Grain Trade Pegs

Even Before They Begin

Grain Trade Pegs

Prognosis Records PRA-158739

This final ‘chapter’ in the Single Currency trilogy approaches concept album theatrics just like the marketing–friendly publishing phenomenon of those overblown fantasy–novel sagas which influenced its origination five years ago. Grain Trade Pegs have not outdone themselves here, or done their pop career any favours - failing to commit like a kamikaze veteran. In a musical medium where common sense is as rare as rocking–horse shit, this album boasts gibberish lyrics, about proverbial goodness knows what, in such a freeform hypocrisy against visionary composition that deciphering meaning of any sort is problematic at best, an inducer of apocalyptic headaches at worst. 

New drummer Fatality Conundrum (formerly with Postcode War Zone, and Ultimate Restorative), brings her veritable cacophony of electronic percussion to a rock ‘n’ roll rhythm section that’s driven to distraction by nuke powerhouse bass guitarist Johnny Parallax (once upon a time acerbic front-man of Glasgow’s legendary ecto-punk outfit Indomitable Sprites), new champion of the indefinite riff and zinger of the lost chord. Lead guitarist and singer Roxbelle Dozer (whose twin sister Roxbeth, former guitarist with Blingdom Cum, owns Prognosis Records), is ably supported by keyboard player/ backing vocalist Goldie Commencement, maestro of hairy monster piano and bastard accordion, onetime Alternative Eurovision winner for composing the world’s greatest piano dirge, a noise later used as the theme tune for short–lived TV series Uruguay’s Got Talent.

 

Even Before They Begin is a Faustian compendium of broken promises, and reneged upon pacts, almost as ethically dubious as serving curdled milk to pre-schoolers. Ground breaking as the proverbial pneumatic drill, first cut Reassuring Architecture is made of ore sum. Apostle Logic results in spreadsheet evangelism of mercenary preachers, highly reminiscent of the mostly agnostic band’s earlier antireligious material Still In Transit or Dog Almighty. A sporty cover version of Reckless But Pretty’s millennial #1 hit, Twizzlestick Delights marks a departure for the ’Pegs, going against the grain, so to speak, in more ways than one. Languid humour is not their usual musical mode, but here they trade-up from morbidity to mirth with a tremendous skill.

Airmail Viva Java is lyrical waffle; a companion piece to Maladroit Intellectual from the ’Pegs first Single Currency album - the much reviled Merely Beloved. There’s not a lot to be said in favour of salty tongue-twisting bayou jive in Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda, Rudder Judder Shudder, but energised pomp of Shot For Mooting offers a cautionary tale cataloguing the dangers of presenting legal problems in kangaroo courts. Raised By Wolverhamptons, could not possibly be any worse than it is, I suppose, but that’s hardly the point, really. It’s Easy To See Why lambastes any simple-minded reviewers who frequently assert their opinions as if such individual viewpoints are the only way to interpret a work, critically.

Venerable Forecast, Terrible Whispers contrasts markedly with Commodity Hugs & Thumb Sucking in the pandemonium stakes, much like the ’Pegs own alternative jazz foray, Vituperative Extracts. A firm favourite here is Dreaming Up, Dreaming Down - a gem of delinquent whimsy about the “fantasy of nosebleeds” and “myths of obesity,” which parallels this band’s all-time-great ‘signature’ classic, Ask Willy Wonka (heard at its very best in the ‘ta-ta 4 now’ remix). Waylaid Horizons is juicily funky, with its staged conversational exchanges of movie dialogue quotes embedded in the lyrics.

There’s certainly no mistaking the gruelling churn of Snogged To Death (Death Snog III, reprise) for any kind of love song, even of the sparkling vampire variety. No One Currently Likes This, offers a tirade against the faceless vacuity of social networking websites, bringing the ’Pegs assumed technophilia into question. Fiendishly complex or just a load of old cobblers..? Temporary Password is another track about people’s online presence and website activities – a largely satirical diatribe on impermanence, anonymity, and cyber–bullying. In the dark end, Even Before They Begin is wayward creativity unleashed.

National Looto Live!

I’M SOCIALLY DISADVANTAGED, GET ME OUT OF HERE!
The government have today announced a new money-making scheme to get the sluggish British economy going, whilst simultaneously clamping down on recent civil disorder.

Teams of looters and protestors, and gangs of disaffected youths, are to be organised, trained and armed, then pitted against each other in televised pitch battles, the television rights for which will be sold to BskyB and CNN Sport.

