Funk Custard : The Wolverine, 6music on Saturday mornings and the increasing obsolescence of the idiot box

Comic book movies have no respect for comic plotlines, and decent radio (with it's kid sidekick the internet) is making broadcast tv very disposable

Life really is minuses and pluses. Sometimes you have to be ready to take all the pluses that fall your way and ignore the minuses as soon as possible.

Example, last night finally caught up with The Wolverine (extended cut). Supposedly based on Chris Claremont and Frank Miller's classic berserker rippin Nippon Noir tale of the X-Men's Wolverine in Japan. The new movie was a crushing disappointment, almost as bad as the previous Wolverine effort. It prompted the increasingly familiar comic book fan reaction :

"How did they screw THAT story up?"

What should've been Robert Mitchum in The Yakuza with adamantium claws is another junevile superpowers drama with a take on the character than can only be described as adolescent. So he's indestructible now? FFS. Among the dramatic misssteps right from the off is Japanese prison camp guard as sympathtic character and icy cold Yakuza daughter Mariko, the love of Logan's life, is now a skinny model with all the intensity of frozen saki.

And two seconds watching the lame fight scenes show the ripping fury of the original tale has been largely ignored.

Positives? The principals are all good, with standouts from Rila Fukushima as Yukio and Svetlana Khodchenkova as Viper. I would hope to see both again in better movies. Hugh Jackman is ok again as Logan but we never seem to see him go the full red eye that this role needs. What hurts particularly is this movie was all great potential, James Mangold is a good director and last I heard the Chris (Usual Suspects, Day of the Gun) McQuarrie script was nailing the original property. Who knows what happened but it seems a long way from a Chris McQuarrie screenplay.

For all the great respect shown to these comic characters in this modern golden era of comics films there is next to none for the storytelling in the original material. We've seen real classic tales like the Dark Pheonix (X Men 3), Galactus (in Rise of the Silver Surfer) the Elektra saga (in Daredevil/Elektra) and most recently Garth Ennis's great Extremis (Iron Man 3) all butchered by Hollywood screenwriters so far. Will I be alive to see those classic story-lines adapted properly? I doubt it.

So next morning walking up after that was grim but, look around and the pluses this morning are there. Just happen to be stuck in sorting the Exmoor house and the brand new Hughie Morgan Saturday morning show is on. I can't lie and say I've been a fan of his band, or himself before ('interesting' character obviously) but I'm there now for this show. This is what Saturday mornings have needed for years, just the right amount of attitude and swagger to kick a slow Saturday's arse right into gear. I'm almost tempted to say this is the best thing to happen to my generation at this time of the week since since TISWAS - it just swaps custard for Funk.
And he's got Harry Shearer on next week. I really must catch up with Le Show in the meantime.

I could rattle on about any number of 6 music shows, Stuart and Maconie, Tom Ravenscroft and LL are just my personal favourites, but these days you just take them as a given. They are all great and an indicator that having the radio on is much better company that an attention grabbing tv blaring moronic adverts every ten minutes.  If even the Hughie Long show is a must listen then that goggle box in the corner really is becoming a relic.

This may be a sign of the times. I haven't replaced the tv in this place and I'm not sorry. Were once the tv had our whole attention, now we are most likely to be primarily messing with laptops and Ipads and the idiot box which needs to be muted every time an ad break comes on (increasing the volume of ads I think is banned in the US I think) is just a painful distraction. Radio, 6 music at least,  is much more more likely a nice background mood generator. Even setting aside the actual quality of the stuff presented to us these days by tv broadcasters the future of radio as a support to our online activity must be looking very bright.

BBC Radio 5Live Tabloid Audio is an insult to everyone especially the license payer

I often serve, on this blog, often as a unpaid PR for BBC 6music. To
be honest I listen to 6 music because the previous station I used to
listen to, BBC Radio5live, has nose dived into moronic idiocy, and
I've just been reminded, by R5, that I should be providing some kind
of balance to the commercial stations.

