Tim Key

Mr Key first came to my attention on Charlie Brooker’s Screen Wipe a couple of years ago, and his hilarious poetry, which on Wikipedia is referred to as ‘deliberately bad’, was refreshing in a market so full of repetitive, observational mainstream acts. Then the short run of the BBC sketch comedy Cowards showcased Key and three other young comics. Most of the show was excellent, and a welcome contrast to the beast that sketch comedy has become, with its otherwise universal reliance on poor impersonations of celebrities to get laughs (see Katy Brand and even, dare I say it, Harry and Paul). Most recently Key has been a much more visible personality, taking the role of question master in BBC4’s We Need Answers, as well as appearing on News Wipe from time to time.

Key’s latest one-man show, which happens to be called The Slutcracker, had a sell-out run at the Soho Theatre in London, and I managed to catch it one evening. Key’s style is not stand up in the traditional sense. There are no jokes, but there are definite punch lines. It’s almost performance art, but with an introspective and self-mocking tone that makes the excessive pretentions seem delightfully silly and very, very funny. Key reads his poems from small notebooks stuffed into the various pockets of his ill-fitting suit, and he uses a conductor’s baton to direct the audio and video elements that punctuate the five or so parts into which the hour long performance is divided. Poems are interspersed with almost stream of consciousness musings, coupled with occasional laddish outbursts that jar intentionally with the rest of his act. Keep an eye on Key, and see him live if you can. He lacks the kind of manner that is gradually turning fellow Cambridge graduate David Mitchell into a staple of the living room, but he is one of the most inventive comedy performers on the circuit today.

Ramona

Having not been to a gig for a while (I saw half of a Propagandhi gig in Sheffield last summer before a fire alarm cut it short) I was fairly excited to shake the cobwebs off my eardrums again. And the Portland Arms in Cambridge was the venue to help me with that task. Before talking about the band, I’d like to praise the venue itself. It is basically a pub, but with a small backroom for gigs. I’ve been to tons of tiny venues in the past, and in terms of atmosphere, and more importantly sound quality, this was one of the best. Every element of the groups on stage was evenly balanced, and even the vocals were not totally eclipsed in the miniature listening environment.

Now Ramona is a band at the beginning of its journey, and you could tell that each member was still in the process of finding their own place in the musical machine. Old pop punk is the driving influence here, and the ghost of Blondie floats over them. Lead singer Karen Anne has an impressive natural presence on the stage, holding herself somewhere between nonchalant cool and energetic emotion at all times, but never being overtaken by either. Her vocal is clean and flawlessly executed in technical terms. Lyrically the songs dwell on the typical teenage topics, though there are flashes of more adult themes that transcend the occasionally angsty but generally up-beat tunes.

Guitar, drums, bass and keys/synths complete the Ramona line-up. There are actually distinct personalities that define each band member, though like Karen Anne there is no overriding/distracting level of showmanship to detract from what is an assured group performance. It will be interesting to see how the band develops, and whether their sound will change over time. I believe an album is in the works at the moment, though you can check out good old Myspace for some previews.

Instead of attempting a straight telling of Lewis Carroll's tale, Burton's version of Alice mashes-up elements from both the original book and its sequel Through The Looking-Glass, which in itself isn't that much different from many of the previous film adaptations of Carroll's writings, on top of this however is a new framing plot-line where Alice is now a young adult, having forgot her previous adventures other than in recurring dreams, and is now having to deal with real world problems such as the etiquette of social engagements and unwanted proposals of marriage. Once again she follows the nervy and elusive White Rabbit away from all this and finds herself in Wonderland, or as it's now called 'Underland' whose numerous fantastical denizens hope that she will be able to deliver them from the tyrannical reign of the Red Queen, but before she can she has to remember her previous encounters with them and rediscover her sense of self, or as the Mad Hatter puts it her 'muchness'. That rather convoluted description of the plot highlights the main problem with this adaptation in that it overcomplicates the original story to the extent where much of the fun is sucked out of it. While the original story is essentially just a collection of vignettes strung together, it was charming, compelling and coherent despite this, and other film adaptations have managed to convert this structure with entertaining results, such as in Hayao Miyazaki's Alice-homage Spirited Away, however this version just feels like it is going through the motions to cover all the 'greatest hits' as Alice is forced to in turn meet all the famous characters and have the same expositional discussions with each. Additionally, the turning of Wonderland into the dark, war-ravaged place known as Underland is a major mistake as it means that Burton even has to hold back on his stylistic touches in order to render the place suitably desolate. While it's clear that a lot of money has been thrown at the film to create moments of 3D spectacle – objects are frequently thrown at the screen in order to make the audience feel like they've got their money's worth – it's a shame that the money couldn't have been spent on giving the script extra dimensions instead.

