"This is a group that will destroy you completely in more ways than one"

Live footage of The Who performing in June 1967 at the Monterey Pop Festival in California, taken from D.A. Pennebaker's concert film, Monterey Pop. The film shows the Who performances of Substitute, the rock operetta A Quick One (While He's Away) and My Generation, but omits Pictures Of Lily and Happy Jack, footage of which appears not to have been included in the film.

With the set sandwiched between the Buffalo Springfield and the Grateful Dead, the film also conveys the aggressive, confrontational energy of The Who in the face of the prevailing hippy ethos of the Summer of Love. Famously, the set ends with Pete Townshend destroying his guitar and Keith Moon knocking over his drumkit. It's entertaining to see the American stage crews, who were presumably well aware of the anarchic reputation of the band, dash on to rescue the microphones. These days more people probably remember the Jimi Hendrix Experience and specifically the set-closing performance of Wild Thing, in which Hendrix doused his guitar with lighter fluid and set it alight. Both The Who and Hendrix had planned their destructive exploits beforehand. Neither wanted to play after the other out of mutual respect, but Hendrix lost a coin toss and had to perform after The Who. No-one minded - the outrageous stage performances sealed the American fame of both The Who and Hendrix.  

Pennebaker's film captures a great performance, but it's noticeable that Who bassist John Entwistle is almost absent from Pennebaker's edit. He was famously inexpressive on stage, particularly in comparison to his hyperactive Who bandmates, but you can still hear Entwistle's marvellous bass runs in the murky mix, and enjoy his backing vocals.



See also:
Music: Monkees - You Just May Be The One, 10 September 2013
Music: Grass Roots - Bella Linda, 23 June 2013
Music: Lo-o-o-o-ng songs, 11 June 2008

Two behemoths

Time-lapse video of cruise ships Celebrity Solstice and Voyager of the Seas, combined total passenger capacity 5988, arriving at Aotea Quay in Wellington next to the Stadium this morning for a day-long visit to the capital. Sorry the clip finishes just before the final docking of the second ship - I had to go to work!

The irredeemable public image of the Bee Gees

One of the most fascinating and surprising chapters, given Stanley’s anti-rockist stripe, is his explanation of why heavy metal was so big – and mostly enjoyable – in the Seventies and Eighties. But Stanley is wise enough to avoid making any ludicrous claims for, say, Herman’s Hermits being better than The Beatles or for Bob Dylan and the Beach Boys being ‘overrated’. Each of these staples of pop history given praise, but without Stanley rehearsing and falling back on familiar arguments. Stanley’s trick is often to uncover some fascinating new fact about a long-established act which he then uses to explain their appeal.

None of this means that Stanley makes his judgements according to melody and brilliant-album status alone. Pop bands and singers still have to display a sometimes-elusive cool factor because, even if they’re masterful tunesmiths, some can still be resolutely unlovable. The Boomtown Rats, the Stranglers, XTC and, for me, Elvis Costello tend to hit that category. For Stanley, while the Police’s early singles were ‘economical and irresistible’, ‘the feeling that something wasn’t quite right crept in early’. Quite. Nowhere is this truer than with U2 who, despite some very fine albums, are a band impossible to love and easy to hate – and it’s not all down to the preposterous Bono, either.

Sometimes, the anti-cool factor is a cruel judge, as the Bee Gees repeatedly found to their cost. Despite a back catalogue of genuinely phenomenal songs, despite the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever still sounding miraculous and beamed in from another planet, the Bee Gees have become a byword for the gauche and tacky. Chic they were not. Stanley’s attempt to explain this chasm between the pristine quality of the Bee Gees’ songwriting and their irredeemable public image is perhaps the finest segment in Yeah Yeah Yeah. The hostility the Gibb brothers generate is long documented, and attempts to rehabilitate them by focusing exclusively on their music remain unconvincing. No matter how much Barry Gibb remains bitter at the Bee Gees’ public reputation, that enormous gap between their work and their image is an inexorable part of the Bee Gees story. Stanley gets the balance right and offers a sharp insight into why a set of siblings who had so much going for them ended up getting all the fine details so spectacularly wrong. But by concluding that the Bee Gees were ultimately responsible for writing a dozen or so pinnacles of modern pop, Stanley gets the judgement just about right.

- Neil Davenport reviews Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Story of Modern Pop by Bob Stanley, in Spiked Online, 17 January 2014, via AL Daily.

