four � George Orwell
3. Brave New World � Aldous Huxley
4. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? � Philip K Dick

I read the book before seeing Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner”. While it’s still a classic film, there’s so much more to the book.

5. Neuromancer � William Gibson

One of the greatest opening lines in all fiction, which sets the tone for the book. One of the few SF books ever written that had a significant impact on the real world. Gibson invented the concept of ‘Cyberspace’ before such a thing existed in reality. If the book hadn’t been written, you probably would not be reading this blog post.

6. Dune � Frank Herbert

I remember getting into a great argument in the CompuServe SFLIT form with one of the Sysops, who insisted that Dune was a truly terrible book because it wasn’t sufficiently character driven. She didn’t seem to be able to understand the concept of a book where the setting itself was a central character, and she seemed to think I was an idiot.

On the other hand, the boring sequels are best avoided. The fourth, God Awful of Dune, is the worst.

7. I, Robot � Isaac Asimov

No, I haven’t seen the film, which I’m told is horrible, and does to Asimov’s work what Paul Verhoeven did to Heinlein’s “Starship Troopers”. Except the latter richly deserves it.

8. Foundation � Isaac Asimov

I remember enjoying this one at a formative age, then trying to reread it several years later, and finding it rather dated. Such is the fate of much of the so-called ‘Golden Age’ of SF. It’s not even Asimov’s best writing (I think the later “The End of Eternity” is his finest work) Still better than the contrived and flatulent sequels he pumped out in the 1980s, which ruin the memory of the original.

9. The Colour of Magic � Terry Pratchett

This is actually a book I’d recommend you don’t read unless you’re a fantasy fan; you won’t get the jokes, and it makes a very poor introduction to the Pratchett’s never-ending Discworld series. Start with “Guards! Guards!”, “Wyrd Sisters” or “Mort” instead.

10. Microserfs � Douglas Coupland
11. Snow Crash � Neal Stephenson

Probably the greatest first chapter in the history of SF, and it’s all about pizza delivery, of all things. Nothing in the rest of the book can top that first chapter, although it tries hard.

12. Watchmen � Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
13. Cryptonomicon � Neal Stephenson

When Stephenson reached the point where he was two successful to edit, the result being a bloated collossus that’s at least 200 pages longer than it needs to be. His more recent baroque trilogy is even longer, but seems to contain less obvious filler.

14. Consider Phlebas � Iain M Banks

What struck me about this book is now RPG-like a lot of it was. The early sections read like a Traveller game with a particularly sadistic GM. When Banks wrote the book he intended to write something literally unfilmable, with scenes so totally over the top that no special effects budget could put them on screen. Nowadays, CGI technology has reached the point that the biggest problem would be the typically Banksian downer ending.

15. Stranger in a Strange Land � Robert Heinlein
16. The Man in the High Castle � Philip K Dick

I love alternate histories. A lot of ‘serious’ books seem to focus on the change point; in contrast, classic AH novels extrapolate things forward to come up with what might have been. This, along with Keith Roberts’ “Pavane” are the standard by which others are judged.

17. American Gods � Neil Gaiman

I found this one moderately entertaining, but no more. It’s had some very mixed reviews; I’ve heard it accused of gross sexism, and crude anti-Americanism (I don’t really get the latter argument)

18. The Diamond Age � Neal Stephenson

It’s considered by many that writing fiction set 50-100 years in the future is the hardest type of science fiction to write, and I tend to agree, but Stephenson manages it better than most.

19. The Illuminatus! Trilogy � Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson
20. Trouble with Lichen - John Wyndham

Long time since we had a music meme doing the rounds. This once came via The Ministry of Information.

1. Of all the bands/artists in your cd/record collection, which one do you own the most albums by?
There are several artists I’ve got a lot by, I think it’s probably Deep Purple. Add in Rainbow and Blackmore’s Night, Richie Blackmore is probably a clear winner.

