This isn't a mock up picture, I do genuinely own a few James Last albums. This isn't going to be a blog about an entertainer who has just died and I say how much he meant to me because James Last means very little to me. I didn't even even know who he was until December when I did a few volunteer shifts in a charity shop when they needed their vinyl sorting out. James Last kept appearing and before I knew it I had a pile of albums by this mysterious band leader in front of me. His range was a fine line between eclectic and bizarre as he released albums ranging from traditional jazz to German bierkeller via a collection of Beatles covers. I only did a little bit of research at the time and that was mainly to find out if he was still alive. My regular charity shop record buying since then has seen me confronted by this strange man staring back at me so I tried to quell my curiosity by buying a few of these albums. Musically the albums are neither masterpieces nor rubbish but fall into a middle category, pleasant background music of the sort we used to hear in department stores before they all had their own radio stations. A CD I bought from Fopp during the Christmas holidays contains a curious collection of modern pop classics and the inclusion of 'Mambo No.5' shows that he was keeping up with the hit parade and giving the people what they wanted, or what he thought they wanted. Perhaps by 2004 (when this album came out) people's tastes had changed and only the original artist would do, the same reason why that other charity shop staple, the Top of the Pops albums also ceased production maybe? I don't know the answer I'm afraid, I'm not even sure what the question was.

My plan to turn James Last into a hipster icon didn't materialise because it was an idea that looked better when written as a piece of blog filling whimsy than it could ever have done in real life. My fascination with this man who somehow managed to release two hundred albums and epitomise cheesy lounge/supper club music extended into wanting to do something to pay tribute to him; a podcast perhaps or a club night. Maybe not a club night but possibly a Sunday afternoon in the corner of a pub playing the music of James Last while people tucked into their roast dinners. I could entice him to Nottingham to perform here, I'd interview him and write things about him while all the time I would be learning just who he was because as far as I am concerned he's just someone who pops up in charity shop record boxes and that's all I know. By strange coincidence he performed at the Albert Hall (London not Nottingham) as part of a farewell tour earlier this year but I couldn't get tickets and that indicated that he was still capable of putting bums on seats, bums attached to people with a weird taste in music but bums on seats nonetheless. 

Farewell tour was an appropriate name for it unfortunately because yesterday James Last died at the age of 86. I feel sad for having just discovered him that bit too late and he doesn't really seem the type of person who will live on through his music, hopefully a BBC4 documentary is in the works.

Rest in peace my new friend, I'll see you in the charity shop.

The Sunday Alternative will return soon.

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June housekeeping

The audio book of Bowie Day (a short story inspired by A Christmas Carol) will be released on August 31st. In the meantime the book can be downloaded to your Kindle from here.

All donations made using the PayPal button will go towards making podcasts, comedy sketches, live video sessions, documentaries, short films and more that will be made available online for free.

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steveEoliver@gmail.com

@SteveOliver76

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Last night one of the more obscure television channels showed a film called The Birth of The Beatles, the story, would you believe, of how the band got together and mainly concentrating on the pre-fame build-up including ex-members Pete Best and Stuart Sutcliffe. Best was the only person from The Beatles who cooperated in the making of this film so there was a certain amount of bias and I don't feel as though making this film was necessary; there wasn't anything contained within that shed new light on things. Made in 1979 this is the only biopic to have been made while all four of the band were still alive, so I'm surprised nobody tried to stop it. As a writer this is perhaps something I should be aware of, but are you allowed to just go around making biographical movies without seeking permission? The whole thing was played out like the worst school nativity play you have ever seen, if the school was the Hollyoaks Academy. A made for television movie, I was surprised to see that it was made by Dick Clark. You can tell a mile off that this was aimed at the American market, but someone with Clark's reputation could have made something better than this. I gave it an hour, and I would like it back.

I recorded the podcast before we left for my dad's house and time was against me so I wasn't able to release it until later in the day. By the end of the recording I had to forgo having a shower as Mandi was hurrying me up, this put me in a bad mood as I hate being rushed and put under pressure; I also hate not being able to have a shower. The walk to my dad's was mostly silent although things did improve by the time we got there.

