Where Worlds Collide

Saw The Musical Box perform Selling England by the Pound at the Manchester Apollo last night. Tribute bands are normally dismissed as the epitome of naff, but this bunch of French-Canadians are a relevation. Using original costumes, stages sets and slides, and a real live mellotron, they try to reproduce the experience of seeing the Peter Gabriel lineup of Genesis as closely as possible.

Since I’m not old enough to have seen the Gabriel lineup live (by the time I was old enough to go to gigs, the Bald Git had taken over and they had blanded out, so I went to see Marillion instead), I can’t give you a direct comparison. However, Peter Gabriel himself has stated that the guy playing him, Denis Gagn�, is ‘Brilliant’. He is certainly a charismatic and visually arresting frontman. The other four musicians, although not physically resembling their counterparts, provided note-perfect renditions of the music. Overall, a wonderful experience, and the best thing short of having a genuine time machine to take you back to 1973.

The set complised almost all of ‘Selling England by the Pound’, plus ‘Watcher of the Skies’, ‘The Musical Box’, ‘The Knife’, and, of course, ‘Supper’s Ready’.

At last! Nigel Williamson, in this Guardian article for once challenges the standard Stalinist NME view on music history.

The Health and Safety Executive had completed their interim report on the Wominseebahn freight derailment (see yesterday’s entry). The derailment was caused by a collision between the pantograph of the Minitrix Ae6/6 locomotive hauling the train with a Kato dummy catenery mast. The recoil from the sudden stop caused two wagons from the middle of the train (a Roco SBB Hbis van, and a Minitrix FS Hbis van) to derail and overturn on the mid-point of the 180deg curve at the end of the layout. The SBB van appears to have suffered no damage, but the FS van has cracked between the roof and the end. The damage is assessed to be repairable with a bit of superglue. Their recommendation was the immediate purchase of some foam-core board to be fixed to the ends (and ultimately sides) of the layout, and to remove the dummy catenary poles.

Stephen Byers has resigned. Clearly he’s had enough, and he’s got too many enemies. For all his mistakes, he probably did the right thing with Railtrack, who’s shareholders seemed to be ignorant of Capitalism 101 (Sometimes the company you invest in will go ‘phut’, and the shares will go down the toilet’).

Unfortunately for New Labour (but fortunately for everyone else), the bad news hasn’t been buried, because India and Pakistan haven’t yet gone to war. On BBC2′s Newsnight last night, Malcolm Rifkind claimed this was the worst international crisis since the Cuban missile crisis in 1963, and sadly I’m inclined to agree with him. In 1963, the American and Soviet leaders proved to be rational, and the flakier Dr Strangelove characters on both sides lost the argument. I wish I had the same confidence about the religious nationalists in charge in India and Pakistan.

When building an N-gauge layout, and you lay track to within an inch of the baseboard edge, put a barrier along the edge!!

Fortunately it was only a wagon (well, two wagons, but only one seems to be damaged), and it’s repairable.

Tonight is the dreaded Eurovision Song Contest, where various nations of Europe and beyond compete see who can come up with the most banal song. The voting is always more entertaining than the actual music - Greece and Cyprus always give each other 12 points, every year, without fail. Sadly Norway (nul points) weren’t in it this year.

This years winner was Latvia.

Am I the only person that thinks the British entrant next year should be M�torhead?

I’ve also been wasting time reading www.railcar.co.uk - a site telling far more than you ever wanted to know about diesel multiple units.

Visited some former colleagues at SX3 in Alderley Edge. I had to pick up a parcel containing six Roco Swiss BLS EWivs which had been mistakenly delivered to my former workplace, as good an excuse as any to have a beer at lunchtime with some of the people I used to work with.

On the way home I decided to take a detour, and ride the famous train from Stockport to Stalybridge. This is one of the (in)famous so-called ‘parlimentary trains’, a ghost train run as a token service on a line to avoid having to get a parlimentary act to close it. This one runs one a week, on a Friday afternoon, in one direction only.

