The Escape - The online web log of Tom Wittlin www.tommy-boy.co.uk

Remember when you first heard someone mention a brand name in a song? Or a person, or a location or even just a common phrase? Sadly, it seems that’s ALL there is in songs nowadays on the Radio though.

It, like sticking the word “The” in front of your bands name came along and became the standard for most artists from all walks of musical life. It spawned a thousand pale faced single women from London of impeccible politically correct physical size (come on, Kate Nash isn’t Kate Moss is she?) and churned out a million floppy haired tight jeaned, ‘truth speaking’ teenage bands from the North. Few seem to now remember however, that without one wonky toothed lad from London - aka Mike Skinner, the UK music scene would be a very different landscape.

When The Streets first came along, I, like many others around me, felt that somebody, somewhere had made a glaring balls up and put this out as ‘music’. It seemed to just sound like some Londoner chatting, not necessarily about anything much, over a load of poorly recorded beats and loops. You had to wonder who at the record label said “ok, let’s go with it”. You hated it, but at the same time, felt strangely intrigued as to what he was talking about - after a while and hearing it a few times - it felt as though he was talking to you - like - right to you…

“Grab something to eat, Maccy D’s or KFC” was one of many lines when you turned around, pointing at the radio and looking at people going “ha, did you hear that…?” - cause we’ve all been there.
His earlier work simply conveyed the thoughts and experiences of pretty much every late teen early 20 year old around, and whether you like it or not - it was ground breaking and paved the way for the aforemented modern bands and artists.

So while Kate Nash, Lilly Allen, The Arctic Monkeys and so on talk about Reebok Trainers, Hash and Tropical Reef, The Streets, on their latest record, appear to have moved in another direction, opting instead to contemplate questions of heaven, hell and religion. I think maybe he got sick of it.

See the thing is - when HE spoke about these day to day things, they were usually part of a story, something that was required to visualise the situation, (eg. “blinded by the lights’” talk of mobile phone bars and pills in socks) - whereas Nash, Allen and friends just lob in a random “Tesco” because it happens to rhyme with “Al fresco” - or worse still, lobbed in a “al fresco” because it rhymed with “Tesco” - and that brand name just had to get in there!

I wouldn’t go as far as to say that The Streets are technically superb musically, I find myself at times still wincing at the sheer inaudibility of some tracks, but surely, for the lyrics, and what they’ve done for modern music, they must be commended.

Everything is Borrowed, the latest album from The Streets is still a reasonably good a record. I read an early review that said “no one likes to hear a recovering drink / drug addict talking at how bad drink / drugs are” and felt he was preaching a bit - having stumbled upon his new found sobriety apparently, but I couldn’t hear that in the songs. Instead I felt that at times there was something to be said, but it wasn’t put quite right - or, if it was, I didnt pick up on it!

At the opposite end of the spectrum, in the areas where I didn’t find myself slightly bemused, what I really like is the simplicity at which things are often pointed out. There’s still that slight ‘The Office’ esque uncomfortability about certain tunes, that you come to see through, and realise that actually, it’s either very clever work on his part, or wasn’t through any skill at all and he simply talked - honestly about something. The first and title track on the album has an endearing chant of “I came to this world with nothing, and I’ll leave with nothing but Love” which seems a million miles away from “Fit but you know it” and it’s like seeing someone actually growing up and changing - must be a weird thing to do in the public eye.

Best tune goes to The Escapist, the closing track, featuring a hacked up string section, horns and choirs that lead the way for a tune that has a real sense of achievement. Apparently for the video he walked from London to France and ends up on a beach - it works perfectly as a video for the song.

Throughout it all though, there is little or no mention of the everyday things we’ve come to expect, witty remarks, everything - all gone, but still sounds ok, it needed to happen.

I suspect it’ll see the death of the likes Ms Allen and Ms Nash now, unless they can find someone else to pinch ideas from - easy way to make a living being a pop star, go on a few benders, sing about it, sell a shed load of records then retire before you’re 24….

