Report from Manchester

This week I made a short visit to Manchester, a city in the north of England that can be found on any map by simply looking at the wrong side of the Pennines. It was there that a large group of people who like blue things had decided to have a big meeting, though it was a bit different to the other meetings I went to because the people who like blue things seemed pretty sure they were in charge of everyone else, no matter what colour anyone else liked best. They spent a lot of time talking about how only old people like blue things and whether there was a way to convince young people that blue things are best. Outside the conference there were lots of noisy people who had big blue flags with little yellow stars on them, but strangely, none of the people who like blue things seemed to like the people with big blue flags even though the big blue flags were almost entirely blue.

Having had this experience, it is now traditional that I should share what I learned with the Beans.

The first thing I learned is that it rains in Manchester. I arrived under grey skies but it was dry. I walked ten minutes to the hotel. I checked into the hotel. I emerged again from the hotel, on my way to work, to find that it had started doing something that I can only describe as “rain”, though “rain” does not adequately describe the volume of water coming down from the sky. It rained for almost the whole of the rest of my stay.

My shoes were not waterproof. There are holes. They need replacing. They should, I now see, have been replaced some time ago. I spent the day with waterlogged feet. They did not dry for three days. I think I have trench foot.

The second thing I learned is that Manchester doesn’t like people who like blue things. There were a lot of Manchester people shouting at the people who like blue things and someone hung a big banner on a bridge that said HANG THE PEOPLE WHO LIKE BLUE THINGS. Maybe they distrust blue things because the sky is blue when it’s not raining and it’s always raining in Manchester.

The third thing I learned is that Manchester is bad at breakfast. The coffee was bad and the toast was bad and the bacon was bad and the only fruit was melon, cut up four different ways in four different bowls to make it look like there was lots of fruit, and worst of all, there was no jam. No jam at all.

There was also the saddest breakfast table in the world.

I mean look at that. There were two sad little stools under what appears to be a coffee table. Nobody was sitting there. Nobody would ever sit there. It’s a stupid place to have breakfast. Just like Manchester.

Lumpy Milkshake

Most of my posts for the last couple of weeks have been about food, so I thought I’d try something different and tell you all a wee story about a milkshake:

Once upon a time there was a handsome, kind, gentle person called, erm, let’s say Kieran. He decided that because he’s such a nice person he would buy his friend a drink at lunchtime and took a stroll to Asda to peruse the choices for sale.

As it happens, it is funnier to buy a weird drink than a normal one. It was a crying shame that the awful mango and passionfruit Frijj drink was sold out so, as a second choice, it seemed a good idea to pick the cherry bakewell milkshake. At sixty pence how could he say no?

His work friend was “delighted” to receive such a “generous” and “tasty” gift. He was so “delighted” that he only took two sips and decided it was too nice to drink, and left it on the side of his desk over the weekend.

How surprised the two colleagues were then to return on Monday to find that the milkshake had turned not only into a solid but some kind of funky, disgusting, yellow scouring pad solid.

As a testament to the power of science, I have included two of the same picture up so it looks as though you’re looking at them through a pair of binoculars. Because that’s cool.

One day I’ll write about other things.

Bad Day

So, after faffing around in the dark for five minutes, I sit down again on the floor and realise I’ve forgotten to get the scissors.

Rewind to five minutes prior to this. At the entrance to the kitchen I forgo turning the lights on, because I’ve lived in the flat over ten years and I know where everything is, and blunder in. In my haste I flap my arms and accidentally knock over the half-filled cup of tea sitting on the side. The tea quickly streams along the kitchen top and filters down through the drawer and the cupboard, before resting peacefully on the floor in a heap. I already feel warm, now my face is positively beaming with embarrassment.

Half an hour prior, Reuben is heading off to bed. As he slips under the covers, I reach over to grab some bags from the floor that need sorting. Something though is amiss; my hands feel wet. I look up and nothing has leaked through the ceiling. “Did you spill your drink?” I ask. “No dad,” he replies. I raise the hand to my nose and sniff. Oh joy, it’s cat piss. The cat has snuck into my room and decided to piss over my stuff, oh, and a brand new pair of school trousers too. Excellent. I’m so glad I had nothing planned for the rest of the evening, now I can put another load of washing to get rid of that oh so beautiful kitty urine aroma. Splendid.

It was not a good day.

Four Word Reviews: Bugs & Friends Sing the Beatles

1995 is a fertile year for the albums that randomly arrive in the post without any indication of their provenance. That year has already brought us The Lone Ranger and It’s Time. Now it brings us a third forgotten horror, Bugs & Friends Sing the Beatles, subtitled “The Furry Four Sing Their Fab Four Favourites!”.

