Never Mourn The Buzzcocks

Yeah, it's probably no surprise that, finally, a BBC Two controller has decided that Buzzcocks has delighted us enough and swung the axe.

What is odd, though, is the timing. The series spent a good five years or so post-Amstell years looking like a knackered warhorse; the most recent series, though, with a fixed host in Rhod Gilbert, was still warhorse, but was at least able to break into the odd gallop or two.

What we have, then, is a series that was able to survive having Eamon Holmes pretending to be Elvis Presley as guest host (or whatever the hell that was) but got axed just as it healed itself.

The news, though, is most grim for any drummers from mid-90s indie acts who were looking for an easy way to make a few quid and promote their new self-released album/tour of Shropshire pubs. The easy route of a Buzzcocks line-up has been cruelly wrenched away; it'll be back to sticking fliers under windscreen wipers.

Glastonbury 2014: View from the sofa

"We're not going to go on about it" reassure Mark Radcliffe and Jo Whiley, leading off the late night live chunk of Glastonbury coverage on BBC Two.

But they do, of course.

And then when they hand over to Lauren Laverne in another part of the field, she can't help but talk about it, too.

And why wouldn't they? This year, clearly, isn't the Glastonbury of Metallica; it's the Glastonbury where the lights went out.

Trouble is, although Lauren had rather a good anecdote - about being chided for asking the bear-slaughterers if they'd bought the heavy metal thunder with them - the stuff that was most interesting about the power outage wasn't touched on.

(Incidentally, it wouldn't be Metallica's heavy metal thunder; Dolly Parton has brought a rainbow with her, and we all know what you have to endure to get one of those working.)

Normally, the BBC's Glastonbury coverage is padded with films of people who've paid silly money for tickets doing really dull things - giving us a taste of the "festival experience". This year, when it'd actually be really interesting to know what it was like to be in a city of tens of thousands of people when the electricity stopped being in the wires and was just in the sky - nothing.

Apart from Mark Radcliffe saying something about communal singing in a tattoo tent, there was no answer to the question 'what was it like on the site?'

Instead, the crisis was reduced to a short snatch of footage of Rudimental walking off the stage.

The big disappointment this year is the red button coverage - clearly all the love has been poured into the website. Three channels of music, more or less lobbed on screen; with whatever happens to be on TV given (it appears) a free pass.

So, at one point, you could have watched Elbow on BBC Three, or something else on BBC Two. If those options didn't delight you, you could press red to get three more bands - except one was Elbow and one was BBC Two.

What's the point of pushing the stream that's already on TV through the red button service?

And doing it so badly - for a good ten minutes, the "BBC Two" Glastonbury feed was so locked in to simulcasting BBC Two that it pushed out a great chunk of Newsnight. (If Jean-Claude Juncker was actually being inducted in the cabaret tent, my apologies to the red button team.)

I suppose it's fair to say that it's more surprising that there's a red button at all - with SmartTVs and Chromecasts and whatnot, it's easier than ever to get the rather good bbc.co.uk experience onto your TV.

(Slight grumble here - the Glastonbury content from iPlayer doesn't show up on the iPhone version of iPlayer, which makes it harder to enjoy on a TV. I know this is a bit like complaining that the handle on the cup the ambrosia comes in is a little fiddly to hold, but... worth mentioning.)

So, what of the bands themselves?

Arcade Fire, it's clear, have edged ever closer to vanishing over the Bono Horizon.

I know, I know...

... how can I possibly think that?

You know when the fireworks (literal fireworks) are at the start, not the end, of the set, that you're watching a band who are overdoing the spectacle.

Men made out of mirrors; the bobbleheads; two-faced skeletons (one of whom, distractingly, had a brand name of a morphsuit maker on his ass); a stage full of around thirty people at one; racoon make-up; pyrotechnics... it's just so fucking tiring to watch, and it's dressing up music that doesn't really need all this extra packing. You've written songs that are packed full of strong, striking images - why are you hiding them in the worst circus ever?

Elsewhere, Blondie were a little ragged around the edges - doing the high bit from Rapture would be difficult under normal circumstances, but Harry just-about nailed it on a stage, early in the day, outdoors. And the cover of (You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party) was a delight - especially watching the ripple of 'oh! this is what this is!' run through the crowd at different speeds.

Sidenote: After last year's fuss about whether jokes about the Rolling Stones being old were okay, it's worth mentioning that Debbie Harry is 69 on Tuesday. But people don't obsess over it because jokes about Blondie being old were never a thing.

Also because she'd kick your butt.

Chvrches were great; and Drenge are still on course to become Mudhoney by the end of next year.

First night: David Bowie - Five Years

On Saturday, BBC Two did what feels like the sixteenth or seventeenth Bowie night. You can still watch the cornerstone documentary, Five Years, on iPlayer, unless you're reading this in the future, or overseas, or on a print-out.

But what did people think?

Tim Footman at Cultural Snow liked it:

Although the basic narrative will be familiar to many, some of the freshly unearthed archive footage is a real shock to the senses, looping as it does in and out of the stuff that gets trotted out for every 70s nostalgia fest (Starman on TOTP, bits of Cracked Actor and so on). Moreover, the fresh interviews prove that there’s nothing inherently wrong with that much-derided format, the talking heads doc, provided the heads are judiciously chosen and given sensible questions to answer. Indeed, so rich were the pickings from people who worked with Bowie in some of his most productive periods (with Visconti *and* Eno *and* Fripp you’re spoiling us) that – completely irrationally and unfairly – I felt cheated by the very few omissions; why, for example, did we hear the recollections of guitarist Carlos Alomar and drummer Dennis Davis but not bassist George Murray? Were Angie Bowie or Iggy Pop washing their hair?

