Round and round and round...

This isn’t the first time I’ve done this, this ‘writing crap about crap’ thing. Oh, no.

In the past a number of outlets have supported my effluvia, from Tripwire magazine through the oft-mentioned Borderline to Comics International and even, a lifetime ago, the venerable British Broadcasting Corporation. The only change is that these days there’s no editor breathing down my neck, no deadline except the self-imposed ones and they can whoosh past any time they like.

It seems to me that in this long, seemingly unending and unendable series of positions as a media commentator, regardless of where the noise is being made, there always has to be a replay of what I’m about to do here.  The words may differ but the sentiment remains, enduring like Ayers Rock or maybe Blue Peter.

Ready?

This chapter would have lead off with the not-at-all-cliched phrase “It’s getting near to Convention Season”, but every day is convention day in this non-stop no-brakes no-filter modern world. Here in the jolly old U of K we’re about to embark on the annual festival of slightly shabby disappointment that is the Bristol Comic Con (which isn’t its actual name. Its actual name is something which I forgot at exactly the same moment I left for home after the last one I attended). Any second now we shall see the inaugural Kapow!, which I’d lay good money on also being the valedictory Kapow!, for there is only a limited amount of time during which the public will swallow Mark Millar’s self-promotion.  In the Colonies there’s a convention nearly every weekend and it wouldn’t surprise if some blighter was planning something for alternate Wednesdays just in case there's someone somewhere who isn't sucking on Geoff Johns' teat.

I’ve had the pleasure of attending many of these conventions, starting with - logically - my first, way back in the heady days when UKCAC was a major event, bringing top names from all over the place and gathering them in a dingy hall just off London’s top open-air gay hook-up spot, to my last, a grey and dismal weekend in a half-full railway engine shed where the only fun to be had that didn’t involve guessing either the weight of the panel moderator or how many years since the star showbiz guest last worked was in getting blind drunk and brandishing the award one had just won[1] out of the hotel bedroom window at the losers down on the street below.

I’ll admit that I’ve never attended a convention at street level, as a civilian. I’ve always been a retailer or a creative or a publisher, my badge has always been a different colour from those worn by hoi polloi[2], I have always had at least a little access to the rarified air in the professional areas. Yay me.

One thing that goes hand-in-hand with standing behind a table with a slightly smug air, as opposed to shuffling along in front of a table with a slightly malodorous fug, is that those among the shuffling humanity who hold artistic pretensions see you as their ticket to a finer life.

As a result, you’re continually bombarded with portfolios. Every other Herbert is slinging a black leather zip-up with many many plastic sleeves inside, and each of those plastic sleeves will contain something which in any civilised society should be banned from ever seeing daylight.

I make a point of asking people’s names when they show a portfolio; it’s only polite and when you’re getting around to asking questions, like ‘I am a retailer and have no publishing interests, so why are you showing me this… Dave?’ or ‘You do understand that this portfolio shows less talent than my dog, and he’s been dead these last three years… Harry?’, it’s good to add that personal touch.

Or, rather: I do this because I have yet to see a decent portfolio. I’ve seen some absolute friggin’ stinkers and I’ve seen a few that didn’t actively make me retch, but I’ve never seen one that made me blink, rub my eyes in amazement and offer the artist any form of work. If you’re offering constructive criticism, and even if you’re enough of a sadist to enjoy taking a fellow’s dreams and stomping them to death as you would a sick kitten, it’s a right and good thing to ameliorate the medicine with the notion that you’re on the artist’s side even if he’s quite obviously incapable of telling which end of a pencil is the sharp one. Using their name, preferably using it without simultaneously projectile-vomiting, is a form of contact, a metaphorical hand to cling to in this Sargasso of destruction.

