Top Ten Albums: Henry's Dream

You lookin' at me?

Nick Cave is a cussed chap. There’s a film about him coming out next month which promises to be as close to its subject as Frank was to Chris Sievey, and all the better for it.

I think Henry’s Dream is Nick Cave’s best album. He, apparently, can’t stand it. Something to do with a falling out with the producer.

I was always wary of Nick Cave. There he was, at the JHQ Rheindahlen RAF record library, staring out at me from the cover of Your Funeral, My Trial and Kicking Against the Pricks, looking like he was perfectly willing to put a stack-heeled boot into my white, flabby belly for having the temerity to like, or perhaps, not like his music.

No, it said. Steer well clear. I did, until I read a review of Tender Prey, the album which supposedly announced his arrival as a major artist. Melody Maker, my bible, said it was beyond good, so I bought it. Then I bought his next album The Good Son, a blessed relief after the intensity of Tender Prey. Then came Henry’s Dream.

I wasn’t waiting on the release date of a new Nick Cave new album, but I knew something was due, and when I walked into the Andover Our Price to see a 12” single adorned with a live shot of that unmistakable mullet I was delighted. It was called I had a Dream, Joe. “I hope this is good”, I remember thinking, “I really hope this is good”.

It is. For any song to have the chance of becoming a classic, the music has to be right. Only when the setting is approaching brilliance do we start to pick apart the words, to see if the artist actually has anything to say. Terrible lyrics won’t necessarily limit the progress of a song, but good ones can help elevate it to a different level.

As a lyricist Nick Cave is in the same class as Shane MacGowan, Paul Simon and Alex Turner. He’s built a career mining a rich seam of violent, bible-belt gothic, and on this song everything comes together.

The title sets out the conceit - we are going to hear an interpretation of Mary’s first words to Joseph on waking from her dream of immaculate conception. The idea is arresting enough, but when filtered through Cave’s knack for disorientating horror, it becomes something new entirely. These are the opening lines:

I had a Dream, Joe - you were standing 

In the middle of an open road.

I had a Dream, Joe - your hands were raised up to the sky 

And your mouth was covered in foam.

I had a Dream, Joe - a shadowy Jesus, 

He flitted from a-tree to tree.

I had a Dream, Joe - a society of whores 

Stuck needles in an image of me.

I had a Dream, Joe - it was autumn-time

And thickly fell the leaves.

And in that Dream, Joe, a pimp in a seersucker suit

Sucked a toothpick, and pointed his finger at me!

Now, that’s the way to start a song. The open road, the mad raving, the unnerving presence of a witch-like Christ and the dramatic gesture at the climax all combine to paint a lurid scar across your imagination. Echoes of Martin Luther King in the phrasing, too. This is not your average pop record.

As soon as I could, I got my hands on the album.

The cover of Henry's Dream is a painting of an orange-red sky behind a billboard. The billboard features the album’s title and an image of Mr Cave in mid-West preacher get-up. He wears his thumbs on his lapels and a brooding expression. 

The picture transports you to a fictionalised version of America's dustbowl. You are drifting into someone else’s mental landscape, looking up at a sign which can be read as as a statement of authority and a warning.

The journey begins with Papa Won’t Leave You Henry - sample lyric:

I entered through, the curtain hissed

Into the house with its blood-red bowels

Where wet-lipped women with greasy fists

Crawled the ceilings and the walls

and ends with Jack the Ripper - sample lyric:

I got a woman - she strikes me down with a fist of lead
I got a woman - she strikes me down with a fist of lead
We bed in a bucket of butcher's knives
I awake with a hatchet hanging over my head

in between we get love-in-the-time-of-the-apocalypse courtesy of Straight to You - sample lyric:

Gone are the days of rainbows
Gone are the nights of swinging from the stars
For the sea will swallow up the mountains
And the sky will throw thunderbolts and sparks
Straight at you, but I'll come a-running
Straight to you, but I'll come a-running
One more time...

an outsider love story - The Loom of the Land - sample lyric:

It was the dirty end of winter
Along the loom of the land
And I walked with sweet Sally
Hand upon hand
And the wind it bit bitter 
For a boy of no means
With no shoes on his feet
And a knife in his jeans

the song of a self-pitying as yet un-caught murderer - When I First Came to Town - sample lyric:

Suspicion and dark murmurs surround me
Everywhere I go, they confound me
As though the blood on my hands is there
For every citizen, here to see

and the best drinking song ever - O Brother, My Cup is Empty - sample lyric:

I've been sliding down on rainbows
I've been swinging from the stars
Now this wretch in beggar's clothing
Bangs his cup across the bars
Look, this cup of mine is empty!
Seems I've misplaced my desires
Seems I'm sweeping up the ashes
Of all my former fires
So brother, be a brother
And fill this tiny cup of mine
And please, sir, make it whiskey
I have no head for wine

The only duff track is Christina the Astonishing, about a 12th Century saint, which is performed almost as plainsong.

