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The postmen in Harrow were, to be kind, languid. They moved liked they had some kind of wasting disease, or had just eaten some of my brother-in-law-to-be's "special cake".
The postmen in Hampshire move like Usain Bolt.
Mind you, neither of them ever turn up much before lunchtime.
 A Harrow postman, yesterday
A Hampshire Postman, yesterday
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1970: Royal Flash What is it? The second of the thirteen Flashman novels by George Macdonald Fraser (well, twelve novels and one collection of stories). “Historical romp” is an awful term, but it’ll get you in the right area. What’s so good about it? Flashman is of course the legendary bully from Tom Brown’s Schooldays. These books, which purport to be his memoirs, show that as an adult, he has, if anything, fewer redeeming qualities than ever, apart from a certain honesty in admitting to his faults, not least his immense cowardice. But you know that old saying about the man who’s so unlucky that if he fell into a bucket of tits he’d come out sucking his thumb? Flashman is the exact opposite of that. So throughout the series, Flashman finds glory, good fortune and lots of lovely ladies who can’t resist him as he wanders, usually unwillingly, through pretty much every important event in the 1800s. The whole thing is totally indefensible, decidedly incorrect, enormous fun, and you learn a surprising amount about 19th century history – certainly more than I did doing an A level in the subject. Royal Flash is probably the most exuberant in the series, and has the niftiest conceit – basically, it steals its plot from The Prisoner of Zenda, but then goes on to suggest that Anthony Hope’s novel stole its plot from the events recounted in this memoir. You could call that idea postmodern, but Fraser wouldn’t have cared for such pretentiousness (he would have loved the idea that some American academics thought the first book in the series was a real memoir, though). On the other hand, you could call it impertinently amusing and clever, and if that feels about right to you, I suspect you’ll enjoy the books enormously. 1971: Soul Noir What is it? It’s my name (which means it probably cropped up in the NME* at some point) for the sophisticated, largely orchestral and often rather edgy soul music that emerged in the early 1970s. It had been brewing for some time (probably due to a mix of increasing sophistication in both musicians and audiences and a change in Black America’s mood as things got worse under Nixon) and didn’t just appear in 1971, but that’s probably the most significant year for it, as The Theme From ‘Shaft’, There’s A Riot Going On and, above all, What’s Going On all appeared then. What’s so good about it? It’s the first and probably greatest proof that pop music for grown ups is not just feasible but can actually be quite magnificent. My first exposure to it would be a year or so later – things like Backstabbers, Why Can’t We Live Together, and Papa Was A Rolling Stone – and while I liked them, as I liked pretty much every record made in 1972-73, I was a bit wary of them: the music was a bit more complex than things like Wig Wam Bam and the lyrics were very definitely adult territory. Nowadays glam pop makes me smile with warm nostalgia but soul noir is music I can actually listen to and it doesn’t seem the least bit dated. In fact, when you hear the singers of that era talking about the effort required to maintain a relationship (If You Don’t Know Me By Now), the breakdown of communities as the Civil Rights movement imploded and the CIA flooded the ghettoes with heroin (Home Is Where The Hatred Is) or the impact of the Vietnam War (Back To The World), you just despair of modern “R&B” singers wittering on about how rich they are, how shapely their arses are or their fucking umbrellas. Endlessly rewarding music, some real lyrical substance and you can still dance to it – what’s not to like? * More to follow shortly 1972: I’m Sorry, I Haven’t A Clue What is it? A radio comedy show masquerading as a panel game. What’s so good about it? ISIHAC is always introduced as “the antidote to panel games”, in which, in its imperial period, “Graeme Garden, Barry Cryer, Tim Brooke-Taylor and Willy Rushton were given silly things to do by Humphrey Lyttelton, with musical accompaniment by Colin Sell at the piano”. There have been personnel changes (and it will never fully recover from Humph’s passing), but the description still basically applies. In case you don’t know it, the “rounds” include tasks such as singing one song to the tune of another (once, and entirely reasonably, touted as a definition of jazz), audio charades (usually introduced with a libellous comment about Lionel Blair), various excuses for puns, and an arcane strategy game called Mornington Crescent, whose complexities are beyond the scope of this overview. So it’s great for four reasons. The first and least important is entirely historical – it is the absolute and unarguable ancestor of every comedy panel game to ever grace our tellies and wirelesses. There’s no Have I Got News For You or Qi or indeed Dave channel without it. Second, it’s the pinnacle of a certain kind of Britishness – specifically, an entirely laudable Radio 4 Britishness, which means it’s civilised, erudite and incredibly quick witted, a kind of Britishness that welcomes learning but isn’t elitist and tempers everything with silliness and a hint of bawdiness. Critics sometimes say it’s too cosy, but they’re the sort of critics who think comedy has to be dark and edgy, while I think comedy has to be funny, I think they’re talking bollocks, unless by “cosy” they mean “gloriously humane”. Then there’s the panel. In the core era, the mix of Barry Cryer’s encyclopaedic mind for jokes (and uproarious laughter when the others came up with a gem), Tim Brooke-Taylor’s superb “please like me, audience, I’m out of my depth here” persona, Graeme Garden’s aura of malign mad genius and Willie Rushton’s grumpy surrealism was irresistible. A succession of guests, notably Jeremy Hardy, has maintained the quality since Rushton’s death. Finally, and best of all, there was the sustained brilliance of Humph’s performance in the chair, a bravura mix of feigned boredom and contempt regarding the proceedings and the panel, a brilliant parody of doddering old age, and frankly astonishing levels of filth. No-one without Humph’s mix of patrician assurance and jazz musician timing could have done this, which basically means no-one but Humph could have done this. I don’t think any of us realised just what a treasure he was till we lost him; genuinely irreplaceable (“Mark, can you sing the words of Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi to the tune of The Stars and Stripes Forever?”). It’s not been the same since Humph died, but Jack Dee is doing a laudable job by fitting Humph’s “how the hell did I get stuck here?” attitude into his own comic persona. It’s still a bloody good listen and I always get depressed when its six-week seasons come to an end only to be replaced by what seems like five years of Just A Minute. I probably heard the first ever episode. In one of the ways that marked my council estate childhood as atypical, my Mum used to listen to Radio 4 at lunchtimes, and in those days shows like ISIHAC, which are now in the 6.30 slot, were broadcast at 12.25 as well as in the evenings. And I came home for lunch (or, to use the Northern, working class and correct term, “dinner”), so I got to hear them all. I must admit I don’t remember it and being 10 at the time I probably didn’t get it. I vaguely remember my Mum didn’t like it. I don’t think I heard it again till I was about 18 and it took me a lot longer to become a real fan (I probably didn’t think it was “cool” when I was a yout’) but once I got it, I got it for life. Being the funniest show on the radio ever is quite an achievement. Sustaining that quality level for decades is astonishing. 1973: A Brief Digression 1973 marks the official End of My Childhood and the Start of My Adolescence by virtue of starting at the Big School in September. Christmas 1972 saw me getting pressies like the Haunted House and Mousetrap games, plus some pop singles: I got more serious boardgames in 1973, and crucially, I’d upgraded to rock albums by then. As there are big personal landmarks associated with both ends of the year, I’m going to make two entries for 1973. Spoiler alert: the second one goes on a bit. By which I mean a lot. 1973a – Childhood: The FA Cup Final What is it? In those days, it was the most important and high profile football match of the year. What’s so good about it? Sunderland won it, beating Dirty Leeds 1-0 on 5th May 1973. Porterfield’s goal at 31 minutes and 32 seconds, Monty’s legendary double save (often chosen by neutrals as the best save ever seen at Wembley), and Bob Stokoe’s fantastic trilby-mac-tracksuit fashion sense. Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive. I’m a bit of a Stalinist with regard to football support. If the team you support isn’t your hometown/local or family team, and in particular if you consciously chose it, you’re not a supporter. You’re just a customer. Sunderland, of course, is my hometown/local and family team, and for pretty much everyone on Wearside the idea that you could ever support anyone else is nonsensical. It’s bred in the bone. As it should be. When we won the Cup, we were languishing in the old second division and we beat the most (rightly) loathed club in the land. Hometown club, hopeless underdogs, biggest game of the season, triumph over despised opposition. The whole town went mental. My sister, who was just four, remembers us all watching the match on the box and once told me “I knew it was something very unusual and very important even though I didn’t know exactly what”. Your bred-in-the-bone, unfancied, unfashionable team doing the giant-killer routine in your childhood is like nothing else I’ve ever experienced, and of course, I never will again, even if we do something remarkable next season. I’m a grown-up, at least technically, now. It can’t be the same. Sunderland winning the Cup is the last significant event of my childhood, and as significant in its way as any family event or landmark like starting school. Though sadly, it’s left all of us Sunderland supporters with the hope that we might do something brilliant again. Which we haven't. “40 years of hurt” doesn’t come anywhere close. 1973b – Adolescence: Nick Logan becomes editor of the NME What is it? The key moment in the history of the greatest music magazine ever What’s so good about it? We need a little bit of historical context here. In the very early seventies, NME was regarded as the most hopeless and least hip of the music weeklies, of which there were at least five. Less hip than the frickin’ Melody Maker, for Hoggoth’s sakes. In 1972, the publishers, IPC, felt that it was kill or cure time and then-editor Alan Smith and his assistant Nick Logan started to turn it around by a radical change in direction, bringing in lots of new writers, including refugees from the underground press like Charles Shaar Murray and Mick Farren, and talented if wayward newcomers like Nick Kent. Logan became full editor in 1973 and this policy kicked in with a vengeance; comparing the old and new NMEs was like comparing Mr Cholmley-Warner with Hunter S. Thompson. The new writers were influenced by the New Journalism of Thompson and Wolfe et al, and the most extreme American rock writers like Lester Bangs, but also had influences outside music and journalism, such as Monty Python, Raymond Chandler, Marvel Comics, William Burroughs, SF and cinema. They also stole ideas from Private Eye (notably the sarcastic speech bubbles on the cover shot), but took their ill-gotten gains in another direction. As a result, a stuffy, old-fashioned PR vehicle became the most cutting-edge magazine in the country, full of great, unpredictable writing, loads of smart jokes, and an ethos that no-one else could duplicate. They were particularly savage towards rock stars and the music industry, not so much biting the hand that fed them as devouring it and spitting out the blood and bones. They made their competitors look like crap. Mind you, their competitors were crap. As a later NME writer Paul du Noyer pointed out in a recent history of the paper, it wasn’t so much a music magazine as a lifestyle magazine – possibly the UK’s first. That’s spot-on. People who didn’t like the NME always used to say “It should just stick to music”, but Nick Logan’s key insight was that the people who liked the music NME liked also wanted to read about certain types of movies, books, politics and, come 1976, Howard the Duck. So it covered them. It was the only music mag to run cover stories about the 1974 strikes and, many years later, Pat Nevin. NME was about a worldview and an audience that came together around music but wasn’t restricted to music. The great thing about this lifestyle magazine, as opposed to any other, was that to get the lifestyle, you didn’t need loads of money, or to wear particular clothes, or to hang around in a particular club. All you needed was taste, which anyone could develop, and which the NME helped you to develop. In reading the ways its writers evaluated music, you also learned how to evaluate it yourself. Unlike other lifestyle magazines, it didn’t tell you what you ought to buy because some knob had decided it was “in”, it helped you to work out what you might want to do, listen to, read or even buy because it was good. It didn’t rely on making you feel anxious because your shirt had the wrong label on it, it relied on making you feel good by pointing you towards something splendid you didn’t know about before. It wasn’t about spending more money to make you feel someone somewhere was