It's a popularity contest

We had my iPod's 20 most-played songs about three years ago on the Goose, but having just understood the beauty of Spotify-iTunes-Last.fm scrobbling (I've just started Last.fm-ing here) and because I could be on the brink of doing an earth-shattering system-wide play count reset, it's clearly time for another list.

This one's completely different to its 2006 counterpart, since the listening game had to effectively begin afresh with the arrival of my new iPod about a year and four months ago. It's odd the songs you accidentally become obsessed with - rather embarrassingly, I've listened to the one at the top of this list 30 times.

1. You Let Your Heart Go Too Fast - Spin Doctors
2. Troublemaker - Weezer
3. Represent - Nas
4. Me in Honey - R.E.M.
5. Leave the Scene Behind - The Wave Pictures
6. Innocent When You Dream (Barroom) - Tom Waits
7. Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa - Vampire Weekend
8. Mutha'uckas - Flight Of The Conchords
9. Yesterdays - Guns N' Roses
10. Takeover - Jay-Z
11. Way Down in the Hole - The Blind Boys Of Alabama
12. Devil Tricks For A Bitch - Lightspeed Champion
13. Timothy - Mr. B The Gentleman Rhymer
14. Needle In A Haystack - The Velvelettes
15. Let Me Take You There - Betty Boo
16. I Wish That I Could See You Soon - Herman Düne
17. California Girls - The Magnetic Fields
18. 52 Girls - The B-52's
19. MJ - Mystery Jets
20. Oxford Comma - Vampire Weekend

And, of course, here's that list Spotified for your listening pleasure (minus the Wave Pictures, Mr B. The Gentleman Rhymer and Tom Waits tracks, which you'll find at the other end of the links featured earlier in this sentence).

Lessons learned from... Brüno

Cage-fighting is romantic.

I can't believe I'm not watching Big Brother this year

From the Channel 4's press release highlights of tonight's show:

1.22pm
Halfwit and Marcus are in the living room. Halfwit says: 'I think I might bust some reps today.' Marcus stares into space.

Steven Wells: 1960 - 2009

I'm probably at least the 5,000th person today to write the words, "Steven Wells was the writer who made me want to become a journalist," but hell, it's true.

For the uninitiated, Swells, who died from Hodgkin's lymphoma on Tuesday aged 49, was a spitting, ranting genius of a scribe, and, when I started reading the NME back in 1995, easily the best writer they had on their books. His pieces were characterised by balls-out irreverence, extreme sweary imagery, a disgust for all things twee and tame (Belle and Sebastian usually got a pasting) and, most memorably, SHOUTY CAPITAL LETTERS (today's report on The Quietus, which he wrote for more recently, had the excellent headline "Swells Dies: Caps Lock Buttons Sigh in Relief").

His final piece is published here and you can see from the comments how well loved and respected he was in the industry (amongst others, Kitty Empire, Everett True, Steve Sutherland, Mark Beaumont, Dominik Diamond, John Robb, Barbara Ellen, David Quantick and Attila the Stockbroker all weigh in. And Brian Wilson, but that may be a nom de plume).

Anyway, all nostalgic, like, I had a root under my bed and found an NME from October 1996. Lo, behold and phew, there was a piece by Mr Wells waiting for me. An extract, for you, then. It's from a wonderfully snarky interview with Power Station, a so-called supergroup consisting of self-confessed love addict Robert Palmer, Chic drummer Tony Thompson, and Duran Duran guitarist Andy Taylor.

They've just finished only their second album in more than ten years and during its recording, John Taylor, also ex-Duran Duran, had to quit because of a bit of a problem with the old proboscis-rotting showbiz sherbert. Then producer Bernard Edwards, also ex-Chic, caught flu while on tour in Japan and died in his sleep. Are you listening Noel Gallagher? You whining WIMP!

Yes indeed, they're called The Power Station and they're here to show you mewling, puking, zitpit-cratered, baggy-trousered, snot-sleeved, scabby-kneed, dope-addled no-hoper teenage slacker scum the POWER of ROCK created by MEN whose bollocks have dropped so far that they hang down by their kneeds like saddlebags.

That's one way of looking at it. That's certainly the way The Power Station see it, as they and your correspondent munch our way through exquisite Japanese food in an exclusive west London restaurant like the jet-setting, royalty-shagging, racehorse-owning bourgeois bastards we are.

