So there is a movie that is coming out soon that has me positively salivating.... it's not Fincher's Zodiac. Nor is it the Rodriguez/ Tarantino lovein, Grindhouse. No - it's This Is England, by maverick English director, Shane Meadows.

The reason? I believe Meadow's last movie, 2004's Dead Man's Shoes, to be one of the greatest pictures of recent years. It's a rivetting revenge thriller starring the British Isle's one true acting superstar (are you watching, Colin?) , the very wonderful Paddy Considine. He plays ex-soldier Richard with such menace, magnetism and macabre humour that I would readily compare the peformance with de Niro's iconic Travis Bickle - yes, Considine really is that good.

Meadow's makes very personal pictures. His Once Upon a TIme in the West was a western based in, you guessed it, the Midlands (Dead Man's Shoes reminds me of Leone's Hang 'em High in its tone) and his newest release, This Is England, is a semi-autobiographical skinhead drama and promises to be as compelling and confonting as Dead Man's Shoes.

Over time, I'll talk about some other lost masterpieces, but if you have some of your own, list them below.

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American TV shows seem to be picking up some increasingly interesting music - I was sitting watching CSI with my girl this evening when a perfectly funky version of Cameo's Word Up was showcased.

A little digging turned up that the song (available for download below) is by a London soul singer called Willis - more info here.

If you are intrigued, Willis is playing the Plastic People on Curtain Road in London on April 28th.

Cover Versions are pretty special to me and, over time, they'll become a major theme of my blog. I hope you like this as a starter for 10... 

Download: Willis - Word Up

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As the BBC recently reported, a draft "Blogging Code of Conduct" is being proposed after perceived threats made on a popular blog against US developer, Kathy Sierra. Ms Sierra was threatened on the US blog Creating Passionate Users. The offensive comments (details here) caused Ms Sierra to cancel a personal appearance at the SXSW festival. The main tenet of the proposed code of conduct draft is that :-

• anonymous blog messaging should be banned;
• writers must take responsibility for comments as well as content;
• don't say anything that you wouldn't say in person;
• users of sites that advocate "open" blogging should be warned on that site's home page before they blunder into the deep and dark abyss that is known as free speech...

Forgive my facetiousness. But doesn't this remind you of Tipper Gore's anti offensive language campaign in the mid eighties that resulted in the now infamous Parental Advisory Sticker. Recent US albums facing censorship from the sticker included Gwen Stefani's menacing The Sweet Escape and Bloc Party's disturbing Slient Alarm, putting them in the same basket as much more infamous Eminem and Ice-T albums... The mind boggles. 

Clearly the imposition of an unenforceable law that has little or no control and boundaries has a precedence in the US. So should we be worried about the Blogosphere? Or should CLUAS impose its own rules and regulations in an attempt to stamp out a fire before it flames.

Blogs obviously provide a more immediate, and intense, forum for debate. That may mean that fundamental differences come to the fore faster, and nerves are laid bare. The facelessness encourages a lack of control that is less apparent on other media. So what does this mean? To me, the best Blogs exhibit a kind of intense honesty that cannot be seen in the House of Commons or on a newspaper letters page.

I take full responsibility for the content of my Blog. If I am to take further responsibility for the content of the comments on my Blog, my position becomes a lot less tenable. The legal concept of Copyright does not apply (and should never apply) to a Blog so any Code on Conduct could only be a voluntary exercise, right? Even so, we are moving at a pace towards our first legal challenge to the right to reply to a Blog.

Allowing people to vent is, in my opinion, a positive thing. Whether it be that the new Arctic Monkeys is crap or that that Mugabe should be removed forthwith, it's still a valuable opinion. Some people are inherently aggressive, nasty, uncontrolled but I just fail to see how imposed voluntary rules can possibly help - those humane enough to take such rules into account are unlikely to ever sink to the level of abuse in the first place.

CLUAS allows me to choose whether to allow anonymous comments to the Blog (something that differentiates the Blog from the Discussion Board, for example). That is a good thing. Long may it continue.

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A comment ("...back in the days when it meant something to him...") left by the reader 'Wazza' on my first blog entry has got me thinking. It was in reference to Robbie Williams and seemed to suggest that Williams' heart is no longer in his music, that somehow he'd lost his muse. Williams' rise was certainly a dramatic one - from making it massive by proving his old mates wrong, by having 250,000 people chant his name. Maybe now Williams is suffering from the Rules of being a Celebrity in the Modern Age that dictate that he cannot stay on a pedestal that high. He has to fall. Maybe that fall has everything to do with his manic depressive nature but, personally, Williams has, in recent years, become a much more interesting artist (though both Williams' record company and would probably disagree based on the quite dismal performance of his 2006 release, Rudebox). It seems to me that the music now means more to Williams than his audience.

