Great bands, bad influences

Can you think of any bands which you love, but are terrible influences if digested wholesale?

With some groups, the issue is that they make such a total statement that influence risks becoming pale imitation - comical, redundant or both. Joy Division, Ramones, The Smiths, Portishead: all fall into that category. Massive Attack are a much better influence than Portishead precisely because they're not given to coherency - think of all the forgettable second-tier trip-hop acts who cloned Dummy rather than Protection.

Then there are the bands whose would-be disciples simply don't notice or disregard the ambiguity in the original work. A great example of this would be Blur circa Modern Life Is Rubbish or Parklife: Anglophile records, but also profoundly critical of British culture, as The Kinks were before them. 

Take away that complexity and you merely replicate the past, offering musical pastiches of a particularly thin slice of British (or, rather, English) identity without nuance or comment.

Finally, there's the 'you only get away with this in the first place because you're so darn good' category, with inferior imitations having few of the merits and all of the flaws. Take Led Zeppelin - no band who has tried to sound like Zep has ever come close to being as good as them. And that's despite the occasionally reactionary sexual politics and the musical and other over-indulgences which would have artistically hamstrung a lesser band.

Over to you? Any other examples of great bands, bad influences that spring to mind?

Alcest's Shelter: background music, with occasional transcendence

Finally, Alcest have dropped all the trappings of metal to make that stripped back, shoegazy, dream-pop album it always seemed they were heading towards. Unfortunately, Shelter might be pretty, but it's pretty average.

By removing the blast beats, guitar FX and harsh whispers, Alcest have lost the counterpoint to their gentler passages. Granted, it's a trick they couldn't have pulled indefinitely and credit to them for wanting to evolve. But the overall effect is to make Shelter background music with occasional - too few - transcendental moments.

The gentler approach also has the result of pushing mainman Neige's ennervated choirboy voice centre stage. And that's asking a lot of it. What worked great texturally under walls of guitar in Ecailles de Lune two albums ago suddenly feels unequal to the task of carrying a quiet storm.

Neige has made it pretty clear in interviews - for now at least - that he doesn't want to return to metal. So perhaps we should see Shelter as part of an adaptive process, a transitional album while Alcest master new forms. Let's hope they keep the courage of their convictions, but also that they get as good as they used to be once again.

Get into radical transparency

A challenge for any organisation with volunteer stakeholders - from national bodies to local community groups - is building stronger relationships of trust with your members.

A lot of that is always going to be judged by your visible successes, not to mention the quality of experience you offer to participants. But another part is ensuring that your members can see what the group is doing and have a chance to meaningfully contribute on their own terms.

I want to suggest that radical transparency and sharing builds trust, and hence support and participation.  

I recommend that core members of your group or organisation should be sharing something interesting that they’ve been up to on a weekly basis via Facebook, Twitter, a blog or other tools. It could be something very simple like a photo, or something you've already done for another purpose like a press release.

This can then be paralleled by longer-form updates, say on a newsletter, a blog, a website or whatever - for the purposes of this argument the format is irrelevant.

The key thing is that your supporters, friends and allies can have an insight into our work if they want it, they know where they can get it, and they can use this sharing as a basis for engaging you in dialogue.

Thoughts?

Local profile check-list

This is something I remember writing when I joined Friends of the Earth which I came across the other day. It's a self-assessment tool for local groups to work out what they can do to increase their profile and to ask for staff support.

As diagnostics go, it's a useful set of questions, I think, but I've updated it to include references more references to electronic communication tools, distinguishing between old media and new media.

Anything else here you think should be added?

Does your group have an online/offline newsletter or equivalent? 

If so, how do you distribute it, to whom and how many?

Does your group regularly display publicity material (e.g. flyers, posters) with contact and meeting information at places where potential recruits might be?

How often does your group hold stalls or any other activities which allow you to promote the group to the public? 

When your group holds stalls or do other public activities, does it have publicity material which provides contact and meeting information? 

Have your group checked that the information – particularly the contact and meeting information – on the FOE website (and on your group website if applicable) is up to date and accurate?

Does your group have a Facebook page or group and post regular updates?

Does your group have a Twitter account and use it regularly?

Does your group use the internet in other ways to promote itself (e.g. blogs, listings websites)?

How often does your group use the media (press releases, letters, events listings) to promote its meetings and activities?

Does your group periodically invite national supporters in its area to an event?

Has answering these questions inspired you to suggest that your group does something new to increase its profile? If time and capacity are issues, what in particular would be the priority tasks? 

How can staff help your group raise its profile?

a.Helping to develop a plan to raise your group’s profile
b.Helping your local group redesign its publicity material
c.Help with maintaining your local group website or a social media presence
d.Arranging training for your local group on any of the above
e.Helping to develop a public event to which national supporters living locally can be invited

f.Something else

A few thoughts on Pretty In Pink - when archetypes go to the prom

Watching Pretty In Pink for the first time recently I was struck by what an odd, good film it is.

Exquisitely styled and designed - think Andie's bedroom, the record store, Iona's apartment - it's also deeply stylised. Everyone presents as a representative of a particular class or subculture - so far, so Breakfast Club. 

But the starkness of the class divide the protagonist Andie seeks to overcome in love, the blankness of Molly Ringwald and Andrew McCarthy as the couple, and the film's commitment to style over realism, moves the romance into the background for me. 

It's the social conflict in Pretty In Pink which is front and centre.

Perhaps it's because the film eludes male identification characters that this is so, rather than suggesting John Hughes was somehow channeling Brecht when he wrote this.

But it's interesting that the initial ending, subsequently scrapped, unites Andie with her best male friend Duckie, from the same class and milieu, who's been nursing a massive crush on her throughout the film.

That would be more in tune with a social conflict reading of the film, although waaay more dramatically unsatisfactory than the happily ever after you get in the ending which was used.

The real world, as this ad says? Yeah, but not for the reasons it thinks.

Strong misreadings: nihilist Madonna

So I've been wrong all these years.

On Get Into The Groove, Madonna is singing:

Only when I'm dancing can I feel this free /At night I lock the doors, where no one else can see. 

And not: 

At night I lock the door and throw away the key.

She's getting her groove on by herself, before deciding in the next line that she wants to find somebody else to dance with.

Hence, Get Into The Groove (to prove his love to her), right?

But, perversely, I still like my version better. Here we have a Madonna so committed to the radical freedom of dance that she decides there's no going home at the start of a night out. The future is irrelevant - all that matters is the eternal now.

PS - it turns out that I'm not the only one to have heard this in GITG. And the line as I heard it turns up in a number of other songs too.

Boggy here...

Bogs get much worse press than swamps or marshes ... even in fantasy novels.