The Second Greatest Steve We've Ever Had In The Band

So, having made a video promoting the new lineup, the band is once more thrown into that familiar languid chasm, four strings short of an ensemble. The bass player's provisory position came to an abruptly premature halt two days ago, rendering a nameless entity incomplete, a road eroded, a title superfluous.

Er...Steve's left the band. And now we've officially turned into Spinal Tap, except, fortunately for me, it's bass players we keep losing and, fortunately for them, none of the losses have involved bizarre gardening accidents or choking on someone else's vomit. Here's a little history:

Dan played bass for us first and introduced me to John and Dave, effectively forming the band. Then he left. And that's all I have to say about that.


Then Simeon came in, all Funkmeister Flex with his 5-string Warwick and baggy pants. Great musician too. Before that he'd played cello for us on a recording we started with Dan but never completed. He left to work in Sheffield.


Then Oli stepped up, another Funkmeister and very talented indeed. I suspected it wouldn't work out though, and it didn't. He does relief work in Asia these days, which while not as worthy a cause as being in a band, is still admirable. Just.


Then came a long break while we did other things. John amassed a collection of tools and DIY equipment matched only by Tim 'The Toolman' Taylor and began to build. Dave organised some sort of giant post-grad party, which I assume involved kegs, paper cups and plastic-covered furniture. They broke a projector. And I developed an addiction to The Happy World of Haribo. My doctor says the regular stinging sensation is because of the sour coating.

So, Steve. We love him for his personality and his playing, so he was an obvious choice. His personal circumstances meant he could only be a temporary solution for us, although we'd all have liked it to become permanent, but sadly Steve didn't quite click with the music. Euphemisms are rarely used literally, but there were actual musical differences, and because Steve was officially temporary it seemed futile for him to go through the time and expense of continuing to rehearse with us.

I understand Steve's plight because I've been there. The boys already know this, but when I first began to play with the band I didn't get it either, and I would drive home from practices wondering whether to stick with it or not. I think the friendships I was developing with John and Dave kept me there, and the fact that there was something interestingly unusual about the music that I couldn't quite put my finger on. It was this element I believed would make the band a success, and still do. Most importantly, the lads share my belief in God and the desire to communicate that belief through music. I love the music these days too - it's grown on me like a third nipple, a useful one that I want all my friends to see.

We still love Steve. He's a fine, fine bass player, but his 80s pop/rock roots presented a latent inevitability. He told me that he hoped to be jealous of our next bass player. In the nicest possible way, I hope so too, and the search is on.


Oh, the blog title. Quite simple really. As great as Steve is, he'll never eclipse his namesake, interestingly also called Steve, our band mascot. Steve is bright orange and thinks Kylie is 'just fabulous', but he's separated from Dale Winton by virtue of his percussion expertise. Booyakasha.

These Chicks Don't Even Know The Name Of My Band

There are no chicks, but if there were they wouldn't know the name of my band because there isn't one. There's a band, well, three quarters of one, but no name. Ach, just watch the video:



Here's the story. John writes good songs and has done so for some time. Dave plays guitar in between all night LAN FPS sessions and lays down a riff almost as efficiently as he eliminates a headcrab. Together they made a demo using a drum machine which was good, but lacked punch. The producer of that demo mentioned that he knew a real drummer, one that would speed up, slow down, make mistakes and everything. So he introduced them to me. One 34 minute tribute to Mike Portnoy drum solo later, I was recruited. Dan the producer played bass and we set on course for small local venue domination using the name Heath.

The song you hear on the above video is taken from the one recording we did together, which sadly marked the beginning of the end for Heath. 'Musical differences' arose and the band decided to split up after trying a succession of ill-suited bass players, all ill players, but unsuitable nonetheless. About a year passed and I did a demo of my own involving both John and Dave, along with a bass player I have worked with for years, Steve, known and loved by literally handfuls of church congregations across the region.

For whatever reason, the timing seemed right to put the band together again recently, although that arguably proved untrue because it couldn't have come at a worse time for Dave, who is currently finishing his PHD and updating his blog. Despite that, John and I recruited Steve and began to practice a few weeks ago in preparation for Dave's ceremonious return. When he does, gigs will happen, and we hope big things thereafter. I'm confident, too.

Man Of Steal

I went to see Superman Returns last Saturday. It was too long.

