Selection Vs Completion

I just got round to watching Season One of The Sopranos. Only taken nine years, but in my defence, it has been shown at quite ungodly and inconsistent times on terrestrial T.V., and it is the sort of programme that demands viewing in chronological order. Thus, having missed the beginning, I studiously avoided the following six seasons for fear of spoiling the whole series for myself.

On the strength of ten episodes the strategy was right, as I am already snared into a compulsive need-to-know what happens next. On the strength of hyperbolic reviews on Play.com and amazon.co.uk (I prefer the opinions of those who buy a product to those who are paid to have an opinion), I could buy the remaining six boxes of DVDs now, or even the complete series in one box and eBay the duplicate Season One. But I wont.

Firstly, this involves splashing out over £100 in one go, for a small saving if you buy the series. But second, I know myself well enough to wonder whether I will still be as interested by Season Four. The last time I was in a similar position was when, having won a copy of Six Feet Under Season One via (ironically) a BBC website, I bought the next two seasons. Still haven't quite made the end of season 3, so the last two seasons will be a long time coming. In the intervening years they've halved in price too. And I really like Six Feet Under!

Herein lies a problem. I'm a collector, in principle a completist. My wife would probably redefine that as an accumulator, but for someone who suffers the collecting "disease" (and I've exploited such folk for much of the last twenty years), the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. My own greatest weakness is music, and the racks contain several CDs that have barely left their cases but that have to be there "to complete the set". The same with books.

Consequently, those two "missing" seasons of Six Feet Under bug me, even though I know I wouldn't get round to watching them for months or years if ever. Part of this is conditioning as a good twenty first century consumer. We all buy crap that we don't need because we've been trained to think, believe even, that it will make life feel better. Be better. Not so, but we do it anyway.

Collecting takes this phenomenon a step further though, into the realms of a psychiatric disorder. On occasions, when I did my selling face-to-face in a real - rather than virtual - shop, I saw collectors on the brink of hysteria for fear of missing a "crucial" episode in the history of a pulp super-hero, or a variant of a model commercial vehicle ("Yes, I want both numberplate versions!"). This obsession is not terribly different to that found in some forms of autism and/or obsessive/compulsive disorders. The dispassionate observer might be tempted to say "But it's only a comic" and even add "so get a life" for good measure. That would be extremely ill advised.
Not least because the collector may react violently !

The adage that "less is more" conflicts head-on with collecting and with much of modern life in the "developed" world. Collectors want, need to have the lot, and more generally the preponderance of mediocrity in so many contexts may be proof that in demanding choice we end up with more stuff that is simply unremarkable.

In a previous post I referred to Peter Gabriel's quality control, which is reflected in the relative sparsity of his catalogue. The exception proving the more general rule that choice, far from being consumer led, is more often down to supply. The collector will buy their fifteenth Darth Vader action figure because this one has his head twisted to one side just so. He didn't know he wanted it until he saw it, because he didn't want it. Completeness now dictates that he must have it.

More generally, the joy of branding means that we'll buy more clothes than we need and all manner of domestic goods and services that we'll never use. This is not a new phenomenon, but it does seem to have run away from any level of rationality in the last twenty years or so. Gordon Gekko's "Greed Is Good" from Wall Street was embraced by many a child of Thatcherism and what we have now is a greater level of disatisfaction amongst ordinary folk with "how little" they can afford than I think had been the case even during periods of genuine austerity. Of course there are lots of people struggling, particularly since the latest generation of Gekkos managed to screw the financial system so thoroughly, but for most of us, we don't know we're born!

No, I don't have an answer. You might argue that just as advertising tobacco products has been banned to limit temptation, so we should stop advertising anything without qualitative merit. Not really going to happen is it? That way lies totalitarian state control and mediocrity of the worst kind (Soviet car, anyone?!).

