RIP Gregg Jevin

Twitter is alive today with tributes pouring in for late, great comedian and musician Gregg Jevin. This is a huge blow to every single one of his 200 fans, myself included. The man was an inspiration, and his loss creates a very huge hole in the world that can only be filled with the Polyfilla of sadness.

Although highly respected as a stand-up, his best work, in my opinion, was the 1976 sitcom that he wrote, directed, starred in and wrote the theme tune for – “Not Without My Uncle” – which was woefully underappreciated, even though its catchphrase “Two tickets to Benidorm, mother” has entered greater pop culture consciousness. I will always remember my favourite episode, where Jevin bought himself a crocodile and how he used it to badger his ever-suffering wife and cousin. When his wife discovers that the “long-lost Shakespeare play” was actually written by the crocodile, I was in tears. It was a truly moving moment in its hilarity.

Of course, the 1979 spin-off “But My Aunt Can Stay At Home” was less well-received, and I’ll admit it wasn’t the best. It did have its moments though, even if most of the jokes revolved around him somehow keeping his aunt locked in a basement. But I think many people missed the subtle satire of modern society of the time, something that Jevin was increasingly trying to raise awareness of. After all, who in the 70s didn’t own a printing press that kept breaking down on them at inopportune moments, such as when the vicar came to stay?

During the 80s, his comedy did less well, and he focused on his musical career instead. His best album is, of course, the 1983 comedy album “Biscuit Cake”, featuring such hits as “Not Without My Uncle Theme Tune”, “Don’t Count Your Bacon”, “Be My Shirley Bassey Balloon Maker” and “Not Without My Uncle Theme Tune (Shep Pettibone Remix)”. His comedy albums were hugely successful, but his attempts at creating a more serious collection of songs weren’t as popular. In particular, his 1986 disco record “Fever Space” proved fatal: everyone who listened to the album in its entirety died under mysterious circumstances. The album was recalled, but the damage was done, and Gregg Jevin’s career suffered immensely.

My own personal memory of Gregg Jevin came from when he turned up at a school disco I attended in 1998, where he handed out oranges to all the kids before leading everyone in a rousing rendition of the Macarena. He then disappeared into the night like Batman. I will always remember that night, especially when I discovered he was later arrested for handing out LSD-laced oranges to schoolchildren. The things I experienced that night changed my life forever.

So to hear of his death I am deeply saddened. The man was an inspiration, and the world of comedy musicians will never be the same before or since. RIP Gregg Jevin, you big ol’ imaginary bastard.

Cupid's Got A Lot To Answer For

So Valentine’s Day has yet again come and gone, leaving in its wake a rubbish pile of red and pink heart shaped boxes and cards, ready to be thrown out for another year. Restaurants are currently counting their increased profits while their workers are breathing a sigh of relief that it’s over for another year.

There are many things wrong with Valentine’s Day, all of which I observed through people’s comments on Twitter, Facebook and various blogs, but it boils down to two camps: The bitter singles and the inept couples.

The bitter singles are easy to spot. They’re the dowdy people moping around bemoaning their single status all day to anyone and everyone, seemingly expecting some sympathy or some solidarity, as if they’re somehow a persecuted minority. But there’s a reason there’s no civil rights movement for single people – you are not a minority. There are a ton of people who are single on Valentine’s Day every single year. The very idea you want to constantly express your disdain for the holiday, even when you’re coming up with ways to justify why it’s good to be single on the day, is remarkably narcissistic. To me, it looks like you’re wandering around going “SOMEBODY PLEASE LOVE ME” when in fact there is a better way to “deal” with the 14^th of February.

Just forget about it. Acknowledge the day exists but merely say to yourself “that’s not my holiday, I shall pay it no more mind”. It’s easy, and it leaves you feeling less bitter. Your reaction to the day is complete indifference. I remember one year where I did genuinely forget it was V-Day, and even when reminded I forgot again within the space of an hour. It was irrelevant to me.

If you’re seriously bothered by being single on Valentine’s Day, maybe you need to re-evaluate your life. What is so fundamentally wrong with your life that you feel everything will be magically better if you have a boy/girlfriend on a specific day? Instead of moping and ranting about the day, find something that betters you as a person, something that makes you happy. No one’s forcing you to stare longingly at the displays in Clinton’s thinking “me too!” You’re doing that to yourself. Stop that. It’s silly and it’s damaging to your mental health.

