This week, the UK chart changed forever. Watching a YouTube video will now count towards a chart position. No seriously, it's true - here's Dua Lipa explaining all about it.
With this in mind, I can now announce the brand new top ten UK singles:
1. James Corden
2. A cat falling off the edge of the world
3. Damp memes (like dank memes but wetter)
4. More James Corden
5. A dog playing Fifa 18
6. A 76 minute video of someone unboxing a Pot Noodle
7. Jimmy Carr laughing like an unoiled trampoline
8. Donald Tru--- oh actually it's James Corden
9. Logan Paul videoing his knee for a full weekend
I once made a blue-tac sculpture of Fatboy Slim. At least, I think it was blue-tac. I found it on the floor.
I don't think Fatboy Slim would have been impressed with my sculpture. The embedded fag ends and dead spiders made it pretty horrible to look at. And also it was fifty foot tall, and I think it would have made the real Fatboy jealous of the fake Fatboy.
Sometimes it's best to leave the original thing alone. The world would be a lot better with one American Pie, one version of the Sugababes, just one of the Jedwards. As it is, people insist on trying to "improve" things until everything that is "good" falls into a "burning pit of sadness".
In an entirely unconnected note, here's a remix of one of my short stories. AHEM. A while back, I wrote a tale called Hey Hey Hey Hey Hey Hey Hey Hey about a person pressing a button in a factory. This is a mocking blog post, but I couldn't be more pleased with this stellar work by Rickerly and David Hartley for The Hillside Curation. Seriously, it's damn good - more literature should be like this (assuming you can call my stream-of-consciousness "literature"). It kind of made me whoop with delight. Check out the Jack Nicholls and Ada Hoffmann pieces too.
The episodes are all named after a cluster of streets from the curators' home town. One day, I will build a blue-tac sculpture for every street. One day.
Doctor Adamski's Musical Pharmacy was the 1990 debut album from Adam 'Adamski' Tinley. (Not an actual pharmacist.) I seem to remember Smash Hits calling him a keyboard wizard. (Not an actual wizard.)
I first got into Adamski when he released the fizzy NRG, a Lucozade burst of squelchy rave. So when he got to the top of the charts with Killer, a tune I was obsessed with, it seemed the keyboard wizard was working his wand overtime. Wait. Not an actual wizard. I keep forgetting.
Doctor Adamski's Musical Pharmacy was the first big rave album I owned, but it was before folks like Orbital and the Prodigy showed us how excel at making dance music albums. I wanted a sweaty club experience but the clubbier elements were squeezed out by what felt like extended jokes. Tinley doing an Elvis impression. Reciting the alphabet ("E is for electro, and that's quite serious"). Adam's strained punk singing.
Then again... Listen to the choppy bassline of Eighth House. The Detroity surf of Squiggy Groove. There's a whole heap of rave sensibility still in there, and the naive sound of his bedroom keyboard set-up is utterly charming. Despite its flaws, I was fond of the album and the 17-year-old me played it loads.
The Pharmacy shut up shop pretty quickly. The album only spent five weeks in the charts, compared to, say, 25 weeks that year by fellow chart-toppers Snap. It doesn't even have any reviews on Discogs. Adamski has been active this century as Adam Sky, plonking out sparky house music and dirty punk electro. Forever the keyboard wizard - just not necessarily remembered as a pharmacist.
Someone playing Take On Me.
Kid to dad: "This is such an obscure tune."
Dad to kid: "Obscure? It got to number one!"
Me: holds tongue.
Me: holds tongue.
Me: holds ton-- "Actually, it only got to number TWO."
Yes, this happened. I really shouldn't be allowed out in public.
To be fair, the dad was then joyfully forced to hear me launch into my favourite bit of pop trivia, which is this: The act beginning with A that had a UK number one hit with Take On Me was, in fact, the boy band A1 in 2000, and not, as you'd think, A-ha in 1985.
How's that for a bit of slightly depressing pub quiz trivia? It's such a poor cover version as well.
To be honest, I think he stopped listening at "actually".
I did a theatre show. I did a big thing on a stage and, amazingly, people came.
After two Edinburgh Fringe shows and a stack of spoken word / comedy performances, it was great to expand my own brand of cartoon stupidity to a larger stage. My third show Seven Inch was a surreal and silly story about a failed record shop, which happened to be a 3D cartoon. The four performances, commissioned by The Lowry, were part of their Week 53 festival for the creatively curious.
What an absolute joy it was. 160 people on the opening night, a five star review, and a riotous closing performance on Friday in which I lost my temper at the audience. All acting of course - in real life, I have the temper of a ketamined sloth on holiday.
It was also a fantastically rewarding experience to collaborate with proper clever theatre people, especially stage manager Mark Croasdale who, I suspect, is an actual angel. Next time I meet him, I'll check for wings.