Perhaps, ironically, the change will be made through choice. Just as the banking crisis and M.P.'s expenses have brought about changes in perception that cannot be undone, at some point we may begin to realize and believe that when we are told that items exist because of demand, we'll say "well, not from me" and refuse to buy. But I'm not holding my breath.

Now, I'm off to sell some stuff to people who didn't know they needed it!

PETER GABRIEL at WOMAD 2009

As mentioned below, the main draw for me to WOMAD 2009 was Peter Gabriel. I've seen him a few times and he has never disappointed. First time was promoting his first solo album at Liverpool Empire in late 1977. He had so little material that the set was padded with a cover of "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" and a couple of songs from Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, most memorably "Back in New York City" which closed the show as a leather-jacketed PG in "Rael"mode, leapt from the top of his grand piano. Another show at the Empire, Knebworth festival (head freshly shaved, giant panda on his back) supporting Frank Zappa, and a breathtaking performance at Birmingham Odeon (first time I heard "Biko") all wonderful and pre-dating the stardom and arena dates that the success of Sledgehammer and the So album eventually provided. The biggest and least successful show for my money was that one, at Earls Court, a venue so soulless only Pink Floyd have ever tamed it successfully. Then the 2008 "Human Rights Now!" tour in support of Amnesty International, with Springsteen, Sting (bleeaugh!), Tracy Chapman and Youssou N Dour. I missed the "Us" tour due to financial embarrassment (the Secret World DVD is a must, though), but caught up with him again at the NEC in 2003. By that time he'd given up dying his hair, sprouted a neat white beard and a comfy looking paunch. Not too far from yours truly, really! What sets us apart is his vision and talent!!

Taking years between album releases, his quality control is extraordinary. With the possible exception of his second record, rushed to capitalise on the success of the first, the proportion of Peter Gabriel songs that do not make the world a better place is tiny compared to most of his peers. They sound crafted (sometimes over-produced, perhaps, but live performance invariably remedies that) and while there are signature sounds, each has a distinct identity to set it apart from the rest. I wasn't that keen on his voice when I first heard it on a badly copied cassette of Genesis' Nursery Cryme, but as I recall, my objection was that he "sounded old", by which I probably meant mature beyond his years. Anyway, he's continued to grow into that voice and is now surrounded by a core of musicians who can replicate and expand upon his studio sound with apparent ease, and routinely appear to enjoy doing so.

Central to these is bass (or more usually "stick") player Tony Levin, who has been integral since the first solo record. The Chapman stick is a bizarre looking instrument, like an 8(?) string bass guitar which is played more like a double bass and plucked with both hands. The only other player I've seen is King Crimson's Trey Gunn, with whom Levin played in the Double Trio manifestation of KC (dig out the Deja Vrooom DVD if you can). Actually I've just found www.stick.com via google which tells you all about it. There are 10 and 12 string versions too. A snip at $2500 !

Other stalwarts are David Rhodes who started out supporting PG with his group Random Hold in the early 80s and Richard Evans (keyboards).There are usually at least a couple of other musicians and latterly PG's daughter Melanie, who does backing vocals and occasional shared lead on duets,including Downside Up, played at WOMAD.

So what about the performance? Well, it's a small stage by festival or even theatrical standards, but they still manged to open supplemented by a string section, drafted in for the debut of a couple of songs from the upcoming (this year?, next year??, next century???) Scratch My Back project, which involves PG covering other musicians' songs in exchange for their covers of his songs. On the strength of his version of Paul Simon's "The Boy In The Bubble" it should be interesting listen (tune and tempo completely refashioned) although not a substitute for "real" new material.
This over-crowded the stage, but once the guests moved on PG, at least, was able to wander about a bit and interact with musicians and crowd. The set was deliberately different to the one played at WOMAD in 2007 (only 3 songs in common, we were told), but there were few questionable choices. Games Without Frontiers sounded re-arranged (again), Solsbury Hill was fun as usual, but in keeping with the professed purpose of the show, namely the promotion of Witness.org (go on, check it out!), the finale was Biko, which I hadn't heard live for over 20 years. Hairs on back of neck, all that stuff. I've never liked the way it's presented (crowd encouraged to give black-power type clenched fist salute with their lily-white liberal manicured paws), but the power of the song is undeniable.