The rest of the album is outstanding. It features an interchangeable cast of murderers, drunks and lowlifes - overlapping lyrical obsessions and imagery delivered with deranged passion. The Bad Seeds' sound around this time was described as an unholy racket. It is.

I cannot recommend this record highly enough. A shame the person who wrote it disagrees.

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Other top ten albums added so far:

The Waterboys - This is the Sea
Floodland - Sisters of Mercy
Duran Duran - Rio

The rationale for doing this. 
Further rationale at the bottom of the This is the Sea entry.

Criminals Caught on Camera Series 2 is go

The first episode of the second series of Criminals: Caught on Camera went out last night. I'm thrilled to tell you it got a sizeable audience which has put the team (who've been working on it since the beginning of the year) in a very good mood.

If you missed it, it's up here on Demand 5, along with all the programmes from series one, which is nice.

If you'd rather just be put off ever buying a street vendor's hot dog ever again, have a watch of this:



If you'd just rather have a look at some screengrabs, fill your boots:

Favourite shot in the whole programme

Good lens flare

Bit post-watershed, this one

Well, exactly.

Friday night fun

Very unwise (see right of picture)

If you want to see the stories behind the images above, do give it a try on Demand 5.

Finally I've been told series one has been sold to New Zealand, Sweden, Poland, and Finland among other countries. And in NZ we have the evidence they're actually broadcasting it...

World domination is, admittedly, some way off, but it's a start.

Gangs and Guns: Caught on Camera - new series!

Hi there. 

Just to let you know the first show of the second series of Criminals: Caught on Camera will go out for the first time on Channel 5 at 9pm this Thursday 17 July - less than a week's time.

It's called Gangs and Guns: Caught on Camera and it's a one-off, focusing on London. The remainder of the series is in the process of being made. It's coming together slowly but surely, and the stuff I've seen so far has been excellent.

I was very proud of the first series and the ratings it got. I'm confident we've got the mix right for the second series. Fingers crossed, you'll like it.

I'll try to get some publicity and screenshots up on this blog when they've been approved, but in the mean time I would be most grateful if you could tell your friends, set your PVRs or even sit down to watch live on Thursday 17 July at 9pm on Channel 5. I will be.

Thanks

Nick

That RVP goal

I was sitting here:

Tolworth station. Evening rush hour.

when Robin van Persie scored the equaliser in Holland's opening group match against Spain.

I became aware of it on twitter. Various people were saying RVP's header was everything from “very good” to “stunning”.

A couple mentioned he’d scored from some distance out. I thought I had an idea of what it might look like.

By the time I got home it was 2-1 to Holland. By the time I got the kids down it was 4-1 to Holland. By the time Arjen Robben scored his second to make it 5-1, I was actually in front of the television, but had to wait until some time after the final whistle before I finally got to see that goal.

Good God. On first view it’s amazing. On repeated viewings it becomes clear this is one of the greatest World Cup goals of all time.

(Yahoo Sports)

Barring something extraordinary, it will become the defining footballing image of Brazil 2014. To have the instinct, athleticism and technique to execute something like that…

First off, look at the run he makes after Blind hits the ball. A straight line 25 yard sprint which he covers in 3 seconds. Whilst doing this, he spots Casillas off his line.

BBC Sport

Then, as the ball approaches, van Persie checks, opens up his body, and takes two positioning baby-steps, with most of his weight still moving laterally across the turf.

Now in the perfect position, van Persie jumps off the tips of his toes, meeting the ball (which is travelling away from him) before he fully leaves the ground.

BBC Sport

In the microsecond of actual contact van Persie needs to nut the ball over Casillas powerfully enough to prevent anyone getting in behind and clearing it off the line. And he needs to kill the backspin to stop it floating over the crossbar.

RVP shapes his body to nail the upward trajectory and power. He creates sidespin with the angle off his forehead. The contact is perfect. The resultant swallow-dive as the ball loops into the top right hand corner of the Spanish net is a transcendent moment in sport. 

BBC Sport

Watching it from the aerial camera is eerie. For the briefest of moments, as the ball sails off his head, the small figure in the centre of shot appears to hang, defying gravity. Flying. Van Persie is three feet in the air, chest pushed forward, back bowed, eyes on the ball as it courses goalward. There is something about that moment which defies ordinary, mortal thinking.

BBC Sport

This sort of thing doesn’t often happen in football, let alone to change the direction of a massively important game on the global stage against the world champions. But, on Friday, it did. And I will be boring my grandchildren about it.

.

Getting rich quick

I got roped into an impromptu EuroMillions lottery syndicate today. I haven’t spent any money on the lottery in years. Jonathan Ross called it “The Stupid tax” on Radio 2 once. 

