Because of moving around an awful lot in my life, I have rarely voted.  Now that I’m in Edinburgh I am settled enough to have voted in the last couple of elections and, now that I’ve done it, I find myself asking what the hell the point is.

That reflex response “Well if you don’t vote, you can’t complain” has always struck me as a load of old bollocks.  In fact, never mind that, it is a load of old bollocks.  When I first decided to cast my own vote, no matter how hopeless the party for whom I was voting, my reasoning was this: I didn’t want the slippery fuckers to be able to get away with it so easily.  I knew I was wasting my vote in most ways, but I just wanted to head off that criticism, that smug “Well if you didn’t vote…”

Ultimately though, voting is bordering on pointless.  Labour have moved so far to the right that the Tories are now fighting them on green issues and civil liberties – in other words, they have almost had to move to the left of Labour in order to differentiate themselves.  It’s ridiculous.  How the fuck does choosing between those two sets of snivelling lickspittles constitute any sort of meaningful choice?  How does the election of Cameron or Brown make even the tiniest difference to our day-to-day lives?  Tony Blair was essentially a Tory prime minister.  And given it makes no difference whatsoever, why are we voting?

A vote is supposed to be a choice, a statement of belief and principle, your chance to make a declaration of political allegiance and attempt to influence the way in which the country is governed.  Does anyone seriously believe that the current system, which is effectively two-party, offers us a choice in how the country is run?  Does it bollocks.  The influence of lobbyists, and hence wealth, in politics is so colossal that unless you promise to govern in a particular way, to play the game obediently, then the chances of your name even appearing on the ballot paper are basically nil.  As Tony Blair so brazenly demonstrated in the buildup to the war in Iraq, they are absolutely not accountable to us; not in the slightest.

So when we vote, what are we doing, legitimising the status quo?  It certainly feels that way.  We are basically giving the impression that we genuinely believe that choosing one special interest sock-puppet over another represents a meaingful choice for us and one which we are willing to take seriously.  Surely voter turnouts dropping to record-low levels makes more of a political statement than dutifully making an appearance and marking your box like a good little boy.  How, after all, can they claim legitimate mandate to govern when a mere twenty percent of the populace endorsed them?  They will claim it anyway of course, and blame us, but it feels like a stronger, more meaningful statement than simply choosing one bunch of toadies over another identical bunch of toadies who happen to wear differently-coloured ties.

The problem, really, is the alternative.  If you refuse to vote, which I think it a perfectly reasonable decision and one with which I am seriously toying at the moment, then how do you remain politically active?  I guess you join activist groups, participate in message boards and sites that debate political issues, and generally cherry-pick your participation in terms of single issues rather than sign up to any one morally bankrupt political party or another.  It’s politics by aggregate rather than partisan allegiance, which seems dead in the water at the moment.  Here anyway.  Look at The States and partisan tribalism has more or less engulfed the political process, and why?  I guess because they genuinely feel that picking Obama or McCain or, until recently, Clinton over the others will produce genuinely difficult outcomes for the country.

Over here, does anyone seriously believe Cameron, Blair, Brown or any of these twits are significantly different from one another?  The great success of the Scottish National Party this year has been their mediocre inoffensiveness, allowing them to play the nationalist card, which in much of Scotland translates as borderline racism, and thus mobilise the bovine masses without seriously threatening to do anything meaningful which might upset anyone.  Or, more significantly, make them give a shit one way or another.

So what are we left with?  I am increasingly finding myself in a situation where I can barely justify voting.  I would rather a pathetically low turnout, as political statements go, to pottering along voting for this or that identikit besuited mannequin and continuing to give the impression that they are actually doing their jobs.  They are not.  We are not being listened to.  Our votes are fucking meaningless.  And what can we do, spoil the ballot?  Maybe.  Not vote?  I don’t know.  I wouldn’t be happy with that at all, it just doesn’t feel right, and of course it is impossible to differentiate between the indifferent non-voter and the pointed non-voter.  So it may be difficult to make a statement that way, but it is very close to being the only real statement we can make as an electorate.  Is this too disillusioned for a Friday?  Sorry.  Have some gin and forget I ever said this.