Prime Minister David Cameron elaborated on the scheme at a press conference outside parliament, inexplicably dressed in a Batman outfit, with Nick Clegg attired at his side as sidekick Robin. As Cameron spoke, Clegg slapped his gloved hands together eagerly, exclaiming “Holy loopy looters, Cam Man, that’s dynamite!” Cameron explained:

The world-wide media interest in Britain’s recent rioting and looting has been overwhelming, and part of our “Big Society” ethos is to look for ways to make fresh opportunities out of everything, but particularly out of human stupidity, which is of course an even more reliable and inexhaustible resource than wave or wind power. Nick and I, as the lead caped crusaders of this government, have drawn up a scheme for a national three-round rioting tournament. 

First round is hand-to-hand combat, second is sticks, stones and bottles, the third will be light firearms and explosives. All play offs will be sudden-death and the final will be fatal, not a single man to be left standing. Instead of National Lotto, this will be National Looto, and the stakes will be life and death. Live mega-violence, the ultimate reality-TV experience, beamed into a billion homes around the world. Britain will become the live looting violence capital of the world, second to none. Just look what happened to Las Vegas when it legalised gambling. This one’s a sure-fire winner. 

Teams will include Tottenham-Molotov and Salford-Sackers, pitted against old favourites like G8-Renta-Riot and Ulster-Bigot-Boys. The winners in each round will win a chance of a pitch battle against mounted police units with water cannons.
 
Quizzed over possible venues for these spectacular events, the Prime Minister smiled broadly and produced a list of the nation’s football stadiums, while his excited sidekick floated the possibility of rioting and looting becoming recognised as Olympic sports events in time for the 2012 games in London.

"Easy chum….." Cam Man grimaced behind his black face mask, hand on the shoulder of his eager young crusader. "Isn’t that Commissioner Boris I hear on the big red telephone…?"

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Thomas Jerome Newton - exclusive interview

The Scary Creep Who Fell To Earth

He was here way back then, he’s still here now.

The alien who fell to Earth, and stayed. So what

happened to THOMAS JEROME NEWTON since

DAVID BOWIE played him in the biopic

‘The Man Who Fell To Earth’?

At last, ANDREW DARLINGTON can reveal the truth

in this interview exclusive to ‘Fax 21’…

‘There are secrets and lies. Then there are bigger lies. There is reality, and there is truth. Then there are scary monsters and super-creeps.’ In a darkened room, temperature at low chill-level, he folds his angular frame neatly into Louis Quinze velveteen-upholstery with all the grace of a long-legged flamingo. Behind him, a wall of silent TV’s swarm collages of squirming movement in a low-level luminous glow that outlines him to black. This figure is unable to see the colour red. But he can see X-rays. His exotic air of androgyny and his near-transparent ‘snow-white tan’ combine to betray his alien origins. He was the nazz. Now he’s below the radar. But he’s still here.

‘Yes, I am Thomas Jerome Newton, the Thin White Duke. On good days, my life is tolerable. I live by the ocean, and watch its endless rhythms. It’s something I still find wonderful. All that water. The stuff we hoard and ration on drought-stricken Anthea. So much of it here. I walk the beach, 198cm-&-a-bit tall. But I have long thin fingers with no natural fingernails, which makes it awkward, it necessitates prosthetic implants like translucent coins. I can also blend in by wearing false nipples. But having four toes means no sandals, and some degree of concealment. And my retinal membranes conceal screwed-up feline-eyes. There are traces of accent I work to disguise, the tendency to enunciate too precisely, too formally. Then there’s the weight of this place. The pain in my gravity-sensitive joints and the bird-frail bones at the small of my back. Caused by gravitational pull on my own slight weight.’