My god. I’ve just chucked a lid that wasn’t mine, onto a saucepan, and started boiling water. I came out to the kitchen to see how it was doing, and saw steam piling out the middle of the lid - because there’s a hole in the lid designed to let steam out! - genius bit of thinking! Why on earth don’t all pan lids have this? No more lid jumping up and down chucking bubbles down the side of the pan and burning on the hob…

Tefal - I salute you……

We’ve all been there. A mate invites you over for some grub perhaps before a night on the town. You arrive and flick through his Sky channels while he batters about in the kitchen. 20 mins later he appears and hands you a plate full of luke warm pasta with specks of red in, which on further inspection turns out to be Tesco own brand pasta sauce stirred in last minute.
There’s no fresh basil, no chopped peppers not even any grated cheese (if there was it’d be cheddar not parmesan). But dont complain, because the thing is, it’s not unpleasant, there is in fact, nothing inherently to dislike about it, sure, you wouldn’t buy it yourself, but you’ll eat it if someone’s made it for you.

This is more or less how I’ve always felt about The Verve. Until now.

The Verve, are one of those odd entities of music which have this rather regal notoriety in terms of every review you read classes them as “one of our greatest talents” and talks as though they’ve been around as long as U2 or Oasis. Then you realise, they more or less have, but through their continual Eastender’s style stories of bust-ups, overdoses, bust ups and reunions you do tend to only remember “The Drugs Dont work” as being a great, if not terribly depressing song, and not alot else.

So I guess that’s why they perhaps aptly titled their forth studio record, ‘Forth’ - kind of setting the record straight for all those that suffer the same type of “eh, what ? you? oh yeah, I don’t really know them that well” frustration that I clearly did.

For me they more or less hit the jackpot with the first single, “Love is Noise” which boasts that attention grabbing loop “ahh haaa, ah haaa, ah haaa” as the intro - then the beat arrives and immediately it has that driving (or as my good lady would say, “walking”) music feel about it.

This has been for me where The Verve usually trip up, good intro, nice vibe, happier than usual - now keep it going without it getting boring - and this song succeeds nicely, more amazingly, so does the whole record.

It’s mid-paced again, not too slow, never dips to the depths of “The Drugs Dont Work” but rarely goes beyond Love is Noise. String sections a plenty also, and well accompanied acoustic / electric guitar combinations make it overall feel alot like songs blend into one another - not in a bad way. It plods along and takes you on small, if not perhaps slightly flat journey - like an ideal bike ride, not too many hills to climb, allowing you to take in the scenery around you. It’s not so much an album of singles as it is a record that needs to be listened to all the way through.

Valium Skies is a standout track, superb harmonies and U2 esque grandeur, despite being one of the shorter numbers, lasting a mere 4:34 compared to the 6.5 - 7 min others.

Of course there’s still the lengthy mid-sections to certain tracks. Moments that have become the cornerstone of most Verve records, where Ashcroft can just be heard sorrowfully wailing into the mic from the farthest corners of space, below a pile of reverb and symbols so great even Wall-E himself may struggle to move - but that’s ok, cause this time, they seem to have substance.

The boy seems to have cheered up a bit, hopefully he looks a bit fuller in the face. That again is reflected in the sound. It’s brimming with a feeling of hope and better times, from the beautiful photo of sunset (or sunrise) clouds on the albums sleeve, through to the emotive closing rings of “Appalachian Springs” the last track of the 10.

So they’ve upgraded, it’s no longer bland pasta sauce that you wont really remember, they have now made their own sauce, they’ve picked fresh sun ripened tomatoes, fresh basil and even thrown in an olive or two - really, you can almost taste the difference, go on, stir it into your iTunes.

I was reading an interesting article recently that discussed the need to reduce down the complexity of web pages - more specifically those for which selling is their primary concern.
There is a trend, which is followed by alot of web designers (including myself on some occasions) for trying to get more information and more sales pitches into a page than is perhaps really necessary.

Take the time old classic “Related products” for example. So you’ve clicked into a section of a site and you’ve found let’s say, Car Stereos. You browse through a page of car stereos that are available until you stumble upon the one you think you want. At this point, it’s quite apparent you are in a section that is dedicated to car stereos, there should be little else to distract you from selecting the one that interests you and clicking forth to reveal more information.