Superman was a childhood hero of mine, so in many ways this film was fighting a losing battle from the start because I consider the 1978 original a classic and don't think a new film was necessarily needed. Watching the original the following day confirmed that fact, although Reeve's costume now appears slightly more camp as a result of the new darker one.


But I was never opposed to an update. In fact, I couldn't wait for the new film to come out from the moment I heard about it. Updates can be done well; a new Batman film wasn't really needed either, but Batman Begins did something completely different and it worked well. Sadly, Superman is for all intents and purposes a remake of the original because it shamelessly refers to the 1978 film at every possible opportunity. And there's definitely a stronger Jesus allegory this time around.

But imitation doesn't itself make this a bad film. In fact, it's a very good film, just not a classic. Brandon Routh plays both Superman and Clark Kent very well, managing to separate the characters enough to make them both believable, but never with as much flair as Christopher Reeve did. Kevin Spacey, on the other hand, is a pale shadow of Gene Hackman's Lex Luthor. All the bumbling comedic flair that Hackman added to the character is lost on Spacey who, although good, is too sinister in the role.

I'm certain that I'll like Superman Returns more the next time I see it, I might even come to love it, but for the moment I just can't get that enthused. Some of the scenes are amazing, the actors are well chosen, the directing and effects are great, and there's a controversial sub-plot that I'm surprised I didn't find out about beforehand. For me, though, it's missing that something special to drag it into the realms of the Spider-man films, which in my opinion are both outstanding comic book movie benchmarks.

That said, I'd certainly recommend it. Just buy large snacks, and don't leave your wallet on the counter when you do, as I did. It took me two days to realise too, yet I didn't get robbed. Incredible.

Flop Trumps

I received an email yesterday telling me that the new official Playstation 3 website has gone live. It's a typical Sony affair, heavy on marketing and very nicely designed, but light on all the things that I, and presumably most people, actually want to see - screenshots and video. I didn't spend too long there, but I don't think there's any game footage at all.

The specs are all in place, but they mean nothing to me whatsoever. I recall reading in Edge, the forerunner in pretentiously anal gaming journalism, that the PS3 will have 'one teraflop floating point performance'. What? Having been gaming faithfully with Sony for ten years now, with a few Nintendo flirtations on the side, none of which have satisfied or lasted very long, all I care about is one question: Will it trounce Microsoft?

The answer, of course, is yes. But I wish Sony would stop being all Japanese and just tell people that. (Note I haven't considered Nintendo's effort. Wii'll see how it does, but I think everyone knows what the outcome will be. Flush?) I've spent some time with an XBOX360 recently and the graphical capabilities are remarkable, but none of the games I've played so far have added anything to my PS2 experience but a few smoother lines. Granted, it's early days, and I expect that lack of innovation will be the thorn in the PS3's side too until developers fully grasp the capabilities of the machine's 'cell processor'.

By which time Nintendo will have announced their retirement from the hardware market altogether and Microsoft will be desperately trying to churn another Halo out, hoping to recapture the magic (of an over-rated PC-lite FPS).

Console wars? It's always been more a polite exchange of statistics, but hopefully soon one of them will punch the other one in the face, steal their trump cards then run away. Now that would be cool.

Gonna Fly Now?

One of the enduring memories I carry from my childhood is my obsession with the Rocky films. That's how I can count to five in Roman numerals, and I thought I was about to learn what six looked like, but alas not because when Rocky 6 comes to a theatre near you it'll be called Rocky Balboa. Nonetheless, my cynical chums, I'm excited about it, to say the least.

One sunny day in 1990 I recall stumbling upon a shop that sold videos while being dragged through the Gateshead Garden Festival by my parents. And there, in the corner among Little Shop Of Horrors and Gremlins, was a title I'd been longing to own for years ; Rocky IV, in all its slightly fuzzy VHS splendour. Fortunately, the Garden Festival had finally given Gateshead something apart from Gazza to be proud of, so everyone who lived there, like us, went every single day. Thus, I got to bug my dad for this copy of Rocky IV on a daily basis, giving me the one and only good reason a 10-year-old needed to go to an urban regeneration site. Except for the hall of curvy mirrors, that was cool.


Rocky IV was released in 1985, so why I didn't have a copy in 1990 is beyond me, although it does explain why I regularly frequented the video shop at the top of the street for packets of super sour gobstoppers and Rocky films. Sometimes I got Superman, because I loved those films too, but usually a Rocky. I loved all of them, you see.