He has the sickly appearance of a consumptive poet. Look into his eyes and they are blue, but no-one’s home. For his pensive gaze is detached from his surroundings. And it took a long convoluted search to track this Cracked Actor down. His visibility is deliberately negligible. As though he’d like to come and meet us, but he’s afraid of the consequences. On both parties. He works by stealth, learned by cruel experience. ‘They say you can never be too thin, or too rich. I’ve been both’ he comments softly, in hazily dismissive cosmic jive. ‘There’s this idea about a twenty-first century person thrown back in time to the Paleolithic, and revolutionising Cro-Magnon society into premature techno-geekery. Except of course, it wouldn’t work out that way. Far from churning out proto-versions of micro-waves, iPods and Blu-Rays he wouldn’t cut it with the most basic survival skills. Without a lighter he couldn’t even make man’s red fire. He can’t program the DVD timer without the manual anyway, never mind build one from bits of sharpened flints. Cro-Magnons might take pity on him and toss him the occasional bit of Mammoth, because he’d be lost without the gastro-Pubs where he usually grazes. It doesn’t work that way. It works this way. You adapt to your environment before you can begin adapting it. Same with me. I’m here. I’m the twenty-first century person thrown back into Cro-Magnon society. Washed up on the reefs of space. Like Icarus, the boy who fell from the sky. And it takes time. I began with existing technology. Rudimentary baby-step patents, such as self-developing photographic film. That’s the way it had to be. I couldn’t leap directly into digital because the infrastructure wasn’t there to support it. So instead I tweak TV antennae and transistors, cheap junk-trinkets to amaze the natives. Ten-thousand years of Anthean technology to draw on, but I had to introduce it gradually. Through my ‘World Enterprises Corporation’ conglomerates. But that takes time. And time inflicts other changes.’

‘Trouble is, you can adapt to your new environment a little too far, making it less easy to begin adapting it. I live among clever, devious apes. A man surrounded by animals long enough becomes more of an animal than he should. Have I ‘gone native’? There are moments I think that’s so. I had Earthling pets, lawyer Oliver V Farnsworth who first negotiated my entry into marketing, Betty-Jo Masher who – loving the alien, introduced me to the numbing intoxications of Beaujolais and Gordon’s gin. And fuel-technician Nathan Bryce who was smart enough to work out my extraterrestrial origins. They age. I don’t. How human have I become? I’m not human. But human enough. Where do I belong? I no longer know for sure.’

This Space Oddity sips from a glass of clear water. His biographer, Walter Tevis, attempted two novelisation of his story, with ‘The Man Who Fell To Earth’ in 1963, then revised in 1978. More high-profile there’s Nicholas Roeg’s movie-interpretation (March 1976) with the ‘starman’ who whirled the soul played by David Bowie, and the novel’s plain Betty-Jo prettied-up as Mary-Lou in the luscious guise of actress Candy Clark. There’s even an MGM-TV pilot by David Gerber (1987) featuring Lewis Smith, Will Wheaton and Robert Picardo. They all cover the same span of years from slightly altered perspectives, but they all end with Newton’s extraordinary-rendition ordeal at the hands of FBI & CIA government agents. Hitting an all-time low. Since then, there must have been changes? He gives little more than an enigmatic smile. ‘I now realise how much brutality lurks beneath the face of your liberal democracy. I’d been too trusting. Too open. In time, my eyes regenerated. Slowly, over a painful period. But they did regenerate. For years I assumed the guise of ‘John Dory’, a reclusive hermit. A man apart. A Greta Garbo, Howard Hughes, or a JD Salinger. Now, chastened, I find it’s more efficacious to operate through shadowy behind-the-scenes manoeuvres, using entrepreneur front-men. So ‘World Enterprises Corporation’ operates more covertly, through avatars. I’d come so far. Achieved so much. But I was impatient, so impatient for more. These smart-chimps are so slow. So mired in their social-inertia. So intent on looting, plundering and irresponsibly over-breeding Earth into premature-extinction. Not all humans are insane. But many of you are. Enough of you. It’s also become apparent that, within the political dialogue about asylum-seekers and illegal-alien migrants, that I’m far from alone in my unfortunate predicament. The ‘Men In Black’ movie (1997) and its sequels – for which I acted as adviser, played it as comedy. ‘Alien Nation’ (1988) treated it slightly more sympathetically. Now there’s NBC’s on-going ‘The Event’ with its aliens interned in a kind of Alaskan Guantanamo. But yes, there are other extraterrestrial scary monsters and super-creeps here with their own agendas, which sometimes conflict with my own. Sordid details following… at least one totalitarian dictator I know for certain is a Sirian shape-shifter. A devious secret clique of Kreggari pod-people engineered the financial credit-crunch meltdown for their own acquisitive motives. My objectives are more benevolent.