Today must have been a slow news day; Granada TV decided feature it on their evening local news programme, and they had a camera team on board. After filming the interior of the train as it set off (and carefully not using any pictures with me in it!), they got off at the forlorn and weed-strewn station at Denton.

For non-Brits, Room 101 is the BBC programme hosted by Paul Merton in which the week’s guest is invited to nominate half a dozen things they hate to be dropped in it. A few people have become infamous, like Anne Robinson nominating the Welsh, or Michael Grade nominating Dr Who - “We’ve seen Star Wars, we’ve seen ET, then we had these cardboard things clonking across the floor. I hate sci-fi anyway. So I cancelled it”.

What would I put in Room 101?

First up, music journalists.

The late Frank Zappa described this species as “People that can’t write writing about people that can’t play for the benefit of people that can’t read”. As a species, they have this ridiculous idea that popular music isn’t actually about music at all, but is really all about ‘style’ and ‘attitude’. All real music gets dismissed by these Stalinist idiots while they champion talentless rubbish. Unfortunately they’re read by 17-year olds that have yet to learn to distinguish facts from opinion, and can be convinced that ridiculously overrated acts like The Smiths really are the most influential band of all time.

A couple of Gypsycons ago, we had a fun time playing Gother Than Thou, a card game which mercilessly takes the piss out of goth subculture. Along with cards like ‘Fun With Eyeliner’, ‘Pet named Hecate’ and ‘Visit from Mum’, there’s one called “Sing This Corrosion for Me” - worth Goth Points if you can sing it, negative Goth Points if you can’t. None of us could (One individual who shall remain nameless tried singing it to the tune of ‘Happy Birthday to You”)

Eventually, curiosity got the better of me, and I obtained The Sisters of Mercy greatest hits, containing the said song.

Now I’ve got the tune stuck in my head and it won’t go away. Arrrrggghh!!!

At least it’s not Rod Stewart’s “D’ya think I’m sexy”….

Ümlä&uumlt will have to cover this song, I can tell. With spooky flanged electric violin replacing Jim Steinman’s choir.

Saw Blue Öyster Cult on Friday night at the Astoria Theatre in London. It’s been a few years since they’ve played Britain; four years since they last played a one-off show in London, and about fifteen since they toured the whole country.

Unfortunately I only caught the last part of Carl Palmer’s set, but the guitar-driven versions of ELP’s ‘Toccata’ and ‘Fanfare for the Common Man’ were impressive. Were they support for the whole tour or just a one-off for the London show?

Blue Öyster Cult’s show was a big improvement from their slightly lacklustre performance four years before. Allen Lanier no longer looks on death’s door, Eric Bloom’s got his hair back, although we’re spared that Jeff Lynne-style perm from the 70s. The sound was slightly muddy at the bottom-end, but no bad enough to spoil the gig - none of equipment problems that plagued the last show at this venue. Allen spent most of the show playing guitar; Eric played as much keyboards as he did.

They played just one number from the newest album. ‘Curse of the Hidden Mirror’, ‘Pocket’, and nothing at all from the preceding ‘Heaven Forbid’. Instead the band resurrected some older classics; ‘Mistress of the Salmon Salt (Quicklime Girl)’, ‘The Golden Age of Leather’, and ‘Perfect Water’, the one gem from the otherwise mediocre ‘Club Ninja’. But sadly no ‘Astronomy’. The standards were all present and correct; ‘ETI’, ‘Godzilla’, ‘Reaper’, ‘Cities on Flame’ and ‘Last Days of May’, now with a solo from Allen as well as the lengthy solo from Buck Dharma.

Setlist:
- Burning for You
- OD’ed on Life Itself
- ETI
- The Vigil
- Pocket
- Cities of Flame with Rock and Roll
- Mistress of the Salmon Salt (Quicklime Girl)
- Harvester of Eyes
- Buck’s Boogie
- The Golden Age of Leather
- Perfect Water
- And Then Came the Last Days of May (guitar solos from Allen and Buck)
- Godzilla (Bass and drum solos)
- (Don’t Fear) The Reaper
Encore
- Dominance and Submission