Monday 29 December 2014

TV: Doctor Who - Last Christmas

Doctor Who often works by having The Doctor turn up in other peoples’ stories and own them.  So it was quite amusing seeing a Doctor Who story briefly invaded by Father Christmas in ‘Last Christmas’.



The last Christmas in Doctor Who terms was ‘The Time Of The Doctor’ and was a horrible mess.  (I first watched it recovering from a seizure, but further watches didn’t improve matters)  What was going on in it was anyone’s guess – it included the worst of Steven Moffat’s writing (the self-referential continuity, kitchen-sink plot) and I for one only kept watching to get a glimpse of Peter Capaldi as the Doctor – by then, all that Trenzalore stuff I just didn’t care about at all, and that’s speaking as a fan.  It being a Christmas episode we were sat around watching telly as a family I was expected to translate this into comprehensible drama terms for my parents and then fiancĂ©.  Perhaps that has coloured my opinion of it as an episode, but I remember it as being something of a nadir.


Well it’s been a year – since that brief glimpse of Capaldi we’ve seen him in his successful first series and now in this, his first Christmas Special.  As with the episodes in this year’s series the plot in ‘Last Christmas’ is much more focused.  The story is set in a scientific research centre at the North Pole, but takes place in dreams, that turn out to be dreams within other dreams. There are aliens where you have to avoid even thinking about them (which gives ‘Blink’ and ‘Listen’ a run for their money in terms of Moffat's list of abstract threats) and there is Father Christmas.

I was deeply sceptical of Father Christmas being in Doctor Who like the Mr Grinch McScrooge I am, and if he had been in last year’s end-of-year pantomime any scepticism probably wqould have been justified as being a cheap gag.  However, in this episode Father Christmas meant something and I liked it.  Father Christmas represented dreams, and in this story dreams weren’t stable or safe – dreams were mercurial and potentially lethal.  To put it bluntly, if you were dreaming in ‘Last Christmas’, the chances were you had a face-hugging monster eating your brain.  Father Christmas strolled into a normal(ish) Doctor Who story to completely disrupt things the way the Doctor normally would.
 
"And a Merry Christmas to all of you at home!"
Doctor Who often works best when it’s in unchartered waters like this and has successfully messed around with dreaming and the unconscious from ‘The Mind Robber’ to the Dream Lord in ‘Amy’s Choice’.  ‘Last Christmas’ succeeded by setting up the audience for that most predictable and generic of Doctor Who stories, the base-under-seige, and then successfully throwing something as bizarre into the mix as Father Christmas and still getting away with it.

Nick Frost’s Santa was judged perfectly right – it was actually about as understated a performance you could ask for when the performance in question is Santa.  Peter Capaldi didn’t make any concessions to sentimentality just because it’s Christmastime, oh no – but he did show signs of his Doctor slowly thawing out as time goes on (oh, and grinned and whooped whilst driving Santa’s sleigh).  Clara was excellent as ever, although the weakest scenes seemed to be based around her, for instance the first dream sequence reuniting her with Danny seemed to just be going on for the sake of it; and the scene where the Doctor went back to save her but she had aged…  But then it turned out it was all a dream and she hadn’t!  Yep, it was a story about dreams but that was one little dream too far.

Those are very uncharitable quibbles though from a fan who was left happy.  This was a good episode of Doctor Who which didn’t patronise its audience (regardless of age or level of fan-knowledge), was scary, clever and funny – oh yes, this year Steven Moffat showed that guy who wrote last year’s show how it’s really done.  (Ho, ho, ho…  Oh please yourselves.)

It also showed that this supposed 'dark' direction that the show has taken is just as capable of lightness as earlier eras, but that lightness comes in chinks and comes with sadness - perhaps ironic that the Doctor Who Christmas Special with the least fairytale-like plot in some time should also be the one that gets to have Father Christmas.



Friday 19 December 2014

RADIO: 'Raw Meat Radio' - Chris Morris Documentary, BBC Radio 4 Extra

Chris Morris is known chiefly for his epithets – “Godlike Genius”; enfant terrible”; “Media Assassin/Terrorist”, and so on.


After his reputation he is known chiefly for his TV work of the 90s, especially The Day Today and even more especially Brass Eye.  And even even more especially the Brass Eye Special.  These news spoofs are indeed absolute classics (although not as flawless as hype would have you believe).  Because the targets of The Day Today and Brass Eye are news presentation they haven’t dated as much as you might fairly expect for programmes made before New Labour came to power.  Probably the most influentuial comedian of the 90s Morris was unique in having no roots in stand-up; he instead came to prominence through radio.


