Radio Killed the Video Star

As Taffy once said, I love my radio. From Viking FM and Radio Humberside’s Top Town Quiz during Sunday dinner at my Grandma's to Simon Mayo’s Breakfast Show and Sunday nights taping the weekly Top 40; through Mark and Lard’s graveyard and Mary Anne Hobbs’ Breezeblock to my own late night ineptitude on Sydney community radio and finally to The Ghost and the Lime Champions on 3RRR I’ve always preferred pottering around with the radio in the background than sticking the telly on.

The history of the radio’s development is long and complicated, with no end of players, patents and claims about who invented what and who nicked which bit from whom. Whether you’re a Marconi man or a Fessenden kinda girl (I’m probably in the latter camp, given he undertook the first music-and-talking type radio broadcast) the truth is there has been a dial-full of folks responsible for spreading the joys of the wireless around the world. Although they are unlikely to be added to this illustrious list by anyone else, I’d like to offer a tip of the hat to the people behind TuneIn Radio for playing their part in revolutionising radio for me all over again.

For anyone with an i-Phone (seemingly every single person on my morning train) or i-Pad (my friend Mark plus one man with a beard on my train) TuneIn Radio is one of many available apps that lets you listen to radio on your Steve-Jobs-endorsed portable device. The others might be good too but to be honest, I don’t care as TuneIn already offers more than I thought possible with its basic premise – the ability to listen to any radio station with a digital stream, in the world, live.

Combine this with an i-Pod dock and you have crystal clear as-if-you-are-there live radio from every continent, country, county, state, borough and city in the world there in your kitchen, toilet or train. And, yes, the world. There’s even a station in Antarctica. You can see it with the handy menu that lets you zoom in and out like Google Maps, showing all the radio stations you might know and plenty you don’t.

I suspect there’s an element of homesick relief about TuneIn that magnifies its importance in my life. I’ve often said that if I could get a decent newspaper, a pint of bitter and access to BBC Radio 6 my expat experience would be a lot easier. TuneIn delivers one third of that and much more besides for the foreigner abroad.

As I sat feeling sorry for myself with my broken arm last Christmas I was surprisingly cheered by the sound of Chris Evans on BBC Radio 2 interviewing the larger than life Archbishop of York. I never listened to Evans when he was on in the mid-nineties every day, but the sound of him making gravy over breakfast whilst I ate my tea brought me a whole lot closer to my folks back home and more Christmassy than I'd felt in years. Even better, when I texted my mum to tell her, she was listening to it too.

In between mainlining 6 Music (Shaun, Jo, Tom, Lauren, Jarvis, Huey, Marc, thank you...) I’ve already revisited all the stations from my youth, as well as some from my travels, both dodgy (ah FUN Radio, still terrible...) and higher quality (no more Pet Sounds but it’s still nice to hear Tom Dunne’s voice on Newstalk). When you have instant access to the voices of people you’ve grown up with, or even just people who have clearly grown up a similar way to you (I’m looking at you Shaun Keaveny) the power of radio to make the world smaller really does hit home.

I hope you’ll forgive me for carrying on like some hanky-on-head wearing ex-pat. In some ways it was inevitable that given this kind of opportunity I would head home in the first instance. If it helps we’ve also been taking random shots at stations the world over, losing hours in incomprehensible languages and music we don’t know. The curious thing is how much radio from Japan to Germany, Morocco to Mexico sounds the same. And how popular the Black Eyed Peas are...

Anyway, thank you TuneIn Radio folks. We may never meet, but you’ve already done me a service that Marconi et al would be proud of. And in the interests of redressing my UK imbalances, I’d encourage anyone outside of Australia to spend some time with 3RRR here in Melbourne. Even with access to every digital dial in the world, some things are worth staying home for.

Crap Band Photography Part 2

Welcome back to Day 2 of the Mint Custard Crap Rock Photography exhibition. And before you ask, no, it's just the photography that's crap... All these pictures were taken pushing my Sony Ericsson's enormous 2.0 megapixels to the max so that you, and your descendants, could sample the atmosphere for yourself. Let us dwell no more and get stuck in...

Pop intellectual turned folk troubadour Lloyd Cole strums for the Thornbury Theatre audience in Melbourne. Please be assured that I wasn't actually a kilometre away from the stage - it just seems that way.