If you’re planning a convention visit soon, and you’re planning to unleash your talent upon the world, do me a favour first. Take a long, hard, cold look at your work and ask yourself: is this any good? You’ll be biased, of course, as you should be. You’ll need an ego the size of a living planet if you’re going to get anywhere in this game. But put that aside and really critique your work. First question: is your grasp of anatomy as good as it possibly can be? Do your figures have ridiculously over-length legs (the most common flaw in portfolio work)? Have you got any sequential work in your portfolio, or is it mostly pin-up shots? If the latter, remember Rob Liefeld’s influence isn’t as great as it once was, but editors will always want decent storytellers.

And if you can’t see anything wrong with your ‘folio, ask someone else. Not your mates, not your Mum. An art teacher, perhaps. Or someone with a professional interest. Ideally, ask a professional artist, and not necessarily a comicbook artist. In fact, most definitely not a comicbook artist.

Listen to what they have to say. Take on board their advice. And if their advice is ‘please don’t ever draw again’, even if their advice is ‘please chop off your hands and your feet and possibly even seal up your own mouth with molten lead so you can’t hold a pencil even between your teeth because if you do I will hunt you down and kill you’, then listen to them.

I ask you to do this because there are far, far too many underskilled creatives around at present. And next time, we’re going to see what happens when a lack of ability meets an excess of ambition.

I can’t wait!

---

[1] Best Comics-Related Magazine, I think it was.

[2] No, there’s no definite article. Do you not know Latin, then?

KEEP FALLING IN AND OUT OF LOVE...

I fell in love in the summer of '99. It was a beautiful day. The sun shone, no doubt the birds sang but I couldn’t hear them as I was inside a car travelling at fifty or so mph around the North Circular. I was bored with the radio. I decided to stop at Brent Cross Shopping Centre to buy a new CD. I just didn’t know what.

This was the first and the only time I’ve ever bought music having had no prior acquaintanceship with the artist. It was a gamble, but the copy of Uncut magazine I leafed through over a coffee in Fenwicks said the album, this ‘first’ album by a young singer who’d chosen to turn her back on the Nashville machine and make her own music her own way, was worthy of five stars.

This isn't it. 

Walked over to HMV. Didn’t expect to see her there. But there she was, blonde hair flying up and around a surly-looking face, all of it framed by a lust-red background. Scrawled across it, her statement of intent: I Am Shelby Lynne.

What the hell. Gamble a tenner. Never heard of her, never heard a note of her music. Didn’t even like country.

Got back to the car, put the disc in just as I was heading down the on-ramp. As the car hit that last stretch of three-lane before the tailbacks started, there was a sound like a drummer falling downstairs with his full kit, a sound that first made me laugh for half a second, then think I’d made a terrible mistake. But then, oh but then, she started to sing…

Since then, I’ve bought every record she’s made. The ill-advised we’re-gonna-make-you-the-new-Dusty Springfield Love, Shelby (where she first started to wear as little as possible on the album sleeve, an image continued retroactively on the re-issued I Am.. a few years later);

the stripped-down Identity Crisis where she shrank to microscopic size using her ex-husband’s scientific devices then murdered her best friend by literally stamping on her brain… No, hang on, different Identity Crisis… Where she went back to basic again while still staying within the commercialised country music perameters (and pulled off an astonishing channelling of Patsy Cline in Lonesome). The even starker Suit Yourself free of any big-label interference and the simplest record she’d ever made, with a bare-minimum band and some killer backing singers (and paid far better tribute to The Man In Black in Johnny Met June than her over-produced Nashville era cover of I Walk The Line could hope for. And let's not forget that she played - and played very well - Johnny Cash's mother in Walk The Line the movie but got ignored when everybody fell over themselves bigging up Reece Witherspoon).

Then the spectacular ‘Actually I am the new Dusty Springfield and to prove it, here’s a bundle of Dusty covers Just  A Little Lovin’, taking Dusty’s kohl-rimmed smokiness and turning each of those songs into a tiny, intimate masterclass in what one girl, a guitar and a set of brushed drums can do.