Today was a big day for The Sunday Alternative as aside from the podcast going online at around six o'clock there was also the launch of the official bag. They went on sale today and all the money will be put in the PayPal fund to create future online entertainment that will be free for everyone. My first day listening figures were respectable enough although down on the same time last week, but it did have good feedback so maybe it was worth it in the end.

This week's edition of The Sunday Alternative can be heard here.

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April housekeeping

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@SteveOliver76 

Photo from The Hollywood News

I realised that giving the IMHO blog over to all reviews isn’t such a good idea after all and will be keeping it strictly music. To include anything that vaguely resembles a review would get into ridiculous extremes as it would include breakfasts among other things and would lose focus. What if I wanted to write about a gig in a café that took place early enough to order a fry-up while you watched? There would be too much crossover so I can’t be bothered. I like the freedom of being able to write what I like without fear that someone is going to remove parts of it or (even worse) make up bits that are then published with my name on. The Nottingham Evening Post (as I still call it), NottinghamLIVE, and Leftlion (who I have only written for on one occasion – the online version, they won’t ever put me or my name in the print edition that everyone in Nottingham reads, not even when a member of their staff co-hosted The Sunday Alternative on Trent Sound or when I started doing a Nottingham music show on American radio thus enabling some of our musicians their first overseas radio play) only really deal in the positive aspects, especially when it comes to Nottingham based reviews. Any slightly negative comments are snipped away making the whole thing look as if you never dislike anything.

Yesterday a new single was released to stream on Soundcloud by a female singer from Nottingham. This singer was tipped as the next breakthrough artist in 2011 but it hasn’t happened for her, although she did have a successful ‘comeback’ show at Rescue Rooms last year which followed a year away from the Nottingham music scene, albeit nothing since. She is a reasonably talented singer, not as talented as she thinks she is, but her minimal talent (there are better female singers) isn’t enough to back up her diva behaviour and delusional attitude. It is sad to listen to such a terrible song and reflect on what might have been. I will not name her (yet) as I am going to reserve judgment until I have listened to the whole EP that she is drip feeding onto Soundcloud and do a review of the whole thing in the optimistic attitude that this first song is the weak link.

On the subject of female singers (neat link, you can tell I work in radio), last night I watched the first part of Cilla. As a child of the 1980s I first came across Cilla Black as the nauseating host of Surprise Surprise and Blind Date, two Saturday night light entertainment big hitters. Although I was aware of her past as a singer, I didn’t really research it further as I wasn’t particularly keen on her based purely on these two inexplicably popular shows, there was also the small matter of there not being an Internet when I was a kid. The songs of hers I knew of, ‘Anyone Who Had a Heart’ for example were chart friendly pop songs that made her a household name before she moved into television presenting.

My first thought was that Cilla Black was hardly a valid source for a three part drama based on her rise to fame, but I decided to watch it out of an interest in popular culture. The story started at the beginning of the 1960s in Liverpool. Unfortunately, nobody from Liverpool has ever become an actor, or so it would seem, which meant that ITV had to resort to using actors who couldn’t quite manage the accent and spent the whole hour dangerously close to saying “calm down, calm down”.

Rather than simply being a programme about Cilla herself, this was an interesting look at the Cavern Club era from a slightly different angle. We’ve all heard about The Beatles forming there and how Liverpool was the musical centre of the universe at the time, but Cilla has until now been a mere footnote. Assuming the sequences involving her jumping on the stage and joining in were accurate, she had a far more capable singing voice than history has written for her, as we saw Cilla (or to be more accurate the hugely talented Sheridan Smith) taking on the popular American influenced rhythm and blues sound and filling the room with it. The sad thing is that if she was to make an album today it would be dismissed as a novelty.

In a parallel world Cilla didn’t go down the light entertainment road, instead she carried on doing what she was doing and these days her name is mentioned in the same breath as Dusty Springfield. Respected by the music world she has survived changing trends to collaborate with Patti Smith, Morrissey, Bowie, and Amy Winehouse. Her headlining appearance at Glastonbury was the talk of the festival and the NME Godlike Genius award speech was greeted with a standing ovation before she closed the show with a storming duet with (insert name of whatever band the NME are championing this week).