‘For me, stage two of my project began with searching out Steven Wozniak. As with Bryce, I intuited potential. He was a high school drop-out employed by Hewlett-Packard, dabbling in computer-design, but with guidance, with nudges and prompts he had potential to inch it further. Yes, he would suffice. My networking also turned up his high school buddy Steven Jobs. He was with Atari, another project I’d nursed into being with low-grade gadget-toys. Through one-to-one tutorials they became my fine-tuned tools. With me as the third corner, the invisible partner injecting fairly basic Anthean upgrades – user-friendly interface, windows, drag-and-drop file moveability, and plug-in-and-play compatibility, evolving into velocity-engine and simple 128-bit-wide architecture, we went hot-tech start-up April 1, 1976. A slow development curve for me, revolutionary for the newly wired-world I’m stranded in.’

Behind him the wall of silent TV’s blare their chaotic news-feeds from around our troubled globe. Can he be trusted, can the words of this strange Man-Insane be believed? ‘That my initial mission failed is a tragedy, for us all. Now, it might be too late. Together we might have saved the Earth. I’m closer now. Closer to the next phase that will prod this monstrous, beautiful, terrifying planet another paradigm step towards my objective. If only things hang together long enough for me to complete. That’s what I’m most unsettled about. I fear this is a race we might lose. It’s a race between time… and time-out.’ He waves his hand dismissively. A pale ghost now, ethereal. Obviously tired by the exertion. Signaling that he’s winding down. He’s talked so much. Time for just one more shot.

So why are you divulging this now? Why grant this interview after so lengthy a silence? ‘Why not? Who will believe it? No-one will accept that this is not a spoof contrived to amuse. That this is not the desperate fabrication of a hack with an Apple lap-top…’

BY ANDREW DARLINGTON

For the full Thomas Jerome-Newton back-story check out the helpful DVD review of The Man Who Fell To Earth on the excellent VideoVista website…

Dictators !

Dictators –Series One, -reviewed by Alexander Stark.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised about good television coming out of Iraq, after all its neighbour Iran has been a producer of award-winning films for the last decade. But who would have thought that the world debut of Iraqi creative talent in the post-Saddam era would be a sit-com? And what a sit-com!

The writers of “Dictators” seem to have avidly watched and digested the soap operas and situation comedies of America and the UK through years of repression and now their belated response is an eruption of free speech and irreverent humour.

The plot for “Dictators” is genius in itself: a household of four uncouth young men living together, “Young Ones” style in 1990’s Iraq, except that these men all share one unusual profession: they are each identical body-doubles for Saddam Hussein himself.

Current affairs, the invasion of Kuwait, Gulf War One and in the next series Gulf War Two: are all seen to take place casually in the background, as the constantly bored stand-ins watch television and compete and bemoan over who will be next to be given a public engagement role. The four characters, Hassim, Ali, Tariq and Youssef, all wear different outfits about the house, Goodies-style, expressing their wildly differing and ill-matched temperaments: Hassim is hugely patriotic but a bit stupid, Ali is obsessed with the secret police and conspiracy theories, Tariq is effeminate and lazy, lying around the house painting his nails like a supermodel, while Youssef longs to pick up girls but is conflicted over his parents Muslim faith, and more to the point basically shy.

Needless to say, hilarious and excruciating scenarios constantly unfold between these four, like when Hassim is selected to meet Gaddafi (making a special guest star appearance as himself in episode 7), but being too stupid to remember his lines has to take Tariq with him disguised as a woman. Tariq then gets embroiled in a lesbian scenario with one of Gaddafi’s butch female body-guards, leaving Tariq hopelessly exposed as the cameras start rolling. All works out well in the end of course, because Gaddafi is out his face on mescaline and totally bonkers.

Ridiculous schemes to blow up Israel using super-guns get repeated airing, Ali taking on the role of mad inventor among the group, his best shot seeing the four of them landing in The West Bank in light aeroplanes made out of toilet rolls and getting loaves thrown at them by Palestinian women in a bread queue.

The boys get roped into assisting at a biological weapons plant and end up growing extra limbs and heads, one of which looks like Dick Cheney, and spouts right-wing psycho babble.

Youssef, constantly sexually frustrated goes out on an urban babe-pulling mission with Saddam’s sons but is too embarrassed to buy condoms. On the strength of a television story about American troops using them over their gun barrels, he crosses the desert to negotiate and inadvertently brings about a ceasefire, on his knees, weeping, with his shoes off. The cameo role of Robbie Coltrane as General Stormin’ Norman Schwarzkopf (episode 9) at this point, is worth the DVD price alone, and rumours that Jack Nicholson has been contracted to play Donald Rumsfeld in Series Two are appetite-whetting to say the least.