But when required to stump up £1.25 for the good of the lottery’s shareholders, it seems I can be persuaded. 

Having bought the ticket, one of our number led the fantasies in what we’d do with our money.

All I could think about was what a hassle it would be.  

First you’d have all the publicity to cope with, and that would be a big disruption. It’s my daughter’s school fete on Saturday and my wife is doing a lot of the organising. I’m down to help out on the gate.

Then we’d have to think about moving house and all that palaver. You’d have to employ people to do stuff, and I’m sure my motivation to work would diminish, even though I’d try to pretend it hadn’t.

Unless your purpose in life is pursuit of money, suddenly becoming rich beyond avarice is likely to be an enormous administrative inconvenience.

On balance, I’d rather not win.

UPDATE: We didn't.

England's prospects

Having lined myself up to spend six days this week recording, speaking, broadcasting or filming in six different counties, I’m feeling like an earthbound version of a jet-setter. A train-setter.

Monday morning was a corporate in Berkshire.

Tuesday was spent filming Criminals: Caught on Camera in London.

Yesterday was spent filming for BBC South in Hampshire.

Today I’m filming Crime Capitals in Manchester.

Tomorrow I’m hosting a panel of radio bosses at a Radio Academy event In Leicestershire.

Saturday morning I’ll be doing the breakfast show on BBC Surrey.

Saturday afternoon will be spent collecting entrance money to my daughter’s school fete. 

Saturday evening will be spent asleep on the sofa in front of England vs Italy.

England have two types of footballing tournament in them. 

Type a: 

Sluggish to start with, 

Barnstorming transformational game to qualify from group, 

Heroic, inspiring, country-uniting progress to quarter-finals or semi-finals,

Exit on penalties.

Type b:

Sluggish to start with,

Limp through group,

Unconvincing last 16 match,

Exit on penalties.

For once, I’d like to see England win every game in their group, and then all the knock out matches, and then win the final. "Believe! Believe!" as Kevin Keegan so memorably mouthed to his players, shortly before they lost 1-0 to Germany at Wembley. 

Or just get past a penalty shoot out. Prove to us you've learned something in the last 24 years.

Three things I learned from being interviewed by a 15 year old

I was interviewed on a community radio station last year. The presenter was 15 years old. Three things stick in the memory.

First was her unabashed enthusiasm for the medium. She really loved radio. It shone through everything she did, and it was a joy to watch her at work, especially when she made mistakes. Her method of dealing with them was to laugh uproariously. It was infectious.

Second was a story she told about dragging her friend up to London to track down a limited edition Muse CD, which apparently had a psychedelic scratch n' sniff cover. She spent a good few hours traipsing round record shops trying to find it, until she was told the CD she was looking for was a US-only release. On hearing this, her friend then asked if they could now, finally, go to Primark.

Third was a quiz she sprung on me called something like Match The YouTuber To The Video, in which I was expected to know which YouTube presenter was most likely to have posted a particular video.

My host's frames of reference were so far removed from mine, it didn't even cross her mind that I might not have the first clue about the famous YouTubers she so clearly loved.

What I learned:

1) Presenting is fun. Enjoy it.

2) Music fans fetishise the artefacts which actualise their relationship to their favourite bands. The more responses this artefact provokes (through its feel, aesthetic, audio quality and in this case, smell), the better. Vinyl's superiority in a number of these categories outweighs its lack of portability and expense. It has more than a future. It could well outlast CDs.

3) If you're not on YouTube, you're dead.

I didn't do very well in the quiz, but I walked away with a lot to think about.

Thank you, Kirsten Poole, for the invitation.

.

Radio Academy Masterclass, Leicester, 13 June

If you can make it to Leicester on 13 June, have £20 and want to be a radio presenter, come along to this:

All these people will be there:

It will be fun.

A retirement

Yes. And it still works.

That there, is my minidisc recorder. For the technical among you, it is a Sony MZ-B10.

It was given to me by the BBC on the 4 January 2004. I last used it yesterday to record an episode of Amy and Abi's diary for broadcast on BBC Surrey tomorrow.

The latest episode of Amy and Abi's diary is likely to be my minidisc recorder's last professional engagement. Next week I shall be taking delivery of a TASCAM mp3 recorder.

Stuff that works, reliably, durably and unfussily seems to be like gold dust. When you find something that does what it's supposed to do, you hang on to it. Sometimes for more than a decade.

Before I put my minidisc recorder out to pasture, I would like to pay tribute to its usefulness, and the fact it has been my mechanical companion for most of my career as a journalist.

We've had some fun together. I used it to record an interview with a woman who killed her husband (with his permission) and a man who survived the bomb blast at Aldershot barracks in 1972. My minidisc has also recorded conversations I've had with David Cameron, Sir Mick Jagger, Halle Berry, Will Smith, Sir Bob Geldof, Dame Judi Dench, Sir Ian Botham, Bruce Willis, Madonna, Eddie Izzard, Christina Aguilera, Nick Cave, Gazza, Simon Le Bon, Jake Gyllenhaal and Keira Knightley among others.