Fela Kuti – Government Chicken Boy
Billy Bragg – NPWA
Radiohead – Electioneering

I was catching up on DC’s excellent and not-at-all-airport-related Christmas podcasts yesterday when I found myself thinking ‘fuck me, that Abba song sounds like Creep’.  After the song, DC was kind enough to explain that it wasn’t Abba at all it was The Hollies, and that there was a well-known school of thought linking the two songs.

Given how slow I am picking up on this sort of thing, probably because I don’t listen to the radio all that much, I wouldn’t be at all surprised for this post to raise a deafening chorus of ‘Well yeah, like duh, like where have you been dude, like everyone knows that’ or something else equally well-phrased and cutting.  But honestly, this is the first I’d ever heard of it and the similarities are uncanny.

I never cease to be amazed by this sort of thing, but why it should surprise me is a mystery.  In my own field, industrial design, it’s entirely common for someone to like the proportions or the surface transitions or the material finishes of any number of other products and then incorporate them, sometimes quite directly, into their own work.  Look at the rise of the secret-to-lit screen, or the ‘one black version, one white version’ approach and things like that.  Look what the iPod did to popularise really basic geometry in handheld products, something that led almost directly to the storming success of the SonyEricsson T610.

Switching these kinds of ideas back and forth isn’t copying as such, but it does exist on the same spectrum.  At some point drawing inspiration does become outright copying, but I think at the moment we are inclined to draw that line too soon, in a great many fields.  Human ingenuity is a cumulative process, as tiny improvements build on thousands of other tiny improvements – the Eureka! moment is largely a myth.

I’ve ranted this rant before, so I’ll shut up now and leave you to compare The Air That I Breathe by The Hollies with an acoustic version of Radiohead’s classic Creep. And never mention airports ever again.

The Hollies – The Air That I Breathe
Radiohead – Creep (Acoustic)

Sometimes promo people send me stuff so mismatched to my tastes I really shake my head at the waste of plastic, packaging and postage. Save yourselves the time and just sling it straight in the trash yourselves, for fuck’s sake. Sometimes, instead of just to me, this happens to the whole world at once. Meet the Hoosiers. If ever an album needed to go straight in the bin it is this garbage. It makes Athlete and Hard Fi seem like serious bands. It even suffers when compared to the scrotum-shrivellingly awful Maroon 5.

And it is Maroon 5 who perhaps are the most interesting comparison. Just look at the comments under this BBC review of the Hoosiers’ album. Poking about the internets, these lads just can’t buy a good review, and for very good reason: they’re rubbish. Limp, lifeless, criminally derivative and absolutely devoid of the barest scrapings of charm needed to moisten even Paris Hilton’s gusset. But look at those comments on the Beeb, and check out that other everyman review site, Amazon. This is a popular album. It’s even – *gulp* – in the charts.

The Guardian wrote a piece recently about Maroon 5 which opened with the following line: “They’ve sold 2m albums in the UK, 10m in the US. But they can’t get a good review.” Again, perhaps this might have something to do with the fact that they peddle a sort of spineless, neutered Argos Catalogue pop that carries all the emotional impact of a half-eaten Pot Noodle. But it is popular, and so are the Hoosiers.

It is easy in our insulated internet world of like-minded folks – who, let’s face it, we would never have found were it not for the wonders of the Information Super-cul-de-sac – to forget that things are popular because lots of people like them. Lots and lots of people. Remember how XFM used to be a really good radio station? Well since they were bought out and had the sperm drained from their testicles they have simply become more and more popular instead of, more deservingly, being dropped like a ginger step-child.

Basically, people like utter garbage and the general population’s taste is woefully bland. People are fucking shit. They shop at WalMart and Morrison’s, they buy Supermarket Pop like this dross, they watch Big Brother, and I’m a Celebrity, Tuck an Angry Hornet Under My Foreskin*. They buy a Ford Focus and drink in the Hogshead and All Bar One. They shop as a pastime, not as an obligation. Most people are fucking dismal, boring, dead, spiritless fucking ghosts.

And to communicate with them in a cool an unpretentious manner, record label marketing people write shite like this, from the Hoosiers’ RCA label page:

For those of you who have only just discovered The Hoosiers I will start at the start, for those who claim prior knowledge of The Hoosiers, I suggest you skip this bit and join us at the next paragraph. Deal?