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Saturday 23rd November

The Rolling Stones did a fantastic job of their Glastonbury set, and indeed the rest of their last tour. The inevitable jokes appear every few years when they announce yet another ‘comeback’ tour, with gags about pensions, slippers, Werther’s Originals and every other cliché bouncing back and forth. The Who still get back together on occasion, and despite being only half the original band are still as great as ever. In fact I would go so far to say that The Who are better now than they were in the beginning. When a band gets back together the worry is that they will be shit and therefore ruin the memory of better days. I had that fear when I went to see Axl Rose fronting a band called Guns and Roses last year, as it was a different Guns and Roses to the one I saw in 1992. As luck would have it, the band I saw in Nottingham was every bit as good as the band I saw at The Milton Keynes Bowl when I was sixteen. People say that without the original line-up it isn’t the band, which depends to a degree on who is missing. The Specials reunited without Jerry Dammers, but would The Smiths be acceptable without Johnny Marr or Morrissey? Roger Daltrey and Pete Townsend are only half of the original line up of The Who, but if one or both of them had died instead would you want to see the band with John Entwhistle and Keith Moon working with a different singer and guitarist? The Who are allowed to continue, but on that principle then what sort of reception would Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr get if they toured as The Beatles?

News of a band reuniting is greeted with either joy or groans, as we want to hear the old songs and enjoy ourselves. However, one of the most popular ‘bands’ of the 1970s have recently announced a reunion, and I am dreading it.

I knew who John Cleese was as a child due to Fawlty Towers of course, and also from his appearance in The Great Muppet Caper. It wasn’t until the death of Graham Chapman in 1989 when I was twelve that I was introduced to Monty Python. The first thing I remember seeing was a tribute to Python wrapped around footage of Chapman’s memorial service screened by the BBC. It was on late at night and I watched it on video with my parents, just as I had learned about Fawlty Towers. Everybody laughed when John Cleese referred to Chapman as a freeloading bastard, and I got away with still watching it. This was literally the first time that I heard the big swear word on television, which was met with laughter from my parents, especially my usually prudish mum. I was genuinely shocked at first, maybe because I was watching with my parents, at John Cleese’s passage:

“I could hear him whispering in my ear last night as I was writing this; ‘Alright Cleese’ he was saying, ‘you’re very proud of being the first person to say shit on British television. If this service really is for me, just for starters I want you to become the first person ever at a British memorial service to say fuck’”.

This was a glorious slice of bad taste and I fell in love with offensive, (but at the same time very clever) comedy. I was delighted when the BBC repeated a series of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, and Channel Four as part of a season of banned films aired Monty Python’s Life of Brian.

John Cleese made Clockwise, in which he played a Basil Fawlty-esque school teacher obsessed with timekeeping who ends up being late with hilarious consequences. His career has been hit and miss ever since; cameos on American sitcoms purely based on the fact that he is John Cleese, and a handful of vaguely amusing adverts. Of course A Fish Called Wanda is a modern classic, but it wasn’t followed up with Fierce Creatures and he has struggled to hit those Python highs. Michael Palin has carved a new career as a travel presenter, Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam direct films, and Eric Idle counts his money from Spamalot. Cleese had a very public shafting from his last divorce and went on tour to try and earn some money, and Jones has stated that this reunion will hopefully pay off his mortgage.

Whether or not they write new material or not, they are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. The audience will want to hear (and shout) the old lines and sing along to ‘The Lumberjack Song’, and their hearts will sink when they hear those words that every nostalgic audience dreads; “here’s a new one”.

I hope they can sleep soundly on top of all the money they’ll make.