less likely to look down on you, it was about spending the same amount on something different because it was good and, well, what a waste not to know about it. NME-haters always used to complain about how critical it was, and then said it told its audience what to think. It was critical because its targets deserved it, and it told its audience how to think. Whilst making you laugh like a drain. Oddly, for something produced by such a load of substance-abusing anarchists, it was the best self-improvement course in history. I think I first bought a copy of NME in 1972 but I became besotted with it in late 1973. I started buying it every week and kept on doing so, with the odd lapse, for the next 15 years or so, poring over every article and absorbing the style, the content and the worldview. Although much of it was above my 12-year-old head, I loved what I could see in it – lots to read, on subjects I was really interested in, by people who obviously really knew what they were on about, and whose prose was a joy to read. And I loved the jokes. It was a window to a better world and the great thing was it was a world anyone could get into. All you needed was an open mind – it was empoweringly and enlighteningly democratic. There were hundreds of thousands who felt like I did – NME’s core audience was always bright non-conformists from the suburbs and small towns. My epiphany was Nick Kent’s 1974 masterpiece, The Cracked Ballad of Syd Barrett (often and erroneously referred to as Dark Star or Crazy Diamond), which I must have read ten times off the bat, and which I last re-read about three weeks ago. It made such an impression I can remember which issue it was in – the one that came out for Easter weekend – and what the weather was like the day I bought it (very gloomy and overcast). It led me directly to Relics and then The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn and, well, there I go again about Piper. NME was the first music mag to cover the Sex Pistols and though it was a bit slow to fully commit to the New Thing, once it made the shift it owned punk. It’s the only music mag mentioned in Anarchy In The UK, whose b-side is actually about Nick Kent, who was briefly in the Sex Pistols before Johnny Rotten. Nick Logan stepped down in 1978 and NME was never quite the same again, mainly because it lost some of the humour (though not all, what with Danny Baker on staff). though it continued to rule the post-punk world with an influx of new writers, including Paul Morley and Ian Penman. To put it mildly, they weren’t to all tastes, but they maintained the NME’s heritage by showing that, if it had to have pretentious writers, it was going to have the most unassailably, brilliantly and dauntingly pretentious writers you could imagine. It started to lose readers in the early eighties (the younger and less committed went to Smash Hits, while self-obsessed vacuous clothes-horses turned to The Face, another Nick Logan creation but one whose empty elitism was a betrayal of all he’d achieved at NME), though it remained the best-selling music weekly. It was a strange beast in the eighties, because it was at complete odds with the prevailing cultural ethos, and music was in such a mess, but even though, or maybe because, it was all over the place, it was still the most stimulating and enjoyable magazine on the racks. I stopped reading it regularly in 1987 because the music world was at an all-time low and I started to feel too old for rave reviews for dull bands. By total coincidence it fell to earth with a bump that year: the IPC board were outraged by its massive support for Kinnock in that year’s election, sacked the editorial team, and pretty much insisted it just stick to music thereafter. For a few years, under Danny Kelly and with writers like David Quantick, it was a brilliant humour magazine, but the golden age was over. And once Kelly at al went, it was just another weekly music mag, and while it’s the last survivor of that breed, it’s only hung on because of the halo effect of its golden age. The modern NME is a parody of what it once was: it just covers music, it covers a very narrow spectrum of music (no 7-page John Coltrane pieces these days), it’s little more than a PR rag and, crucially, it gives its readers just what they expect, and what they already know. That’s a sad end, but let’s salute its long and brilliant heyday. Remember how people used to say they should bring back National Service because it was so character-building? Well, the NME was the equivalent of National Service for my generation, and hell, I’m proud to admit it made me the man I am today.