But, there is the flipside. The inept couples. These are harder to spot, because they’re very easily camouflaged in amongst the genuine couples. The inept couples are the ones that view Valentine’s Day as the most important day in their relationship, that huge, lavish displays of affection on this one day will forgive all other misgivings for the rest of the year. These are the people that look at large pink oversized bears on display and fork out the extortionate money they charge for the privilege just because they have no real imagination for what to get their loved one.

There’s nothing wrong with buying gifts for your loved one and doing stuff together on Valentine’s Day, but why does it need to be some big, extravagant thing. The bitter singles often try and justify their stance by saying “well, if you’re single I suppose you don’t have to spend loads of money on the day” but the fact is, you don’t even need to spend that much if you’re part of a couple either.

If you don’t have much money, what’s wrong with a heartfelt handmade gift and cooking a romantic meal for your partner, or even cooking something together? Even if you’re collectively rubbish at cooking, the fact it was something you did together and most likely had a lot of fun doing means more than a “romantic” dinner at Generic Fancy Restaurant #2487263 in amongst a billion other couples who had the exact same idea. An intimate night in is miles better than sitting waiting around for restaurant staff who are already overworked because of the million couples they have to deal with.

Put simply, it’s not about how much the gesture costs; it should be about the personal value of the gesture to the person on the receiving end. A poorly constructed plush toy of your partner’s favourite animal may not cost much to make, but it’ll always be of much greater value than a disposable, mass-manufactured teddy bear that cost £100.

Valentine’s Day is one of the most hyped-up days of the year, and it’s amazing how many people make it a bigger deal than it needs to be. Let’s stop complaining about the cost, and definitely let’s stop complaining about the “horrors” of being single on such a day. If you’re single, forget about it. If you’re in a relationship and the only gift idea you can come up with is a bunch of cheap generic flowers from a garage forecourt, then your relationship has some serious issues that no amount of merchandise is going to paper over. It’s nice to do something, but it shouldn’t be deciding factor for your relationship.

Let’s get some sanity back.

Track-By-Track: Christmas Special

Track-By-Track is a series where I listen to albums for the first time and pass comment on the individual songs as I listen to them, before giving my final verdict on the whole album at the end. For the first of these reviews, I’ve decided to go seasonal and review a Christmas album.

The Boy Least Likely To are a “twee-pop” band. They’re a two piece, consisting of Jof Owens and Pete Hobbs, and their music sounds like the sort of thing a bunch of stuffed toys on Prozac might make. Very cutesy and child-like musically, but lyrically tend to touch on issues of anxiety and fear. Their music is almost like the loss of innocence in a way – growing up and taking on stresses and responsibilities while wanting to stay connected to childhood somehow. So they sing about stress while jaunty xylophones play in the background.

I thoroughly enjoyed their first album The Best Party Ever, and was pleasantly surprised to see they’d made a Christmas album, entitled Christmas Special. This is my Track-By-Track review of that album.

The Christmas Waltz

An instrumental track kicks off the album, and is very much a Boy Least Likely To track to begin with, only with sleigh bells in amongst the usual cutesy instruments. It sounds a little like something out of a toy music box in fact, until there’s a brief sombre strings interlude. However, the track’s not particularly interesting, but does serve as a good introduction for the style the band are going for.

Happy Christmas Baby

Such a blatant Christmas song in its production it’s almost a parody. But no, it’s a perfectly legitimate homage to the Phil Spector-esque Christmas song sound, even down to the use of “Christmas stabs”, the same little riff utilised in the likes of Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas Is You and Wizzard’s I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday. All the other elements are present and correct, of course, from the prominent string section to the sound of bells buried in the production.

It’s catchy as hell, and a lovely little Christmas song that could easily sit alongside other Christmas classics. The lyrics are happy and upbeat, evoking imagery of what makes the holiday so magical. There is a sense of BLLT’s loss of innocence themes with the mention of feeling sad that it’ll never feel as good as when you’re a child, but this line is more hopeful than usual for them, suggesting that this year they want to rediscover that childlike joy. This becomes especially obvious in the singalong coda, which repeats the line “I still believe in Santa Claus, even if no one else does”. It’s hard not to join in and feel like a little kid again. Brilliantly done.

Blue Spruce Needles

Starts off sounding like something from some odd barn dance, and unfortunately this instrumental intro (which appears later as a break) doesn’t fit the rest of the song and threatens to drag it down.