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Saturday 14th September

Another fine one day weekend spent with my girlfriend and not involving work in any way, which of course meant another breakfast outing. It was Mandi’s choice this week, and not one that I would have thought to make. I’m sure regular readers will know that I am something of a traditionalist about certain ways, and breakfast is one of them. However, this weekend I was encouraged and persuaded to forgo my usual full English fry-up for something a little bit more foreign.

photo: Trip Advisor

To be honest, it wasn’t a total departure from the norm. We took breakfast at Warsaw Diner, based in Canning Circus. I’ve often wanted to use this place but it is hardly ever on my route, based as it is on the top of the hill that leaves town, (or enters it depending on which way you’re pointing I suppose). Canning Circus is a bit of a strange area; it is on the cusp of The Park, a private estate containing a variety of architectural styles, starting with Victorian. Due to the private nature of the estate, planning permission isn’t required and so the place can look like a bit of a mish-mash of new and old. Regarded as a posh and affluent area, it is strange that it sits on the edge of Canning Circus, which is a bit of a shit-hole on the surface. It was once the home of the Ben Bowers restaurant, which changed hands and sadly became a short-lived grotty bar which now sits rotting away like the other boarded up shops that line Alfreton Road leading away from town. Alfreton Road is the first thing that visitors to Nottingham see, (unless they approach from Mansfield) and it is a disgraceful welcome.  It has always had a reputation, despite being a shit-hole, for fine bars and restaurants. Derby Road, which meets Alfreton Road at the top of Canning Circus, is slowly on the decline, having lost a couple of nice shops. I assume that these are considered by The Park as the local shops, as they are (or rather were) higher end shops.

photo: Trip Advisor

Warsaw Diner has a good reputation for breakfasts and last Saturday we decided to tick it off our list. I opted for the Empire State Breakfast; two pancakes, two bacon OR sausage, hash brown, and one other item. For my other item I chose sausage, take that system! The price included bottomless coffee, which we didn’t really get chance to take advantage of as we arrived at about half past one, and the place closes at two o’clock. Having coffee with breakfast is something that I initially felt uncomfortable with, as all sensible people take tea with breakfast. When in Rome I suppose, or an American style diner, you should do as the Romans (Americans) do and have coffee. The coffee was lovely, and I managed to have three cups, so not really bottomless. Will it cut any ice if I go in again tomorrow and claim that I still need to continue with the bottomless coffee closing time cut short? Of course not.

photo: Trip Advosor

The breakfast itself was very nice, a lot nicer than I was expecting. To my mind, pancakes are something you eat on Pancake Day with sugar and freshly squeezed orange juice poured on. The idea of pancakes sharing a plate with sausage and bacon is one that I had to very quickly come to terms with, but amazingly it worked. Even pouring syrup on the pancakes didn’t hurt the presence of bacon and sausage.

Although the staff was smiley, friendly, and attentive, they weren’t exactly sociable. Not that that’s an entirely bad thing as there’s nothing worse than the old cliché about waiters asking how the food is when you’ve got a mouthful of the stuff, but I think that talking among yourself and texting sends out a message to anyone looking through the window. Another plus was the music; not for them the generic ‘the same six songs, all day long’ commercial station, but a not totally brilliant but pleasant and suitable compilation that included Blondie and The Beatles alongside some of the crappy indie bands (that weren’t really ‘indie’ at all if you go by the proper definition) such as The Feeling and Scouting For Girls, that sort of thing. As I said, it could have been worse.

Our only problem was that being so close to closing time neither of us felt as if we could linger in the way that you want to over a Saturday breakfast, so we couldn’t take our time over the bottomless coffee and read the papers, (although they only seemed to have the tabloid papers so we wouldn’t have been lingering for that long anyway).

They did however, (and this is a callback for regular blog readers) have the right type of sausage.

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I’m raising money to make a film about The Sunday Alternative and put on a free screening, please read my latest newsletter.

In the city centre we have Broadway Cinema, which caters for the more discerning film goer, playing independent films, documentaries, and themed festivals (including nicking my idea on one occasion, I'm over it now), alongside the new releases. There is also Screen 22, (formerly known as Screen Room), with its 22 seats making it one of the smallest cinemas in Europe. However, Screen 22 is unfortunately only a private hire place, you can't just go in and watch a film. The only other option is of course Cineworld. 

Nottingham has lost all of the delightful little cinemas through the demolition era, and the local press this week has been full of reports that demolition has begun on the old Odeon.

Once again, Nottingham Council have sanctioned an act of cultural and architectural vandalism. In the 1960s, this was a music venue that played host to The Beatles among others. With Nottingham's music scene finally gaining the national recognition it deserves, a place that size would of course be ideal. But, Nottingham seems to think that we need even more student accommodation.

Stupid, short-sighted fools!