It has never let me down. Every time I press the red button, it starts recording. The recording is always there. Playback is simple. The levels are automatic. The sound quality is good. When I use the external mic the BBC gave me, the sound quality is exceptional.

If I were using it every day I would have got rid of it a long time ago. It can only upload audio in real time. But after 2007, most of the reporting I did was for TV, and when I was at BBC Surrey my main role was as a presenter, so the minidisc was only wheeled out for special occasions. For the last three years it's only really been used at home, to record Amy and Abi's diary.

But it was a good bit of kit, and I will miss it.

Criminals: Caught on Camera - Series 2

I am delighted to tell you I have signed a contract to present a second series of Criminals: Caught on Camera for Channel 5.

We've already put together a one-off which will go out some time over summer, and there are plans for a further seven episodes to go out before the end of the year.

Obviously I can't say too much about the content until nearer the time, but when the press material is ready, I'll get some up here.

***************

I do have a couple of other TV projects I'm working on at the moment which I can't say too much about (save that one is crime-related, and the other is concerned with yet more shoddy goings on at the Post Office), so I'm using the opportunity to have a bit of fun with the top ten albums thing.

I'm also trying to do something useful with the Nick is Not Drinking experiment, which is hosted on a separate blog to this.

My experiences of the last four months along with some of the literature I've been reading are starting to crystallise into a theory about the way we deal with alcohol as a society, and what we need to be doing better.

I'm exploring these ideas with a leading clinician who obviously approaches the subject from a different perspective, but has a lifetime of experience in the field. It's been fascinating to learn about the effect of alcohol on mind, body and brain and the way it makes us perceive our environments.

We'll see what comes of it, but if you want to find out more, and possibly even donate to some very worthy causes, have a read here.

Finally, a reciprocal plug for the inestimable Ian Fraser who is due to publish his book on RBS next month. Ian has been a key chronicler of the worst of the British banking system's excesses and is a fearless journalist. His first book "Shredded: The Rise and Fall of the Royal Bank of Scotland" will no doubt be a rollicking read and I would recommend pre-ordering a copy.

Top Ten Albums: Floodland

Artwork definitely a case of "could do better"

Before this record came out, I was aware the Sisters of Mercy were a band I should like. At the time, there was None More Goth. The mythic persona of Andrew Eldritch, the apocalyptically doom-laden first album First and Last and Always, and a concert video filmed at the Royal Albert Hall (which apparently exhausted Europe's supplies of dry ice) had already cemented the legend.

I was never really a fan of First and Last and Always. But god knows I tried. I liked the track Nine While Nine, but overall it was just too... gloomy.

So when I finally got my hands on a copy of Floodland it was more in hope than expectation.

I have written in the past about the impossibility of hearing new music as a child. As a teenager living in Germany, it hadn't got much easier. Stuck on a military base in the middle of nowhere meant listening to British Forces radio (not great champions of alternative music), watching Top of The Pops a week late on Services Sound and Vision TV or getting the bus into Mönchengladbach to stand, rather lamely, at one of the listening posts which German records shops used to offer.

These brightly-lit, atmosphere-free music marts would often contain two or three turntables behind a glass counter and a pair of headphones. The shop staff would reluctantly put on records at your request whilst you put on the headphones and stood there like a plum.

As a 14 year old boy I could barely speak English without becoming a clammy mess, so attempting to communicate in German to a stranger was a complete non-starter. Yet I was so desperate to hear new music I would steel myself to undergo the horrendous process of taking a record to the counter. The man behind the counter would glare at me for a while, then with a great show of contempt, he would snatch the record from my hands, take it out of its sleeve and put it on. I had to stand there, attempting to evaluate the life-changing desirability or otherwise of my chosen record whilst trying not to overheat with adolescent self-consciousness.

If the other turntables were being used, you could guarantee that within thirty seconds another customer would walk up and stand two yards away, holding the record they wanted to listen to. As you tried to ignore them you would become aware the man behind the counter had acknowledged the customer and was fixing you with his "well-are-you-going-to-buy-this-record-or-not?" stare, to which you both knew the answer was no, as you had just spent your weekly pocket money on the bus fare into town and a McDonalds.

I soon gave up on it.

The only other source of new music was the RAF record library, which I was given special dispensation to join, despite being underage, and not a member of the RAF.

This opened up a new world. Borrowing a record only cost one Deutschmark. On my pocket money I could borrow five albums a week, tape the best of them and come back the following week for five more. Furthermore, once a record had been borrowed twenty times the library would sell it to you for another Deutschmark, so I was able to start building a proper record collection. The growth of the collection accelerated when I got to know the record librarian who would "notice a scratch" on a record I particularly liked and flog it to me even though it had yet to be borrowed twenty times.