Raw Meat Radio was a documentary concentrating solely on this sometimes neglected aspect of his career, bypassing almost entirely the more familiar TV stuff.  For someone of Morris’ reputation there haven’t been that many insights into his work, and Raw Meat Radio was happy to do some oblige with some talking head material and stories about his career.  Its 3 hours were roughly divided into 3 sections – On The Hour, the Radio One Music Shows and Blue Jam.  

Looking back at On The Hour you find yourself unconsciously
comparing it to its TV incarnation, The Day Today, in a completely unfair way.  On The Hour hasn’t really held up as well as The Day Today has, or certainly not based on the episode included as part of the documentary.  It sounds too bitty, and some sections drag. On The Hour was a game-changer in Radio 4 comedy, brought a new generation of comics to the forefront of the media (especially Steve Coogan), and so on.  But the bits that work the best are mainly bits that sound somehow incomplete because these were perfected on TV.  The best section for me of the episode here was the clip of On The Hour from the 1950s, complete with received pronunciation newscasters and jazz music...

It’s the Radio One Music Show clips that sound the freshest out of all the material in the documentary, partly because it’s the least familiar but also because it sounds so much like Morris letting his hair down and having a laugh.  If you can track down the complete shows on the internet (and you definitely can) you can listen to a great blend of Britpop and Hip Hop from the mid 90s as well as some good old insanity.  (I came across the description ‘chummy psychosis’ somewhere on the internet and that’s as good as any)  Prank calls/interviews and surreal sketches with Peter Baynham about opening tortoises and the dead body of Johnny Walker are the highlights.  Sketches where Morris tells Paul Garner to humiliate himself in public are less interesting, although because of their unpredictability can still be funny.  Garner repeatedly refusing to go back into a shop to ask whether the owner has “been to hell” while Morris and Baynham scream at him is actually funnier than it would have been had he obeyed his orders.  In these sequences it seems pretty clear that Paul Garner is Morris’ dupe, the person we are really laughing at.  I’m not sure Paul Garner always realised this (as he says in the documentary – he could have easily stood in a corner quietly saying that he was obeying his crazy orders without any of the hassle).  It’s certainly the Music Shows where Morris’ skill for persuasion is at its most obvious.

The Music Shows were a bit of a headache for Morris’ boss Matthew Bannister who explains on the documentary that he had okayed a sketch about Michael Heseltine’s obiturary tapes as long as it was made clear Michael Heseltine wasn’t dead.  When Morris opened the show with the decidedly ambiguous “If we hear any news on the death of Michael Heseltine we’ll let you know” led to the show being pre-recorded not very long into its run.  This is probably the most notorious stunt from the Music shows, and at least 5 minutes is spent talking about it.  It’s interesting that Peter Baynham doesn’t hold it as a crowning glory of what they did on the show.  
The documentary moves on to Blue Jam, a project that Matthew Bannister helped bring to Radio 1  was a completely new direction for Morris –
it was a ‘dark’ sketch-show interlinked with monged-chilled records, and didn’t have anything to do with the news.  Listening to the sketches out of context of their show makes them seem unbearably slow-paced – the Unconcerned Parents (who show a shocking lack of interest in the disappearance and murder of their 6 year old son) seems to drag on and on.  Similarly, the Rothko the Dog monologue (“he’s not a very good dog, but he’s an even worse lawyer”) didn’t seem as funny.  I suspect that this is because the bright and breezy approach of the documentary sets completely the wrong mood for enjoying that sort of thing.  It’s funniest when you’re on the verge of falling asleep, not bookended by some reminiscing by the writer.  Even so, one of Blue Jam’s selling points was in fact its power to shock, and it sounded tamer than I remembered.  

3 hours is a long time to listen to a documentary about any subject, but if you’re interested in 90s comedy in general Raw Meat Radio should raise some interest.  It was planned for an old unheard Chris Morris sketch to be exhumed on 6Music the following Saturday, but this was cancelled at the 11th hour – the official line is for reasons of quality control than for any last minute censorship.  But maybe also for reasons of lack of interest.  Chris Morris has finished with radio but he is a genius at it – he is uniquely talented at using his voice to force people to enter his world, without them necessarily realising it.  Not only the unwitting members of the public but the listeners themselves are taken to strange places before they have time to realise what’s going on.    


Listen to Raw Meat Radio here


Sunday 7 December 2014

MUSIC: Pixies - Doolittle 25

One thing that seemed to be impressive about the 25th anniversary of Doolittle was that the Pixies seemed to be more interested in releasing new material instead.


Well that turned out to be wrong didn’t it?  Here it is – just in time for Christmas – Doolittle 25, a re-release of the album with B-Sides, Demos and Peel Sessions.


