thelump.net

This Week in Lumps
#46 [08/04 - 14/04]

· Maybe this weekend (if the weather stays nice) you’ll find yourself sitting at a sticky wooden table in the garden of a nice pub with a few friends, chatting about life, love… no, actually I withdraw that, that’s never the case, it’s always how you’ve missed the taste of cold beer in the sunshine over the last 8 months, and what Arsenal should have done differently in the last few months. You may even plan your summer festivals, or if, like me you suddenly realise you don’t like any of the bands they class as headliners nowadays, you may plan a boozy long weekend in Brugge instead.

If you decide going home just isn’t an option, you may need a few more topics of your pocket in case the conversation turns quiet, so this weeks TWiL, apart from ending conversation killers as I’ve always done, is also dedicated to sparking up debates, reasoning and possibly a few arguments. How, prey tell am I doing this? By listing some old favourite “top ten of all time” lists. Regular readers will remember I’ve done this before on these pages, many centuries ago (in week two) where I listed the top ten powerful movie franchises. I have friends that hate lists, and hate me for bringing them into conservations, forcing them to pick between The Big Lebowski and The Usual Suspects for best film ever, or Radiohead and Muse for best band ever. Trust me, they’ll always be one guy who hates one your favourites, and therein lies the fun.

Fun and jokes aside, nothing gets more frustrating than listing 9 of your favourite albums, struggling on the last one, then thinking of three worthy contenders. It isn’t long before you’re asking the bar staff for some pen and paper, jotting down a shortlist, a shortlist for the shortlist, then finally sticking on your favourite ten, and laminating it to show off your good work. Come next week you’ll think of something else, and will strongly consider changing what you have.

Maybe to lighten the mood (or after struggling through your ‘top 10 movies of all time’ list, you decide to get hideously plastered instead), you may opt for a more surreal top list, such as ‘ top 10 worst band names in history’ or ‘top 5 terrible tom cruise movies’ to pass the time. For some revision, you might want to check out Cracked.com, which does a great job of thinking up top lists of subjects you never thought you’d make lists about, such as ‘30 error messages you never want to see‘ and ‘History’s 10 Most Terrifying Contraceptives‘. Genius.

So, what ‘top 5′ or ‘top 10′ could you start up? Celebrity shags is a favourite, as covered in Friends I do remember, known over the world as the “laminated list”, it reads as the 5 celebrities that your partner will permit them to sleep with if they were to ever meet them. Friends on my Facebook page will already see my (current) 5, although in the last week I’ve decided that Alison Lohman needs to be put on, possibly in place of Hayden Panettiere.

~

· On one of my occasional browsing sessions of Digg this week I came across a submission entitled ‘50 Actors We’d Watch in Anything‘, a run down of some actors who are bloody decent in just about everything they sign up for. Now, admittedly the article isn’t as great as I was hoping, not only is it stretched across 26 pages (urgh), but after you start getting to names like Paul Rudd, you start to realise that 50 was just too much, and a lot of the ‘filler’ is making the rest look bad. Fair enough, the list creator may think that Will Ferrell is the best thing since slice bread, but a lot of people would disagree, and I’m sure there are lots of names who are absent from the list which deserve to be in there instead. Less is more, right?

So I decided to create a list of ten myself. Not a ‘top 10′ I may add, listing them one after the other and trying to put them above each other is not easy, and not fair either. Just 10 actors I’d watch in anything. Oh, and whilst I’m filtering out what this list actually is, I need to say here that this isn’t a ‘my favourite actors‘ list, nor is it meant to highlight who the biggest A-listers, brand names or sexiest stars in Hollywood right now. As I did in my top ten British TV turn offs a few months back, the best way to describe the following people in listing is to describe their complete opposites. Film stars like Nicolas Cage and Kate Hudson who just seem to be the same person in every film, and more often that not stink it up.

These are the types of people who you think about when trawling around the local DVD rental shop, or browsing for something to fill your basket on Amazon on an idle Wednesday evening: “Huh, I wonder what ‘person X’ has been in lately“, and “oh, I never knew Actress Z’ was in this film, I might get it“. The names that make you realise you’ve never seen them in anything bad, the names that make you realise that it only takes one good casting decision to make or break a film these days. Ergo, not the Jack Blacks, not the Jim Carreys, and certainly not the Denzel Washingtons. Seen one film, seen them all.