Quickly, for I have little time as I must pop to the shop to pick up some milk: The Hoosiers (formerly The Hoosier Complex) are a triumvirate of odd-pop from Exeter, Reading and Stockholm. Before they were a three piece, they were a two piece and before that they were three one pieces. Its simple maths really, not rocket surgery – which, ironically, is where Irwin, (vocal “assaultist”) met Alfonso – formerly Alan (stick-ferret/drums) – ten years prior, in a local school band named Ronnie Rocket and the Rocket Surgeons.

No, no fucking deal. You make this deal with what remains of the empty shell of achingly meaningless tedium that you call a life if you so please, but only if you truly have not one last spark of spirit or dignity left in your dead soul.

What depresses me the most is that in most people’s view, the title of this album is entirely accurate. The Trick to Life for most people, it would appear, is to aspire to this sort of hellish existence, sound-tracked by, erm, whom, I wonder? Well at the bottom of the Hoosiers’ RCA page it recommends that, if you like the Hoosiers, try the following: Backstreet Boys, Kelly Clarkson, Natasha Bedingfield, Sandi Thom, Lil’ Chris and The Fray. These people do their research depressingly well.

The Boo Radleys – Wake Up Boo!
Johnny Boy – You Are the Generation That Bought More Shoes and You Get What You Deserve
Radiohead – No Surprises
Dave Matthews Band – Ants Marching

*The actual program may be called something slightly different.

Never mind the fuss over the business model, this album just isn’t very good.  I have all sorts of things to say about the way they are actually selling the record to the public, but I think I may have to digest a little before they become coherent enough to write down.  I do, however, have to say that I have nothing but applause for their efforts to find Another Way.  It appears bands are going to have to go it alone in this way in order to force the recording industry to actually address the 21st Century instead of just sticking their fingers in their ears and hoping it will go away.  Radiohead are to be seriously applauded for this.

Unfortunately, the album itself represents no semblance of a return to form in the wake of horribly disappointing recent fare such as Hail to the Thief (soft) and Eraser (beige).  In fact, this album is very much what you would get if you ground those two records together, stirred them up, and sprinkled ten new tracks out of the mix.  The sound comes pretty clearly from these two records and, lamentably, so does the lack of spirit.

Radiohead used to have urgency, don’t you think?  I mean, even the more downbeat electronica of Kid A and Amnesiac still had a direction.  They were moving forward, at pace, straining slightly to go faster, twitching nervously at the reins.  The last three albums, if you include Eraser, have been so lacking in any kind of nervous tension or drive that they seem to me to be lifeless, unengaging records that bring no emotion at all to the listening.  It’s a shame really, but it seems churlish to complain about a group responsible for two or possibly three albums that I am pretty sure history will view as era-defining classics.

I paid £7.

Radiohead – Nude
Radiohead – Weird Fishes/Arpeggi

website | hype | buy it

I enjoyed reading this little bit in the Times about a judge in Manchester getting stuck into some goddamn awful talk show because it provoked one of its guests into nutting someone on air.  The quote from the Times piece is here:

“The circumstances of this case are exceptional and the provocation involved seems to be paramount. I have had the misfortune of viewing The Jeremy Kyle Show and I feel bound to make some observations.

“It seems to me that the whole purpose of the show is to effect a morbid and depressing display of dysfunctional people who are in some kind of turmoil. It is for no more and no less than titillating members of the public who have nothing better to do with their mornings than sit and watch this show, which is a human form of bear-baiting under the guise of entertainment. The people responsible for this, namely the producers, should in my opinion be in the dock with you, Mr Staniforth.”

Good.  Fuck the producers of these things and fuck the audiences too. This must be one of the most utterly unedifying sights in modern culture, how we get together to mock, deride and humiliate the weak and the foolish in our society.  I am not saying they aren’t entertaining because I find them compellingly awful myself – they are the very epitome of car crash TV.  But I do not and will not watch them.  Circus talk shows, the love of reality TV, the mobs who gang up to attack paediatricians, the howls of self-righteous outrage that accompany press witch-hunts – they’re all part of the same ugly instinct and I really wish we knew better than to indulge it.