It was then that she came over here to London to play a gig and promote JALL; one night at the Royal Festival Hall in the middle of Summer 2008. Sweltering day, my temper rising higher the later my date became. Eventually she turned up about an hour after the show was scheduled to start, with a friend, literally fresh off the plane from South Africa, in tow (I’d known about this in advance but had expected the friend to have gone straight back to the date’s flat). We picked up an extra ticket and went in; luckily we’d only missed the support act – and if you were that support act I’m sorry for being quite so dismissive of you. The date and her friend took the original two seats – I’d hate to leave a visitor to our fair land on her own in a strange concert hall – leaving me with the spare.

Ms. Lynne's promotional photographs
were always bound to attract
a certain type of gentleman

It’s a terrible thing that an artist like Shelby Lynne is as undervalued as she is, and an indicator of that undervalue is that in the circle of the RFH no more than the first six rows were occupied. The rest was yawningly empty, row after row of mocking beige seats. But that meant I could take my pick. Which I did.

Sitting and enjoying music with friends is a wonderful thing. But to sit in splendid isolation, watching one of your favourite artists perform without distraction, without someone else, someone unfamiliar with your entertainer whispering questions, giving their opinion…that is a thing passing sublime.

The first few songs – from the early albums – were overmiked, probably as the balance was designed for a full hall; the sound distorted by its own loudness, and I dreaded what might be to come. But by the time Shelby had got to the more reserved, intimate settings of JALL – and after she’d been delivered of a Jack and Coke with nowhere near enough ice for her taste - everything fell into place.

Look, the long and the short of it is that this woman could do no wrong for me. The next album, Tears Lies And Alibis wasn’t made available in the UK until nearly a year after JALL, but did I mind? No, I just paid big bucks for an import copy.

But.

Shelby’s most recent album is called Merry Christmas. It’s – yep – a Christmas album. OK, some of the songs are her own and I’m sure they’ll show the same levels of cynicism and disillusionment as her others, but nonetheless… A Christmas album. The first time I’ve not pre-ordered, or dashed to a shop on release day. Because I doubt that even this astonishing woman call pull off a Christmas album. As I said to the date; I don’t care what she looks like… A Christmas album?? Even I have some standards (and I don’t mean Little Drummer Boy).

Would you argue with her?

Even so, even though it’s only the end of March, I’m looking forward to December, because that’s the only time I’m going near this one. 

THIS WEEK

I can only be arsed to go and buy comics every couple of weeks. The shop’s a good half-an-hour away by bike. The effort involved is more than made up for by the long-standing friendship I have with the proprietor, Mr. Gary Ochiltree, and by the fact that no matter how much I tell myself that I’ll just pop in, pick up my order and pop out again, no matter how pushed for time I might be, every visit turns into a couple of hours worth of discussion, argument, bad jokes, swearing and all-round japery on all subjects under the sun with the usual exception of comics.

On top of that, there’s so very little being published today that gives me any sort of buzz. Maybe I’m jaded. It certainly feels like it’s all be seen before. It also feels like every mainstream title is constrained by the demands of the next great crossover; that’s why I stopped reading any Marvel comics about five or six years ago, and why I’ve recently informed Mr. O. that I’ll be having none of that Flashpoint business thank you very much.  Conversely, even out-of-continuity material is more than a bit lacking in interest these days. Is anybody surprised that DC’s First Wave line has bitten the dust so quickly, given that it’s been confusing, badly-written, and has hardly ever been on schedule? (Such lousy food! And so little of it!)

Anyways, this is what I picked up this week….

(All images copyright DC Comics, etc etc)

Knight and Squire 6: That title needs definite articles. Just doesn’t sound right without them. I so wanted to love this book, honest I did. The first two issues were outright joys, bringing a proper taste of English humour to something so quintessentially American as the superhero comic; just enough silliness, demonstrating examples of many different styles of English comedy (and this is without doubt post-war English comedy, with its roots in Surrealism and Oxbridge and dodgy seaside-postcard puns) without losing its footing as an adventure story.

