The power of ROCK!

BB recently dug out a long-forgotten compilation tape, containing many hits of the eighties carefully recorded off the radio and spliced with snippets of Bruno Brookes - a man still irritating even in two second snatches. Part-way through the side 2, we found “Here I Go Again” by Whitesnake. Almost instantly, we turned into our father, banging the steering wheel and moaning, “They don’t make ‘em like this anymore!” Thankfully, the car was otherwise empty at the time, otherwise the occupants might have been crouching in the footwells screaming, “FOR FUCK’S SAKE, SLOW DOWN BEFORE YOU KILL US!!!”

You may at this point wish to break out your old air guitar and join us in a respectful rendition of the chorus: > “Here I go again on my own,
Goin’ down the only road I’ve ever known,
Like a drifter, I was born to walk alone,
And I know what it means,
To walk along this lonely street of dreams!”

It is instructive and insightful to compare this classic hard rock hit of yesterday to some of today’s hits. Not Travis or Starsailor obviously, because the comparison would just kill them immediately. After all, you don’t lock a hungry alsation and a chirping budgie, neither of which have eaten for days, in a room together just to see which one survives. No, we should compare it against something that has massive popularity and huge general appeal.

Therefore, BB presents The totally objective and balanced Whitesnake vs. Will Young Comparison:

So there you have it: believe only in the power of ROCK, kids, and reject false idols!

Turnkey solution

After it fails to start when you turn the key, you resort to kicking the box, which is your only remaining option as there’s no documentation or other method of control. After all, it’s a turnkey solution. It’s possible the “n” is meant to be silent.

Mission-critical

Failure-certain.

Best of breed

Requires constant pampering and attention, prey to every virus going around, catches fatal cold when exposed to any minor draught.

User-driven

…Badly.

Consumer in Crisis recently tackled Colgate-Palmolive’s attempt to do a Jonestown.

session at The Bank (it was a bank, it’s now owned by Banks’ Brewery). There was a wide range of refreshingly amateur talent, and at least one well refreshed amateur: * Old blokes in baggy blue jeans playing 12 bar blues. Well, it’s more acceptable than smoking a pipe and talking about your prostate op. * Sensitive solo crooners with guitars and “a song I wrote last week”. * “The kids” grooving down to the funky rock sound. * One extremely pissed drummer, accompanying some like-minded souls only a few drinks behind him.

Now, I like bad drummers because they make me feel good about my own playing. I always find a little practice makes all the difference, and it was the distinct lack of same that made the last bunch stand out a mile. That and the large guy desperately trying to hit the snare drum (which he seemed to have some trouble locating and which at one point made a spirited attempt to escape him by shooting halfway across the floor) more often than once per verse.

OK, I might be unfair. He might have just begun learning how to play - we all have to start somewhere. He might not have possessed natural rhythm; I can certainly sympathise with that. But I venture to suggest that his performance might have been considerably more accomplished if he hadn’t started the evening rolling drunk. No, really. My suspicions were first aroused when I noticed him fall over a fellow punter at the bar earlier, mumble a slurred apology and then leer with his tongue out behind the guy’s back.

This … still entertaining workout was terminated when he abruptly gave it up as a bad job mid-song (Jeez man, how many snare drums were in that kit anyway??) and walked off stage, pausing to lovingly rub the second guitarist’s bald head. He later staggered back up to shake hands with all concerned - particularly the owner of the kit, who had jumped onboard in a last ditch attempt to save the ship (or perhaps go down with it). Presumably this was intended to convey the fact that he still had his dignity. Then he crawled quietly away to curl up and die somewhere. Aw. Or maybe he was hurling up in the gutter.

Just saw the following headline on Yahoo! news: > LONDON (Reuters) - The stars have begun arriving in force for the grizzliest show in the British pop music calendar – the Brit Awards. Spot which word I misread. And then tell me it isn’t more appropriate.

somehow escaped a mention in either the Bloggies or the Anti-Bloggies. Or indeed, on any other site anywhere on the net, according to Google. We couldn’t think why. Just because all we do is rehash endless Grauniad stories and make bleedin’ obvious snarky comments about obscure subjects that Americans wouldn’t care about (like bombing non-American civilians), that doesn’t seem a good reason for discriminating against us.

In search of enlightenment, we resorted to desperate measures and went out surfing other blogs to see if we had somehow drastically misjudged our audience (or merely been unable to find one). And it quickly became obvious why Empty Spaces has conspicuously (in a highly invisible way) failed to become a leading light in the bloggie community. To play such a fine and upstanding role, or least GET NOTICED, we’d need to be either: * gay (thanks for sharin’); * divorced (with a teenage kid); * a teenage kid, convinced that “life sucks!” (darn, only missed qualifying on this one by 12 years); * over twenty and still complaining about “mom” (e.g. “Mom rang to nag me about getting back together with Brad and claiming that she’d caught Hayley smoking crack in her bedroom. life sucks!”); * friends of people called Ed, Kiki, Amanda and Jason (which is apparently accomplished by writing “Hi Ed/Kiki/Amanda/Jason! <hugs>” at least once a week - if that particular tag is accepted into the next HTML standard, we’re gonna push for <vom> too); * mad; * sad; * tedious to know; * suffering from several highly imaginative allergies or mental illnesses (e.g. “Ed wanted me to come bowling last night, but the shoes cause my feet to ooze blue pus and besides, my agoraphobic hypomania is playing up after I drank too much pepsi. life sucks!”); * suffering from several highly imaginative love affairs (we’ve tried to picture some of these people dating but really, we can’t attain the same frenzied heights of fantasy - and if we could, we suspect we’d need to <vom>); * missing the point of cApiTal leTTerS; * some kind of HTML pervert, hell-bent on playing with tags mortal man should not meddle in (“JavaScript deviant seeks XHTML slave to brutalise endless layers of dynamic CSS objects with weird and twisted results”); * hermetically sealed into a loft apartment with the TV and Internet bringing the only news from the outside world, which may explain the manic obsession with utter trivia; * suffering from delusions that we’re special or talented, when we’re really so, sooo average in a way that really hammers home the unending levelness of the playing field implied by the term; * logging an entry every hour that goes, “i’m back! did ya miss me? i dont know why i’m bothering writing this, no one is reading it. anywayz, life officially sucks. im like so depressed and i can’t see an end to it, cant go on much longer, i just feel like theres this big VOID and i cant escape it, blah blah drone…” (we often feel something similar - particularly after reading such encouraging thoughts - but really, if you’re under thirty and you can put it into words, you’re not really feeling it at all).