2. What was the last song you listened to?
“This is the 21st Century” by Marillion

3. What’s in your record/cd player right now?
Marillion’s Anoraknophobia

4. What song would you say sums you up?
I am too complex to sum up in a single song.

5. What’s your favorite local band?
From my old home town of Slough, it would have to be the now sadly defunct I Zingari.

6. What was the last show you attended?
Marillion at Manchester Academy 1

7. What was the greatest show you’ve ever been to?
Tough one. Blue Öyster Cult at the Hammersmith Odeon way back in 1989 is hard to beat.

8. What’s the worst band you’ve ever seen in concert?
Ignoring many dreadful support acts, the worst headliner has to be Sledgehammer in the early 80s. Dire barrel scrapings of the NWOBHM scene, played deafeningly loudly in a failed attempt to disguise the fact that they couldn’t play and had no decent songs.

9. What band do you love musically but hate the members of?
Can’t bring myself to hate an entire band, so I’ll select an individual. A few years ago I would have named Roger Waters or Richie Blackmore, but I think both of them have mellowed with age. So I’ll nominate Tarja Turunen, the (former) singer of Nightwish. Great voice, but I can see why the band sacked her.

11. What show are you looking forward to?
The Mars Volta, this Thursday

12. What is your favorite band shirt?
Has to be that black and yellow Uriah Heep one!

13. What musician would you like to hang out with for a day?
Buck Dharma of BÖC seems like a cool guy.

14. What musician would you like to be in love with for a day?
Heather Findlay. Unfortunately I believe she’s already spoken for.

15. Metal question: Jeans and Leather vs. Cracker Jack clothes?
Lack of knowledge of the nature of these ‘Cracker Jack’ clothes prevents me from answering this question.

16. Sabbath or solo Ozzy?
Sabbath, definitely. With Ronnie Dio, of course.

17. Commodores or solo Lionel Ritchie?
Neither

18. Punk rock, hip hop or heavy metal?
Metal, of course.

19. Doesn’t Primus suck?
If you say so. I don’t know one note of their music. Now Pete “I should be in rehab rather than touring” Doherty’s Babyshambles, there’s a band that really sucks.

20. Name 4 flawless albums:
Only four?
Marillion, Brave
UFO, Strangers in the Night
Pink Floyd, Wish You Were Here
Queensryche, Operation Mindcrime

21. Did you know that filling out this survey makes you a music geek?
So what?

22. What was the greatest decade for music?
The 70s. The decade of the almighty Mellotron!

23. How many music-related videos/dvds do you own?
Very few; I think it’s single figures.

24. Do you like Journey?
Of course. Get past the cheesy power ballads and they can rock out with best of them.

25. Don’t try to pretend you don’t!
It’s only trendy to slag them off because pop fans used to like them.

26. What is your favorite movie soundtrack?
This Is Spinal Tap.

27. What was your last musical ‘phase’ before you wised up?
I was never dumb enough to feel any need to ‘Wise Up’.

28. What’s the crappiest CD/record/etc. you’ve ever bought?
The self-titled album by Angelwitch. Awful songs, awful vocals, awful production. NWOBHM at it’s very worst.

29. Do you prefer vinyl or CDs?
CDs. Vinyl may be ‘superior’ of you’ve got several grands worth of stereo equipment and keep your records in a sterile dust-free vault, but CDs are better for those of us living in the real world.

BBC are showing a documentary tonight about lunatic fringe metal bands, centering on the tale of a bunch of Italian cretins called “Beasts of Satan” that ended in murder. And this, of course, has given the media the change to trot out all those lazy clichés yet again.

BBC News quotes one Michele Tollis:

“No one can contradict me when I say that heavy metal and satanism are closely linked. They’re inseparable,” he says.