I have just switched on the Radio5, (avoiding Nemone who is filling in
for Lauren Laverne on her 6music show this week), and Radio5 have a
typically goonish comedian/reporter interviewing people escaping the
cold in Britain to go to Berlin, where it is even colder. Yuk yuk.
(I did this myself a few years ago. Berlin is actually roasty in all
weathers. They have like central heating, decent insulation and people
who close doors)

So this typical R5 "personality" is bugging people in the queue at
Heathrow, he gets past a few German girls who say essentially "grow up
its not that cold in London" and he gets to a British guy and asks him
why he's going to Berlin, ending with

"Lets be honest, it's the beer isn't it? It's not the culture!"

*BERLIN*
There are comedians who make whole acts (Al Murray?) out of this kind
of pig ignorance. Well, THIS TIME I just cannot be bothered to
complain to the BBC trustees about this pathetic excuse for a national
radio station, instead I'm going to leave it up here and throw up some
rants from the past...

I can't find Dotun Adebayo's classic intervention into a debate on
animal cruelty
"It's nothing compared to slavery.."
but here are some of my other attempts to let off steam in their direction


A major reason for 5Live's existence is to supposedly cover mass popular sport when the BBC does not have the live tv rights..
Patchy coverage of the worlds most popular sports league

date: 25 August 2012 16:01

Just thought today I'd revisit an old pleasure, a long walk listening
to the football via an old friend, R5. Back when it started I used to
listen to R5 from dawn until dusk and beyond.

So imagine my astonishment, after a month of blanket Olympics coverage
and only two weeks into the season, on a miserable bank holiday when
the nation is all indoors, that you are choosing to cover that chummy,
clubby elitist favourite - Rugby - instead. Honestly ....if you cannot
summon the resources or will to cover the NATIONAL GAME on AM bloody
radio you may as well hand over the rights to someone else. You
actually drove me off as a regular listener years ago with infantile
personality driven programming (recent example SPOONY MEETS JOSE),
shrieking idiot commentators and trailers that sound like 6 year olds
locked in a joke shop overnight.

There is also the disgracefully patchy coverage - there is a 70 mile
stretch of the M4 and A303 where it sounds like you are broadcasting
from the edge of the solar system. It really hurts me to say this, as
R5 used to be like an old friend, but for at least a year R5 has made
TalkSport sound cerebral. As a regular listener you've lost me to ,
6music and R4, and are fast becoming a waste of the license fee. I
think I've heard the last of you.



Radio 5's Wake Up to Money - a short memory for the economic consensus pre-Crash

Wake up to Money(tarism)
5.30am
11/4/2011

Half of this mornings Wake Up to Money covered the proposed firewall
between consumer and investment banking. With the expert (Sir Humphry
Bufton Tufton from Credit Suisse) opinion being that regulation is a
bad thing. Presenters, as ever, agreed with accepted city opinion.

The other half covered Gordon Browns regret that he had not
effectively regulated the financial markets prior to the crash which
has devastated western economies. Brown had said regulation was
difficult as the consensus at the time was 'less regulation rather
than more'. Wake Up To Money presenters and expert chortle as ever at
the ex Chancellors opinion, sidestep his statement (perhaps because
this program has always been part of the very consensus opinion he is
talking about) and suggested that perhaps even less regulation at the
time would have been even more effective.

Wake Up to Money dates back to an era of the 1980s when the BBC was
regularly pilloried by Mrs Thatcher's government for lack of balance.
In stark contrast there never has been any political balance on this
program and it continues to promote discredited economic and political
arguments that are the direct cause of most the misery covered in the
rest of the news output.

Can I suggest that everyone involved in this program is made to watch
the 2011 Oscar winning documentary INSIDE JOB and then perhaps they
have a televised discussion on how many of their city drinking buddies
should currently be in prison?




Radio 5Live breakfast show thinks L Ron Hubbard was a scientist

22 October 2006 07:47

Note to breakfast presenters - L Ron Hubbarb was not a 'science author' - he was a 'science fiction author'

Probably not a big distinction for a news programme that needs a
special correspondent to come in and explain what the sound barrier is
(as happened last year) but important in this time of religious debate
to to point out that Hubbard was more aspiring Flash Gordon than
Einstein.