This is kind of like a salesman in a store going “ah, hello Sir, car streros? yes, this way please” and leads you to (if you’re in Halfords) a dimly lit area of the store presumably designed to make the boy racers feel as though they’re in a cheap club, filled with car stereo’s all blasting out Euro Trance and Radio 1.
His main interest now is for you to get in there, start fiddling around, eyeing up the features of everything, and with any luck, chose an item you think fits your needs and begin enquiring about it.

This would be the offline equivalent of clicking through to ‘Read more’.

Now you’re getting a bit excited, you’ve found the thing you want, you may need some convincing still, as it’s a bit more expensive than you had hoped, but you’re on the right track. It’s unlikely at this point, you want to know about optional extra’s, speakers that would go nicely in the boot, gold plated cabling or a lifetime guarantee. What you really want is the sales man to convince you that this is the right stereo for you.

Go on, tell me again how easy my iPod will work with this thing, and how simply it’ll slot into my cars dashboard. Show me how to remove the facia and how incredibly secure it is - more over, point again to the 5* rating it was given by What Car Hi-Fi magazine and tell me how every other motorist has said this is surely the pinacle of car stereos.

What I’m getting at is, you don’t want to feel as though you’ve been led in, pushed in the direction of the product you want, then bombarded with loads of other additional crap you may not want or need. It detracts from the importance of the intial reason for being there, and diminshes that buzz from spending out cash when it looks like you may have to shell out loads more that you never expected.

This is precisely what “Related Products” and “Sale items” does in a way.

There are obviously exclusions to this case. I agree that for some things like a Motherboard for a PC for example, it’s perfectly valid to remind / inform you that you may need a PSU or a Fan of some description, maybe you’re new to the site and or PC building and need this information.
But for larger and more luxury purchases, I think it’s good to keep the page the product is dedicated to - dedicated to that product - instead of “Related items” include magazine reviews, more images, full list of features and materials used, customer comments and information about the manufacturer.

It could make the experience of shopping at your eCommerce store the difference between shopping at Harrods and shopping at Poundland.

A moody black and white photo - check
Some funny comments littering about the place - check
‘key facts’ about the members (including a proud statement we’re all under 30) - check

All it needs now is a link to a distasteful MySpace page and we’re ready to launch the band website…. www.contrast.ie Oh, and we need a Downloads and Tour Dates section too..

..Or do we?

Nope - we don’t - my mistake - we’re not a band after all, we’re a f**king web design company….

How many other industries do you know that do this? Imagine visiting your local plumbers webpage, and there’s a black and white photo of him sat there in skinny jeans and messy hair, perched on the side of a bar with a cigarette in one had and a spanner in the other…. You’d think “prick” wouldn’t you….?

It’s not the first time I’ve seen this either (Andy Clarke) - web designers getting above themselves and acting all ‘rock’ on our asses… Yes, fine you’re great at what you do - but what you do is considered by most people to be done by nothing more than Dungeons & Dragons playing, burger chomping geeks.

Next thing we know, web design agencies will be started prefixing their company name with “The”

“The Webs”
“The Coders”
“The IE Fixes”
“The White Borders”

Despite all this, I admit, I’d love to see the day when Jakob Nielsen makes the cover of NME……

Don’t let the fact that Googling ‘Noah and the Whale’ returns a first result of their MySpace site, followed swiftly by their own (rather nifty) website, lead you to believe they’re yet another in a long line of overnight successes.

Even though they may be of course, but from the images I’ve witnessed thus far, they look a more like their stylists were borrowed from Vampire Weekend than Russell Brand - and there’s apparently no Whale in the band, which upset me.

As with most people who are familar with Noah now, I became bothered by them when their super summery, ipod-ad-esque song ‘5 years time’ lurched casually into my unconcious - yes, just when you had forgotten whistling to Peter, Bjorn and John’s hit of last summer, you’re lips will be similarly pursed until what’s left of Summer 2008 is finally put out of it’s misery.

Fitting in with the summer vibe, after writing 5 years, they appear to have had the ukulele surgically sculpted onto their arms, as it forms the basis for many of the songs - not necessarily a bad thing, but you can’t help wondering if Jack Johnson is going to chime in with his trademark soft vocal spasm’s about soft sand and old wood…

The tempo never gets past that of 5 years’ excitable vigour, save for ‘2 atoms in a molecule’ which plods along at a fair lick, with plenty of plucking, xylaphones and chanting to re-introduce some cheer into an otherwise rather solemn sounding record.