The Guardian’s Sarah Dempster is even worse; she turns up the bad cliché knob all the way up to 11

Perhaps the most startling realisation to spring from this fog bank of ridiculousness is that heavy metal has, over the past 35 years, barely changed at all. While pop, dance and rap have all grown, diversified and experimented with fashionable trousers, metal has remained in a state of suspended adolescence, clinging like lichen to its black jeans and refusing to relinquish a MO so primordial it’s probably scrawled on a cave wall somewhere near Birmingham, accompanied by a chalk drawing of a shouting Neanderthal that looks, coincidentally, a bit like Tony Iommi. Death metal (a relatively recent variant birthed in the late 1980s) may have upped the ugg-factor by swapping proper singing for singing like an illiterate serf describing a stampede of wild boars, but its primary fixations - pseudo-demonism, third-form nihilism, angry boffing and white trainers - form the pubescent marrow in a bony chain that links everyone from Cradle Of Filth and Slayer to Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath.

It appears that Sarah Dempster, just like Beasts of Satan themselves, doesn’t get metal. It’s not meant to be taken seriously. Heavy metal at it’s best has always been pantomime, and most fans recognise this. Has Sarah Dempster ever been to an Iron Maiden gig?

Like a lot of things, it’s a moronic minority that give everyone else a bad name. How many murders have been committed by football hooligans? The figure runs into hundreds over the years. Yet nobody suggests that football fandom itself is responsible for the thuggish behaviour of a minority of so-called fans. When was the last time you heard of large numbers heavy metal fans being drunkenly abusive towards everyone else after a gig? When was the centre of any major city turned into a no-go area when Metallica were in town?

So goes the refrain of a certain work colleague who shall remain nameless, when he heard I’d been to see Marillion. He accuses me, quite wrongly, of living in the 1970s.

Nonsense! Here are some of the bands I’ve seen or will be seeing this year:

• Rammstein, only three (or is it four) albums so far
• Porcupine Tree, who I think you’ll find started in the 90s
• Marillion, who played nothing from earlier than 1989
• The Mars Volta, who have only been going for about 18 months
• Mostly Autumn, first album 1996
• Paradise Lost, yet another 1990s band

So what’s this ‘modern’ music I’m supposed to be listening to instead? Turns out it’s the likes of Franz Ferdinand and The Kaiser Chiefs. In other words, ridiculously overhyped reheated 80s new wave pastiche, doing nothing that the likes of XTC or Magazine didn’t do 25 years ago. I find Franz Ferdinand boring and shallow, all style and no substance. And while The Kaiser Chiefs “I predict a one hit wonder” might be a decent song, they’re no better overall than The Darkness.

I fail to see why Rammstein, Porcupine Tree or The Mars Volta is dated and old-fashioned, while the current crop of retro four-chord poseurs is considered state of the art. Perhaps some people need to tune out the media hype.

All too often Marillion get written off as old dinosaurs living off their reputation. But as those who know their recent output can confirm, nothing could be further from the truth. Although they’ve existed since the early 80s, they’re a band that have consistently re-invented themselves every couple of albums, and they’ve exorcised the ghost of their former frontman Fish many years ago. The content of their last few albums bears little resemblance to the music they played when the big Scotsman was still in the band. Many consider their last two albums to contain some of the best music of their career; still containing the essence of what made them great in the first place, but adding elements of trip-hop and dub to the mix.

This is the ninth time I’ve seen Marillion live, and the third time at the Academy One in Manchester. As usual, the place was pretty full, if not quite sold out, and the queue to get in almost encircled the building.

Support was Aziz & Dal. Guitarist Aziz Ibrahim once replaced Jon Squire in The Stone Roses, and also appeared on Ian Brown’s later solo work. Here, accompanied just by Dal on tabla, plus a whole heap of guitar effects, he gave us a mostly instrumental set of what he describes as ‘Asian blues’. Mixing elements of eastern and western styles, his guitar sometimes produced sitar-like sounds, sometimes Floydian blues flourishes, and a lot of music which reminded me of parts of Robert Plant’s last album. His heavy use of echoplex even recalled the early days of Twelfth Night.