It lost its way somewhere around the third issue and the fourth dragged quite badly; there was a distinct feeling that Paul Cornell (who is a very nice man) had been given the keys to the toyshop, played with all the good stuff straight away and then had to shuffle a couple of FuzzyFelt playsets around for a few hours before getting back to the Johnny Sevens and the Scalectrix. In short: the sense of fun dissipated.

Here we are at the end of the run, and although it’s still not a laugh riot (but how could it be, with one main character dead, another dying, and the biggest bastard in the whole DCU striding about in a snitty mood?) it’s a big step back up.

And it’s become clear that despite the title, this has been all about Beryl; Cyril’s done sod all except ride a motorbike and date a popstar. Beryl’s the one who’s done the thinking, who’s become more clearly defined as a character and who’s stolen the whole story out from under her boss’s ugly grey visor. And she picked up Cyril’s copy of Total Castle. Good for her.

The Spirit 12: One of those First Wave titles mentioned above and the only one that I think will be missed. Doc Savage has been meandering about like nobody’s business, but we can blame that squarely on Brian Azzarello’s seeming inability to write a story that doesn’t go all over the shop. First Wave itself has been delayed so often it gets admiring glances from Virgin Trains and is also written by Azzarello. 

Anybody foolhardy enough to take on The Spirit has mighty big shoes to walk in. Of course Will Eisner, but also Darwyn Cooke, whose run a few years back was the best Spirit since Eisner’s glory years. And here’s something: if Cooke could make the outdated and racist character of Ebony White work, why the hell couldn’t Azzarello? Where was the need to make Ebony a girl? Next thing it'll be "the only way I can see the Fantastic Four working is if The Thing is a twelve-year-old ballerina!" Jesus, it’s worse than having Claremont around.

Back in the present, David Hine’s been knocking out some half-way decent stories, nothing to bring a tear to the eye or make you give up smack, but better than the majority of the post-Cooke material. Good words here also for artist Moritat, who knows how to draw figures in motion and has a way with drapery not seen for a long time. More good words for colourist Gabriel Bautista’s use of the secondary levels of those primary colours that make up the Spirit’s customary suit and tie, and for Rob Leigh’s Eisner/Oda tribute lettering that still has its own style, and which I do believe is used on the cover of our next pick…

THUNDER Agents 5:   Oh, this book’s pretty much doomed, isn’t it? Just looking at the sales figures makes that much plain. That and the fact that it’s a bloody good superhero book, taking place outside the main DC line. It’s had Beautiful Loser written all over it since issue one. All your fault. You should buy books like this instead of another Geoff Johns travesty. But you don’t. Tossers.

First of all, most of this issue is drawn by Ryan Sook, which is A Good Thing. Second of all, it looks very much as if Nick Spencer has for the last four issues led us all gently by the hand into expecting a certain something, and then, with this issue, set about kicking the shit out of the entire edifice. It’s not one of those EVERYTHING YOU KNOW IS WRONG!!!! issues, but… yes, it is. Very much so. THUNDER Agents hasn’t been about the THUNDER Agents per se since it started, but it’s suddenly about something a lot more interesting and a great deal more subtle. If I’m reading it right. Which I may not be.

This is a splendid comicbook and you really should buy it. If there’s a niggle, it’s that Cafu’s art isn’t quite on a par with Spencer’s story, but that’s compensated for by the ‘guest artists’ that handle the secondary plotline/flashbacks that are so important to the book.

Special Month-Old Review!

Legion Of Super-Heroes Annual 1:  Oh, I loves me some Giffen. I love his writing (and we’ll come to his Doom Patrol just as soon as the run finishes, too soon, very soon) and by golly I love his pencilling. And here he is pencilling the Legion again. 80’s fanboy wetdream (well, this one’s, anyway). I’ve actually given up on the current Legion monthly, making it the first incarnation since the original Levitz/Giffen run that I’ve had no taste for. It’s seemed that Levitz, despite his association with, and obvious love for, the Legion, has suffered from the same malaise that struck Jim Shooter in the previous series: thinking that comics today can be written as they were back then. Admittedly, Shooter’s writing style has dated far far worse than Levitz’s, but the monthly Adventure Comics and Legion Of Super-Heroes have been lacking any kind of spark.