Speaking of solemn, they do bear a distinct resemlence to Micah P Hinson, sound although when I say ‘distinct resemlence’, think Micah P without the anti depressants and 3 litres of whiskey, (or indeed the need for them).

It’s not the sort of record you perhaps want on first thing on a rainy summer morning, but come the afternoon / evening after a couple Pimms this may slip down a little easier.

So if it was more summery sing along action you were after a la 5 years, you’ll come away mildly disappointed, but if you’re up for some sad reminders for how the summer really went - you’re going to appreciate it.

No one likes losing possessions that are important to them, for some it’s mobile phones, some it’d be handbags, but for me I don’t like losing my wallet. Well, it’s only happened to me once, sorry, twice now.

It happened to me on Friday, still not entirely sure how it happened, whats most concerning is the fact that I was completely stone cold sober when I lost it…..

I realised it had gone while we were halfway back from a trip to Portsmouth, and fortunately my pal Skedders drove me all the way back to the spot where I guessed it could be - alas it was not. No one had handed it in and it hadn’t been moved anywhere….

Me being me, this began to then instigate thoughts of how crap people are, why would you hand a wallet in, there’s the chance to rip this bloke off here….

I began calling banks and credit cards etc to cancel everything and just before my battery died, I noticed an answer phone message from a Australian (or perhaps New Zealand!?) lady, who said she’d found my wallet on the floor and my business card with the mobile number on - did I want to meet her or she could post it back!

Immediately I dialled her number thanked her numerous times and she agreed to send it back with no concern for me sending her payment for doing so.

It totally made me feel alot better about things, and it inspired alot of confidence in people in general, to the point that I’m almost glad it happened. It’s really good to know there are people like that out there, especially in times when people can’t even be bothered to stop while in a traffic jam at a junction to let you out.

So thank you Kirsty from London who found my wallet, I really appreciate what you did, and as soon as my cards are working again, i’m firing something off in the post to you…..

It’s all too common a scenario these days. Walking down the street, then, all of a sudden “is that a very small steam train I hear approaching me in the very far off distance?” Oh no, it’s just another chav on a battery draining attempt at belting his dreadful music out at me via the wonders of that ever ideal sonic source - the mobile phone.

Is it some kind of statement that they’re making? “Check me out, I’m listening to the new Jay-Z record” - I mean, if your phone can play music, then there’ll be a small hole somewhere on that phone, which has a little icon of some headphones - either have a guess what this might be for, or read your instructions.

I struggle to think of anyone playing any type of music who DOESN’T look like a twat while doing it. The most common appears to be HipHop fans, although to be honest the quality is just so great, making it hard to determine, that it may well be boy band ‘Blue’ - which surely can’t be cool and sort of goes against the idea of forcing your music on people because its cool…

Recently I heard one very adventurous chap who was blasting out what appeared to be heavy metal of some kind. But with less Bass than tapping a biro on your teeth, a good old fashioned E minor sounded more like someone twanging a hamsters bango string.

It’s laughable, really. But if you insist on telling the world what music you listen to on the street, at least buy a proper stereo and have the balls to sit it on your shoulder - it’d fit right in with the day-glo trainers and skinny jeans all contributing to that 80’s re-hash.

Saturday night will stand out as just another good reason why I made the (some might say) foolish move to a town offering more than glugging a load of beers after a dodgy Chinese and standing in a bar doing my upmost to pretend it’s great.

It began with a casual summer stroll up into my local shop and restaurant area complete in winter raincoat and umbrella, Saturday afternoon when I discovered, a plethora of interesting and mind expanding eateries adjorning the Charminster high street.

It started off relatively tame with the textbook Italian but swiftly upped the ethical game when just a few doors down I noted a Lebanese restaurant offering an interesting array of spice thrills usually involving things stuffed - vine leaves, peppers and aubergines to name a few. This instantly grabbed my interest seeing as I’d never been to a Lebanese place before, (insert your own, “and I’m always up for anything being stuffed” gag) but I continued - and became more suprised as I went on. Japanese, Mediterranean Meze’s, the bog standard Chinese, but it wasn’t until I reached the end of the road when Charminster pulled out the big guns….