I have to be honest, I don’t really know where to start. I loved Looney Tunes cartoons when I was a kid. Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck were my favourites, and Disney could absolutely do one. So I had a small glimmer of hope that there might be something entertaining about this. Then I put the CD in and – in a Four Word Reviews first – I genuinely had to pause it at the end of the first track to try and gather my thoughts and steel my nerves to get through the rest.

I don’t even know what’s worst. Is it that they’ve taken on brilliant, beautiful songs and wilfully converted them into vehicles for terrible puns on other Beatles song names and cartoon fights with lots of sound effects? Is it the fact that almost every song breaks down in the middle into a spoken-word sketch of some kind? Is it that even when they’re not talking, they mostly speak the lyrics in “funny” voices or respond to them in some way? Is it the patronising Indian accent in “Fool on the Hill” when Elmer Fudd is asking his swami for spiritual guidance?

Actually, no, I do know what’s the worst and it’s none of those. It’s that you’re not even listening to Bugs, Daffy, Elmer and Taz. You’re listening to four bad impressions of Bugs, Daffy, Elmer and Taz and they are slowly battering eleven Beatles songs into an early grave. Taz doesn’t really matter because he’s not in it much, but his character isn’t really meant to speak. Elmer’s voice is wobbly and cracked and sounds awful when singing. Daffy is vaguely convincing until he does his catchphrase “woohoo!” and then the actor loses the character a bit. And Bugs is… well, I don’t know who Bugs is, but he’s not Bugs Bunny. It’s not convincing at all. He doesn’t even speak in the right register. I have never missed Mel Blanc so badly.

Track	Title	Word 1	Word 2	Word 3	Word 4
1	She Loves You	She	wouldn’t	love	this
2	The Fool on the Hill	Elmer	Fudd’s	harrowing	vocal
3	Birthday	Includes	reference	to	Laserdiscs
4	Hello Goodbye	Joyless	Bugs/	Daffy	argument
5	With a Little Help From My Friends	Elmer	bludgeons	another	classic
6	It Won’t Be Long	It	was	too	long
7	Yesterday	Daffy	Duck	singing	“suddenly”
8	Penny Lane	Oh	god	I	can’t
9	Help!	Yosemite	Sam’s	unwelcome	debut
10	Can’t Buy Me Love	No	no	no	no
11	The Long and Winding Road	Featuring	Roadrunner	“meep	meeps”

The jokes are bad. The sketches are bad. The scripted-to-death ad libs are bad. The changes to the lyrics are bad. The way they shoehorn other Beatles song titles into their jokes is beyond bad. The instrumental version of “The Long and Winding Road” that featured only backing vocals and Roadrunner – “the long and winding road MEEP MEEP that leads to your door” – was painful. But I think worst of all is that I listened to the album and it made me realise what brilliantly written songs these are and how sad it was to hear them being taken for granted and pillaged for cheap laughs that mostly don’t land by people without even half the talent of the original songwriters. It’s a horrible parody of brilliant music by people doing a horrible pastiche of a brilliant voiceover artist. There’s no joke at the end of this paragraph. It’s just really sad.

In all, this was among the worst things I’ve ever listened to, though still not as bad as “To The Extreme” by Vanilla Ice which is the worst thing that has ever happened to me and will never be matched. My favourite thing about this album was Daffy Duck singing “suddenly!” in Yesterday. My least favourite thing was basically everything else.

It Had To Happen

Self-fulfilling prophecies; funny, aren’t they? They are the “I told you so” for the individual. For me they do not happen very often but on occasion they creep up to bite me here, there and everywhere. Sometimes all you will do is play through a scenario in your head and think, “that COULD happen, but it WON’T happen.” Why won’t it happen? Because I am a smart, intelligent human being who is capable of great things.

Yes, great things but also deeply, deeply stupid things.

Let me set the scene for everyone; Friday morning, pretty early. I’m awake but not fully awake so I shower and get dressed for work as per usual. Our bathroom has the very helpful location of not being anywhere near natural sunlight so if you need to see things you have to turn the light on. I don’t like this, using any light during the day seems silly, so I do try to avoid using it as much as possible. I stumble into the bathroom to brush my teeth and carry out the rest of my daily routine: brushing hair, applying cologne and finally ending on some sweet, sweet roll-on action.

Yes, Kevin, it is still the 1990’s.