It looks very much as though being together with Giffen again has given Levitz a kick in the rear: this annual has a fairly routine plot – it’s another Emerald Empress origin story – but it gets into groove nice and early and it stays there all the way through. There are only a couple of actual Legionnaires present and there’s no need for any kind of longer-term foreshadowing, so Levitz isn’t bogged down by repetitive introductions or the need to shine spotlights on the rest of the cast; he can just get on with telling this one story and make it a good one.

Oh, and it’s Giffen in Kirby-channeling mood, not as blatantly as he did when he started out, but in the way he positions and proportions figures, so the women (and this book is very much about the women, in a good way) look like they’ve been fighting for most of their lives; they’re chunky but still feminine, they have real weight and power to them. And if that cover isn’t a subconscious tribute to Kirby’s Barda I’ll eat my hat, even though I don’t own a hat. 

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a paella to stir...

I would've said 'Xero', myself

Owing to some form of viral bastard kicking at the inside of my head and raking its fingernails down the internal surfaces of my eyes, I’ve spent most of today sleeping and/or sweating. Normal service will be resumed. Meanwhile…

On Sunday I was, as I sometimes am, being of assistance to my good friend Gary O (nephew of Harry O and great-grandson of O, whose Story was so entertaining) at the London Comic Mart. Wasn’t a very good one, it was at the wrong point during the month; one of the Sundays where T (Time elapsed between paydays) > M (Disposable income allowed between paydays) and where W (clemency of local meteorological conditions) < N (Desire to get up, go out, and spend money on old comics).

During a lull, a customer and myself were discussing this and that; the need for slabbing, that recent sale of Amazing Fantasy #15, whether Spurs would beat Real Madrid in the next round of the Champions League. General Bloke Stuff.

Then an excitable youth, there with his dad, asked the most important question of the day, possibly of the year. Which Superhero Would You Want To Be? Most of the admittedly small sample group of respondents answered 'Superman’, because he can do everything. Large response for Batman, with the usual ‘Superman can do everything but Batman does one thing really really well, better than Supes even. Plus he can do martial arts and he’s got like so much money.'

Best response: from a big fella with two full-sleeve tattoos (and very likely more besides; the sleeves were only the visible tats, the tip of the Ink Iceberg). Everybody in the comics is a wuss, he reasons, beside Darkseid. Darkseid, despot of Apokalips. Darkseid, granite-faced conqueror of all he sees. Darkseid, who wears that funny little skirt thing and nobody dares take the piss because he’d Omega Beam their ass right there on the spot.

Care to elucidate, chap? Tell us why old Stoneface is greater than anyone else? Why Darkseid, fella? His reply: Because Darkseid Is. The great propaganda poster slogan that really should replace Keep Calm And Carry On on the country’s tea-towels is also the only justification needed – if justification be needed at all – for The Great One’s supremacy.

Darkseid Is.

And the first person to append ‘A Big Gayer’ to that gets eternity in Armagetto. 

No time for a proper post, so...

I was on the train when I saw a girl reading a book. I could see it was called 'The Archaeology of Knowledge' but I couldn't quite make out the author's name. 

I asked her, 'What are you reading?'

'Foucault', she replied.

'Well,' I thought. 'There's no need to be rude.'


This has been tonight's Alan Bennett Tribute Joke.

Goodnight, everybody!

From the Archives (1)

Every so often, something old. First, a Beautiful Losers column, reproduced and lightly edited from the original as published in Borderline Magazine #8, March 2002.

If they were music, they’d be the last two XTC albums. If they were film, they’d be Shiner or maybe something by David Mamet. Lionised by the critics, loved by a small handful of fans, completely ignored by everybody else. We look at comics series which should’ve done better than they did and which vanished far too quickly. These, then, are the Beautiful Losers.