Eventually I badgered my dad enough to buy me the video, and that copy of Rocky IV was my most favouritest thing in the world, ahead, even, of my Megadrive. I watched it every single day when I got back from school, and sometimes I'd just watch the end fight sequence with the Russian over and over again, before running into my brother's room and beating the living daylights out of him. This nice VH1 feature explains what all the fuss was about:



Then disaster struck. A big freak from my class called Christopher asked if he could borrow my copy of Rocky IV while my mam was there, so she forced me to give it to him against my wishes. When I got it back, the sound had gone, replaced by a muted buzz. I was raging, so we had a fight the next day in the playground, by which I mean we pushed each other around a bit before the bell rang, quite unlike Rocky. Apart from the bell bit.

So, Rocky-less and alone, I had to wait until Christmas before getting a new copy, but my mam and my auntie Linda came through with all of them on VHS. Sweet.

All I ever seemed to want to do as a kid was watch Rocky. I even wanted to be a boxer when I grew up because of it, until I found out you had to train every day and getting smacked in the head hurts. I believe the roots of my obsession lie in one night in early 1980.

While my mam was heavily pregnant with me, my dad took her to see Rocky II. To this day they both maintain that it was the best cinema experience they've ever had, as every single person in the room got up from their chairs and jumped up and down to cheer Rocky on as though his title re-match with Apollo Creed was actually unfolding live. It was absolutely unlike anything they'd ever experienced before, and there I was, listening to it all immersed in amniotic fluid. In fact, there are only two times I remember ever going to the cinema with my dad; once to see Schindler's List during which I fell asleep (which is no indictment on the film) and the time he took me to see Rocky V, which, despite the horror of the film, remains a warm memory of time spent with my father. Actually, before Nicola miscarried, our baby was due on the release date of the next Rocky film, which I thought was cool.

The first Rocky was released in 1976 to widespread critical acclaim, winning 3 oscars. According to Stallone, who was an unknown actor and about to sell his dog Butkus for food when he wrote Rocky, the producers who wanted the script initially offered to buy it for $25,000 on the proviso that a big name star play the central role. Robert Redford, James Caan and Ryan O'Neal were mooted as possible Balboas, but Stallone's unwavering desire to play the part himself saw him refute a final offer of $360,000 before the producers caved.


With $106 dollars in his bank account, Stallone was used to being poor and saw Rocky as his big chance to become a star, reasoning that he wouldn't be able to live with himself if it succeeded without his involvement. It was agreed that with an unknown actor in the leading role production costs should be kept low, so the budget was set at $1,000,000 and the rest, as the old cliche goes, is something that happened in the past.

The film went $100,000 over budget, but that didn't matter as it turned out. Some would argue that Rocky was too successful for it's own good, because the $117,000,000 US box office gross it took led to the inevitable glut of sequels, culminating in the artistic and financial (relatively speaking) disaster that was Rocky V.

Now, I know there are a load of playa-hataz who cuss every Rocky film past the first one for being formulaic, cheesy and cynical Hollywood churn-outs with thoughtless and predictable plot lines. And they're absolutely correct (with the possible exception of Rocky II), but so what? They entertain. And the fact is that there aren't any other films quite like them, or at least none that do it so flagrantly and so very well. The first film basically invented a narrative structure that has been followed by Hollywood ever since, and it did it with integrity and artistic flair. The ones that followed, granted, had little by way of originality, but they entertained in a basic 'flawed hero gets battered but comes good at the end' manner. It wasn't the conclusion that mattered, but the way it took you there.

You can imagine my disappointment when I realised how bad Rocky V actually was. The notion of 'champ losing everything and going back to his roots' was fine, but to execute it so poorly was shameful. Let's be honest, after Rocky II the films were basically a testosterone vehicle - a training montage set to an oversized adrenalin-inducing RAWK soundtrack followed by Rocky getting the crap punched out of him then tearing his opponent apart at the last minute. Rocky V tried to do that, but it was as though Stallone had become a bit embarrassed about the obviousness of the formula and had tried to hide it by getting someone else to do the training / fighting bit. Just in case, though, he had a quick rumble with his protege at the end and pummeled him for being an ungrateful little mug.

Stallone knew it was rubbish and admitted it later, but the damage was done. There was no way he was going to let an American icon go out like that.