So here goes (and I’ve even linked them all together, ’cause I’m so smart):

• Penélope Cruz, star of the original and re-created Vanilla Sky, written by Cameron Crowe, who also wrote Almost Famous, starring
• Philip Seymour Hoffman, who has shone in everything he takes on, especially for his role in Capote, a great film. Also starred in Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead alongside Albert Finney, who was wonderful Big Fish, as was
• Steve Buscemi, who was also in The Big Lebowski with Hoffman, and was probably the first name I thought of when thinking my list for this topic. Was great in Reservoir Dogs, and also starred in Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead, alongside Andy Garcia, Christopher Lloyd, and
• Christopher Walkern, who has spent more than 50 years on stage and screen, and is still one of my favourite actors, Especially in The Deer Hunter, The Funeral, and Catch Me if You Can, alongside
• Leonardo DiCaprio, who has done a great job of making a name of himself in big roles, but also being diverse and unique in the roles he accepts, including being pencilled in as Theodore Roosevelt in the 2010 film ‘The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt’, a role which nearly went to
• Edward Norton- great in everything, including Fight Club, and will also be in the new The Incredible Hulk movie with
• Liv Tyler, who may surprise you in her inclusion, but her Filmography shows she is careful in what she picks, or what she has picked so far, and pipped Jessica Alba to this position, despite enjoying her in Sin Sity with Elijah Wood, who was also just pipped, as I preferred
• Christian Bale, who has such a bright career ahead of him, the highlight of it so far has to be Batman, with
• Morgan Freeman, who doesn’t really need a description, because everything he;s been in seems to be great. The same can be said for
• Danny DeVito, who was in The Good Night which I saw recently, also starring Penelope Cruz.

Phew, I’m exhausted. Good list, though.

~

· You may think that Radiohead were trend setters last year, releasing an album entirely online before being available anywhere else. How fashionable. They created a lot of hype, and yes the album was flawless, we can’t deny that. However, what you may not know were that bands were doing this long before it became popular, in fact, ten years ago this month, one such album was released in its entirety on the bands website for legal download many months before it was released on CD. Whether this helped or hindered the band didn’t matter, as it went on to be one of the most popular albums of the decade. Who on Earth could get away with such a despicable method of promotion and distribution?

Step forward Bristol-based Massive Attack, who back in 1998 released Mezzanine, their third album proper after Blue Lines (1991) and Protection (1995). These two albums were greatly received commercially and from the moment their first album hit the shelf, the band was receiving praise from all corners of the country, creating an album that mixed soul, hip hop, rock and even jazz into some strangely enjoyable fusion. Coming with the first album was ‘Unfinished Sympathy’ a song which is frequently described as one of the best songs of all time by those in the know. Album number two came along after the gulf war, and before too long, ‘the Bristol Sound’, known more frequently as trip-hop, was born. ‘Protection’ took all of what made ‘Blue Lines’ so special, added a touch of electronic music into their sound, and made one of the best chill-out albums of all time. Another slight change of direction followed, although not to everyones taste. Founding member Andrew Vowles (aka Mushroom) left due to creative differences during the creation of Mezzanine, and many wondered just what the differences were that forced him out.

The move, it seems, was one towards a somewhat dark, tense sound, filled with distorted guitars and a combination of drum machines and live percussion that lacked the laid-back, jazzy nature they had occasionally shown in their previous albums. In Angel, the band made probably the best opening track you’re ever likely to hear, a scarier-than-hell track, full of sharpened beats and a distorted bassline that frames the vocal and a two-minute flame-out with raging guitars. Instantly, you’re aware that this is the kind of music you’d play in pitch black rooms to scare small children, and I loved it.

The album continues on with track after track of utter brilliance- Risingson, a black, silky track with a hypnotic back beat which is perfected by Daddy G’s vocals, thick and husky, yet still sounding great behind and in-front of the hip hop surroundings. Half way through, everything just falls apart, and then it’s built up again. Teardrop, is well, Teardrop- Insanely beautiful, delicate yet stunning, words fail me with this song- it is the finest finest thing ever recorded bar nothing. The vocals are so fantastic, so heartfelt it hurts; Elizabeth Fraser of the Cocteau Twins recorded this right after hearing of Jeff Buckley’s death, and my lord it shows. They could have ended the album right there, and just recorded a few fart noises, and it still would have been perfect, but they followed it along with ‘Inertia Creeps’, which many said was the actual highlight of the album. With eerie, sensual atmospherics, fuzz-tone guitars, and a wealth of effects, it showed a band confident in just about every department. This band, and their fans, would never be the same again.

The release of Mezzanine also led to a change in Massive Attack’s live show. In addition to their previous simple set up of a few mics and turntables, the group began incorporating more and more live instrumentation into their shows. In addition to their usual numerous guest vocalists, the trio were now being joined on stage by a live guitarist, bassist, drummer, and keyboard player, as well as a video screen and lighting effects.

So, fair enough, a great album worthy of anyone’s top ten list. But why hasn’t it created more of an impact in society, say, like OK Computer, or Parachutes? In 2003, the album was ranked a lowly 412 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. In my humble opinion, it should at least be in the top 10.

If you’ve never owned (or never heard) Mezzanine before, i suggest now, on its 10th birthday, is a good time to change that. On Amazon it’s currently under a fiver, an absolute bargain for one of the finest albums of my generation.

~~~

That was the week in lumps, a week in which: Hip hop is wrong for Glastonbury, cat poo coffee, whatever next, BBCi is killing the tubes, a green Ringo Starr was beheaded, Lindsay Lohan will be getting naked sometime soon, and 5.7 million tuned in to see Pushing Daisies on ITV, however I haven’t been able to review it as planned as it’s sitting on my Set top box waiting to be watched.

and finally, woah, just when you think that goths hated everything…
x