Visiting your local city market this weekend?

Like this one or this one or this one or this one or this one
or this one or this one or this one or this one or this one?

After all, they’re all so individual, aren’t they? *cough*

But why not? Or rather – why?

We believe that, in spending ludicrous sums on this wonderful food, we are making a stand against The Man. We are turning our faces against the supermarkets, promoting true agriculture, supporting a way of life that is in danger of being lost.
There is a technical term for all this: bollocks.

So says Jay Rayner.

But that aside, really why not? After all, the produce is superb and… er… “authentic”:

There’s ostrich steaks, smoked venison,
And eggs with sh*t and feathers on,
There’s cauliflowers with gritty bits in between…

At the Market, the Farmers’ Market,
I drive my Volvo there and then I park it.
At the Market, the Farmers’ Market,
I find any old crap and sell it in a basket.

Some Friday smiles with this brilliance from the Armstrong and Miller Show.
You’d be well advised to watch it all the way through for the twist in the tail.

Got to love the odd cameo appearance, right?

NFL does London, Brian does NFL

Another great post from my favourite UK blogger Brain Micklethwait:

…let me tell you about something else that was happening at the same time as the Conference, just a walk away, in Trafalgar Square.
This was the NFL Fan Rally, happening a day ahead of the game between the Chicago Bears and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, at Wembley, yesterday.  Yes, really.  The NFL exports one of its game to London every year, to fly the flag for their sport, in a foreign part.

So, on Saturday afternoon, I snuck out of the Conference, to take a look at this Fan Rally, with my camera, of course.

By the time I got there, the event was winding down as far as the official entertainment on offer was concerned, but there were still large numbers of fans milling about amiably, chatting, drinking beer, purchasing memorabilia, and enjoying the bright autumn sunshine.

Generic shots – of the same thing over and over again but different every time – are my favourite sort.  And I quickly realised that the thing that there were a great many of here, the same every time but different every time, was shirts with the names of NFL stars on the back, each with a big number.  So that was what I hoovered up with my little camera.

The photos are simply – but really cleverly – arranged:

For the full effect, go take a look.

Morten: New album, new tour

After the heartbreak of a-ha going their separate ways and the heartbreak of a million tonnes of snow at Gatwick Airport, some new green shoots are beginning to emerge from the wasteland that my connection to Norwegian music had become.

Yes, a new solo album from Morten and a tour to go with it. Sadly, I don’t think South Africa will make it onto the itinerary, but the UK has already got three confirmed concerts in Manchester, London and Birmingham, with further dates announced in Zurich and Paris. The UK dates are in May and I’m off to the UK in June. So that’s not great.

Still, at least I have a new album to look forward to. This will be his 5th solo offering, and the first since his brilliant Letter From Egypt in 2008:

The other a-ha band members are still doing their own thing as well: Pal with Weathervane here and Magne in Aparatjik.

Look out for more a-ha related videos on here over the next week or so, simply because I can do that on here because it’s my blog.

Private Eye on shale gas

South Africa isn’t the only country to have potentially economy-changing amounts of shale gas underneath it. The UK has some too. According to the usually politically-left In The Back section of Private Eye magazine:

Cuadrilla, the gas exploration company drilling for shale gas in Lancashire, has announced its discovery of 200 trillion cubic feet of gas – a seriously big find.
If only a tenth of that were to be produced, it would still make it far larger than any gas field discovered in the North Sea, with the added benefit of it being accessible from dry land.
It represents a potential lottery win: not just for Cuadrilla, but for UK plc as a whole.

And here we are talking about 200 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of shale gas.
South Africa’s shale gas deposits are estimated to be at least 450tcf. That’s 450 000 000 000 000 cubic feet of gas. Putting that into some sort of perspective, Mossgas, the successful refinery in the Southern Cape, was built on the assumption that there was just 1 (one) tcf in deposits under the seabed.

The article continues:

Recent shale gas discoveries in the US have already transformed the North American gas market, changing it from a net importer to a net exporter in just two years, and significantly lowering gas prices there. If the Lancashire discovery turns out to be even remotely as big as has been announced, the UK will be in a position to keep its lights on cheaply – and cleanly – for a very long time to come.

Yes – locally produced shale gas means cheaper, cleaner energy.

The technology for shale gas production is controversial [including] the alleged – but disputed – potential for contamination of groundwater. Again, if the amounts of gas are as large as stated, the highest environmental standards could be imposed on its production and it would still be profitable.

Because abundant shale gas undermines the case for subsidising nuclear and renewable power generation, it faces a well-funded hostile lobby, keen to play up any negatives it can find.
Lurid films of gas-flames shooting out of bath-taps in America have comprehensively been shown to have nothing to do with shale gas production (it is a naturally-ocurring phenomenon in part of the US) but they capture the public imagination.
We can therefore expect largescale anti-shale gas protest from a range of vested “green” interests.

Indeed. I wonder if the British-born Lewis Pugh will take time out from poking his nose into other country’s affairs for long enough to “save” his homeland from an economic boom and cheaper, greener energy like he is trying to do here in South Africa.

“If nobody’s listening, you can say whatever you want”

There was an interesting article in the Grauniad this weekend entitled: “Jarvis Cocker: the secrets of Pulp’s songs” and featuring an except from his new book “Mother, Brother, Lover: Selected Lyrics”, which is out later this week.

Pulp were/are a Sheffield band and during their commercial height in the early to mid 90s had 5 Top 10 hits including Disco 2000 and Common People. The music was good – great, even – but the narrative style of the lyrics was superb and was what I think a lot of fans identified with. And that’s why it came as such a shock to read Cocker’s feelings on writing such gems as:

Well we were born within one hour of each other.
Our mothers said we could be sister and brother.
Your name is Deborah. Deborah. It never suited ya.

and:

I took her to a supermarket
I don’t know why, but I had to start it somewhere, so it started… there.
I said pretend you’ve got no money, she just laughed and said oh you’re so funny.
I said yeah? Well I can’t see anyone else smiling in here.

So what did he have to say?

Because it was my group and I was the singer, I ended up having to write the words. Hence I found myself in the position that a lot of songwriters start off in: you don’t particularly want to do the job but because a song isn’t really a song until it’s got some lyrics, it’s down to you to write them. And this kind of “Aw, mum, do I really have to do my homework?” attitude stays with you.
Many of my lyrics were hastily written the night before a recording session because I’d been putting off writing them until the very last minute. It’s strange that the most intelligible part of a song – the words – should be seen as the most boring and chore-like aspect of the songwriting process by musicians themselves.

And perhaps that’s an understandable attitude: after all, musicians, by definition, do music not words. Can you imagine a poet trying to put a tune to some of his work? Exactly.

Fortunately, there’s also an upside to this approach:

But once you’ve realised that the words are not so important, then the real fun of lyric-writing can begin. If nobody’s listening, you can say whatever you want.

And while Cocker seems to underestimate the power of his lyrics, all’s well that ends well. He writes the tunes and imagines no-one cares about what he has to say over the top of them and we get some amazing social commentary on the difficulties and awkwardness of growing up in Sheffield the 70s and 80s.

The rest of the article is definitely worth a read as he repeatedly proves and disproves his theory on the importance of lyrics in pop music and I think that the book will be an excellent buy.