So I'd heard about the new Sisters of Mercy release. I'd read a fascinating interview with Andrew Eldritch, all mirror shades and leather jackets, stalking the bars of Hamburg. I'd read the album review, which, being the Melody Maker, didn't mention the music once. I was ready for Floodland to arrive at the RAF Rheindahlen record library. Eventually, it did.

The cover looked like it had been knocked up in five minutes, but the photo on the lyric inlay  was rather lovely.

Who is More Goth? No one. No one is.

As I have mentioned before, my favoured way of listening to new music when I had the time to do this sort of thing, was lying down, lights off, loud as possible.

I nervously put the needle on the record and walked across the room to lie on my bed as that crackling, anticipatory pause built the tension before the opening bars. You have no idea how much I wanted this to be listenable. Good was too much to hope for.

Much to my surprise, and eternal gratitude, Floodland is a cacophanous, thundering juggernaut of a record. If The Cure's Head on the Door is self-involved indie goth, The Cult's Love is metal goth, Floodland is disco goth, and none the worse for that. In fact it is an arch nod towards the dark camp of the dancefloor, the fluid moment when exuberant physical expression gets locked up in desire. It is also stupendously silly in a deliberate, grandiose way.

I love it. Well obviously I do, or it wouldn't be in my top ten albums, but I still listen to certain tracks on it now, weekly, if not daily.

Essentially Floodland is one, maximum two ideas stretched across 45 minutes. But as Adrian Edmondson (yes him! clang!) once said to me "all you ever need in life is one good idea".

The twin peaks of the album are undoubtedly Dominion/Mother Russia and This Corrosion. Both are parked at the beginning of each side, and both are essentially the same song. Between them they take up nearly half the album.

Dominion/Mother Russia was produced by the same bloke who engineered This Corrosion. This Corrosion was produced by Jim Steinman, who made his name producing Meatloaf's Bat Out of Hell. As soon as Eldritch had the idea for This Corrosion (over-the-top grand concept goth with stupid lyrics) he did everything he could to get Steinman on board. Makes sense.



Flood I, 1959 and Never Land are fillers of various quality. Flood II, Lucretia My Reflection and Driven Like the Snow are three excellent pop records. The latter also provides a nice link back to First and Last and Always - elegantly returning to the same subject matter covered on Nine While Nine.

Eldritch's boomy baritone isn't for everyone, nor is the relentless clinicism of Doktor Avalanche, the band's famous drum machine, but two amazing and three very good songs on one record doesn't normally happen, and never on an album I was expecting to be a bit of a dirge.

I wouldn't necessarily recommend seeking out Floodland unless you can get hold of the original tracks as put out with their original durations on vinyl. During the remastering process, (presumably through some misguided notion of adding value) original tracks were extended and extra tracks were added. All the extra tracks are terrible and the extended versions of the originals are irritating, unnecessary and actually just ruin perfectly good songs. The overall effect is to further expose the paucity of Eldritch's ideas on the album rather than bolster them. Shame.

***************
Other top ten albums:

The Waterboys - This is the Sea
Duran Duran - Rio

The rationale for doing this. With further rationale at the bottom of the This is the Sea entry too, come to think of it.

Top Ten Albums: Rio

This latest entry has been prompted by the discovery that a production office in the Docklands has decided to put my list of also-ran albums on Spotify and go through them one-by-one, no doubt gleefully critiquing my musical taste in the process. Quite an unnerving thought. Anyway - Duran Duran's Rio.

This is very possibly one of the most perfect and perfectly-timed pop albums ever.  Even now I know every lyric, note, production flange and sequencer squiggle on every single song on this record. There was a time when I could probably take you, shot by shot, through every single video made for this album, had you but asked.

Yes I know Simon Le Bon is a terrible lyricist. A really terrible lyricist. Who can't sing. But whilst George Michael was writing boooooring stuff about gurls and relationships and love, Simon Le Bon was spouting monumental bollocks in a way that sounded perfectly adequate to a nine year old boy. Which, funnily enough, is exactly how old I was when I first heard this record.

It has many faults.

It is not fashionable to like it (if, nowadays, anyone has actually heard of it).

I thought re-visiting Rio, track-by-track, after a ten year break, would be disappointing.

It was not.

My main criticism is that Rio, as a strictly musical endeavour, does not bear too much scrutiny. This subsequently makes it hard to explain in any detail why I like it. Everything that made it huge - the band's videos, image and status is etched on the memory of anyone who lived through the early eighties.

Everything has faded now. All we are left with is the music. And that stunning cover.

Yet the record holds up. Rio is still special. It's partly down to the production and engineering, but is also, undeniably, down to the band, who happened to have written, assembled and learned how to perform nine strikingly good songs.