The two central performances are rather problematic as well. Mia Wasikowska makes for a pretty Alice but she doesn't have much presence, remaining quiet and girlish even after Alice rediscovers her muchness, whereas Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter is simply irritating. It was perhaps a bad idea to bump up his character from supporting role to major star anyway as the dark back-story that has been created to do so doesn't sit well with the comedic moments created by his lunatic antics. Added to this is Depp's decision to portray the character as a jumble of comedic accents and tics, which serves as a reminder of how his Jack Sparrow was incredibly fun in the first Pirates of the Caribbean but got subsequently less so with each further film in the series.

However, there are still many parts where the film gets it right. The supporting cast, mostly comprised of familiar British faces, are generally excellent, with Stephen Fry's Cheshire Cat standing out in particular as an always amusing mix of sophistication and mischievousness. The portrayals of the Red and White Queens are also rather inspired. Most reviews have pointed out that Helena Bonham Carter is essentially channelling Miranda Richardson's Queenie from Blackadder II as the Red Queen and Anne Hathaway's serene White Queen was inspired by Domestic Goddess Nigella Lawson (although Lawson never made quite so many gracefully elaborate gesticulations with her arms) and the contrast between Carter's spoilt-child and Hathaway's caring maternal figure is delightful. Whenever Burton is presented with the opportunity to show the more vibrant side of Wonderland the film becomes much more entertaining, such as the ostentatious palace of the Red Queen, with her royal court comprised of amusingly out of place anthropomorphic animals such as frogs, fish and pigs. It's just a shame that these moments are so few and far between.

Simply put this is the Diet Coke version of the story, a pleasant, but artificial and unsubstantial take on an old classic. While there are worse ways to spend an evening at the cinema it feels like a missed opportunity. There are already better versions of the tale on film – even Disney's previous version – which are more worthy of your time than this, as is a re-read of Carroll's still amusing and enchanting books.

The crisis did give Joan a chance to shine (not that she doesn’t do so generally – she still looked stunning after sleeping on the couch waiting for her useless, and drunken, fiancé to come home). Despite it being her last day, and her feeling rather emotional about both this and her fiancé's utter failure in his career, she leapt into action, getting the hysterical Lois out of the way, stopping Guy's bleeding and spending the last few hours of her time at Sterling-Cooper in a hospital waiting room, although Guy eventually had his foot amputated, she did manage to save his life.

Don meanwhile had managed to miss most of the drama by skipping out on the 'fete' (as Guy pretentiously insisted on calling Joan's leaving party) to attend a surprise meeting at the Waldorf-Astoria. It turned out that Connie, the old man that Don met when he last hid from another work-party – Roger and Jane's spectacularly racist affair from episode three – was hotel magnate Conrad Hilton. Hilton pretty much got Don to consult on an advert for free, before making cryptic comments about what he could offer Don and moaning about the inconvenience about being put on the cover of Time magazine – now he wouldn't be able to anonymously hang out in country club bars as everybody would what he looked like and, even worse, in the photo he looked like 'an A-rab' (when actually, what he looked like was the spitting image of John Waters). During the meeting Don got a call from the office about the mini-tractor incident and raced off to the hospital, where he managed to have a tender farewell chat with Joan, and a share a Dr Pepper with the clearly relieved Lane.