Marillion opened with “The Accidental Man”, with frontman Steve “H” Hogarth dressed as a demented old-fashioned schoolmaster, wearing a mortarboard and wielding a cane, with which he took pretend raps over the knuckles of the front row. The band were tight as ever, Pete Trewethas laying down wonderful basslines, and Steve Rothery reeling off many magnificent soaring solos in his trademark style. H added to the instrumentation at times, contributing keyboards and pink Les Paul to several songs.

Marillion aren’t one of those bands that plays the same set of standards every show; with such a high quality back catalogue the setlist varies hugely from tour to tour. This time the two hour set took in every post-Fish album with the exception the mostly dismal indie-flavoured “DotCom”. They went right back to the very beginning of the H era with “Seasons End” and a rousing “King of Sunset Town”. In contrast to their last show at this venue, they drew quite heavily from 1995′s Afraid of Sunlight, which they’d ignored completely last time round. Gentler reflective songs like “Beautiful” and the recent top ten single “You’re Gone” contrasted with the darker and more intense material such as “Mad” from Brave, and a surprise, “Cathedral Wall”, from Radiation, the latter sounding a lot less like Radiohead than it sounded on record. Like the band themselves, Marillion’s fanbase don’t live in the past, and recent songs like the dub-driven “Quartz” from 2002′s Anoraknophobia and the anthemic closing epic “Neverland” from last year’s Marbles have already become crowd favourites. The only weak spot was the final encore, a rather silly Christmas song with H dressed as Santa, which we could have done without.

People who dismiss Marillion as 80s relics don’t know what they’re missing. They may be in their 40s, and might not wear the currently fashionably skinny ties or sharp haircuts. But they play great music, and in my book sounding great is far more important than looking cool.

I’ve suspected this for a while, but this study by Cambridge PhD Economics researcher Rufus Pollock (link from Boing Boing) seems to confirm it. Filesharing won’t reduce overall music sales, but it does threaten the business model of the major record companies.

In particular, the point estimates imply that the median ‘new’ artist, whose weekly sales are 2,163 albums, would see a decrease in weekly sales of 101 albums per week were files shared to be reduced by 10%. A similar calculation can be made for an artist of maximum popularity. At the median level of sales for these artist, the estimate implies an increase in sales of 490 albums per week if file sharing were to be reduced by 10%. This stark contrast between the magnitudes of the effects for artists of varying levels of popularity highlights the importance of this heterogeneity in estimating the aggregate effects of file sharing.

A similar calculation can be made for estimating the total effect of file sharing on sales. To estimate the aggregate effect of a 30% reduction in file sharing across the board,33 I simply subtract out the effect of the deleted files from the second stage estimation in Table 4 and then aggregate up to market level numbers using the appropriate weights. The estimated effect of such an across-the- board reduction in file sharing is to increase aggregate sales by 15%. Again, while these calculations were useful for placing the analysis inside the framework of the previous literature, they do not take into account competition effects across albums, and so the effects of file sharing will be overstated in these estimates.

In other words, filesharing reduces sales for the small minority of overhyped corporate rock megastars, but increases the sales of hardworking smaller bands. Which is just what the big record companies fear. They’ve developed a business model that depends on maximising sales of as small a roster of artists as possible.

Since anything not ‘mainstream’ doesn’t get played on format-driven corporate radio. the only way much of it can be heard either by people risking money on buying an album unheard, or by ‘try before you buy’ filesharing. Which is just what the big companies don’t want. People might start buying self-financed music rather than Madonna, Metallica or whatever four-chords-that-sold-a-million-that-sounds-like-Coldplay-now that they’re trying to hype. And that would never do….

Steve Jones, quite possible the Amadán of model railways, celebrates the all-too-brief reign of Nigel Burkin as editor of Modern Railway Modelling.