You Can Blow Out A Candle
But You Can't Blow Out A Fire
Once The Flame Begins To Catch
The Wind Will Blow It Higher
And The Eyes of The World Are Watching Now.....

Unfortunately, the world has been watching for quite some time now, and while the problems in South Africa may be no worse (though not as much better as we might like to believe), there are plenty of others queuing up. As Alexei Sayle once pointed out (re. "Ebony and Ivory") "as far as race relations go, piano keyboards aren't gonna solve nuttin' " and however moved I am by hearing "Biko", the world is the same the next day.

Death & Taxes

Bloody Hell! I've just done my V.A.T. return to discover that I owe them. I know that might be the normal expectation, but because I mostly sell zero-rated goods (comics) and pay V.A.T. on certain overheads (storage costs and stationery, mostly), I've become used to paying no more and even a small rebate every quarter. Not this time. It all comes of trying to rid myself of some of the vatable residue still hanging about from the shop and the years thereafter when I was still "doing" models. No, not that kind of model, unfortunately. Up to a point, this is actually good news, as I can't afford to hang on to them for the rest of my life and on average I'm probably getting back most of what they cost me. Still, paying more tax....

Of course someone needs to be paying tax, indeed we'd better all start paying more soon, however much we'll moan about it, as government borrowing seems just about stretched to breaking point.

A recent feature on The Daily Show demonstrated an American's mock outrage at the tax rates in Scandinavia and confusion at the population's contentment with their higher levies. It illustrated a point which I think the LibDems have been trying (and clearly failing) to make over the past few years. People will accept taxation if they are happy with the corresponding expenditure. In this country we are not.

Everything - transport, defence, healthcare, education to a lesser extent, is done on the cheap i.e. not as well as it could be. Then we moan about how much it cost to deliver mediocrity. If we spent more and had the standards that would satisfy the majority, we would have to pay more tax. We might resent it less than paying what we do for transport that's clogged, worn out armour and understaffed hospitals. But who's going to risk putting that in a budget?

It's exactly the policy Obama claims to be following and for which the right are labelling him a socialist. Sticks and stones. He'd rather be mis-labelled and get the desired result. I doubt that we have any politicians this side of the pond ready to stick their necks out, so it's mediocrity or worse for the forseeable future....

Breaking The Mould

Following on from News addiction, whilst The Telegraph may have done us all a favour by showing us who our elected representatives really are, the original story is running out of steam. There may be new "revelations" on a daily basis, but the message that our M.P.s have been engaged in wholesale misbehaviour got through a week ago. There are a couple of points here.

First, the M.P.s who say they have done nothing wrong by claiming, as those claims were approved as being within the rules, may be legally right but are morally wrong. A plasma T.V. is not essential to the conduct of parliamentary business. It is not, therefore, a morally justified business expense, even if the "watchdog" approves it. These M.P.s either lack a moral compass or choose to ignore it and are therefore unfit to govern and should be summarily dismissed.

Second are those, like our own in Gloucester (so far anyway) who not only seem to be doing their job, but have not abused the system. This is where further enquiry would be justified. Didn't they know what the others were up to, and by turning a blind eye to it, weren't they tacitly condoning it? If so, you might argue, they have failed in their duty and also deserve to be slung out of office. Without inside knowledge of the day-to-day running of the "Westminster Village", it is difficult to guess how genuinely innocent this second group, or individuals within it, are.

For instance, can we believe that none of this group knew that some of their colleagues claimed second home expenses for property barely closer to Westminster than their "main" homes? Didn't some of them wonder how their colleagues could afford to finance lavish lifestyles both in London and at their country mansions? They may say not, and as they haven't worked the system to their advantage we may have to give them the benefit of the doubt. But that doubt remains.