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Part the second. If you like this kind of thing, ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=91.7) thechangingman has started a Stuff The Jubilee thread of his own, and it's quirkier and more readable than mine. 1960: A Bout De Souffle aka Breathless What is it? A French crime film (a technically correct description, but hopelessly misleading) written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard and starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg. What’s so good about it? It’s so influential, you’d probably wonder what all the fuss is if you came to it cold these days, because it’s everywhere; like Citizen Kane, it’s the cinematic equivalent of that joke about the American woman who went to see Hamlet then bitched that it was just a load of quotations strung together. I was certainly underwhelmed the first time I saw it, until I realised that all this shit starts here. It tore the history of cinema in two, and is basically the reason why most films made since 1960 still seem reasonably modern and most films made before 1960 seem more or less dated. To keep things concise, it made film more spontaneous, more exciting, more casual, more playful and more knowing in ways that were almost totally unprecedented. I’ll admit there’s a very boring bit in the middle, but even that’s deliberate; it’s boring out of a sense of playfulness. Well, it is French. Oh, and without it, there’s no Hard Day’s Night, without which the history of the Beatles, and thus the entire history of popular music, would be very different. A few other films might have had as much influence on cinema as a whole, but there’s no other Big Landmark Movie that’s had so much influence on another artform entirely. 1961: Fantastic Four issue number 1 What is it? The first issue of a superhero comic series created by Stan Lee and JACK KIRBY. What’s so good about it? Like the previous item, if you came to it cold, you’d be justified in wondering what the hell all the fuss is about. But without this, there’s no Marvel Comics, and there’s probably no American comics industry at all after about 1964. Even setting that aside, it’s the first issue of the greatest superhero comic series of all time. KIRBY, who in his lifetime was seen as a lesser talent than his more self-consciously arty peers (Eisner, Kurtzman) looks more and more like the true genius of comic books as the years pass, with an influence on popular culture that goes way beyond the form he worked in. And FF is probably his greatest work – in part because Stan Lee’s scripts made KIRBY’s work more approachable and less daunting. 1962: The James Bond Theme What is it? A film theme officially credited to Monty Norman, but we all know it’s the work of John Barry. What’s so good about it? This is one of my earliest musical memories. The Infant A Run In My Unmentionables: Mam, what’s that sound? The Dowager A Run In My Unmentionables: An electric guitar. And how. It’s probably the first time so hard-rocking and evil-sounding an electric guitar had been placed in such a sophisticated orchestral setting, which makes for an extraordinarily exciting piece of music even now: entirely of its time, for sure, but not stuck there. And it utterly outclasses the amusing but naff movie franchise it was created for. 1963: A Rose for Ecclesiastes What is it? A science-fiction story by Roger Zelazny. What’s so good about it? It’s an early attempt to give SF some psychological depth and deliberately poetic resonance. A lot of SF fans hate that sort of namby-pamby stuff, but I rather care for it, even if, as could well be the case here, it doesn’t entirely succeed in meeting its objectives. Or even because it doesn’t entirely succeed, because I do like a heroic failure. It’s also a brilliant metaphor for growing up: without giving away too much of the plot, the central character, who thinks he knows it all and is in total control of his world, finds out, to his cost, that’s far from the case. I first read this story when I was 19, not long after I’d realised a juvenile but deeply felt infatuation was built on sand, and it wiped me out. We all have to go through something like that: Zelazny’s story is a brilliant and moving encapsulation of those formative experiences. 1964: Downtown What is it? A pop record performed by Petula Clark and written and produced by Tony Hatch. What’s so good about it? It encapsulates everything that’s great about cities and city life – the excitement, the constant activity, the novelty, the sense of something fantastic about to happen. It does this by means of a musical technique totally lost to modern pop called dynamics. Now, this is an incredibly complex phenomenon and very, very difficult to explain but I’ll do my best: it starts quietly, then gets louder, and then gets louder again in the chorus. Yes, it is hard to get your head round, but read it a few times and concentrate. Anyway, I first heard it when I was three and my Mam and Gran had decided we were going to go to Newcastle for the day. I had no idea what “Newcastle” was but it sounded like it must be incredibly exciting and hearing Downtown at the time was an epiphany. By the way, if you’re wondering why all of a sudden I’m so positive about Newcastle, I’ve always loved the city – I just don’t like the football team. Or its supporters. And in particular the manager. 1965: Strange Tales issue number 130 What is it? A Marvel comic featuring the first episode of a 17-part Dr Strange adventure, plotted and drawn by Steve Ditko with a Stan Lee script. I’m really going on about the whole sequence, ending in issue number 146, so let’s also note that Roy Thomas and Denny O’Neill picked up the scripting from Stan in later issues. The art and the story itself are Ditko’s work throughout.