[…]

Is it better to be a pop star or a rock star… Hang on, for some strange reason all three of them have burst out laughing.

"I'm a singer," says Robert, suddenly very serious. "He's a guitarist. He's a drummer. I really don't know what you're talking about."

Andy, you have, without a doubt, been a pop star.

"Well someone chooses to call you that, to pigeonhole you and plan your life out for you blah blah blah blah blah…"

FUCKING HELL! What THE STINKING HELL IS going on?!!? The guitarist of DURAN DURAN will not admit to once having been a pop star?!? I mean how many exclamation marks can NME print in one issue?!?!!!???!?!?!!!!!!!! The Power Station are not rock stars or pop stars, they are 'musicians' Why? In God's name, WHY?!?! People worship rock stars! They adore them! They are desperate – in their panting, turgid and drippingly moist millions – to have savage, uncomplicated and utterly mindblowing SEX with rock stars and they want it NOW! I mean, 'musicians', for crying out loud! Do you know anybody in their right mind who would even piss on a 'musician'? But we digress.

So, yep, RIP.


More:
NME tribute: Rage in Peace
His Guardian Sport highlights
The Daphne and Celeste reunion campaign starts here

Lessons learned from... Terminator Salvation

The future is Very Loud.

Hay fever

Perhaps this is a little strange, but within five minutes of arriving at Hay-on-Wye for the books festival, I was thinking, "I need to come back next year." The place emanated immediate good feeling.

Books - and copies of The Guardian - were everywhere, although the sponsorship and presence of Sony, who were attempting to flog their e-reader, provided a vague challenge to such paper-based gaity.

Providing my brain with exercise were, in this order: James Marsh (director of one of 2008's films of the year, Man on Wire) and Adrian Chinn (producer of etc etc), Graham Swift, Chris Patten, David Simon, Kate Summerscale and Simon Schama. Hey, Swifty, can you sign my digitally downloaded copy of Last Orders, please? Just scratch your name onto the screen with this scalpel, it's fine.

When Macca, my companion for the weekend, wasn't snacking on sugary treats - the man's sweet tooth, I discovered, was insatiable - he was raving about The Field. The Field was not, as you might have thought, David Simon's idyllic follow-up to The Corner and The Wire, but an actual field next to the festival grounds, filled with a host of golden, um, buttercups, several easygoing cows, and much peacefulness.

[Checks for udders.]

In the evening a light pointed to at top of this tree, making it look eerily like an enormous piece of broccoli. I don't like broccoli, but I liked this tree.

In summary, then: see you next year.

Valencia looked a little bit like...

This!

Also, this.

With a little bit of this thrown in.

That's it - I only managed to take three pictures. Not really. The rest are very much here.

Wedding brochure FAIL

"It’s difficult to imagine a more divine location than Thornbury Castle, the majesty of the building playing a substantial part in the uniqueness of the occasion. Where better to enjoy a honeymoon than in the bedchamber in which King Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn once slept. "

Hardly the most successful of marriages, that one!

A shot in the farm

Some pictures from our Sunday afternoon visit to Folly Farm in Pensford, near Bristol.

Lessons learned from... Let the Right One In

Let the right one in.

Tonight on ITV1: Boy Meets Girl

Ah, the body-swap comedy – it's an actor's dream. If it's of the “man becomes boy, boy becomes man” type, a jaded star gets to play completely against type by clowning around childishly in business meetings, while a young up-and-comer gets to show his maturity and range by teaching his classmates the value of youth. Read more...

State of the art

As a Goldsmiths alumnus and lover of pretentiousness of all kinds, I couldn't resist this little nugget from Will Hodgkinson's article in Sunday's OMM about whether the country's art schools are still an effective breeding ground for our pop stars. I miss that place...

For his degree show, Alex Fear is planning on installing a working brothel at Goldsmiths. Don't the lecturers mind? "Funnily enough, they don't," he claims, "although they are concerned about the illegality of it."

Fear grew up infatuated with pop culture. He has had haircuts modelled on all four members of McFly and says of that boy band: "I really love them, and still can't tell if I'm being ironic or not." He claims that coming to Goldsmiths was the only option for him.

Full article here

Believe.

WWE, WTF?!