As I finish I put everything away and turn to leave only there is something amiss, something different that shouldn’t be happening. There is a warm sensation tingling under my armpits that wasn’t there before. “Hmmm,” I think, “that’s a bit unusual.” I leave the bathroom and enter the bedroom, the feeling is a bit more potent now, in fact it’s getting hotter and hotter. “What on earth…” and then it hits me. The thing that could happen but won’t happen. The instance that no self-respecting person would ever find themselves in.

When my ankle wasn’t so great I was using some deep heat to help ease the pain. I was lucky enough, rather than a tube, to get one which is similar to a roll-on where you can apply the deep heat quick and easy. This is located next to my usual roll-on; I had decided not to keep them separate, like a smart person, but ensure that they remain very close by.

In the darkness of the bathroom, without the help of someone with a brain, I had applied deep heat to my armpits. I toyed with the idea of just ignoring it however the sheer speed at which it worked forced me to return to the bathroom (lights on this time) and wash it off as much as I could. It took approximately three hours after this for the burning to reach an acceptable level.

Needless to say, this shining example of COULD/WON’T hopefully will inspire others to either avoid this remarkable pitfall or to come forth with their own stories of embarrassment.

Four Word Reviews: Love Situation

I’m getting used to terrible albums mysteriously landing on my doormat now. I don’t know who sends them or why, but they keep on coming. Normally I’ve heard of the people involved – Vanilla Ice, Clock, that sort of thing, but I have to say I’ve never heard of Gary Wilmot before. I’ve searched the internet to no avail. He’s a complete unknown.

Still, here it is, a forgotten 80s classic: Love Situation by Gary Wilmot.

The feeling I normally get while listening to music for these Four Word Reviews is that I struggle to care about the music I’m hearing, but this album was an interesting first, because I got the distinct feeling that Gary Wilmot didn’t care either. I don’t think I’ve ever listened to an entire album of music in which none of the participants show any sign of giving a damn about the music they’re mechanically churning out.

Of the 12 tracks here, four are cover versions. The eight original songs are without exception awful, with the sort of lyrics that slowly and deliberately tell you exactly what the song is about so there’s no space for imagination or subtlety, but it’s not clear whether Mr Wilmot thought that he could genuinely improve on the four songs he covers or whether he’s just using them as a way to avoid having to write any more drivel. In any case, all four are disasters.

In terms of the music, it sounds like someone listened to “A Winter’s Tale” by David Essex and decided to make a whole album like that. There’s almost no sound on the whole CD that is not made by one of the instrument settings on a Yamaha keyboard, though there is a bit of Carpenters-style subdued electric guitar once or twice that’s turned right down so it doesn’t get you too excited. Several of the songs fade out over the course of thirty seconds or more, sometimes from the middle of a chorus, which gives the impression that the producer has had enough and is trying to wrap it up early.

Track	Title	Word 1	Word 2	Word 3	Word 4
1	Love Situation	Dreading	eleven	more	tracks
2	On the Way to a Dream	Synth	clarinet	and	sadness
3	Unchained Melody	Uninteresting	rendition,	unmitigated	failure
4	And Now She’s Gone	Allegedly	emotional	breakup	ballad
5	Take My Breath Away	Masterclass	in	slaughtering	songs
6	Star Without a Soul	“Raggy	Dolls”	backing	vocal
7	Wind Beneath My Wings	Emotionlessly	plodding	through	dross
8	Expectation Road	Overwrought	ballad	about	loneliness
9	I Won’t Forget You	Not	even	Gary	cares
10	Against All Odds	Nobody	asked	for	this
11	Danny You’re a Loser	China	Crisis	with	crooning
12	There’s Only Room for the Good Girls	Unsuccessfully	channeling	Billy	Joel

Interestingly, after ten solid tracks of slow, quiet, bored-sounding crooning, the last two tracks suddenly pick up the pace, like a direct reversal of all those albums that have ten tracks of lively good stuff and then a couple of slow half-baked songs tacked on the end. Both of them are crap, but Danny You’re a Loser is almost the first appearance of any sort of beat, which is at least a welcome change if not actually pleasant listening, while There’s Only Room for the Good Girls might be a terrible song and a transparent pastiche of Billy Joel but is at least not more mushy, apathetic muttering over dreary keyboards. If they were the first two tracks you’d misguidedly think there was some hope for the album, so in that sense at least it is kinder to put them at the end.