(There's another story in Strange Tales 130, in which the Thing and the Human Torch meet the Beatles. It's terrible). What’s so good about it? Well, it’s not the plot, which is to be kind episodic, to be fair somewhat rambling, and to be blunt barely coherent – though the last episode is a doozy and pulls it all together nicely. It’s all about Ditko’s art, and no-one was better suited to illustrate the adventures of a magician super-hero travelling through a maze of occult dimensions. Ditko was a remarkable artist (he’s still active, publishing his own work in tiny press runs, but he’s not what he used to be, due to a combination of extreme old age and taking Ayn Rand seriously), combining touches of surrealism, abstraction and expressionism whilst always telling his stories with exceptional clarity; he had an utterly distinctive and individual style even though it absorbed so many influences. And this sequence of stories is the absolute peak of his work – astonishingly inventive. I’ve been looking at this stuff for decades and I still can’t work out how he does it, and neither can anyone else, because generations of comics artists, a breed renowned for wearing their influences on their sleeves*, have never come up with anything remotely like it. I’ve stuck my favourite panel from the whole run (from issue 138) at the end of this post to give you a flavour. Put another way, it’s probably the best psychedelic artefact, in any artform, to emerge from the sixties. With the possible exception of what I’ve chosen for 1967. * IE copying 1966: Carry On Screaming What is it? A British comedy film directed by Gerald Thomas, written by Talbot Rothwell, and starring Kenneth Williams, Fenella Fielding, Harry H. Corbett, Joan Sims, Jim Dale, Angela Douglas, Charles Hawtrey and Peter Butterworth. I’ve given a very long cast list because I like Peter Butterworth. What’s go good about it? “FRYING TONIGHT!” The Carry On team’s Hammer parody is so pitch-perfect it could be a Hammer horror. The plot, sets and music are perfect, and the cast (probably benefitting from the absence of Sid James and Barbara Windsor) couldn’t be better. But mostly, it just makes me laugh like a drain. There’s less slapstick than usual, too, which helps on the laughter front. 1967: The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn What is it? The debut album by The Pink Floyd. Use of definite article indicates we are talking about the (superior) Syd Barrett incarnation of the band. It’s very psychedelic. What’s so good about it? The Current Mrs A Run In My Unmentionables, who doesn’t share a lot of my tastes but generally knows quality when she encounters it*, said something like “It’s four young men pushing themselves and pop music as far as they could all go at the time”. Long-term readers, and I do mean both of you, will know this is my desert island album and I’m always banging on about it, so I’ll leave it at that. For once. * Hence our relationship, n’est-ce pas? 1968: I Need Your Love So Bad What is it? A single by the Peter Green edition of Fleetwood Mac, being a cover version of an earlier single by the R&B singer Little Willie John. What’s so good about it? It’s hard to say anything other than “It’s devastatingly lovely”. The original is pretty good, and certainly feels needy, but this one feels utterly bereft and takes the song to another level entirely. Green’s vocal is so understated, but so pained. His unshowy guitar solo is so intense it’s almost neuropathic. And the string arrangement is subtle and spacious and lets the whole thing breathe. Nah, let’s just stick with “it’s devastatingly lovely”. 1969: The Wild Bunch What is it? A Western film directed by Sam Peckinpah. What’s so good about it? It’s The Magnificent Seven through a glass darkly, or it’s a Spaghetti Western about the real world rather than a fantasy, a brutal tale about a bunch of horrible old gunmen who find a degree of moral redemption by trying to liberate a Mexican village from a local warlord. It’s a bit like A Clockwork Orange – they’re despicable, but the world around them is, if anything, worse. The tale is brilliantly told and brilliantly acted, and although its moral compass is all over the place, that’s actually a strength, because it’s primarily a howl of anger. Anger at the lies the Western genre had told about American history since it first came on the screen, and at the increasing power of corporations, and at American involvement in Vietnam, and at the increasing levels of violence in American society in general. Oh, and at producers. Sam Peckinpah didn’t like producers much. A flavour: the opening line, delivered by the leader of a gang of bank robbers as his men pin down their terrified hostages, is “If they move, kill them”. He’s the hero. We’ve got the poster for this hanging above our staircase. The Current Mrs A Run In My Unmentionables hasn’t actually seen the film. I don’t think she’d like it much.