Not since Father Ted, has there been so much fun to be had the expense of figures of dubious authority. Our four Saddams are never less than loveably dumb-assed, but always full of hilariously ill-founded hope, standing up at public gatherings and getting their hats shot off, and trying to score Speed off Chemical Ali.

The theme tune and end-titles are a joy in themselves: the tune from “Neighbours” sung in Arabic with subtitles: Dictators, everybody loves Dictators, with a small misunderstanding, you can meet a sticky end… That’s why Dictators don’t make good friends…

The Fly 3sum

Spoiler Alert!

After the final credits have scrolled, there's a teaser-trailer for the next cross-franchise movie... as cobwebs fill the screen, and the shadow of Spidery-Men appears.

It's the End of the World as we know it (and I feel fine)

A Pop Song on the radio? The prediction of a

deranged prophet? Or a new condition pervading the

multiverse? A special report from the CERN Large

Hadron Collider by ‘FAX 21’ correspondent

ANDREW DARLINGTON

A strangely volatile atmosphere pervades the plush PR suite of the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The kind of hush the tabloid hacks usually refer to as ‘expectant’, as the assembled multi-platform representatives of global media gather in feeding-frenzy mode. In truth, they’re mostly technical correspondents from academic journals and dedicated sites, anticipating the long-awaited announcement. High-profile in their limited fields, their numbers are swelled by popularisers from the more mainstream titles hoping for a sexy angle. As they sip complimentary wine, monitors and wifi’s are given fine-tuning tweaks and the panoramic glassed-in walls overlook the tranquil Franco-Swiss border countryside, with a few high white clouds in the sharp still air as dusk falls over Geneva. The first stars just visible. In every way, it seems very much a normal evening. The tall bespectacled Dr Harold Camping of the facility’s theoretical physics discipline opens proceedings with the deceptively simple prepared statement that the most recent particle acceleration sequences have finally yielded evidence of the elusive Higgs Boson, with data-files recording the creation of the nano-particle – and the release of related phenomenon, a condition existing for a billionth-of-a-second, yet confirming the twelfth-dimensional quantum nature of Einstein’s final enigmatic equations, and the teasing enigma of the Mass of elementary particles.

Invited questions follow the rapturous reception of the news, as events take a stranger turn. From the display of eagerly raised hands Camping stabs the air with his pen to indicate Ms Persson of the ZEN website, perhaps expecting an easy ride. She stands, brandishes her iTablet, and asks ‘in the statement, you refer to the ‘release of related phenomenon’. What is the nature of these phenomena?’ Camping hurriedly confers with his colleagues. ‘Dealing with highly exotic particles there’s an integral element of indeterminacy. What occurred happened within the same billionth-of-a-second time-frame, but involved the creation of spontaneous bubbles of micro-singularities that nevertheless set up a ripple-cascade of consequences percolating across, and annihilating a series of parallel or alternate continuums.’ There was a pause of perhaps ten long seconds of perfect silence. Then a low hum of confused comment. Camping makes as if to move along to the next questioner. But Ms Persson persists, ‘would these alternate continuums have been inhabited, and if so, would they have been aware of what was happening to them?’ Camping squirms in his seat, obviously agitated. ‘We are entering highly conjectural terrain here. If I can hazard theoretical data I’d suggest yes, each parallel universe is both superimposed on, and separated from each other, by the slightest step apart, like layers of an onion. Certain individuals are more sensitive than others, it’s not impossible some may have picked up advance tremors of what was happening. In all likelihood they would fail to understand what they were sensing, and interpret it through some simple superstitious belief-system. Now perhaps we can move along to another questioner…?’

There’s a scuffle at the back of the hall. Camping carefully removes his spectacles, and cleans them with a precise circular motion. But attention continues to focus on the tall ZEN scribe. ‘Dr Camping, if these parallel continuums duplicate ours so exactly, how can we be sure they’re not also carrying out particle acceleration experiments that will leak over and annihilate our universe?’ ‘Ms Persson, we can’t be sure. In fact, this might already be the case, and even now we are existing in a highly attenuated echo-state, which will only continue to become yet more tenuous.’ ‘You mean, as in the movie ‘The Sixth Sense’, we’re all dead but don’t realise it yet?’ ‘To a lay-person, yes.’ ‘And what can we do to stop this happening?’ ‘We can’t. It’s already happened. The Higgs Boson data is time-coded 18:00hrs on 21st May 2011. So it’s already happened….’

There’s a strangely volatile atmosphere pervading the plush PR suite of the CERN Large Hadron Collider. Outside, the stars are winking out…