A magazine is very much a reflection of it’s editor, someone who has vision of how the finished product should look and where it’s supposed to be going. Nigel’s editorial direction has been close to what I want from a magazine and, I’d suggest, the excellent sales show it has struck a chord with many other modellers disenfranchised by the increasingly out-of-touch UK press. It’s a direction refreshingly different to that historically favoured by UK publishers, closer to overseas magazines that have moved with the times. Nigel isn’t, of course, the only person capable of doing this job, but it’s vital to attract and keep such new blood, and this is clearly not happening.

I’ve always thought the market leader, the “Railway Modeller” actually has one thing in common with “Playboy” i.e. nobody reads it for the articles. RM seems to driven by advertising, which means it’s product reviews are useless; they don’t want to upset their advertisers, so all reviews are about as much use as an NME review of a neo-prog band. And their editor seems to think that history ended in 1968.

I hope MRM doesn’t descend into “Toddler” land.

David Edelstein has this to say:

What is it about spam that makes even a laid back, tolerant person’s blood boil? What is it about spam that makes someone who�s against the death penalty even for child molesters and serial killers start ranting about burning spammers at the stake? Sometimes our hatred for spam borders on the irrational… but hate it I do.

I’m sure I’m not the only person who feels like this. I’ve occasionally advocated nuking the whole of Florida (where many of the spam cartel are said to reside), but the collateral damage might be too great. Read the whole thing, as they say.

I think it’s a sign of a good concert if the music’s still playing in your head not just first thing the following morning, but well into the day.

Once described as ‘a blend of poetry, jazz and rock’, Van der Graaf Generator stood at the avant-garde end of progressive rock before splitting in 1978. I only discovered their music in the 1980s, so I’d never had the chance to see them live. But with the reforming at the beginning of this year, this was about to change. Having continually met up at the funerals of members of the road crew, they decided that if they were going to reform, it had better be while the four of them were all still alive.

The venue was Bridgewater Hall, Manchester’s premier classical concert hall. It’s a place more used to playing host to symphony orchestras than rock bands, which explains the unusual timing. VDGG were on stage just after 7:30, and finished their two hour set just after half-past nine, a time when a typical headliner is just about hitting the stage. Naturally for a symphony hall the acoustics were excellent, a far cry from the dreadful sound of far too many club gigs.

The set started deceptively quietly, with the gentle intro to “The Undercover Man” from 1975′s “Godbluff” album, before exploding into full-blown sound and fury. This was not your typical rock band. Lacking a bass player, their instrumental sound revolves around Hugh Banton’s sinister swirling organ and David Jackson’s furious saxes and flutes. Peter Hammill’s distinctive ‘Hendrix of the voice’ vocals were on fine form. Unlike too many 70s veterans, the voice that influenced artists as diverse as Fish and Johnny Rotten has lost none of it’s power. During some instrumental sections he prowled the stage like David Byrne’s sinister uncle, pacing back to the microphone at exactly the point where the vocals come back in. At other times he contributed towards the instrumental sound mostly on electric piano, but also occasionally on guitar.

I can’t remember the full setlist; my CD collection doesn’t include their whole back catalogue, and I didn’t recognise about a third of the setlist. I know they played most of “Godbluff”, included the two strongest numbers, “Every Bloody Emperor” and “Nutter Alert” from the new album, and closed with “Man-Erg” from “Pawn Hearts”.

This sort of dark and intense stuff can hardly be described as easy listening, with songs often exceeding ten minutes in length, frequent tempo changes, dramatic contrasts between quiet church organ and flute interludes followed by cacophonous walls of sound, plenty of minor keys, and some howling solos from David Jackson, sometimes playing two saxes as once. Peter Hammill’s theatrical vocals are definitely an acquired taste. I can easily forgive anyone for not liking their music; this stuff is not for the faint-hearted. But it’s rewarding for those prepared to make the effort to listen. And even reforming after 25 years, they’re very much a live force to be reckoned with.