In an odd way, everything turned out for the best – in addition to this being the last we'll see of Guy, as the injury means he'll never play golf again, apparently an essential skill in the advertising industry, Lane won't be shipped off to Bombay, Roger Sterling won't be pushed out of his company, even if nobody's entirely sure what he does anymore, and the staff of Sterling-Cooper got their independence day holiday after all what with Lane closing the office 'out of respect'. And all it cost them was a new carpet, an office wall and a dry-cleaning bill for Kinsey and Crane after they were squirted, quite spectacularly, with blood.

Elsewhere in the episode, Betty’s parenting skills continued to be incredibly lacklustre. With baby Gene to dote over Sally and Bobby don't interest her any more– she didn't even bother to tell them to watch TV this episode, instead settling for the much more sarcastic ‘Go bang your head against a wall’. To be fair her attempt to win Sally over by bribing her with a Jackie Kennedy-styled Barbie doll was sweet (albeit short as Betty isn't the type to have heart-to-heart talks with anyone), but then she undid all the good she had done there by merely responding to Sally’s night terror with an exasperated ‘I have no words’ before storming off to dote on baby Gene some more. So it was up to Don to come to the rescue. Considering the way he behaves in the workplace – and the numerous hotel rooms that he hooks up with other women in – it's still strange to see him act as the caring family man. But he's proved to be good at it, even though he was admittedly the one who caused Sally's screaming fit in the first place by bringing the slightly creepy Barbie back into her room after she had thrown it out of the window. Although his first plan, to get Betty to agree to change baby Gene's name didn't work, as she continues to childishly cling to that name as if it actually brings her beloved dad back from the dead, he managed to bring some sort of peace to the situation by taking the time to sit down with Sally, explain away her fears and properly introduce her to her new baby brother. And, with that scene nicely accompanied by a Bob Dylan song, that was the end of the possibly the best episode so far of Mad Men season three, what did you all think of it?

The 1986 movie has added topicality for me as it was this month three years ago that I attempted to replicate the Withnail & I experience by travelling to the Lake District with a friend and fellow fan named Neil (‘Withneil’, ahem) to spend a wintry weekend in a cottage in the middle of nowhere. It was an idea which, while seeming inspired and exciting at first, led from booze-fuelled fun to horrible disaster.

To synopsise for the short-memoried or rare unacquainted, the film tells the story of Withnail and Marwood (the eponymous ‘I’ identified by name only in the screenplay, played by Paul McGann): two struggling and strung-out actors who resolve to escape the substance abuse and squalor of their 1969 Camden flat by retreating to the remote Cumbrian cottage owned by Withnail’s Uncle Monty, a melodramatic fat gaylord who only relinquishes the keys after Withnail deviously explains that Marwood is an active and available homosexual. Of course, the holiday doesn’t go to plan: the weather is worst than in London, the cottage desolate and dilapidated with no heating or electricity, there’s no food and the locals are hostile. The unannounced arrival of Monty is both blessing and curse – he brings food and money, but is also intent on buggering a certain someone “even if it must be burglary”.

It was precisely this unconventional bare plot, fleshed out with dark humour and masterful ever-quotable dialogue, with which the film mocked its modest box office returns by attaining cult classic status, particularly among the nation’s students whose own boozy yet penurious lifestyles closely resembled the main characters’.

Despite the determination of my friend and I to stay as true to the movie as possible, regrettably we had to do without the Uncle Monty figure, as well as crossing off the more unsavoury acts like downing lighter-fluid, strangling a chicken or smearing our entire bodies with Deep Heat. Character-wise, however, we were both quite accurate: Neil being a tall, slightly unhinged amateur actor and alcoholic, and I being his shorter, wiser sidekick in thrall to his mischief despite efforts to be the ‘voice of reason’.