When Birdy said, "Let's go to WWE Smackdown at the O2," Dan, Jamie and I were all like, "Haha, you're an idiot, but yes, that would be amazing," not expecting him to actually reply a few hours later with an email that went, "Okay, I've booked tickets, we have four seats in my company's corporate box, transfer me £30."

As a result of the confusion, at around 8.30pm last night I found myself watching a dwarf dressed as a leprechaun appearing to beat the beejesus out of a large-chested woman with luminous pink hair and leggings to match. I'm so glad I wasn't fully sober.

With little to no knowledge of the recent developments in the grand soap opera that is ECW, I couldn't quite follow the plot, but according to some sentimental older dude in a green vest, his son - the little person - had been drafted and was heading off to fight overseas (like, Vietnam?) the next day. The pink-haired lady and her asshole husband were taunting him for some reason, which led to the fighting pictured above.

Against all the odds, though, the Oirish underdog won, and, in scenes reminiscent of Spinal Tap's Stonehenge interlude, he celebrated by dancing round with three similarly-sized children to the strains of some manic Irish folk music, apparently composed by a misty-eyed American tourist with cliché-filters turned down to minus-11. As your typical WWE commentator might say, "I'VE NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE IT!"

Still, epic arena, that O2, if distinctly lacking in a hot dog chute pointing directly at my mouth. These pictures are made even better by the fact that you don't have to listen to nu-emo songs that all sound like Evanescence at full volume.

Like a quartet of raddled old-timers, we all had bets on who would win each fight: The Undertaker or The Big Show? Triple H or Randy Orton? Dan managed to call every one. Luck? Probably not: he was surprisingly well-versed in WWE history and could easily foresee the narrative patterns. Although not even he was expecting the leprechaun.

The upshot of all this was that I woke up this morning and found seven mini packs of Sugar Puffs-like cereal in my rucksack; in my head was a nagging feeling of guilt for telling Birdy that wrestling is fixed.

A few more pics here

Birthday books

This year's batch...

Shatner eats pudding

Kasper Hauser v Karl Pilkington

Watched Werner Herzog's rather excellent The Enigma of Kasper Hauser (aka Every Man for Himself and God Against All) last week, a telling of the true story of a young German man who, one day in 1828, was discovered standing in the street in Nuremberg, holding a letter and barely able to walk or talk.

It emerges that up until this moment, Kasper Hauser – for it is he – has been imprisoned in a cellar since birth; aside from a stranger who fed him, the villagers are the first human beings he has ever seen. He's played both movingly and clownishly by Kevin Eldon-lookalike Bruno S., who had also suffered from mental illness and - typical Herzog, this - had no acting experience at all.

Later in the film, when Kasper has been taken in by a kindly philanthropist and has learnt to speak, a self important professor turns up at the house to test his lateral thinking.

"In this village live people who tell only the truth," says the man, moving a sugar pot across the table. "Here is another village: the people who live here only tell lies."

He moves a tea cup to the other side of the table. "Two paths run from these villages to where you are standing, and you are at the crossroads. A man comes along and you want to know which village he comes from: the truthful village or the village of liars. Now, in order to solve this problem logically, there is only one question you can ask. What is that question?"

The maid, sitting between the two men, insists the problem is too difficult for Kasper, who remains silent. After some more pontificating, the professor gives the answer: "If you came from the other village, would you answer no if I were to ask you whether you came from the liar's village? By means of a double negative, the liar is forced to tell the truth… That's what I call logic via argument to truth," he concludes, with a flourish.

"Well I know another question," pipes up Kasper, emphasising each word as if it is an announcement all of its own. The professor indignantly denies that another question exists.

"I would ask the man if he was a tree frog," Kasper continues simply. "The man from the village of truth would say, "No, I'm not a tree frog," because he tells the truth. The man from the liars' village would say, "I am a tree frog," because they would lie. That's how I would know which village he was from."

Having been raised - if you can even call it that - outside society, Kaspar never fully grasps the rules - but this has also liberated from the rigid thought structures everyone is expected to adopt. He's a visionary, although, like Aguirre, Fitzcaraldo or Grizzly Man's Timothy Treadwell, one destined to be crushed by life's realities.

The nurse smiles. "What you've done is describe something, not deduce it," replies the professor angrily. "I cannot accept that question."