And so comes Rocky Balboa. As you can tell, I could write about Rocky all day, so you can imagine my merriment when the rumours of a sixth Rocky were confirmed. I can totally understand what the geeks must have felt like when Episode I was confirmed now.

Predictably, the movie forums are spattered with 'LOL he must be fighting with a zimmer frame' and the like, but Stallone should be applauded for even trying to make this film. Cynics will say that he's doing it mostly for financial reasons, but at 60, with many millions of dollars to his name and a recent successful TV show in 'The Contender', he hardly needs to make a comeback. His CV is littered with some truly awful films, but I would suggest that the risks involved in making another Rocky are far greater than is first apparent. For a start, Rocky is a character ingrained in American pop culture who arguably represents the American Dream itself. Rocky V is like the drunk, embarrassing uncle at the party in congress that nobody wants to talk to. Send his drunk younger brother to congress and the party might get shut down.

See, if Stallone makes another Rocky V, which he runs the risk of doing because he's already making noises about going back to the roots of the series, much the same as he did before V was released, he could ruin the franchise for an entirely new generation, and take his own reputation down with it for good. He'll also prove the ageist crowd absolutely right.

But at the moment it looks good. For one, he's actually been controversial (SPOILER ALERT) because he's killed Adrian off. Rocky's NEVER been controversial before. And then there's the trailer, which was released only a coupe of days ago and which prompted me to write this. Clearly, Stallone is aware the type of stick he's getting and is happy to poke fun at himself, yet the fight sequence looks like it'll be as viscerally satisfying as ever. Plus, this time there's no guarantee how the fight will end. So, ladies and gentlemen, I give you Rocky Balboa:



Best. Christmas. Ever.

Is That Daddy’s Car?

A couple of weeks ago on a Friday night I had a dream. In my dream the world was a better place, a tranquil haven of joy and plenty in which trouble and woe melted by in a luxurious haze.

My dad has a friend called Chris. Chris is a partner in a firm called Halliwell Landau and Chris just bought a new silver Mercedes CLS500. In my dream Chris gave me his car for the evening.


So you can imagine that on following Saturday afternoon when my dad called me and said, “Mark, Chris says you can have his car tonight if you want it,” I was overjoyed. To thank him I offered him my ride in exchange, but he said no. He probably knew he couldn’t handle my dope whip’s raw power, but that's ok.

I went to my dad’s house to reintroduce myself to Chris. I’d only met him once, about five years ago for a few minutes after he’d had a few, but I remembered him as a top bloke and this gesture was magnifying that memory. It turns out he’d read my musings on the 6 Series in The Independent and wanted to know how his car compared. Well, that’s what he told me, but my dad had shown him the article and he probably just wanted me to have a good time. Like I said, top bloke. I remarked that I’d known my dad for 27 years and he’d never let me anywhere near his cars, and out we went.

He took me out to talk me through the features, like the voice activated DVD player and sat nav, heated vibrating leather seats and 7-speed automatic tiptronic gearbox with a ‘start/stop’ button on top of the shifter. Oh, and to tell me that it had a 5 litre V8 and I should push it a bit to see how it went.


To be honest, though, as amazingly impressive as it all was, I was slightly under-awed as he was taking me through the stuff, even though I was about to drive a car with a £52,000 list price and every option box ticked on top of that. Nicola, on the other hand, was not. In fact, she was so gobsmacked that fear filled her from the moment she sat inside the thing, terrified that I’d prang it.

As Chris walked away, I realised that the one thing he hadn't told me was where the handbrake release was, which was a bit embarrassing as I contemplated running up the garden after him so he could show me. Fortunately I remembered that my dad’s old Merc had a foot-operated handbrake and I found the release. This could be a disaster, I thought, but I kept that to myself.

Nicola was just about shaking as I reversed away. So, for fun, as I turned out the drive I floored it.

Yes. It was like falling down Mount Everest inside a marshmallow, if you can imagine such a thing, except you could watch the telly while having your behind gently massaged at the same time, which I'm told you can't do even in the most modern Marks and Spencer marshmallows.

It only took about 500 yards for any sense of grandeur missing from my introduction to the car to slap me in the face harder than Balboa on Christmas day in Moscow. I've always thought the CLS looked a bit goofy, a bit confused, like it didn't know what it was supposed to be. I mean, Mercedes call it a 'four door coupe', which is a bit like calling your house a 'three tiered bungalow', and I've never really understood who it's supposed to appeal to. But, when I asked the journalist who took me out in the 6 Series if any car had really surprised him lately, his answer was the CLS without hesitation. And now I could see why.