So, step one in transposing the Withnail & I experience to the 21st century: rather than suffer a six-hour drive in a spluttering rustbucket and risk incarceration for drink-driving, Withneil and I take the speedier yet serene alternative of a Virgin train. No traffic, stress or arguments – that was all to come later.

Amazingly, the mid-Feb dates had rewarded us with the best possible weather for the time of year: cold but cloudless skies with brilliant wintry sunshine. Even the gods were making sure what was supposed to be a dismal rain-soaked weekend wouldn’t go to plan, but then wasn’t the whole point of the scripted weekend that it doesn’t go to plan?

We arrive at our holiday abode in a sleepy village called Coniston, just outside Windermere. Whereas our hapless fictional counterparts turn up at a dark, dank hovel, the cottage we’ve rented turns out to be a picture of character and comfort, complete with log fire, exposed beams and antique furniture (disappointingly, no travel agent could find us a dwelling akin to the shithole in the movie). We dump our stuff and hit the pub.

No rain means not having to tie carrier-bags around our shoes and just a short pavement stroll to the first of the village’s three taverns, of which we weren’t expecting so many. We follow the manual: two large gins and two pints of cider – ice in the cider – but choose to leave out the bit about getting into a fight with a fierce Irishman. Nevertheless, we resolve that should we find ourselves in any kind of bar confrontation, Neil would follow Withnail’s ruse of whimpering that his wife is having a baby.

Fortunately for us (and the locals) the pubs are quiet, keeping with the movie’s out-of-season break, only a couple of villagers and ramblers noiselessly sipping their pints. Irrelevant if you’re alcoholics – indeed Withnail and Marwood are content to sit drinking in a ghostpub until closing – but for us, after sinking a couple in each pub we’re now sitting half-cocked in the third and feeling a bit twitchy. We enquire if there’s anywhere with a pool table or dartboard, slipping in that “we’ve gone on holiday by mistake”, and to our delight we’re directed to a local Royal British Legion club with both.

With entertainment secured, we return to boozing with renewed vigour, perhaps a bit too vigorously as after three large scotches we are fairly pickled. It’s worth mentioning as an aside here that if you were to partake in the infamous Withail & I drinking game, in which participants must match Withnail drink-for-drink, you’d be facing a liver-wringing 13 scotches, 10 glasses of wine, 6 sherries, 3 gins, a pint of cider, half an ale and a mouthful of lighter-fluid.

Back at the club I’m facing my first piece of excitement after being challenged to a game of pool by a man with one leg, who whizzes around the table on a wheelchair, but the tightly-contested game ends on a sour note when I fluff the final black, he accuses me of deliberately missing then wheels off in a huff. Sheesh, can’t-win scenario or what? We decide to pop over to the local tea-room before it closes to drunkenly order “the finest cakes and wine known to humanity” but are met with a blank look from the waitress, who checks the specials board to see if she’s overlooked something.

Disappointed, we head back to the second pub which is suddenly busy with locals despite the efforts of the world’s worst pub entertainer, named ‘Wayne O’Neil’, whose appalling karaoke act leaves us teetering open-mouthed at the bar. We choose to call it a night when the one-legged man turns up. It hits home during our dejected trudge back to the cottage that attempting to emulate a Withnail & I weekend of just drinking and wandering around aimlessly is actually a bit rubbish.

So, despite waking the next morning with the kind of hangovers that lighter-fluid drinkers must suffer (Withnail: “feels like a pig shat in my head”), we resolve to do something constructive with our weekend, something our counterparts would not even have contemplated. So we hire a pair of bikes and cycle down to Coniston Water – the Lake District’s 3rd largest lake – where exactly 40 years previously one Donald Campbell attempted to beat his existing world water-speed record before spectacularly crashing and dying. We elect to instead break the record for slowest water speed, hiring out a Canadian canoe for the job.