Fifteen years ago. It had been a while since the twin Houses of Secrets and Mystery had closed their doors, and ever since those particular shutters had gone up, the prevalent wisdom was: Anthologies – Especially Horror Anthologies – Don’t Sell. Mike Gold was given the job of disproving this; the book he tried to do so with was called Wasteland.

Gold chose to ignore many conventions of the anthology; there was to be a regular creative team, there was no Cryptkeeper-style ‘horror host’ and the editorial mission was not to jump out and go ‘Boo!’ but rather, to quote Gold, to ‘crawl inside the readers’ head and kick the icky nasty thoughts loose’.

The writers of the series had worked with Gold at First Comics: John Ostrander had since become a familiar name in comics and was probably best known for his runs on Suicide Squad and Firestorm The Nuclear Man, neither of which were any preparation for what was to come in Wasteland. Del Close, Ostrander’s collaborator, was a writer, an actor, a circus performer, a theatrical director and a witch. They worked with a team of four artists; one would illustrate each of an issue’s three stories while the fourth provided the cover. The initial teal were Don Simpson, who was and still is known for his Megaton Man series; George Freeman, creator of the Canadian super-hero Captain Canuck; William Messner-Loebs, who at that time was known for his remarkable series Journey: The Adventures Of Wolverine MacAlistair; and a pre-V For Vendetta (so far as America was concerned) David Lloyd.

But was this ‘experiment in internal horror’ any good? To be honest, especially when looked at today, it’s a little weak. Freeman’s cover, using a format designed by Richard Bruning – the logo and credits in a black frame around the top and left of the main image – sets a trend that was followed n the following three issues, with alien imagery striving for an air of otherness that doesn’t quite come off. Inside, there was one slightly unnerving story about drugs (among other things), one unfunny science fiction comedy tale (which, owing to its controversial subject and denouement, became the main selling point of the book for a while) and the first of Close’s series of autobiographical stories, this first one involving sewer-set hallucinations.

The second issue was where things started to get interesting. The stories were: another chunk of Close’s life story; a twist-ending piss-take of Shirley Maclaine’s claims of reincarnation – this was the Eighties, remember – and a quiet little thing illustrated by David Lloyd, concerning a small boy telling child welfare officers that his step-father was a werewolf. The welfare workers talk to the boy and his family, and everything ends happily. Then, right at the end, one small caption; “One month later, the boy was dead.” No explanation or reason, just the reader left to wonder.

And from there, it flew. Issue three contained one story that satirised Harvey Pekar whilst discussing the nature of fear, and two absolutely cracking jobs by Lloyd and Freeman. Issue four ruminated on success and failure throughout its four stories, including a murder/suicide set to Shakespeare’s Sonnet LXVI. Issue five had ‘guest appearances’ form Swamp Thing, Doctor Fate and Wonder Woman, and carried issue six’s cover. A few weeks later issue five reappeared with its own proper cover. Issue six – labelled ‘The Real Number Six’ – had a plain white cover so as not to unbalance the artistic rota.

Despite these shenanigans, the creative quality of the book improved by the month. At a time when DC were pushing new titles such as Power of the Atom, Action Comics Weekly and The Wanderers, Ostrander and Close were taking on relationship breakdowns, Dickian solipsism, syphilis, the primal urge to reproduce, and the eternal question of whether God is full of shit. They were producing work the like of which would’ve out-Vertigo’d Vertigo before Vertigo had even been thought of (as a rough guide, Grant Morrison’s first issue of Animal Man coincided with Wasteland #9, as did the first issue of DC’s repackaged V For Vendetta).

George Freeman left; Timothy Truman came on board for a short run, as did Ty Templeton, whose ‘Dissecting Mr. Fleming’ was a small masterpiece. Messner-Loebs and Lloyd left; they were replaced by Bill Wray and, for one issue, the legendary Joe Orlando. The stories these illustrated took on greater themes; love, personal responsibility, existential loneliness.