Uniquely with Duran Duran, and particularly on this album, the guitar and synth parts remain on an equal footing throughout. This is put to great effect on Hungry Like the Wolf where the guitar's metallic edge is mixed down into the guts of the song, adding energy and bounce to the poppy, bubbly, melody-driven rythmic synth sequence which jerks and jiggers all over the place. The opening bars are the distilled essence of pop excitement. A girl laughs, an overdriven guitar runs down the fretboard and we're off.

I'm listening to that synth line again on Spotify now. It's just as exciting and just as fresh as it was 32 years ago. Try it for yourself - but close your eyes - the video hasn't aged well:


It's the same for the rest of the album. Compared to most pop songs of the time each guitar riff, bass part and synth sequence on Rio sounds like it was crafted meticulously, line-by-line, section-by-section - and then played without a care in the world by the people who wrote it. The constituent parts are as creative as they can be without detracting from the coherency of each song. It's a very difficult trick to pull off.

I've never thought of Duran Duran as musicians. They were a band, a brand, an image and five individual media personalities within a pop cultural phenomenon. Their songs were the stepping off point for what a generation of people wanted to project back onto them (and this is where the vacuity of the lyrics actually helped).

For a couple of years in the eighties, Duran Duran held up a mirror to every screaming teenager, music fan, journalist, fashionista and factory worker in the country. The tabloid-reading, Smash Hits-devouring, television-watching public saw something of themselves in them, wanted a piece of them or defined themselves against them. The music was almost incidental.

But on Rio, if you shut out all the blether, there is a sense of a creative unit still young, feted, successful and pigheaded enough to believe in their own ability. The result is an extraordinary record which is limited by but achieves greatness through its authors' unique sensibilities.

Highlights:

The whole of Lonely in your Nightmare
The sequencer on Hungry Like the Wolf
The opening synth riff to and chorus of Save a Prayer
The bass playing on New Religion
The chilling, oddball sound to The Chauffeur, perfectly placed at the end of the album
The songwriting
The cover
The energy
The unbelievable good looks of John Taylor

Lowlights:

The drumming
The lyrics, particularly the goddawful second verse to Hold Back the Rain which was never in the original vinyl version of the album, but was on the version of the b-side to Save a Prayer and has subsequently found its way into every bloody version of the main album since. Le Bon is obviously proud of it because he still sings it live. It's terrible.

But the album is good. Go on. Have a listen.

********************

Original top ten albums post
First top ten album - This is the Sea  (these are being added in no particular order)

Britain's Crime Capitals: Birmingham

Beverley Thomas by the grave of her daughter

The second episode of Britain's Crime Capitals goes out tonight at 9pm on Channel 5 (and, obviously at 10pm on C5+1). This episode focuses on Birmingham's gang culture and the steps being taken to change it.

I met Beverley Thomas, whose daughter Charlene was shot dead in 2003. We spoke at Charlene's grave. As we walked back to the car she pointed out the graves of at least four other young people whose lives had been cut short by street violence.

On another occasion I met an interesting character who was subjected to a sustained machete attack by a group of people he took to be his friends. They left him for dead by a park in Handsworth. We took him back there for the first time since it happened. The resultant interview is worth watching.

I hope you can spare the time to catch the programme tonight, or view it after transmission on Demand 5.

Top Ten Albums: This is the Sea

I was given this album on tape by a boy two years older than me at school. Mackey. His surname was Maclean, so we called him Mackey. He didn't like me very much.

One day he handed me a cassette. "You'll like this." he said. "Ignore the trumpety shit at the beginning. It's good."

Because the album had been copied, I assumed the "trumpety shit" was something that had been imperfectly taped over.

I took the cassette out of his hand. "Why the trumpets?" I asked nervously, for something to say.

"How the fuck should I know!" he bellowed.

"Er, okay. Thanks." I said, as he stormed off, muttering.

That night, I lay on my bed and put my walkman on. When I was a kid I always listened to as much new music as I possibly could prone, and in the dark. Especially new stuff. No distractions.

There is quite a lot of trumpety stuff at the beginning. One minute, twenty-seven seconds in all (I've just timed it).

What follows is the most thrilling guitar riff ever. That first time, the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. I lay, rigid, my arms by my side, my feet stretched out in front of me and my eyes staring straight up at the ceiling frozen in a kind of goonish ecstasy. What a fucking beautiful sound. How was it even possible to make that screeching, grinding, melodic, electrifying... noise? Sweet Mary mother of Jesus - how good is this?

The brilliance of the opening track (Don't Bang The Drum) isn't matched in sonic terms by the rest of the album, but there were enough gems in there to elevate This Is The Sea and The Waterboys to (nearly) favourite band status for a good few years.