The people who watch shows like this remind me of the outraged mob who formed when the children who killed James Bulger were released in 2001.  Most of those people were dreadful human beings going about making threats and getting on their high horses about something for no other apparent reason than to simply manage to give their own lives a sheen of validity by forcibly making the point that no matter how worthless they were as individuals, at least they weren’t as bad as  those two Evil Child Murderers.  It had nothing to do with the issues at hand, it was just personal validation through facile, hysterical self-righteousness.

With talk shows the mechanism seems to be similar: part of the enjoyment of watching is intrinsically related with boosting our own self worth by claiming acres of distance between our own normal, banal lives and the freaks that are on the telly.  With Venables and Thompson, at least they actually did something bad.  The reaction to it was disgusting to behold, but they at least were responsible themselves, although given they were ten at the time, the extent is debatable.

In the talk show scenario all the exhibits need to do to deserve our vicious taunting and ridicule is to be dysfunctional.  Or stupid.  Or weak.  We are rounding up the lame and the impotent, putting them on show like animals and then provoking them to do something humiliating so we can all laugh at them.  How is this different from the early years of boxing, where some folks would ’round up a couple a niggers’ and make them batter each other to a bloody, comatose pulp for the entertainment and sport of the white audience?  This is the level at which the producers of these shows find themselves.  Congratulations.  You must be very proud.  How is this any different from dog fighting?  The only difference is that neither being mentally deficient, rather than actually brain damaged, nor emotionally crippled are currently recognised as being part of a neatly defined ‘minority’ deserving of protection or pity.

If you watch this shit you are essentially enjoying the humiliation of the weak to make yourself feel better and you should be abjectly fucking ashamed of yourself.  Is it any wonder bullying is on the rise in schools?  This is why I hate the Pete Doherty Tabloid Circus.  That is why watching these idiotically vain celebrities and pseudo-celebrities make fools of themselves for us all to laugh at on reality TV turns my stomach.  That’s why I felt such a dick for posting that Britney rant the other week.  Yes, they are culpable themselves and yes, it is compelling in a rather gut-wrenching way.  But we should have some fucking dignity and have our fun at the expense of someone capable of defending themselves for a change.

So, erm… Christ.  What songs do I put with that little honey, then?

Radiohead – Karma Police
Daniel Johnston – Like a Monkey in the Zoo
Eef Barzelay – Ballad of Bitter Honey
Bob Dylan – Who Killed Davey Moore?
Pearl Jam – Jeremy

What sort of woman does this? A scarlet, wicked, naughty, and downright slippery one, that’s what sort. Fucking scandalous behaviour!

[Edit: the link appears to have been taken down.  She was asking her Guardian Talk Board mates to all go and download the Mrs. Toadcast so that hers could outstrip all my other ones in terms of popularity.  The bitch.]

Radiohead – Electioneering

I’m trying to kill two birds with one stone with this podcast.  Firstly, I am throwing in a couple of songs that I wanted to put on the Contrast Podcast episode entitled Young a few weeks ago.  I was away at my brother’s wedding at the time, and I never got the chance so here they are.

Secondly, a good while ago a regular reader of mine called Allen Lulu tagged me with one of these internetty meme thingies whereby you write about the music that was in the charts the year you turned 18.  Well for me that year was 1993, but the chart music was abysmal, so I couldn’t possibly do that to you.  Instead I had a look at what I was listening to myself from that year and came across so many excellent old songs I haven’t heard for ages that a quick post turned into an entire podcast.  And this is that podcast – me at age 18.

Toadcast #9 – The Folly of Youth

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1. The Spin Doctors – Two Princes (03.21)
2. Stereo MCs – Connected (09.08)
3. Radiohead – Anyone Can Play Guitar (13.41)
4. Stone Temple Pilots – Plush (17.30)
5. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Loverman (25.12)
6. Levellers – This Garden (31.29)
7. James – Five-O (38.24)
8. The Long Blondes – Once & Never Again (6Music Acoustic Session) (43.12)
9. Gogol Bordello – Never Want to be Young Again (49.48)
10. The Mathletes – Linger (Cranberries Cover) (55.27)
11. Pearl Jam – Daughter (57.45)
12. Blind Melon – No Rain (63.19)
13. Soul Asylum – New World (67.57)
14. The Lemonheads – If I Could Talk I’d Tell You (71.50)
15. Portishead – Mysterons (75.24)
16. Engine Alley – Song For Someone (82.26)