It failed, of course. Or, possibly, it succeeded. One of Wasteland’s stated aims was to up the ante every issue, pushing its readers harder and harder until it could push no further within the bounds of a DC-published book. Gold, Ostrander and Close expected to lose readers every issue, not through the normal attrition of sales but through a continuing process of alienation, and had said that they expected Wasteland to last no more than eight issues. It eventually lasted for eighteen.

The final issue featured a cover that may or may not have depicted necrophilia, and contained the only full-length story to appear in the run. This ended as the first issue had begun; with a man deciding whether or not to ingest a toxic narcotic.

Anthologies – especially horror anthologies – still don’t sell. In 1999, DC’s Vertigo imprint launched an anthology series named Flinch. It lasted sixteen issues. 

Blimey, Is That The Month Gone Already?

Would be viral/meme thingummy on Facebook: 30 songs in 30 days, wherein the participant names a song that best fits a different daily category over a period of roughly one month. Starting with:

1. Your Favourite Song. What kind of dumb question is that? My favourite song tonight isn’t the same favourite song I had thirty years ago. It’s not the same favourite song I had this afternoon, for chrissake (Oblivious by Aztec Camera until about half past three this afternoon, when it was usurped by Panic by the The Smiths. The last couple of minutes of that song, with all the little kiddies joining Mozzer singing ‘Hang the DJ!’  over and over again, and if you listen you can hear the tiny differences in each go-round, which means they actually got a childrens choir in to sing ‘Hang the DJ’? Genius. Pure brilliant genius. Even better if you imagine the Mozzer in the studio at the same time, brandishing a sinister gladioli and waving an emphatic quiff and egging the kiddies on with a detached yet maniacal glint in his eye). Thirty years ago? God knows. Probably either something by Frank Sinatra or The Goodies. That’s the kind of kid I was.

2. A Song From Your Favourite Album. That’s just not fair. Again, your ‘Favourite Album’ is a mutable thing, changing with the seasons and infinite in its variety, man. For years my FA was Sergeant Pepper until I realised that loving Sergeant Pepper was pretty much received wisdom and that Sergeant Pepper is over-indulgent shit. There’s a terrible thing gnawing away deep inside about 95% of us that makes us, every time we take part in a thing like this, choose something that makes us look just a little bit cooler than we actually are. And I’d bet that no matter who you are, even if you’re some nightmarish hybrid of Brad Pitt and Alexa Chung, you’ll still be thinking “Is the first Strokes album still cool? Should my favourite album be something I bought in Papua New Guinea or somewhere else like that where not many people have actually been except me and my cool mates? Should it be something by one of my cool mates that isn’t actually out yet and probably never will be?” Straight answer; anything from Surfer Rosa by Pixies. Usually Gigantic.

3. A Song That Makes You Happy. Shouldn’t that be your favourite song? No, seriously, I mean to say, what’s the point of having a favourite song that doesn’t make you happy? Why have a favourite song that makes you feel pissed off, or psychopathically violent, or reminds you of your dead wife’s smile? Maybe these are upcoming categories. I don’t know, I’m taking them one at a time because I’m scared of overloading on Song Category Conflictiness. But face it, it’d be fan-flippin’-tabulous if several million Facebookers all over the world were trying to think of the song that reminded them of their dead wife’s smile. Yes it would. Don’t deny it. You know what always makes me happy? It makes me so happy that I have a playlist on my iPod labelled ‘Happy’ and this is the only song in it. Don’t Rain On My Parade. Streisand’s. Jesus no, not Darin’s What kind of freak are you? But why just one? What about Great Things by Echobelly? Mushaboom by Feist (now there’s a girl. Saw her standing alone on the stage of an almost-deserted Royal Albert Hall when she supported The Divine Comedy, several lifetimes ago, forcing people to come in from the bars and listen, just by playing her very own damn good songs on an acoustic guitar. Couple of years later she headlined the place herself)? I Think I Love You by The Partridge Family? Or the glorious opening few seconds of Roxy Music’s Pyjamarama, with its relentless crazyman drumming? All of those – not to mention near enough the entire oeuvre of Leonard Cohen – make me smile.

We shall continue with this at a later date. Set your alarms.