However, the rest of the song is catchy, but as usual for TBLLT, the lyrics are not cheerful at all. This is one of those “I miss my lover at Christmas” songs, which could easily be cliché, but mercifully they’ve chosen to make into an analogy through the pine needles of the title. Last year, the protagonist of the song put up a tree with his girlfriend of the time, and shortly after they split up. Over the year, he’s still finding shed needles from the tree lying around the house, and it’s an obvious analogy to how he’s being constantly reminded of his ex as he goes about his daily life. It’s quite effective imagery, and clever in its mundane nature.

But seriously, lose that barn dance break.

Little Donkey

Unfortunately, I’ve never liked Little Donkey as a carol. It’s always seemed very dreary and tuneless when compared to other more emotional or thrilling carols. Little Donkey always just evokes school plays with terrible child singers and one kid attempting to play the recorder.

Well, TBLLT don’t help matters by actually having a recorder introduce the tune, so the dreary school play interlude imagery sticks. And sadly, they’ve added little to the arrangement to make this interesting. It’s still as dreary as ever, and tuneless. This isn’t their fault, of course, it’s the carol they’re working with, but still, no.

But, based on their sound, the village school play imagery kind of suits TBLLT, so while it’s probably the least exciting track here, it’s still quite fitting. Which is odd.

Christmas Isn’t Christmas

This was the song that made me listen to this album in the first place. Which basically means I’d already decided that it was a brilliant song. It’s catchy as hell, and while not quite as in your face as Happy Christmas Baby, it’s still obviously a Christmas song in its arrangement, especially when the bells lead into the chorus.

It’s another lost-love-at-Christmas song, and although it’s been done, many times, many ways, TBLLT are still very effective in their imagery here. It’s almost like they tried writing another Happy Christmas Baby celebrating the wonders of the holiday, and then twisted everything around into saying how boring those wonders are when you can’t share them with someone special. It’s almost an anti-Christmas song, but there a deep yearning in the vocals that sound like he wants to enjoy the holiday but is also feeling lonely.

It also has the line “I’ll just have a pizza with a bit of holly stuck in it”, which I love. It’s just a brilliant image.

The Wassail Song

Here’s the second cover of a traditional Christmas song, and it’s certainly a lot more interesting than Little Donkey. It helps that The Wassail Song is a much more upbeat and catchy tune in the first place. But TBLLT build on it brilliantly, practically throwing every instrument they could get their hands on into the mix, and adding a choir (of course!). As such, the track is irresistibly fun, and enough to make you go a-wassailing.

Once you’ve looked up what wassailing is first, of course. It’s fallen out of the public consciousness a little.

Jingle My Bells

This track is awful. It’s really not clever in any way and feels like a way of padding out the album without covering more carols. There’s barely a tune here, and the lyrics are borderline schoolboy joking about mutual masturbation (“Jingle my bells and I’ll jingle yours” – really?). And it ends abruptly, having gone nowhere. A disappointment. I expect better than this.

George & Andrew

Yeah, like this. This is what I expect more of. George & Andrew is, without a doubt, my favourite track on the album. The title seems a bit unusual, until you figure out that the men of the title are George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley, better known collectively as Wham. Yes, this is a Christmas song about Wham. Not a cover of Last Christmas, but an original song about how George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley decide to meet up in a pub on Christmas Eve to catch up on old times. And it’s AMAZING.

Now, while this isn’t a cover of Last Christmas, the arrangement is certainly trying to make you think it is. It’s notable that this is the only song on the album that obviously uses a drum machine, and it’s one that sounds like a cheap version of Wham’s. The chord changes evoke the Wham song in every way possible without having to pay George Michael royalties. Even some of the little instrumental breaks sound like they’re about to slip into the instrumental breaks in Last Christmas.

But why Wham? It’s not clear. I get the feeling TBLLT were just listening to Last Christmas far too much when making the album and got into a discussion about whether or not the members ever get together at Christmas. And so, in this song, they do. They discuss the controversial song Shoot The Dog and whether George regrets going solo, while Andrew talks about joining in the campaign for real ale. It’s an utterly bizarre topic for a Christmas song, and yet…it works. It’s such a nice little song, and it really evokes the feeling of meeting up with an old friend for the first time in years.

A truly clever and sweet little song, and is easily worth the asking price for the album alone.

In The Bleak Midwinter

Another carol cover, only this time it’s instrumental. It’s led by accordion, and it quite calm and relaxing, albeit very sad at the same time. Oddly it captures the sound of bleak winter quite well. The arrangement is good, and it will just make you want to curl up with a mug of hot chocolate and watch the snow fall.

That’s if the snow was falling, of course. Right now it’s not. But never mind.