After passing out prematurely the previous night it’s still pretty early when we glide into the empty lake, no life stirring but ducks and swans, and no sound except our arrhythmic oar splashes, making it quite a surreal hangover experience. It doesn’t last long though because you have to share a Canadian canoe, paddling on opposite sides, and our lack of synchronicity has us erratically weaving around and somehow running aground at the lake’s far edge.

We abandon boat and spend the rest of the day walking off our stupors around the nearby Furness Fells, an area of natural mountainous splendour very similar to the Haweswater spot in which Withnail delivers his desperate cry of “I’m going to be a star!” to the echoing valley after another fruitless phonecall to his agent. With over 200 peaks around the lakes, comprising England’s highest mountains and Scafell Pike, its highest, the sheer uninterrupted scale and space of the Lake District is unlike anywhere else in the country, and as Bill Bryson declared in his book on Britain: “…away from Bowness, Hawkshead and Keswick, with their tea-rooms, teapots and Beatrix Potter shit – it retains pockets of sheer perfection.” It’s a shame that Withnail and Marwood fail to embrace this, zipping themselves into the pocket of the local pub and only absorbing the scenery on their traipse back to the cottage.

Back at our lodge we establish its only shortcoming as its non-provision of towels, and of course we haven’t brought any and the village doesn’t have an M&S so we’re forced to share two tea-towels at bath time. Buoyed by the day’s head-clearing activites though, we attempt a hair of the dog at our local but abandon the idea after the déjà vu discomfort of sitting with exactly the same bored punters as the evening before. London social conditioning can really mess with your head.

The next and final day is when things go hideously wrong, despite an auspicious start in which we hire an off-road 4x4 jeep to explore the nearby Grizedale Forest and precipitous areas beyond, negotiating narrow scree-strewn trails which would tip the jeep sideways into arse-clenching angles. It’s the buzz from this off-road expedition that clouds our judgment in deciding exactly how we’d spend our final afternoon, resulting in a grave error which nearly terminates the pair of us.

However as it’s a story within itself and I’ve presently reached the upper limit of my wordcount I’ll have to make it a separate post, one that ends with Neil and I parting ways back in London with the same poignancy in which Withnail and Marwood finally part, knowing that despite their pissed-up jollies they can never return to the final circumstances they found themselves in.

Gil Scott-Heron, arguably the most influential poet to come out of America in the last fifty years, the master chronicler of American mistrust and arch social provocateur, has released his first album since 1996’s Spirits and twenty-eight years after his last release for Arista Records, Moving Targets. The great pioneer of socially conscious soul and rap has emerged from this extended hiatus, part spent incarcerated on Riker’s Island for cocaine possession, with the searingly brilliant I’m New Here and, if he has taken a step away from the acid-jazz and soul that made him famous a quarter of a century ago, placing him among yet detached from the pantheon of great soul revolutionaries of the era, including Curtis Mayfield, Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder, a new rawness acquired with age makes this album a match for anything that he released at his zenith.

It is an album so sparse, so rare and desolate, set against the simplest electronic and acoustic canvas, that it exploits every nuance and shade of Scott-Heron’s ravaged vocals to the most magnificent, hypnotic effect. Me and the Devil is a cover of Robert Johnson’s blues classic remolded with a dark electronic undercurrent; Bobby Bland’s ambiguous blues appeal, I’ll Take Care of You, is rendered dense with hope and heartache, positively bending under the weight of love’s ambition, impelled by a steady bass drum and lingering beautifully over measured piano chords; Where Did the Night Go is a short, sharp burst of ambient darkness tracing the singer’s unresolved relationship with his own existence and ideologies; while The Crutch mines the similar territory with stripped back and powerful effect. Throughout Scott-Heron displays the most captivating, free-flowing and soulful curiosity and the effect is mesmeric.