If you have never come across This is the Sea before, here's a quick tour:

Be My Enemy and Medicine Bow are two straight-up roister-doistering this-is-who-we-are-and-this-is-what-we-do pop songs. The music is uncomplicated celtic-soul-rock, made outstanding by arrangement, production and performance. Listening back, the lyrics seem genetically engineered to appeal to fourteen year old boys, which is, funnily enough, exactly how old I was when I first heard them.

Medicine Bow is about going on an epic journey to somewhere epic, whenceforth everything will be significantly better than it has been before:

There's a black wind blowing
A typhoon on the rise
Pummelin' rain
Murderous skies

I'm gonna take my boots
I'm gonna wear my coat
I'm gonna find my scarf
And wrap it around my throat

And you can come with me
Through the driving snow
We gonna ride on up to 
Medicine Bow

Be My Enemy is a fantasy about tracking down someone who is being an almost biblical pain in the arse, and duffing them up. 

I've got goons on my landing
Thieves on my trail
Nazis on my telephone
Willing me to fail
And they were all sent by someone
Obviously you

(...)

Now from the slime on your tongue to the nails on your toes
From the scales on your skin to the stains on your clothes
You're gonna make me have to do something, I do not want to do
But if you will be my enemy, I'll be your enemy too.

Every line is thoughtfully metred and measured, and the result is almost cartoon-ishly spot on. This is an exercise in lyrical rhetoric, and it is up there with the very best.

My hands are tied, nailed to the floor,
Feel like I'm knocking on unknown doors.
Gun at my back, blade at my throat, 
I keep on finding hatemail in the pockets of my coat,

Oh I've been, trying to grow
I have been, cooling my heels
I have been, working on the treadmill
I've been, working in the fields...

And I, can't get to sleep...

And I, can't catch my breath...

I can't stop talking and I look like death,

But I will put right this disgrace.

I will RE-ARRANGE YOU!

('Cos if you'll be my enemy, I'll be your enemy too).

Love it. Trumpets I can take or leave, and I was never that sold on Old England or The Whole of the Moon, but The Pan Within is kind of groovy, and This Is The Sea is a perfect album ender - 12-string guitars and we're-all-flowing-downstream-through-life-and-then-we-reach-the-sea-which-is-when-we-die-but-it's-great-because-we're-all-one-intermingling-of-celestial-energy lyrical gubbins.

As someone who had already happily consumed The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, and most of CS Lewis, the album's celtic-leaning spirituality and Yeatsian imagery was perfect fodder at the perfect time.

Once I'd acquired This Is The Sea on vinyl (Mackey wanted his tape back) I dug out the first two Waterboys albums. They weren't as good, but they didn't disappoint. The title track of A Pagan Place is still my favourite Waterboys song, but I don't think anyone would deny This is the Sea marks the band's creative high point, and it just scrapes into my top ten albums ever.



****************

Postscript:

When I started this project, Max Velody, top TV producer, made the following comment on Facebook:

"A question. Will your top 10 albums be, the albums you think are the best, or, the albums you play the most, or, are they one and the same for you? I ask because whenever I mentally draw up these lists, I am aware that the two don't always match and I wonder, should they. For instance - I don't think Iggy Pop's Lust For Life would make it into my list of the top 10 albums ever, however, I have played it a few times each and every year since it came out, 37 years ago, and I don't think that's true of any other album I own. So maybe it should be in my top 10, maybe it should be number one. I just don't know....."

Which obviously got me thinking. Am I really writing up my top ten albums at all? I rarely listen to This is the Sea nowadays, and certainly haven't at any time over the last 5 years. Musically and lyrically, I've kinda moved on. It is a great album, but it is something of a period piece.

This is the Sea is in the top ten because it meant so much to me at the time. But there are plenty of albums like that. What is the difference between those which meant a lot when I was younger and made it into the list and those that didn't?

The Damned's Phantasmagoria changed my relationship to music overnight. It created a step-shift in my aesthetic at a time when I was frankly floundering and set me off on a journey of discovery which basically opened up The Cure, The Cult,  The Cocteau Twins, The Sisters of Mercy, all of punk, The Smiths, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Mission etc to me. But I was thirteen and it is a terrible album. I'm embarrassed I ever liked it and you don't need to hear it.

So I will admit, part of the reason for presenting you a top ten album list is in the hope you will have a listen to them, and this has inevitably had an impact on what they are.

If I had to do a top ten album list based on how much particular records may have meant to me at particular stages of my life, it would be a pretty stringy list. It would also not be a true reflection of what I consider to the ten best albums I've ever heard.

But if I took out all the ropey albums which meant such a colossal amount to me at the time and tried to look objectively at everything I've ever listened to, the result would be even more pointless than it is already because the albums on the list would be there for technical or cultural reasons, rather than personal ones.

So in answer to your question Max, my top ten consists of:

- some albums which meant a lot to me at the time, but in retrospect, aren't objectively that good, or ones I particularly listen to now, but have something in them which is worth sharing.