The greatest panel in comics history, in 1965, yesterday
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…with goodness.
As a to-the-bone republican, I have no interest in Brenda’s Jubilee. But it’s a good excuse to look back over the last 60 years and pick one gem per year from 1952 to 2011. Decade-by-decade instalments to follow, on a roughly weekly basis up till Jubilee Day, starting with the 1950s, below. Neither of my readers will be surprised to hear that up till about 1980 I was spoilt for choice, but after that I really struggled (1987 and 1988 in particular appeared to be the official Twilight of Quality of Everything). But that’s for later. Here’s 1952-1959. Alternative suggestions more than welcome. Show all your working. 1952: The Crimson Pirate What is it? A self-parodic pirate adventure movie, starring Burt Lancaster and directed by Jacques Tourneur. What’s so good about it? It’s funny, exuberant and pacy, with a knowingly absurd plot and Lancaster taking the piss out of himself in a way you’d never get from a modern movie star. In the final scenes, a whole panoply of modern weaponry, including the submarine, is invented by Mr. Kipling. Basically, it’s Pirates of the Caribbean 50 years earlier, but funnier, less ponderous and much less self-regarding. 1953: The Mess Around What is it? A rhythm-and-blues single by Ray Charles. What’s so good about it? While it probably has bucketloads of historical importance, the thing you’ll notice is just how amazingly hard, fast and energetic it is: from the era of atomic paranoia, here’s a record of appropriately thermonuclear power. 1954: The Seven Samurai What is it? A historical adventure film by Akira Kurosawa What’s so good about it? Everything. It’s so long it spreads over two DVDs but when I first watched it I felt it had only been on about half an hour when it finished. The story famously became adapted as The Magnificent Seven, which is certainly a superior western, and a more accessible film, but to compare the two is to compare first-rate hackwork with something that has the resonance of real myth and poetry. Plus Toshire Mifune shouting and leaping about. 1955: Master Race What is it? An eight-page comic-book story written by Al Feldstein and illustrated (which is an accurate term but doesn’t do what he does here any justice) by Bernard Krigstein. What’s so good about it? It’s probably the best story to come out of the legendary EC Comics company, who between 1950 and 1955 published a line whose overall levels of quality, maturity, and consistency have never been rivalled. Sadly, they were put out of business by a moral panic which absurdly blamed them for rising levels of what was then called juvenile delinquency (however, they had Mad magazine to fall back on, which means they had the last laugh both literally and metaphorically). Master Race, an enigmatic tale about a chance encounter between a former concentration camp guard and one of his victims on a New York subway platform, was one of the very last stories they published. If it had appeared as originally written, and illustrated by any competent artist, its subject matter and subtlety would have made it remarkable. It achieves genius because Krigstein’s art broke down the action in such innovative ways the story took eight pages to tell, rather than the six dictated by the original script. To do this he had to literally cut up the typeset captions and dialogue to fit them around his art. When the editors saw what Krigstein had done, they realised how much he’d improved things and ran with it. The story itself is a tribute to the excellence of the EC line, but the editorial decision not to harangue the artist for taking such liberties (which would have happened at any other publisher) but to accept his contribution as an improvement is also laudable. 