The final stop landed me outside a rather humble looking establishment entited ‘Bedouin’- A Tunisan restaurant. A quick gander at the menu confirmed this should be the place to go.

We arrived at 9.45pm, I’m thinking this may prove an issue to get a table, but this concern was soon cleared from my mind in a haze of North African spices and authentic Arabic Sounds propelling from the speakers, when it became apparent that time has no concern here.
The entire place was rammed with people, which is never a bad sign, so there was a period we wondered whether we would get a table. The main front of house man approached with an extremely chipper nature and said a table would be ready in 10 mins, did we want to pop next door to get a couple bottles of wine though, because they had no license. Not paying £17 for a £6 bottle of Cab Sav? - Jackpot !

Grub arrives, some kind of rare sausages in a rich tomato and pepper sauce for starter, and quite frankly, after tasting these bad boys, I would have been happy if they went “that’s it mate, starter and main in one”. They were amazing, so much flavour you couldn’t contain yourself, you wanted to bang on about how good they were, but you had to keep interupting yourself to knock back a load more.

Then I had an interesting pancake filled with minced lamb, tomato and peppers then covered with cheese - nuff said. Slid down and even when I was too full to manage anymore, had to just get the last bit done - leaving this would be like leaving your arm behind on floor after it’d been blown off in a rather nasty paintball accident.

All this and the total cost for 3 of us was just £35 for 2 courses each! And, where else would the manager give you a guided tour of the place afterwards when everyone else had left? We were shown the prayer room (well, more a converted garden shed with a selection of nice rugs), the kitchen and then the garden where local family and friends apparently hung out and ’smoked’ on the terrace.

To top it off, they gave me a takeaway menu, that offers free delivery - I’ve already deleted Domino’s number.

Hurrah for exotic restaurants, it’s what going out for dinner should be about - trying something new, meeting some interesting characters and not feeling like you’ve come home 50 quid lighter and still hungry.

The Bedouin restaurant is located on Charminster Road, Bournemouth and is bloody well worth driving several miles to enjoy.

Tennis, Cricket, Footie, Rugger, Darts, Video games and Golf - spot the odd one out.

Darts. Cause all the others are now forms of exercise. (Unless swigging pints and walking the 8 feet to the board and back passes as exercise)

Video games is the unlikely one however. But according to Nintendo, the Wii is now a full-on form of exercise. You have to hand it to them, they’ve built themselves a whole new industry revolving around playing games, whilst getting ‘fit’. No longer is it reserved for school kids and wannabe soldiers exercising only their trigger fingers, oh no sir, you can now build muscles, release pent up frustration and improve your balance all from the relative comfort of your own lounge.

But the sheer genius of this is that not only have they already hooked half the nation in with their oddly titled system with the promise of ‘family fun and health’, they then continually release games that require you to puchase yet more shit to clog up your living room. More shit that’s just asking to get busted when an over ambitious uncle hops on the step machine while pissed up on sherry at the Christmas Dinner.

Their latest game, something pretending to have something to do with snowboarding, requires you to balance on a board type thing, presumably setting you back around £60 to get full effect, and slide down a mountain. It looks pretty good, well, judging by the amount of fun the family on the advert were having - it must be - but I have to question whether it’s a good idea that parents are now encouraging kids to play games.

As a child I was ridiculously obsessed with video games, but they were nowhere near as advanced as the games that exist today. Remember Duck Hunt on the NES!? What this meant was, we got bored of playing after a few hours and went out to find some slugs to pour rings of salt round or locate some snails to attach to bangers. (Does the RSPCA cover insects?!)

The point being, all this gaming will only encourage kids to become less absorbed in real games involving real people, furthering their views on life and gaining experience in other areas. At this point I am fully aware of how old I’m starting to sound. But even I, without children can see the benefits of a ‘get fit’ videogame over a GTA IV type thing, but I fail to see how it should replace children appreciating going outside more and seeing that as the default setting for having fun, with Wii’s, Xbox, PS3 etc a substitute for when the Classic English Summer arrives and it’s too wet to do alot else……