And whilst we're at the Thornbury Theatre, let us remember Candle Records heroes the Lucksmiths, captured here for posterity at their last but one ever gig. I attended this concert in my slippers. Which was nice.

A crowd of backpackers chant for an English band at some theatre or other in Sydney. Said band were not as good as said crowd drunkenly believed.

The unmistakably slight silhouette of Mr Jarvis Branson Cocker, erstwhile of Pulp, seen here at the Metro Theatre in Sydney for his first solo tour. Mrs Custard took this, hence the slightly higher than average picture quality.

Mr Cocker again, flanked by Mr Steven Mackey (erstwhile of Pulp) and Mr Martin (M) Craft. Note other person taking photo of same scene. I assume theirs came out better than this.

And last for today, my most favourite picture that I took on my old phone. If you don't know that's Mr Robert Forster, with bassist Adele Pickvance in the background. This was taken in the Studio Theatre, Sydney Opera House during Forster's first post Go-Betweens solo tour. The show was so good this was the only picture I got around to taking.

More from my mixed bag of photographic nuts tomorrow...

Do You Remember the First Time?

Is there nicer news to wake up to than the fact that Pulp have decided to reform and play some live shows in 2011? Probably, but right now I'm too excited to think about what that might be. Details are only sketchy so far but seem to involve Pulp's line up at their 1995 pomp (i.e. Russell Senior is back) and rumours of gigs in London and Spain.

You can find out more by registering at pulppeople.com which is flashing up phrases like 'Is this a hoax?' and 'Is this really necessary?' and 'Is this nostalgia?' - the answers to which are hopefully not, yes and yes, but who gives a monkeys. Many people won't care (Pulp quietly returned to the obscurity from whence they came after 2001's We Love Life and their 2002 Hits compilation both stalled in the charts) but it's the kind of news that's already making us change our holiday plans for next year. Candida, Nick, Jarvis, Steve, Mark, Russell - ta, you've made my day.

I Never Said I Was Deep

I like the world sometimes. A bit of sunshine on my face here, a little rain for the garden there, a lie-in wrapped in daggy flannel sheets, a 95th minute equaliser against Arsenal at home. Tiny things that warm my little cockles. I had another one this week when a man who was helping puppy-proof our yard spotted the Sunderland sticker on display in our car.

Despite being from Zimbabwe he was all too familiar with internecine football politics in the north east of England having lived in Newcastle for a while. We used to live just around the corner from each other. Small world and all that but the thing that made me smile most was that he lived in one of my favourite buildings in the world, Shieldfield House.

It’s hard to explain why I love Shieldfield House so much. As you can see it’s a rather typical and unassuming 1960s tower block, typical of many on Tyneside built in that period. As far as I know it's only claim to fame is the less than prestigious title of second tallest building in Newcastle. I’ve never lived there or even been inside and whilst it’s similar to a block of flats in Hull we used to live in, I’m not so nostalgically romantic about it as to project on other unsuspecting highrises.

Yet there is something that makes Shieldfield House special amongst buildings; it is magic. Magic how, you ask? Look closely at the picture. What do you see? More pertinently, what do you not see? I'll tell you what you won't see - 3D. That is because Shieldfield House is a two dimensional building. Not a reflection on the residents, but a geometrical fact. Shieldfield House has an up and a down, and a side-to-side but it is sadly lacking a front-to-back. In dimensional terms it is deficient to the tune of one. Like those shanty town facades in old western movies, it's easily to believe that a good gust of wind could see the whole thing fall flat on its face.

Now I don’t claim to know the nature of this feat of concrete conjuring, but look again for proof. Even up close and from the side, there is still no... side. Despite the fact that you can sometimes see people going about their lives inside, and even opening their windows, Shieldfield House remains as improbably flat as the Phantom Zone in Superman II.

If you're ever in the area i thoroughly recommend checking out this unlikely architectural phenomenon for yourself. That said, even when visiting it in the flesh it doesn't look any different to these photos, so if you're unlikely to ever take trip up to Shieldfield just take my word for it. As Bucks Fizz once assured us in more innocent pre-Photoshop days, the camera never lies and no amount of James Cameron-style 3D trickery will change that.