See also:

Music: Elvis Costello - Tramp The Dirt Down, 14 April 2013

Music: Elvis Costello in Hyde Park, 4 July 2010

Music: Bee Gees - Message To You (1973)

Piracy in the Hellenistic Age

Rhodes' antipiracy campaigns were complicated by the fact that pirates operated both on their own account and as mercenaries for foreign rulers. At the end of the third century BCE, for example, the island of Crete was a collection of cities joined in a loose commonwealth presided over by Philip V of Macedonia. So Cretans engaged in seizing merchantmen may have been in Philip's pay and therefore not, strictly speaking, pirates. During the Cretan War of 206-203 BCE, Rhodians faced pirates from at least half a dozen cities, some of which they managed to neutralise and bring into formal alliances. By this time, legitimate maritime commerce was vital to the well-being of individual city-states and kingdoms. No longer an honourable way to make a living, as Thucydides claims it was in Homer's day, piracy was something to which all those with a stake in sea trade paid close attention. Nonetheless, if the testimony of St Augustine is to be believed, the question of what differentiated pirates from recognised rulers was already current: "It was a witty and a truthful rejoinder which was given by a captured pirate to Alexander the Great. The king asked the fellow, 'What is your idea, in infesting the sea?' And the pirate answered with uninhibited insolence. 'The same as yours, in infesting the world! But because I do this with my tiny craft, I am called a pirate; because you have a mighty navy, you are called an emperor'".

- Lincoln Paine, The Sea & Civilisation: A Maritime History of the World, New York, 2013, p.116.

See also:
History: Roman Machines, 16 September 2013
History: Posting the empire as the royal word, 9 January 2013
History: Lysistrata's gambit, 25 November 2012

Vigilo Confido

XCOM: Maj Pyotr 'Odin' Malakhov

The recent XCOM remake successfully captures the brilliant squad-based infantry tactics of the original game, and surprisingly the graphical upgrade hasn't spoiled the gameplay at all. It's still great fun dashing for cover and attempting to outflank the murderous alien Sectoids, Mutons and Cyberdiscs. One of the nice touches in the game design is the effective random character generation for the player's XCOM troopers. Once your squad gains in experience and accumulates some promotions and new skills, you start to warm to your successful soldiers from all around the world - even if they do all talk with American accents.

Progressing through the various XCOM campaign missions the obvious and essential lesson is that your soldiers must never be caught by the enemy out of cover. Many of the casualties in my KIA list were caused by forgetting this rule, usually due to impatience and a general rush to take up new positions. Later on the rise of irritating alien mind control powers also ups the kill count, as soldiers have to rush the controlling Ethereal in the hope of killing it to free their squad-mate from its evil psionic thrall.

To give you an idea of the characters thrown up in a XCOM campaign, here's the roll of honour of troopers who lost their lives in the service of humanity against the dastardly alien menace.

Squaddie Wei Cheng (China, 3 missions, 2 kills)
Killed in crossfire by Thin Men in Mexico City graveyard whilst on Op Black Dawn, a bomb disposal mission.

Colonel Jan 'Pops' De Graf (Netherlands, M17 K21)
Caught in the explosion of a parked tank in Durban, South Africa, on a terror attack mission, Op Rotting Vanguard.

Rookie Fungai Mabaso (South Africa, M1 K1)
Ambushed in a three-way crossfire by Heavy Floaters during a terror attack on Liverpool (Op Shattered Tears).

Rookie Zhi Chen (China, M1 K1)
Shot while out of cover by an Armoured Floater on Op Dying Hero in Egypt, a raid on a UFO supply ship landing site.

Captain Galena 'Lockdown' Volkova (Russia, M1 K2)
Flanked by floaters on Op Stone Sentinel, a UFO crash site raid in South Africa.

Captain Azubuike 'Dozer' Ngelo (Nigeria, M9 K9)
Shot by Muton exiting mindmeld at close range during Op Black Gaze, a UFO landing raid in Washington state, USA.

Sergeant Jamie 'Bonus' Powell (USA, M6 K4)
Mauled by berserker on Op Twisted Saviour in Brazil, investigating a UFO crash.

Colonel Habika 'Witchy' Miambo (Nigeria, M31 K86)
Champion sniper shot in the back by a mind-controlled ally whilst raiding a UFO crash site in Texas, on Op Final Thorn.

See also:
Games: Crusader Kings 2, 5 May 2013
Games: Brogue, 14 April 2012
Games: Spelunky, 4 March 2012

Split Enz '79

Here's Split Enz performing Give It A Whirl at the Wellington Town Hall on 27 May 1979, which was Neil Finn's 21st birthday. Neil performs lead vocals here as on the album Frenzy, released three months earlier in February; the song was a co-write with brother Tim having written the lyrics and Neil contributing the music. Give It A Whirl and the album closer Mind Over Matter were the first Finn brothers co-writes on a Split Enz album, with Neil having joined the group officially in April 1977.

Frenzy achieved modest success, reaching no.13 in the New Zealand album charts, 24 in Australia and 49 in Canada. At the time of this Wellington gig the band had only one New Zealand top 40 charting single to its name (My Mistake, which reached no.21 in September 1977); the week after this concert I See Red would chart but only at no.43. It would take 1980's tremendous True Colours LP to propel them into proper Antipodean stardom - it went no.1 in both New Zealand and Australia, no.10 in Canada, and grazed the bottom of the top 40 in both the UK and the US; its classic Neil Finn-penned single I Got You topped the charts in New Zealand and Australia.



See also:
Music: Neil Finn, 24 November 2013
Music: Pajama Club, 4 November 2011
Music: Liam Finn, 4 December 2008