***

Interestingly, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant once posed a variation on this conundrum to that modern day idiot savant, Karl Pilkington. This alternative version had two identical angels, one truthful, guarding the door to heaven and one a liar, guarding the door to hell. What question would the bald-headed Manc ask to find his way to heaven?

After suggesting that one of the doors might be warmer because of the heat given off by hell, Karl wonders whether he might be able to take a look through one of the doors' keyholes. Gervais and Merchant disallow this.

Karl begins to get frustrated. "But would they be neighbours like this?" he says. "Would they be that close?"

After an explanation, which presumably goes right over his round, orange-shaped head, Karl concludes, "This is where you use your gut feeling, though, innit. I just think there's a lot of questions in life where you don't know the answer and you go, 'Do you know what? I don't like the look of him.'"

"They're identical," Gervais points out.

Says Karl: "Yeah, but still, with identical twins, you always get a little snidey one."


From the Goose archives
Film review: Rescue Dawn

Dark Days/Light Years/Good Times

The Super Furry Animals's ninth album, Dark Days/Light Years, is out in a couple of weeks - but age hasn't withered them, nor custom staled their infinite variety. I particularly liked this lyric, from 'Inaugural Trams':

"I will design a town in the image of your face
Round the wrinkles of your eyes, my footsteps you can trace
We could promenade down the infranasal depression
The streets of your hands will never feel a recession."

The song also features some rapping in German and the line "they say the future of cement is set in stone" - and yet it's still as hummable as anything. Viva SFA!

Put your best footnote forward

A pair of footnotes I've enjoyed recently. The first is from a history of Bob Dylan's song 'Like a Rolling Stone', the second from a non-fiction account of a murder which took place in Wiltshire in 1860.

"John Hammond told me once that I should take over Columbia Records," [Dylan producer Bob] Johnston says, as if telling the story of a broken treaty, of how his Apache ancestors were driven from their land. "And so I said, 'Well, how do you do it?' I went up and met with Paley and Stanton [William S. Paley, the legendary capitalist buccaneer who bought the tiny Columbia Broadcasting System in 1928, was chairman of the board of CBS, Frank Stanton had been president of the company since 1946] and those people up there, and they said, 'What would you do if you came into this?' And I says, 'Well, you're not gonna like it and you won't do it, but I think the first thing is, you should get your shit together. And by that, you should have the tenth floor of attorneys. And the eleventh floor of accountants. And the twelfth floor of music. And they should never be allowed to pass one another. Whatever you want to do, however you want to cheat, and fuck these artists around, is your opinion - but at least give them the opportunity of doing something, without people who tap their foot and whistle out of tune, and judge what's being made according to what somebody did last week, to keep their job six months longer.' And I said, 'If you do that, the music will always be the music, and those son-of-a-bitches will never have the chance at it, you can make all the money you want to, but they can't fuck with the music.' Paley said, 'That's very interesting.' John walked out and said, 'You didn't want the job, did you?'"

Greil Marcus, Like a Rolling Stone, London: 2005, fn. p143

***

To demonstrate the weird logic of homicidal monomania, [writer Joseph] Stapleton recounted a horrible story about a mild-mannered young man who was so obsessed with windmills that he would gaze at them for days on end. In 1843, friends tried to distract him from his fixation by moving him to an area with no mills. There the windmill man lured a boy into a wood, then killed and mutilated him. His motive, he explained, was the hope that as a punishment he would be taken to a place where there just might be a mill.

Kate Summerscale, The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, London: 2008, fn. p236

Tonight on BBC1: The Real Swiss Family Robinson

The problem with being shipwrecked is that it often looks like such fun. When it happened to the Swiss Robinson family in Johann David Wyss's 19th century novel, they ended up learning some important lessons about family values and self-sufficiency. When it happened to the cast of Channel 4's Shipwrecked, they ended up with, like, amazing tans and a handful of invitations to a variety of low-budget film premieres. Read more...

Last night on Five: The Mentalist

I've always wondered what would happen if Derren Brown decided Channel 4 wasn't big enough for him and started using his awesome powers of psychological illusionism for evildoing. Presumably he'd have his hands on millions of pounds and would have recruited an army of hypnotised mercenaries before you could say, "look into my eyes…" Read more...