I'm not quite sure I can process how big of an experience this was just yet. I'm writing this in bed by yapping into my phone. Maybe I just need some sleep, and to get my blogging and social life back. A touch of normality, and some space to reflect.
Then what? It would be great to go on tour with my little record shop show. For now, though... to bed.
What's Fat Roland up to? Where is he hiding? Why is he wearing that tutu?
I've been up to lots of things, reader. Here's a bit of an update. I'm aware I've been too busy to blog about music (catch my Twitter feed if you want to hear more from me, or read my column in Electronic Sound), so I'll pepper this news with Vague Music Thoughts (VMTs).
I've mostly been prepping for my show at The Lowry, which is fast approaching so you'd best bag tickets quickly. I've added a couple of extra dates, so you've no excuse to miss it. Unless you're a million miles away. Or in another dimension. Or a dog and therefore have no concept of theatre shows. Here's me in my performance space...
VMT: The Prodigy's Music For A Jilted Generation is a cracking album. I know the one after that got all the plaudits and number one singles, but cor, it's a belter.
I compered a scratch show at Waterside in Sale, in which thesps try out new ideas on a crowd. Nights like this are always wonderfully messy, and if compered right, a real joy for the audience. Plenty of new faces too at Bad Language - packed as usual, with the brilliant Deanna Rodger headlining.
VMT: Boards of Canada's Music Has The Right To Children turned 20 this month. One of those albums I remember hearing for the first time. Those detuned chords. So good.
I popped to the Lake District to perform at Verbalise. Lovely crowd, and I spent some time scuttling through the Serpentine woods looking for adventures. I found a massive caterpillar so I ran away.
VMT: Have a listen to Jon Hopkins' new stuff. Emerald Rush is all dirty and squishy and uplifting. I'll embed it below.
Finally, I have a track on a compilation album. There's a robot-themed CD with the latest Electronic Sound, and you can find my Hounds of Hulme track Rise Of The Dead Robots alongside Devo, Meat Beat Manifesto and John Foxx. This is quite a big thing, really, so I should have led with this. Ah well. Too late now. Have some Jon Hopkins...
How the heck do you write a theatre show? I've come up with an amazing hack. Here's how to write a one-person theatre production instantly, with as little effort as possible.
Ahem.
This is a roundabout way of saying my two-date Week 53 festival run at The Lowry is now a four date run. Pilter some lovely new Fat Roland: Seven Inch tickets here.
We all know Eric Morecambe was a special talent, and his partnership with Ernie Wise is pretty much universally acclaimed. The glasses waggle. The stripper song at breakfast. The speeding 'ice cream van'. All the right notes, not necessarily in the right order.
But when analysing the depth of someone's performance skill, I don't think the big routines are enough. As with Les Dawson's tiny glances off camera, Morecambe made the best of his talent in the small stuff.
Take his paper bag routine, as seen in this video. Skip past the David Frost stuff and watch Morecambe and Wise on stage in Croydon.
Eric's laughing at Ernie's song. Some ad-libbing about Eric's wig. Earnest carries on in, er, earnest as Eric gets out the paper bag. The audience is laughing because they've seen it before. It's a signature Eric prop. Eric begins to catch the imaginary ball, as the ever-straight Ernie presses on with the "singing, folks".
Then comes the twist: Ernie grabs the bag, and of course, he fails to replicate the trick. And then a lovely bit of audience interaction which gifts Ernie the funniest set-up line of the routine, where the bag itself becomes a pun.
But hold on. Rewind. We've skipped my favourite bit. It's a part of the routine that lasts ten whole seconds, but you wouldn't notice it because the Sooty line distracted you.
After Eric laughs at the Sooty line, he decides to get out his trusty paper bag. He's half-ignoring his partner as his attention wanders. The paper bag will liven things up, he thinks. Eric then reaches into the wrong pocket. Eric then reaches into the wrong pocket.
Morecambe knows exactly which pocket the paper bag is in - watch him retrieve it with ease back in the Frost studio. Yet he has the confidence to bumble clumsily for the bag while the routine picks up pace. This is the same Eric who trips over nothing, who flinches at imaginary goosings, who second-guesses everything for that extra laugh. It's the same Eric who asks Ernie to move along the sofa, then sits on the chair instead. An inexhaustible supply of sleights.
His deliberate mistake elevates his performance into something that's deeper than the big-hitting gags and comedic face slaps. Every time I watch that routine, I'm so grateful for the moment of Cooper-esque humanity. If Eric can make an error, albeit very small, then I'm okay too.
Except it's not an error. It's pure professional dexterity that keeps the audience hooked. All performers can learn from this. What extra can you do between the things that are there to be noticed? What can add a pleasing ripple as we go from A to B?