I Can’t Make It Snow

I wasn’t sure when this started, but as it started to build up I was won over. The arrangement is very Christmassy and, much like the last track, evokes the feeling of curling up somewhere warm while it’s freezing outside.

Lyrically, this is a very bittersweet song. The singer describes wanting to do a million things for his lover, but can’t do everything, in this case, wanting to make it snow to make Christmas perfect for them. I sense some kind of analogy in here somewhere, but it’s hard to spot it.

However, at the end there’s a whole load of random cymbals that kind of spoil the cutesy feel to the song. Largely unnecessary.

The First Snowflake

This is a sad, guitar-led ballad. The guitar parts are lovely, and very sad, but the vocal melody is less interesting unfortunately. As a result, the song does threaten to get a little dull as it moves along, as the arrangement initially does little to progress the song. It feels very wintery, but a bit slow.

And then the bridge comes in. Wow. They could have made that bridge the entire song, it’s so beautiful. The arrangement just leaps out and it ends up sounding like someone watching a snowstorm at night. It could be the soundtrack to some heartfelt Christmas movie. It’s a brilliant end to the album.

Verdict

Overall, the album is quite good. It’s not amazing, and much of it is filler, and considering the album’s short length (it only amounts to roughly half an hour) it may have been better do an EP with a few songs on instead of a full album.

But that said, it’s good to see bands doing albums of original Christmas music. Far too often modern musicians like to release covers of existing Christmas songs. KT Tunstall did this a few years back, with a Christmas EP that was entirely covers, and it was a little disappointed. So to see The Boy Least Likely To apply their unique style to Christmas, it’s refreshing, and it’s enjoyable.

The best tracks are easily George & Andrew, Christmas Isn’t Christmas, Happy Christmas Baby and The First Snowflake, and the worst are Little Donkey and Jingle My Bells, which could have been dropped without any effect to the album as a whole.

It’s worth picking up if you want some cutesy original Christmas songs with a mixture of childlike wonder and sad nostalgia, but if you’re allergic to xylophones you might want to stay away.

The Perils Of NaNoWriMo

So, I’m participating in NaNoWriMo. Well, unofficially anyway. I’m not joining any sites associated with the idea or anything, and I’ve modified word counts to suit myself, but ultimately, I’m still using the challenge to get the novel I’ve wanted to write for a while written.

For those who have no idea what I’m talking about, NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month. The “National” bit is a bit of misnomer these days, since it’s become a little more international. Hell, the fact I’m doing it shows it’s international. The thing’s American, and I am not.

And of course, the point is to produce a novel by the end of November. Which sounds daunting, until you break it down as I have. First of all, who says you need to have a complete publishable novel by the end of the month? After all, writing a proper novel involves writing multiple drafts and editing constantly until it resembles something genuinely good. So I narrowed this down to writing a first draft by the end of the month. This means all I need to do is write 50,000 words by the end of the month.

Still sounds daunting? Well, OK, let’s divide that by 30. Oh, that gives 1667 words a day. Now I’m fussy, I like round numbers or nothing. So 1500 words a day it is. OK, this means my overall word count becomes 45,000, but this is merely a minimum. I could still hit 50,000 by the end of this. Who knows what might happen?

The reason I broke this down was to make it less daunting. 1500 words a day isn’t actually a lot. My Sven vs. The Movies reviews are between 500 and 1000 words (with Star Wars being an exception due to it being 3 films), and I can write those reasonably quickly, so why can’t I do that for a novel?

And it’s worked so far. I’m very much on target at this point, to the point where I feel like taking a break from it today and doing a bit of work on other things that have been neglected. In trying to work the novel around my job, I’ve found I’ve had less time for the movies for Sven vs. The Movies, or I’ve let my Youtube LPs slip even more than usual. But I have the next two days off, so I can easily catch up.

But I’m amazed at some other people’s methods of taking on this challenge. I encountered a Twitter of a guy who was pushing to write the full 50,000 words by the end of this week, to which I ask “why?” Surely the whole point of the exercise is to get a draft done in one month, then edit it and tweak it later? Or am I the one missing the point here? There are also people bemoaning their “poor” word counts so far of something like 20,000. It’s only the first week of four! What the hell? I’ve only reached just shy of 11,000, and I’m proud of that.

I suppose it’s just interesting to see how people take on this challenge, and how differently people try and push themselves to do it. I take the slow and steady “breaking it down” route, and then edit it later; others want to blitz it in as little time as possible.

So is anyone reading this participating in NaNoWriMo? How do you go about tackling this challenge? Let me know in the comments!