It had an X factor that I couldn't quite put my finger on and it looked absolutely stunning from the outside. Pictures of this car don't get across how good it looks in real life at all, because in print it looks like someone's tried to fold it in half and bent it from side on.


I think that what I liked about it was how different and weird it was, much like the 6 Series, except the Merc is more practical. Personally, I'd still take the BMW, but if I was a bit older and needed the space, I don't think there's a better looking or cooler saloon (it's NOT a coupe) than the CLS. Granted, I haven't tried that many £50,000 plus saloons, but really, they're probably much the same at this end of the market and are largely selected based on one question: 'Which one will detract from my middle-aged spread best?'

The only disappointments were that it seemed slightly cramped for such a big car because the roof line's quite low, and the gearbox was a bit lazy when it wasn't in sport mode. That said, one man's lazy is another's comfort, and there was still plenty of room, just not as much as I expected. Most of all though, I loved it a shocking amount.

But you know when you’re doing something you really enjoy, say, watching a new episode of 24, and the phone keeps ringing so you have to keep getting up just as Jack Bauer’s about to lay the smackdown on some perp who he’s just discovered has been hiding a nuclear weapon in his shed that he bought from someone who works at the CTU? Well, Nicola was that phone. Every time I prodded the throttle, she rang. See, in her mind this was a disaster waiting to happen, and no amount of German precision safety engineering, active or passive, was going to prevent us from spinning out of control and onto the nearest cow the very moment I tickled the pedal under my right foot. So I decided to get rid of her.

In fairness, it must be quite scary being out of control in a car that is over four times more powerful than your normal ride. I had a similar experience in an Impreza RB5 with my brother’s mate ‘Big Bad Dave’. The name should tell you everything you need to know.


I dropped Nicola off at her mother’s place so I could have the car to myself for a bit, but to be honest I didn’t really know where to go, so I just drove around for half an hour, taking in the confused ‘you’re not a footballer so what you doing in that?’ looks from other road users. Then I picked my sister up (who also likes her cars) and scared the crap out of her too.

Unlike my 6 Series foray though, this time I was to experience one of the sad realities of owning a pricey car. I realised, or rather the car told me, that petrol was low, so I made my way to a petrol station to do something about it. I only had a tenner on me, so I put that much in, which I admit I was a bit embarrassed about because it’s the type of thing my mam does and I rib her for. Mind, filling this bad boy would probably cost the thick end of 70 quid, and although I’d be trying my best to keep the MPG in single figures, I wasn’t likely to use a full tank over the remaining half an hour I had with the car.

Anyway, that’s not the point, but rather what I heard when I returned from paying for said petrol. When I’d pulled up at the pump there were two chav-mobiles demonstrating, strangely enough, both the upper and lower echelons of the chav car game. One chav was in an ancient battered Ford Fiesta, the classic chav-wagon, but the other was rolling in the brand new Focus ST. Quite a motor, to be honest. Clearly fresh from tearing through town with their bass bins rattling the fascias of alco-pop riddled youth clubs on both sides of the Bigg Market, these boys had taken their lady friends to the petrol station for the after party. There was no re-fuelling being undertaken, they’d just parked up near the pumps. Classic.

But when M Dawggg rolled up in the CLS500, jaws dropped. I was genuinely embarrassed about it, because I knew that I’d stolen ST Boy’s thunder from him when all I wanted to do was put a tenner in my dad’s mate’s car. So, how does one react when he can no longer impress a girl even in his cousin’s uninsured Focus ST?

“Is that daddy’s car?” was the cry.

To be honest, it was so quiet that it didn’t register properly until I drove away. I think that might be because I was concentrating on not bunny-hopping or reversing away like Arnold in Twins, but when I glanced to my right as daddy’s 19s skimmed past the party at pump two, the look of pure hatred I got from ST Boy, all decked out in pink Top Man splendour with a haircut that said 'this party’s never going to end,' suggested he desperately needed a reason to feel better about himself at that moment. The funny thing was, if he knew the truth, that it wasn’t even daddy’s car but daddy’s mate’s, he’d have slept easy that night.

But he better make the most of it, because daddy says he’s buying the CLS in a couple of years.


Mind, I won’t get anywhere near it then.