Actually, given Angie Bowie's track-record as an unreliable witness - claiming, variously, to have invented Bowie, bisexuality and possibly the concept of music - keeping her out the way was probably a wise move.

In The Guardian, Sam Woolaston concedes the programme was "better than most music documentaries", which he puts down to the subject, rather than the approach. But not before he has some fun at the programme's expense:

No, don't stop, more! Of Queen Bitch, Suffragette City, Fame, Golden Years, Young Americans, Ashes to Ashes, even Let's Dance. They're all rudely interrupted though. By Rick Wakeman, saying: "I got a call from Dave, he called me directly." A direct call, eh Rick?

Ha ha. Yes, that does sound stupid, except... it was worth noting, surely? Wakeman wasn't opening his eyes wide at the concept of a person-to-person call, more at the idea that Bowie spoke to him, rather than the more traditional 'have-your-people-call-his-people' route; that Bowie knew who we wanted, and went directly to him. Worth mentioning, surely?

Which Sam actually, sort-of acknowledges:

And Rick Wakeman's unpicking of Life on Mars is fascinating, because it's Life on Mars and it's Rick Wakeman (plus I'd show off a bit if Dave had phoned me, directly or otherwise).

Well, sort of.

For Michael Deacon in The Telegraph, it all comes down to class:

There was a bonus pleasure in being reminded that not only did Bowie have an incongruous speaking voice, but so did his early Seventies bandmates. Wafting around on stage: gold-bloused glamourpusses. Open their mouths: bricklayers from Hull.

The Scotsman's Aidan Smith spotted a brighter star than Bowie in amongst the contributors:

Five Years’ funniest contributor? Actually, that was Robert Fripp. If you know me as a prog-rock fan, you probably think it tediously predictable that I’d nominate someone from King Crimson, but, really, Fripp was hilarious. Did he think he was on Jackanory? Slightly alarmingly, did he think Jackanory was a forum for rude anecdotes (too rude to repeat here)?

Incidentally, after saving his readers from a fit of the vapours by repeating Fripp's anecdotes, Smith then details the upsetting plot of a crime programme where a kid was traumatised by seeing his mother, a sex-worker, murdered.

It makes you think, doesn't it, Helen Nianias over in Fabulous magazine's Tellyboxing column. What was it that made Bowie such a legend?:

Is he a the biggest genius of our time, or just a shrewd businessman? It’s a tricky line to tread. However, the opening shot of Bowie himself is breathtaking. But not because of what he’s wearing or saying or doing. As he descends a flight of hotel steps...

Yes?

...you see just how strikingly tall and thin he really was in his ’70s heyday.

David Bowie. He was tall.

Maybe someone should be pitching a show in which people measure pop stars and plot them on some sort of a graph?

Bowie at 65: Bowie at 50

With acres of newstime to fill, it's easy to get attention for an anniversary these days - BBC News did a big splash about Steven Hawking's birthday a few minutes ago, which is a lot of attention for a very minor character from The Simpsons, when you think about it.

It wasn't so easy to get a full-on carnival celebration back in the last century, which makes this - BBC Two clearing an evening to mark Bowie's 50th birthday - almost as much of an achievement as the some of the events it chronicled.



[Part of Bowie at 65]

The XX: they'll tell us what to do

For reasons that are as unclear as they are welcome, Newsnight's election special at 6.30 tonight is going to feature a live performance from The XX.

Possibly they had to be promised junior ministerships at the Treasury to secure the booking.

Glastonbury 2009: View from the sofa - The last night

I know it's churlish to complain about the BBC's coverage, when it offers up so many riches, but... lets complain anyway.

Every year, I'm left scratching my head wondering why the press red service on the last night is busily churning out Saturday and Friday sets when there's plenty happening on site; I could understand if there was one screen of all-weekend highlights, but at some points yesterday it was a choice of old, or older: Quo today, or Springsteen or Florence or Little Boots from before?

And why can't you bloody stick with a set? If you're going to put on the record label's knuckledusters and issue take-down notices to YouTube, can't you at least push back and not wait until Blur are really getting going before cutting back to Whiley and Lowe, sat around, enthusing over how this is the greatest thing that has ever happened on the pyramid stage since stages began - only to go off and show The Black Eyed Peas instead, while BBC Three - scheduled to show The Black Eyed Peas - slaps on Blur. But the bits that BBC Two had already shown.

The Sunday night coverage is always hyperbolic - it's always the biggest crowd ever seen in front of the stage, always the most extraordinary end to the most extraordinary Glastonbury, but this year it actually felt like it might be true. Apart from the most extraordinary Glastonbury bit - from the sofa it had all the thrill of a well-oiled machine.

But Blur were magnificent. Whoever thought that a bunch of aging indie-kids would outrun Bruce?

What was the name of that group from the North who was meant to be their competition?

Glastonbury 2009: View from the sofa - BBC 2

Ah, the senior service on BBC 2 gets a full complement of presenters - Radcliffe and Laverne sharing main duties, but throwing to Zane Lowe down in front of The Ting Tings, and Jo Whiley off in the studio.

Jo presents an acoustic performance from Paolo Nutini as if it's some sort of treat, although she does use the phrase "it's the same thing, year after year" so perhaps she was trying to be knowing.

They're currently showing a short film explaining who Neil Young is, rather than showing Neil Young playing live. Is there anyone alive who doesn't know who Young is, who is going to go "oh, if this chap David Crosby says he's worth hearing, maybe I will listen to him?"

Oh. Having spent five minutes of their time talking about Neil Young, Radcliffe is now promising they'll show him "in the next show". After - I kid you not - a Newsnight Michael Jackson special.