Shieldfield House, Mint Custard salutes you. I never said you were deep, but you are profoundly shallow.

Society of the Spectacles

There is no escaping the fact that, in fashion, what comes around goes around. Yesterday’s discarded object of fashion ridicule will be tomorrow’s band new retro. Just as my folks must have been bemused by my enthusiasm for flares and brown corduroy, so it’s been bizarre watching fashion horrors from the Eighties excavated by the high street and sold to knowing (and unknowing) Gen-Y kids.

And yet, even though we’ve seen the return of ra-ra skirts, footless tights, slogan tees, neon, Rayban Wayfarers and vintage Kylie-style prom dresses, there is one sartorial frontier that I hitherto thought unbreachable; big glasses. Now before you get all fashionista on me, I’m not talking about those enormous bug-eyed sunglasses favoured by footballers’ wives and Paris Hilton. No, I’m talking about those large unattractive plastic spectacles your mum might have favoured in 1986.


You know the ones I mean. They wore them on The Golden Girls. Like Clark Kent in reverse Dustin Hoffman became Tootsie the minute the big glasses (and other accoutrements) went on. I don’t know when they became popular but a generation of mums, aunties and teachers must have looked at Estelle Getty and thought ‘I’ll have me some of that.’


Usually accompanied by a tight bubble perm, such glasses have been by used by comedians for the past twenty years to denote a certain type of woman; one who never left the eighties, in attitude or fashion. Consider the Fast Show’s Roy and Renée (‘Oh I got a really dicky tummy on the Wednesday, I said oh Roy, my tummy’s off- what did I say Roy? You said you could have shit through the eye of a needle. I did not say that Roy).



An eerily similar look is favoured by undercover social benefits investigator Beverley Hilscopto (think about it) in Peter Kay’s Phoenix Nights.



And when Shane Meadows wanted to make sure we understood that young Shaun’s mum in This is England was downtrodden and a bit mousy, he did this to the otherwise attractive Jo Hartley:



And yet, curiously, I am starting to see young women wearing these monstrosities in 2009. Young, attractive, fashion conscious and otherwise immaculately turned out women, with my Grandma’s enormous glasses perched on their nose. Why do they do it? To be different I guess. All generations wants to prove they’re different from the last, and what better way, superficially at least, than to embrace everything that the last generation held up for ridicule?

I recall the first time I pulled my Dad’s black horn-rimmed NHS glasses out of the loft and started wearing them out, even though I couldn’t see through them properly. I was inspired by a photo of Jarvis Cocker recreating this classic shot of Michael Caine by David Bailey.


My Dad and my friends all thought I was a bit odd (fair enough) which is interesting considering how common and ordinary they are these days. I’m certainly no fashion risk taker - I just wanted to look cool like Jarvis, so I can kind of understand wearing something that other people might see as horrible to stand out a bit.

Perhaps the same will happen with Tootsie specs. In five years time everyone will be wearing them too. Maybe, but those oft-mocked NHS black-frames somehow became ‘classics’ because there is something attractive about them in the first place – the sleek plastic, harsh black edges, the way they dominate a person’s face. This is as much about taste as anything else, but it’s hard to imagine those enormous vaguely-clear-brown plastic horrors in quite the same way regardless of how many beautiful young things wear them. At least not for me – not whilst I can still see Estelle Getty’s little eyes peering out from them.

A Jingle, Jangle Morning

Some mixed fortunes this week for people who like their music intelligent and sporadically jangly…

Sadness because this is the week we say goodbye to the Lucksmiths, one of my favourite Australian groups. Being one of Australia’s best bands they, like the Go-Betweens before them, have sold bugger all records and as a result this weekend’s duo of Melbourne concerts will be their last.
The Lucksmiths were the first Australian band I ever saw and the first band that I saw with Mrs Custard. She put Smokers in Love on the first mix-tape she ever made me. Aw, bless. They were playing at the Hopetoun in Sydney and reminded me of the Housemartins. Through them I heard about other Candle Records acts and discovered a whole new world of indie down under.