So anyway, thanks but no thanks. (If you think this is cruel, I can link each of the above to specific examples.)

(no, we don’t read any other papers), Martin Woollacott asserts that “nobody could seriously maintain that much binds most Iraqis and North Koreans to their rulers but fear, routine and lack of an alternative.” Which might be true, but applies just as much to Britain as well.

The head of the BBC has had a marvellous new idea to encourage creativity amongst his drones: give them “Cut the crap, make it happen” yellow cards to brandish at meetings where they feel stifled by inertia and negativity (e.g. “Oh god, not another cop show/Eastenders special/soapumentary!”). BB has to say that this initiative possesses all the fine attributes of the very best management consultancy, being terminally naff, deeply patronising and utterly irrelevant. And if someone ever waved such a card at us, we’d be tempted to subject them to a bout of inverse digestion by shoving it up their arse and then punching their teeth so far down their throat, they’d be able to chew it.

Of course, we can all think of many, many people to whom we’d like to show such a card (the Department of Transport, the postal service and Greg Dyke spring immediately to mind), but then we’d also all deeply resent it forever if anyone ever waved the same card at us.

BB’s approach to cutting the crap has always been to switch off the TV set. Works every time.

When you see someone obviously under the influence of mind-altering substances - whether it’s alcohol, drugs, mobile phone radiation or the Bible - in a public place, babbling incoherently about a load of complete drivel, do you throw money at them? Do you stop and listen appreciatively to them for an hour or more?

Probably not. So why, whhhyyyyyyy is the BBC spending my licence money on Terry Wogan?? BB has to listen to this doofus every morning in the car (“has to” for reasons outside our control - i.e. we’re not the driver), and we think he manages one sensible word in fifty. On a good day. And that’s a relative term. Otherwise, he burbles vapidly on, chuckling and giggling to himself (his accomplice “Doctor Wally” is, we are convinced, a tape loop of a man muttering “Mmhhh-huh”) over a variety of piss-poor anecdotes allegedly sent in by people called “Lou Smorals” that surely, surely were written by himself (if it’s you writing them then fucking stop it, NOW). It’s not funny. It’s doesn’t idle the time away, only makes each second drag agonisingly out into what feels like geological era. It’s certainly not clever; even the worst basket case in the asylum would earn a swift slap and an injunction to “Pull yourself together!” if they came out with anything Tel said. And it’s not even relaxing, because I want to grab the tyre lever from the boot and walk along the queue mashing the heads of the other drivers to pulp until that voice in my head WENT AWAY.

Of course, there is music inbetween the rattling of Wogan’s dying braincell. Awful, bland, vaguely acoustic garbage mostly; we left Radio 1 to get away from boy bands like Westlife and A1. Having run out of classic pop-lite hits from the seventies, Radio 2 now plays anything with acoustic strums and airy, multitracked vocals - tune optional, usually considered an unnecessary luxury.

But that’s all that is left to you as a thirtysomething cultural orphan. We quit listening to Radio 1 because we hate kids and we hated ourselves as kids, Radio 3 is just a whole other planet mercifully light years away, Radio 4 is a full dinner when you just want tea & toast and Radio 5 would be great with music. But not the BBC’s idea of music. Wait, the BBC has no idea about music.

In the meantime, we’d say that Death cannot come soon enough for Wogan, but we know he’d be replaced by Steve Wright. Oh. Ghod. No.

• Barry Longthorne of Stotes Newingham, Norfolk, yesterday changed his name by deed poll to Fling Fling Fishee Fin and announced his forthcoming nuptials to a two year old halibut kept in a tank at his home.
  In a statement, Mr Fishee Fin said: “Punishing Microsoft for monopolistic practices by giving them an unbeatable monopoly over IT resources within the education system is an extremely bad idea,” thus proving that he is not completely off his fucking trolley.
• A new world record was declared in Walsall yesterday, when Sarah Shawstone successfully managed to cycle around the town’s war memorial 1,379 times in four hours, despite appalling dizziness. Asked why she had wanted to achieve this feat, she said: “In light of Transport Secretary Stephen Byers’ decision to authorise Heathrow Terminal 5, thus once more putting narrow business interests above both local and global pressing environment concerns, it seemed only sensible.”
• Neighbours on Eynsham Road in Greater Manchester are up in arms after the occupant of no. 16, Mr Darren Clenshaw, elected to replace every outside wall of his semi-detached former council house with double glazing.
  “It’s disgusting and stupid!” said one. “You can see him in the bathroom and everything!”
  “I like a bit of daylight,” said Mr Clenshaw, explaining his unconventional renovations. “Besides, it’s not like I’m some fat cat Railtrack shareholder investing in a fatally flawed company to cream off public funds and then expecting to be further compensated by the taxpayer when it inevitably goes tits-up, is it?”