- some albums I genuinely love but don't really listen to any more.

- some albums I still listen to a lot and seem to be getting closer to as we grow old together.

It doesn't contain some albums which meant more to me at the time than many of the records in my top ten, but which are nowhere near as good as I thought they were, and aren't worth sharing.

If you think this is getting over-thought, wait until we get onto the subject of compilations.

If you have no idea why I'm writing this, please read my introductory piece.

Britain's Crime Capitals

Always nice to get a photo listing in the Radio Times

At 9pm on Monday 14 April, you can see the first programme in a new series I'm presenting for Channel 5. It's made by twofour productions - responsible for The Hotel Inspector, Educating Yorkshire and Splash, among many other fine shows.

The first episode focuses on Liverpool. Over the course of the series, we also visit Birmingham, Glasgow and Manchester. Each city has its own problems and its own way of dealing with them.

In the armoury

On Monday we visit a police ballistics facility (above) somewhere in England. I was allowed to fire a Glock handgun, using the same hollow point bullets Oscar Pistorious used to kill his girlfriend. 

To demonstrate the damage one of these bullets can do, I fire one into a block of custom-made "ballistics soap", designed to have the same consistency as human muscle. 

Even in a sterile and controlled environment, it's possible to get a sense of the catastrophic injuries these weapons are capable of inflicting on their targets.

I hope you can spare the time to watch or record Britain's Crime Capitals on Monday, or stream it on Demand 5 after transmission.

The England Football Shirt

is worth what people will pay for it.

There appears to be a small child trying to escape from Wayne Rooney's abdomen

The pricing point is aspirational. Not for the manufacturer, but the buyer. When you are dealing with something as ubiquitous and easy to produce as a polyester t-shirt, only a fraction of the value lies in the physical artefact. The drivel about  "engineered mesh" and "laser cut side panels" is just dismal marketing screed. It's made from recycled plastic bottles, same as the cheapo unbranded top I wear to the gym.

Most of the value of the product is bound up in the price. The higher the price, the more people aspire to own it, the more valuable it becomes.

There is, of course, a cut-off point at which a majority of potential customers will walk away, and this is where it gets clever. Ninety pounds for an England shirt is most likely well above that cut-off point. But who is actually going to pay the full amount?

Only the rich and stupid will be ordering them full price from the Nike website. No retailer is going to be buying these shirts in at £45 per unit, giving them huge scope for discounting. Many thousands of people this summer will be wearing official £90 football shirts they picked up from a discount retailer for closer to £60, believing they have won themselves a bargain in the process.

Ninety quid for the 2014 England Football Shirt is nothing to do with profit margins and everything to do with marketing and PR. Given the likely minuscule manufacturing cost, it barely matters to Nike's accountants whether they sell a million shirts at ninety quid or two million at forty-five. Announcing  the new England shirt at an essentially unaffordable price is a strategic decision made in order generate acres and acres of publicity.

And it's worked. The new rip-off England shirt is now part of the national conversation. The media is happy because it's got something to talk about, the politicians are happy because they can position themselves as being on the side of the poor football fan, incapable of not buying a new shirt every time it comes out. The fans are happy because they've got something to moan about. The retailers are cock-a-hoop because they've got so much scope for discount, yet can still preserve their margins.

The manufacturers are happy because any lingering idea that Umbro made England's shirts (which they did for more than 50 years) is being swiftly blown away. The Nike and England brands are in the process of being indelibly associated with each other.

And of course, everyone knows there is a new England shirt out. When we see it on sale for £60 at our local retail shed, we will at least go and have a look to see what the fuss is about. Ker-ching.

Yes it is another example of multi-national conglomerates turning powerful notions of identity, pride and common national experience, into a grubby, exclusionary, commercial process. Yes the whole sordid charade strips another shred from the twitching corpse of uncommodified social experience. Yes by explicitly introducing the concept of first ("match") and second ("stadium") class supporters the manufacturers are suggesting those who can't afford the top dollar shirts are not fit to wear them. Yes the wholesale capture of sport by capitalism is a degrading and dehumanising thing.

But we keep going back for more, don't we?

So who's the sucker?

.

Showreel

A brief idea of what I've been up to over the last twelve months with some bonus pre-BBC Surrey news reporting at the back.

If you would like to get in touch directly, twitter is probably the best way. If you want to speak to my agent, his name is Chris North and his email address is chris@northmediatalent.com

(if you can't see the embedded video in this post, the showreel itself is hosted here on youtube. Please contact Chris if you require a DVD)

Bank of Scotland investigation

First broadcast: BBC1 Inside Out South, 3 March 2014

Copyright: BBC News

Info: A transcript of the film as broadcast is available here. The version above has had minor edits due to time constraints.

If the embedded video does not appear above, please watch it via this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5z0ZDT1gC8s