1956: Tiger! Tiger! aka The Stars My Destination What is it? A science-fiction novel by Alfred Bester. What’s so good about it? It’s a fantastic adventure tale, full of invention, told in a dazzling and flamboyant style. Many elements anticpate cyberpunk, nearly 30 years early. And at the end the hero liberates humanity from corporate oppression. I once saw Michael Moorcock talking about this book on TV, and he said something like “It was the first science fiction novel I ever read, and it was so well written, so exciting, and it had this wonderful anarchist ending, so I though science fiction must be for me. But then the next SF novel I read was something by Heinlein… fascist crap”. 1957: What’s Opera, Doc? What is it? A Bugs Bunny cartoon written and directed by Chuck Jones and based on Wagner’s Ring Cycle. Yup, you read that correctly. What’s so good about it? Generally, the contrast between Wagner’s pomposity and the irreverence of Jones and the Warner Brothers cartoon team. More specifically, there’s that fat horse, Bugs dressed as Brunhilde, and Elmer Fudd “with my speaw and magic HEW-met”. Once you’ve heard Elmer singing “Kill the wabbit” to the tune of the Ride of the Valkyries, you’ll never again hear that piece of music any other way. 1958: The King Must Die What is it? A historical novel, about Theseus of Athens, by Mary Renault. What’s so good about it? It tries – and I think succeeds – in telling a plausible and exciting tale about events that could have inspired the myths of Theseus and the Minotaur, without any supernatural flapdoodle in the background. Stylistically, it avoids all the pitfalls that can so easily waylay historical fiction. And it manages to be totally accessible whilst never letting the reader forget that the ancient world must have been an utterly alien culture. 1959: Kind of Blue What is it? A jazz album by Miles Davis, accompanied by John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Bill Evans, Paul Chambers, Jimmy Cobb and Wynton Kelly. What’s so good about it? It’s the best jazz album ever made, because it has a unique spacious and unhurried feel which allows for simple but memorable tunes, inventive and melodic improvisations which have real depth of feeling and aren’t just about running up and down the chords, and an utterly distinctive atmosphere. My very good friend thechangingman thinks it’s the only jazz album he will ever need to own, because others “sound too much like jazz”. He makes a very reasonable point, and I speak as someone with hundreds of jazz albums. Mentioned in despatches: 1959 also saw the release of Francois Truffaut’s The 400 Blows, which is possibly my favourite film. In any year that didn’t also produce Kind of Blue, it would have been on this list without a moment’s hesitation.
That fat horse, in 1957, yesterday
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I've never quite understood celebrity fragrances. By which I mean perfumes and the like with a stars' name on the bottle, not how celebrities actually smell. Other parts of the web may be more to your liking, if that's your bag.
But I digress. What's the deal? There are gazillions of nice-smelling but overpriced concoctions on the shelves already. Why go out and buy one just because some star has stuck their name on the bottle (I assume that's what "created it" means in this context)?
Now I do realise, given that celebrity fragrances tend to bear the names of entertainers from the "shake your arse and shout about how rich you are" corner of the showbiz world, that (a) these "keeping it real types" have no compunction about screwing their fans for every penny they can and (b) by virtue of age, sex and overall worldview, I'm a long, long, way outside the target demographic. But still: what's the deal?
That said, if certain folk were to come up with a new aftershave, I'd certainly investigate. Here are ten "celebrity" (I use the term loosely) pongs I'd be very keen to check out. Alphabetical order. NB some of these persons are almost certainly dead.
1 Brian Aldiss
2 Kevin Ball
3 Peter Butterworth
4 John Cooper Clarke
5 Michael Hordern
6 Burt Kwouk
7 Nick Lowe
8 Jonathan Meades
9 Chic Murray
10 Bill Tidy
If pushed, I reckon Meades would have the most interesting bottle, Lowe would probably be the most pleasant smell, but Butterworth is the one to go for.
The master perfumier, yesterday
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