If you’re the kind of person who’s interested in B-Sides, Demos and Peel Sessions (and believe me, I am), you’d think this would be the mother of all packages.  It’s not even very expensive.  What makes it much less impressive is that the Pixies have already released a complete B-Sides and Peel Sessions separately roughly 15 years ago, meaning that a significant amount of the songs on Doolittle 25 are almost certainly on the shelves of the people most likely to buy Doolittle 25.

Then...
Another point of minor contention is that the album hasn’t been remastered, which is so much expected of deluxe editions it feels like it should be pointed out in big letters when something hasn’t been tinkered with.  On the whole I think most remasters are pretty good – I certainly haven’t come across a remastering which has made something sound worse.  In this respect I think I am relatively easily pleased – just look at the one-star reviews of Nevermind on Amazon to read some audiophiles kicking off about something called the Loudness War and a lot of uses of the word ‘dynamic’ in a way I don’t really understand.  Some things definitely need remastering (the Beatles remasters were necessary), sometimes it can seem like pouring old wine into new bottles.   Really though if you are going to buy an album for the second time it’d be nice to know they’ve done something to improve it.  Even by just a little bit.  It’d be better to be lied to in a way.

It comes down to this: realistically it’s going to be a majority of existing Pixies fans that  buy Doolittle 25, and Pixies fans will very definitely own Doolittle already, probably the B-Sides and BBC discs as well. So that leaves the demos.  And, Demos usually being the weakest sibling in the Bonus Track family, that’s where Doolittle 25 really hung for me – they effectively rereleased a bunch of stuff we all had already and the only real new content was some demos.  And that would have been really bad; only the demos actually turn out to be really, really good.
...and Now!

I normally skip over demos on deluxe rereleases and I suspect the majority of people do.  With the benefit of hindsight they’re often little more than really awful sounding versions of songs you like.  It’s possible in some cases to make a case for it being interesting to see ‘the creative process in action.’  But just because it’s interesting from a historical point of view it doesn’t necessarily make it fun to listen to.  I mean, who listens to the Beatles Anthology series now?  Who listened to it then?  Even hardcore Beatles fans don’t actually listen to the Anthology series.  The reason for this is that seeing the creative process at work is like knowing how the magic trick is done.  You think you want to know, but really you don’t.  Recent examples include Public Enemy’s It Takes A Nation Of Millions… and Fear Of A Black Planet and Led Zep’s back catalogue – all the bonus tracks are either throwaway or virtually identical to the original.  The alternative 'Stairway To Heaven' is a musical spot the difference but no more.

However, there are exceptions that prove the rule, and the demos on Doolittle 25 are an exception.  As I said in a previous post, although I like all the Pixies’ albums for me Surfer Rosa captures a raw energy whereas Doolittle is just a bit too polished and clean and frankly less fucked up.  Well the demos on Doolittle 25 can give you a glimpse into a world where Doolittle was made in a similar way to Surfer Rosa, or even Come On Pilgrim. The demos are even all laid out helpfully in the same order as the original album. When it comes to the Pixies I believe they were not served as well by ‘polished’ production, or at least they were made less exciting by it.  That doesn’t mean I think they only worked as a raw grungy outfit, more that there are parts of Doolittle where it feels like the production is filling in some gaps that would have been left more intriguing let alone.  That works great for something quite bombastic like ‘Monkey Gone To Heaven’, but not always.  ‘Tame’ is a great example of the production of Doolittle doing the song a disservice.  Listening to the demo of it, the heavy breathing from Frank Black is bestial and creepy.  On the album it sounds merely percussive.  And that’s fine – it is after all a matter of taste – but I find with a band as seminally weird as the Pixies I’d rather hear them being bestial and creepy than merely percussive.  I mean, the second half of Doolittle has some tracks that I’ve always thought of as filler pretty much, but the demos of 'No 13 Baby' and 'Hey' feel more like a brush with insanity and therefore more alive than the album versions. 


Admittedly, this is quite a specialist vindication of Doolittle 25.  It’s basically great news for Pixies fans who thought they got a bit tame after Surfer Rosa and wondered what it would have been like if they hadn’t.  The world is not full to the brim of people (especially in 2014) wondering that.  Doolittle 25 shows what a transitional album Doolittle was - it was apparently during the making of this album that Deal and Black learned to really loathe each other for instance (which is such a given now you tend to forget that they probably managed to be in the same room as each other for whole hours at a time).  So even though there’s a something a bit suspect about another reselling of a much-repackaged and resold (and tiny) back catalogue, I’ve chosen to forgive Doolittle 25 that.  I've chosen not to get up on my high horse and instead enjoy it for making an album I’ve always felt was slightly overrated make complete sense to me.