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I'm naked. Head resting against the floor to ceiling windows; looking down on the city from the 14th floor. Sipping on the room service coffee. And I'm hands-free, dialled in to a teleconference with my Director and assorted Heads-of. I think it's unreasonable to book a meeting at 9am, the day after our conference.
It's quite freeing actually, I may run all my meetings this way in the future. I also get the opportunity to drop a few double entendres into the mix:
"do I need to firm it up"
"let's strip down to fundamentals here"
All the sweeter, as a few people on the call do know I'm 'tackle-out'. Those little snorts and chokes made welcome listening. It's also quite productive. It's amazing how accommodating people can be when they're dealing with someone stark bollock naked:
"do we need to do this face-to-face? I can come over to your office?"
So when I roll into the office around lunchtime, news of my performance has preceded me, and I'm already a legend. They impress easy at BigCo, I mean, it's not as if it was a videoconference....
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6.2.05 21:35
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Congratulations to Ellen MacArthur on a great result
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8.2.05 01:00
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The conference itself was extremely civilised (the budget could have kept most of our recent redundancies in work......). As a change this year, we had a motivational speaker. Can't recall what the guy had achieved, it was something along the lines of rowing the Atlantic in a washing-up bowl or sambaing across the Gobi Desert. Much of his chat focussed on the long, and drawn out, deaths of his team mates which was a bit of a buzz-kill. Mixed with the usual cliché's of "you can do it", "climb your personal Everest". I'm more than happy to 'climb my personal Everest' if they'll provide me with a sports drink endorsement and an 18-man support team....Feeling somewhat down after tales of people freezing to death, satellite phones still in their hands, I blew off the rest of the day. Which meant I missed the 'team building' session. This involved the whole conference being issued with drums, rattles and pipes. Then, led by a Goan trance refugee, they found their inner primitive, to a tribal beat.
I returned to witness the unveiling of our latest advertising campaign. The creative are gods at BigCo. We merely supply the raw materials they use to demonstrate their majesty and wonder. They exist on a higher plain, unfettered by the grubby requirements of making money. Free to soar on the warm thermals of creative whimsy.
They favoured us with the 30 second cut of the new TV advert. I've never really heard the sound of silence before. Crushing, deafening silence, as a room full of people stare in incomprehension at the utter bollocks on the videowall in front of them. These were the very same people who bought the BigCo/Sound of Music concept last year, so it's not as if they aren't credulous. But this went down like a turd in the soup tureen. It was worth dragging myself away from the bar for.
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9.2.05 20:36
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I've raced 60 footers. Spend a day doing that, you wont get up the next morning. I've shinned up the mast to fix the sail, on a calm day, with a crew below me. I've been out at sea for nine days, and been damn glad to spend the tenth on dry land.
Listening to the radio. Listening to all the fat bores saying "round the world on a yacht...I could do that". Err, no you couldn't. 71 days at sea, single-handed, driving a 75ft multihull hard, against ocean waves. It's difficult to imagine a more challenging achievement. It's at least equivalent to an Everest ascent.
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10.2.05 00:39
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Maximo Park; Jug of Ale, Birmingham; 15/2/05
GoF on the Tyne
Climb the stairs at the back of the Jug of Ale pub and you're in a typical 50 capacity toilet venue. But there's an enthusiastic youth club feel to the organisation and crowd, so I don't send the gin back for lack of lime. Maximo Park arrive about 40 minutes late with suitably contrite apology.ffice ffice" />
There's some talk about a dodgy curry, but I suspect that singer Paul Smith was perfecting his windsor knot. His suit, and the rest of the bands smart casual attire attract lazy comparisons with Franz Ferdinand or The Strokes.
But the opening bars of 'The Coast is Always Changing' confirm a North Eastern post-punk alliance with the Futureheads.
Smith fronts like Ian Curtis on balanced meds - all jerks, tics and wild-eyed stares; but drinking in life from a glass half full. The frenetic set speeds through a blizzard of bittersweet 3-minute slices of life - 'Graffiti', 'Kiss You Better', 'The Night I Lost My Head'. Culminating in new single and rousing set closer 'Apply Some Pressure'. Here's Pulp's fanfare for the common man; shot through The Smiths pathos of love and loss; soundtracked by Wire's arrhythmic tempo.
Smith is joined by Lukas Wooler on keyboards, Coxon look-alike Duncan Lloyd on guitar, and a rhythm section of Archis Tiku bass and Tom English drums. Recently signed to Warp they underline a watershed in British pop. Joining Bloc Party and The Futureheads in an emerging group of young bands who have rejected the lazy recycling of Stooges riffs and pursued a different, more exciting, sound.
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17.2.05 23:11
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No more heroes
There's a tart insult thrown at some girl groups - 'pram faced' (that they'd look better pushing a proto-chav round some council estate). I think equivalent epithet for Doves etc would be 'bin-faced' (in that their image is better suited to hanging off the side of a refuse truck).
It's the anonymous interchangibility of the bands; their lack of charisma, which irritates me. Is it Doves, Athlete, Coldplay, Jet? Ask anyone in the Sainsbury's queue if they can name a band member from that CD nestling amongst the ready meals; or even recognise a photograph. With their turgid riffs and plodding drum beats (is it me, or are they timesharing the same drummer) we're partying like it's 1995. None of those sexually ambivalent chord changes you find in art rock, this is the sort of easily familiar verse/chorus structure you can safely bellow drunkenly into your mates ear without fear of looking gay. This is music you can like without fearing your girlfriend will ever ask you to dance.
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23.2.05 19:59
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Skins - E4
I really must blog about something else other than how shite Chav 4 has become. But, this steaming turd of a programme really does deserve the briefest of mentions. Skins makes Goldplated look like Jewel in the Crown. The big pre-publicity hype was that it's "you, know, like, real", because the writing team are barely in their twenties. It certainly has the feel of a student drama workshop, with no cliché left unused - Ferris Bueler is present as the central character, sadly his charm isn't; there's a terribly contrived Risky Business pastiche where a stolen car ends up in a river; and a 'crazy' drug dealer, straight out of Rules of Attraction. If it had been channelled directly from Paul Dacre's fevered imagination it couldn't have been less real. What is completely absent from this after-school playwriting club is any decent adult supervision. Someone to take the essence from their little dreams of cool, and actually turn it into something worth watching. Which is bizarre, since the producer is Bryan Elsley. Who, many, many years ago when Channel 4 was a credible broadcaster gave us the warm and funny Young Person's Guide to Becoming a Rockstar. Sadly this is more Middle-aged Writer's Wank Fantasy. With the teenage subject matter raising it from the crass to the icky.
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28.2.05 17:13
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