In short, my favourite thing about this album is that it took four songs I already knew and didn’t like, and showed me how it would be possible to make them much worse, so that next time I hear any of them I can at least appreciate the fact that the originals are competently performed and that the singer seems to give a toss about them. My least favourite thing is that I still have no idea who Gary Wilmot is.

The Cheek of It

This completely took me by surprise!

Now I am used to receiving abuse from family members, close friends, clients, the general public and the occasional letters through the post, but this is a new low. I was recently walking past a new development of houses and what did greet me upon turning my viewing eyes to the right? A sign in the window as above.

It would appear as though property is now turning its attention to me. I do not know what in particular it had against me and my award-winning personality and, quite frankly, I do not care either. I just wanted to make sure that this issue is brought to light so that others do not suffer in silence.

Thank you.

Four Word Reviews: To The Extreme

Everybody knows “Ice Ice Baby” by Vanilla Ice. It’s a cheesy old 90s rap song with stupid lyrics. While we can all laugh at it and perhaps in some contexts even enjoy it, Vanilla Ice himself and his music were hated by an awful lot of people at the time. Genuine rap fans hated him because he was the product of a record company, just some guy who was recruited to become a white rap star. Queen and Bowie fans hated him because he changed the bassline to “Under Pressure” so that he didn’t have to pay them royalties for sampling it on his biggest hit. He had no credibility. For those reasons, and a whole lot more, I wasn’t looking forward to listening through the entirety of his debut album, 1990’s To The Extreme.

Let’s get straight to it, then: there’s nothing here to like. It’s just awful. This CD arrived in the post a while ago, a gift from a Beans member unknown, and I can safely say that this is the worst thing anyone has ever given to me. It is beyond worthless. The music itself is pretty poor, the lyrics are atrocious – you can tell they’re written by committee in a record company’s meeting room, ticking off a list of phrases young people and rappers say until they’ve all been shoehorned in one by one – but worst of all is the actual rapping. You can’t believe for a second that this nice middle class white guy wrote it or had ever lived the sort of life he’s talking about, and he would certainly never have said phrases like “you kno’ I’m sayin'” or “yo, you insane”.

Here are some phrases from the songs on this album:

“You can call me dad”
“Let me tell you how it is makin’ love on an inner tube”
“People under forty, yo, let’s get down”

Let’s see the damage, track by track.

Track	Title	Word 1	Word 2	Word 3	Word 4
1	Ice Ice Baby	Fake	gangsta	rap	classic
2	Yo Vanilla	Five	seconds	of	terrible
3	Stop That Train	Mysogyny	with	bee-bop	sample
4	Hooked	Synth	sax,	unconvincing	accent
5	Ice is Workin’ It	Unclear	what	Ice	worked
6	Life is a Fantasy	It	thinks	it’s	sexy
7	Play That Funky Music	About	race,	mentions	Nazis
8	Dancin’	Nauseating	use	of	stereo
9	Go Ill	Mostly	tuned	it	out
10	It’s a Party	Sampled	women	shouting	“yeah”
11	Juice to Get Loose Boy	Stupid	high	pitched	interlude
12	Ice Cold	Every	eighties	sample	ever
13	Rosta Man	Actually	offensive	Jamaican	accent
14	I Love You	Breathy,	creepy,	genuinely	distressing
15	Havin’ a Roni	Beatboxing	disaster,	mercifully	short

Almost all the songs on the album are really long – proper five minuters – and a lot of them drag it out with stupid samples and repeated choruses. Tracks 6 and 14 both think they’re sexy and seductive, but they’re both creepy and actually quite repulsive, like Vanilla Ice’s tongue is coming out of your speakers and trying to lick your ear. “I Love You” comes complete with a fake telephone call where he tells his girlfriend how much he loves her. Track 7 is all about how he’s a white man making black music – so there is some self-awareness to the whole project at least – that then finds a way to mention the Nazis. Track 13 picks up the theme of borderline racism with Mr. Ice adopting something like a Jamaican accent and claiming he is a “rosta man”. It’s like he didn’t think he’d stuck two fingers up to enough of black culture and decided to go after Caribbeans as well as rappers.

In short, my favourite thing about this album was that the CD was correctly manufactured, meaning that when I finally ejected it, it came straight out with no trouble and didn’t play for a second longer than was strictly necessary. My least favourite thing was the fact that such a thing is in my possession at all and that I actually listened to the whole thing, god help me.

It looks like the next Four Word Review will be a toss-up between “Dead Letters” by the Rasmus and “Love Situation” by Gary Wilmot, either of which will be an actual pleasure after this ordeal.

Pouring
Beans

Category: Grim