I was reminded this year after the death of Raymond Baxter that the BBC
used to have a a whole team of science correspondents, space
correspondent, aeronautics correspondents. Now if there isn't some
medical or celebrity angle involved all science items are ignored or
presented as if it were a reject from Blue Peter or Newsround. Its no
wonder Hubbarb is being turned into a scientist... he's so much easier
to explain than Stephen Hawking.

Normally I can take the dumbed down travesty that is R5 news but ....
god you know... honestly I used to be such a fan and promoter of R5.
And have to listen to voice of middle class (R4) now just to stop
myself waking up p*ssed off everyday

Why don't you just read articles straight out of the Daily Star?



Ahhhh I feel so much better now.. blogging is so therapeutic

Sixto Rodriguez's time machine to 1970s Detroit

"music of the past expanding faster than the music of the future"

This is a great article by comedian Stewart Lee (weirdly sounding like
more like William Gibson every day :-) ) basically saying we are rediscovering great music from the past faster than we are finding new music, a phenomena I thought was related to BBC 6music.

I understand why this is a a current theme now, as I saw this over the
weekend...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Searching_for_Sugar_Man

It won the Oscar for best documentary on Sunday night.

Essentially it is the rediscovery of a long forgotten folk/protest
artist from early 70s Detroit, totally ignored in the US before the
tunes are rediscovered in 90s South Africa as the the soundtrack for
white liberal protest against Apartheid. South African hippys track
him down and find he's been working as a labourer for 30 years, then
get him to tour and it finally kicks off his career. Sixto Rodriguez
is basically the Mexican Bob Dylan..and pretty much lives up to the
hype, his tunes are certainly the best thing about the movie..

Weird listening to the first album, Cold Fact, this morning, it is like a slice of fresh protest era Detroit. Most of it a lot less hippy-ish than the the singles I keep hearing everywhere and it is a lot more laconic and fatalistic then this contemporaries..

It is much more Marvin Gaye What's Goin On? than MC5 or The Stooges.

and that I think points to the wierdest thing..  if you've seen the

brilliant BBC4 doc on Detroit music, "Motor Citys Burning" you'll know that
era, as a long lost period of great music and red raw politics feeding
into each other. The real story for me of Sixto Rodriguez and his two
rediscovered albums isn't the South African huggy hippy feel good
story (especially as it appears he had been a favourite in Australia
and New Zealand long before his 'discovery' in South Africa). It is
finding fresh albums from nearly half a century ago, from a place and time that
absolutely fit right in with that era, yet seem relevant now.

How good is Sixto Rodriguez? Motor City is Burning now needs an update.

6Music radio from an alternate reality

One of the plusses of current work environment is that I've really got into BBC 6 music..

To those abroad who don't know, 6music was the alternative BBC digital radio station set up in tribute to legendary DJ John Peel. It was threatened with closure a few years ago but a listener campaign saved it. It recently won UK station of the year

After an abortive start a few years ago listening to the Adam and Joe Show, I started again with 6music in Feb this year with a bit of Lauren Laverne show (great music, very chilled|),

went onto the Radcliffe and Maconie show (great music very funny),

I'm now listening in the evening as well, particularly to Tom Ravenscroft (initially irritating but brilliantly eclectic, this week featuring Hawaiian guitar heroes from the 50s)

I'd thought, even if I wasn't particularly ..errr.. selective in my musical taste, INXS for instance, I at least knew my way around things...but there is constantly great stuff featured on 6music, that is completely new to me

Hear are two examples in last two days, enormous bands with huge influence I'd never heard of

Can

Os Mutantes

Am I that musically ignorant? Or - we can't hear these digital music stations on our old radios - are they broadcasting from a parallel dimension with a completely different music history?

(6 music flag is courtesy of http://www.forfolkssake.com/news/3730/save-6-music-your-letters-to-the-bbc-trustees)