In particular the Lucksmiths have a distinct and quite lovely way with words. They capture the joys of the pleasurably mundane (crosswords, reading the paper in in bed, smoking, sitting around on rainy days) better than most. This flows into their sweet and realistic love songs which are always high on romance, nostalgia and longing with healthy sprinklings of unrequited-love scattered throughout. The objects of their affection often have quirky habits and back stories so you find that you're listening to a story as much as a song. Travel and geography are also important aspects of their lyrics, with the great distances required both to get to Australia and to travel within this huge continent used metaphorically to describe the pains of being apart. Like the Go-Betweens before them, the Lucksmiths world, whilst universally understandable, is very much set against a backdrop of their Australia - and for that read the trams, cafes, street corners and record stores of Melbourne.

I left Australia not long after seeing them that first time at the Hopeton. Flying out of Melbourne I did a quick whistle stop of the record shops to get some music to take back to the UK. I ended up in Polyester Records and innocently asked the person behind the counter if they had heard of a band called the Lucksmiths and did they have any records of theirs. They were very friendly and pointed me towards a surprisingly healthy amount of stock. I nattered on with them for a while about how I really liked them and then bought a few singles and albums to remind me of my trip. I found out a few months later that Polyester is basically the home of the Lucksmiths and at least one of the band works there. It's hard to imagine many other bands as good as the Lucksmiths being so unassuming in that situation.

The Lucksmiths are playing with the Smallgoods at the Thornbury Theatre on Friday 28th August. Tickets are still available so it’s still not too late to come along and give them the goodbye they deserve. Their last ever show is at the Corner Hotel in Richmond on Saturday 29th. Quite rightly it’s been sold out for months.




More pleasant and not totally unrelated news, given his propensity for an intelligent lyric and a jangly chord, is that Lloyd Cole is returning to our shores in November as part of a very quick jaunt around the world. He will also be playing at the Thornbury Theatre for the Melbourne leg, as well as the following dates around Australia:


Friday 6 November: Hepburn Springs, The Palais
Saturday 7 November Brisbane, Powerhouse Theatre
Mon 9 November Freemantle, Fly By Night Club
Wed 11 and Thu 12 Nov Sydney, The Basement


He’s also taking in the west coast of America, New Zealand, Singapore, Paris and England before finishing up in Glasgow as part of promotion for his four CD box-set of rarities, Cleaning out the Ashtrays. Dates and booking details for all shows are available on Lloyd’s website.

If you haven’t seen him do his solo acoustic thingy I can heartily recommend it whether you’re a fan or not. The evenings are usually pretty intimate; you could hear every hushed word during songs at The Basement a couple of years ago. Lloyd himself is pretty comfortable in his own skin and pretty adept at playing up to his grumpy young man (but getting older) persona.


I know from personal experience that this is mostly slight of hand, as he’s actually an exceedingly nice chap. He signed some records and a set list for me after a gig in Toulouse and then he and I got done at babyfoot (table football) by some local fans who were clearly semi-professional. I told this story to my disbelieving French friend who came with me when Lloyd played the same venue six months later. Sure enough Lloyd was up for a bit more babyfoot. This is my friend on the right casually kicking Lloyd’s arse…


It’s worth saying that Lloyd has many, many songs equally good if not better than those on Rattlesnakes – his most famous album with the Commotions. His first eponymous solo effort (also known as ‘X’) is one of my favourite albums and used to make me feel like the oldest 15 year old in town. Check out Don’t Look Back and Undressed for a hint of the times to be had in November.

And finally, whilst we’re talking front men gone solo, Jarvis Cocker is also returning to Australia to play songs from his new album Further Complications. Strangely Cocker is only two years younger than Lloyd Cole yet their imperial phases stand well over a decade apart. It’s unlikely that Jarvis is ready to dip back into the Pulp catalogue but no matter, because Further Complications and 2007’s self-titled contain more than enough songs to entertain.


Jarvis is playing as part of the Meredith Music festival as well as the following dates around Australia:

Sat 5 Dec Brisbane (Hi-Fi Bar)
Mon 7 Dec Sydney (the Metro)
Tues 8 Dec Freemantle (Metropolis)
Thu 10 Dec Adelaide (HQ)
Friday 11 Dec Melbourne (the Forum)

Tickets are available from Ticketek as of... (wait for it...) NOW!