I’m New Here is an album that advances Scott-Heron’s reputation as an outstanding poet but one that simultaneously strips away and demystifies all that made him such a powerful revolutionary force in the first place. No one more than the man himself is as acutely aware that his legacy means little across the time that has elapsed and the changes that have occurred in his absence and from this modest, introspective foundation a new, more meditative artist has emerged. It is a hugely charismatic album, soaked in a lifetime’s experience and wisdom; it is bold, beguiling and triumphantly fashioned. I’m New Here might just come to be the album that defines this mighty artist’s career.

As the first words of the The Book of Right On fell out of this beautiful thing, cradling a ginormous harp and as everyone else in the room grimaced at her "squeeky" voice, It was then that I pretty much fell in love with the girl who "killed her dinner with karate".

Loving Joanna Newsom can be an alienating experience as some of you may know. In the same way that being a  fan of Tom Waits or Daniel Johnston or of Randy Newman or even Kate Bush can be. Though my Mum still maintains that she sounds like a drunk Lisa Simpson it is, never the less, a brilliantly perverse feeling, putting on Ys (Newsom's second LP) for people and watching their face twist; sometimes even in wonder.

Good news fluttered on to the inter web this week then. Newsom's eagerly awaited third record entitled Have One On Me will drop on the 23rd of Feb. Based on her recent live performances in Australia the record seemed to sit nestled, sound wise, between her punchy hook filled debut The Milk Eyed Mender and epic 5 song Ys (strung by the most excellent Beach Boy's maestro Van Dyke Parks).

That was until very recent reports from a magazine who's name I shall not mention, claim Have One On Me is in fact a triple LP. A triple.

After her debut cemented a devoted fan base, Ys garnered many critics praise and more fans for its unconventional instrumentation, voice and language it could only be speculated what the young songstress would come up with to top it. With the shortest track on the record being just shy of 8 minutes it certainly took some time to get your hooks into but after it did it was the epitome of of what people mean when they say "grower".

Can she do it again?

Expect songs about bears and rivers, birds and seas and (if the rumors are true) times all of it by three.

Outrageously, SuBo, Take That and Beyonce have all been snubbed..How can SuBo - who had the biggest selling album in the UK and US last year - not be nominated for Best Female?'

Despite scoring the biggest selling album of 2009 in the UK, moving 1.6 million units of 'I Dreamed A Dream', Boyle did not get any nominations. The Syco/Sony Music Artist will not have a presence at the ceremony, organized by UK trade body the BPI.

JLS' Marvin Humes told Billboard Biz that '2009 was an amazing year for us, hopefully it's going to continue in 2010'.

The Daily Mail had a list of the acts expected to perform at the Earls Court ceremony on February 16th, including Robbie Williams, Kasabian, Lady GaGa and Florence + The Machine who will be performing alongside Dizzee Rascal.

And while most categories seem too close to call, the Guardian have already started predicting which moment in the award cermonys colourful history will be voted the best performance by industry executives...'whether Jarvis Cocker's bottom-baring during Michael Jackson's Earth Song could win it for late prince of pop remains to be seen'.

What do you think of this year's BRIT nominations? What do you think of SuBo, Beyonce et al being left off the list?

What the film does have going for it, apart from its zeitgeist-tapping quality, is that it is a very strongly made example of this genre. Casting George Clooney as Ryan was an excellent decision as his good looks and easy charm makes an essentially blank character interesting, it's also oddly delightful to see him dance as badly as he does in this film. The cast are strong all round - including the non-professional actors who draw on their own experiences of recent unemployment in the firing scenes - however, the real star of the film is Anna Kendrick as Ryan’s young rival/protégé Natalie. Her character, being so much broader than any other in the film, might seem out of place but her sweet and exuberant presence does brighten proceedings considerably. Up in the Air does also raise an interesting point about the spirit of individuality so ingrained in the USA’s make-up, and the contrary effect this has had of producing uniform corporate environments that render every town and city the same. And, most importantly, instead of just hammering home these points to make an impact, for much of its running time it manages to be fairly witty and playful too.