"...back in the days when it meant something...". Another interpretation of Wazza's comment applies to the quite extraordinary number of 40+ year old rock stars who are returning to their old stomping grounds in the hope of rejuvenating both their lives and their music. The Who's Endless Wire was a tired rehash of Tommy except the main protaganist wasn't a deaf, dumb and blind boy but Townsend himself explaining away his rather unusual websurfing activities. The beauty of the Stooges was that their thrillingly ugly slabs of sound raged against their perceived lack of respect. Now their first release in over 30 years, the Weirdness,  sounds cleansed, anodyne and should never have been allowed to happen.

The Pixies have reformed. The Police are reforming... and are guaranteed to make huge amounts of money from their impending world tour. Indeed Pixies legend Black Francis has clearly stated that he is in this game for the filthy lucre (and let's not even talk about that Sex Pistol's reunion embarrassment). Does the music still mean something to them?

Not that this drive to recreate the glory years can be a totally negative thing.... The elder statesman of literate Aussie rock, Nick Cave, has regressed on his latest release, Grinderman, to the clanking, discordant days of the Birthday Party. And rather thrilling it is too with its dirty laughs (No Pussy Blues) and garage beats. Indeed the original press release for the band describes them rather perfectly - "Foul-mouthed, noisy, hairy, and damn well old enough to know better."

Grinderman stands out because, whilst it is a nod to the past, it doesn't pander to the past. Cave is 50 years old this year and he sounds it. But you can hear his heart is still in it. And he kinda sounds like the Stooges...

There are some bands that I would love to see reform, for purely selfish reasons of course. REM (the original Bill Berry lineup), the Band, Midnight Oil. Any other suggestions? 

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Have you had a musical experience that, over time, has festered in your mind until you reach a point where what you feel now is much more intense than what you felt at the time?

Well, let’s talk about Damien Rice’s show at the Enmore Theatre, Sydney, last month. Having had mixed Rice live experiences in the past, I was wary of his mood. On occasion, he can be a storyteller, an engager. On others he can be sullen and dismissive. But seldom, if ever, has an artist shown such disregard for his audience as Rice did that night in Sydney. He was surly, he turned his back to us. He refused completely to engage. His band played with a kind of cautious acceptance, reverentially bowing their heads at the appropriate times as if to let him know that they understand. The show only sparked to life when the band played a glorious Cold Water in near total darkness. How pleasurable it was to not have to look at him! When Rice had left the stage, Vivienne Long gently taunted him by pretending that he was the devil. The tension lifted, albeit briefly. He returned for the encore, a still prickly yet warmer set of songs that teased the audience by hinting at how good the show could have been.

           Separated at birth, according to Vivienne Long...

Now weeks later, when I reflect on the show  I feel a kind of bilious frustration. I’ll never see him again, I threaten. He’s lost me this time, I moan. Surely he knew that there were paying customers out there who would go home unsatisfied. This clearly wilful antagonism has got me thinking about what constitutes a great gig. I filtered through the live experiences that have stayed with me through the years. Is there a common theme? The Flaming Lips at Hammersmith Apollo, Sufjan Stevens (download some live Sufjan tracks here) at Shepherd’s Bush Empire, the Stones in the Olympic Stadium Barcelona, Solomon Burke at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Eels at the Metro Sydney, Gillian Welch Shepherd's Bush. Great gigs, great songs played with exuberance and not a little showmanship. Ray laMontagne, Richard Swift, Antony Hegarty – performers crippled by shyness and depression yet capable of transcending their vices to connect and thrill. Then there's Sleepy Jackson, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and Ryan Adams - live performers of huge potential let down by egotism and negativity. Yet still those were memorable gigs, for the wrong reasons of course.

Rice can polarise an audience (like Adams) – the same show can inspire reverence and despair in equal measure, as can be seen by trawling the message boards of his website. My feeling is that he loves his songs, not his audience. He expects his audience to expend significant effort to listen - his band's reverential poses challenge us to bow our heads, to copy their body language, to succumb. He doesn’t want to earn our approval or acclaim. He doesn't seem to care. Indifference or perceived slights by his paying fans are met with overt resentment and not a little anger. Possibly this anger (immaturity?) is what drives him.

What is clear is that this challenging Irish performer can be even more intriguing on the nights he misses than on those he hits.

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