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Archive: NME

Lewis Hamilton: The next Jacques Villeneuve?

17 April 2007 11:07

Categories: Entertainment, Formula 1, Newspapers, Radio

Well that’s blown it. The most exciting new talent to hit Formula 1 in a long time is about to find himself in the centre of the dreaded British tabloid hype. Jenson Button wilted under the spotlight. Lewis Hamilton might not cope much better, despite the nerves of steel he has shown in his career so far.

A few people are worried that he will catch the “Formula 1 disease” and lose his racing edge, opting for a safe 8 or 6 points instead of taking the sort of risky moves we have seen from him. More worryingly, Hamilton will have to take the chequered flag soon, otherwise the media will make him pay the price. The fact that Button took so long to win a race suffocated the man. Expectations were too high. The higher the expectations, the bigger the pressure and the worse the performance.

And as Clive James has pointed out, it could be even worse for Lewis Hamilton because he is black. So not only is he a sportsman who is expected to win. He is also expected to be a representative of an entire race.

But Hamilton, as a rookie, has had it relatively easy so far. His first three races happened in relative anonymity as far as the general public was concerned. Now, it seems, everybody knows about him. He has made history, being the first ever driver to finish on the podium in each of his first three races.

Yesterday morning Jackie Stewart moved the hype machine up a gear by saying that he could be the World Champion this year. He would be the first rookie to do so, apart from the very first World Champion back in 1950 (because they were all rookies).

In one sense, Jackie Stewart is absolutely right. What he said is really no more than a statement of fact. Lewis Hamilton could win the World Championship this year. I said so myself yesterday. But there is a difference between me and Jackie Stewart.

I am an arsehole with a blog. I have never raced a car in my life. The ultimate armchair enthuso-dick. Stewart, on the other hand, is one of the most respected observers of Formula 1 in the world, a triple World Champion who has seen decades of racing and knows what he is talking about.

As such, Jackie Stewart’s word is taken as gospel. And because he has said that Hamilton could win the championship this year (a statement of fact), people will now start to expect him to actually win the championship this year (a fanciful tabloid seller).

Jackie Stewart’s appearance on Today was just the first step, and by the end of the morning Matt Bishop, editor-in-chief of F1 Racing, was on Radio Five Live spouting the biggest load of crap I have ever heard about a driver who has only driven three grands prix.

F1 Racing is a good magazine, but it likes its hype and sensationalism. It’s a bit like the NME of motor racing publications. “Why Nico Rosberg will be world champion!” and “Robert Kubica is the best rookie since Alonso!” are two typical headlines you might see in F1 Racing. They said similar sorts of things about Fisichella and Trulli a decade ago.

This is made worse by the fact that Hamilton happens to be British, so everyone in the country will be interested. I can see the next cover in my head. “HAMILTON! The best driver the world has ever seen! And why he will be the first ever rookie champ!”

I can understand this sort of thing when it is designed to sell magazines. But Matt Bishop was there on Radio Five Live representing Formula 1. He is meant to be a level-headed expert. So what did he say?

He said that Hamilton has trounced his team-mate Alonso. Well, he beat Alonso in the last race, but was it a trouncing? It looked to me as though Alonso was just struggling on the soft tyres. He had a bad race in Bahrain. But in the other two races, Alonso beat Hamilton. At best, I would say Hamilton and Alonso look neck-and-neck.

But what Mr Bishop went on to say after that was even worse, almost unimaginable. He said that Hamilton is one of five or six drivers in Formula 1 history who have ever had this much talent. And then a minute later he even trotted out the names of people who Hamilton is meant to be as good as.

Lewis Hamilton is in the same chapter only as Juan Manuel Fangio, Jim Clark, Ayrton Senna, Michael Schumacher. And that’s it.

So, with a career that has lasted just three races, Lewis Hamilton is, according to Matt Bishop, at least the fifth-best driver the world has ever seen; the latest in a short list of Formula 1′s most legendary names. That is just an extraordinary thing to say. He hasn’t even won a race yet. Hamilton has looked impressive, but give him a chance! This is just going to create expectations that simply will not be met any time soon.

And, predictably, it just gets worse with ITV’s coverage. ITV have spent the past few years creaming their pants over the distinctly average Jenson Button. Now that a genuinely good British driver has arrived it is just one big Lewis Hamilton wank-fest.

As if the interviews with his brother (eh? What other sports give you interviews with a sportsperson’s brother?) weren’t bad enough, ITV even manage to spend their whole time talking about Lewis Hamilton even when they are interviewing other drivers.

Before the race at the weekend there was an interview with Robert Kubica where Louise Goodman actually said to him something along the lines of, “But you’re making the sort of mistakes that Lewis Hamilton should be making as a rookie — what do you think of him?”

And then after the race there was an interview with Alonso where the questions about Alonso’s race came across as a chore for Louise Goodman, who obviously couldn’t wait to say, “But Lewis Hamilton had a good race, didn’t he?” Alonso frowned and politely said “yes”, but if I was in his shoes I might have given her a punch.

And the British public will tune into the Spanish Grand Prix next month expecting to see something amazing. And Hamilton will now know what is expected. And he will be unable to deliver it.

Let us just remember the last time a rookie driver had such an impressive start to a career. Jacques Villeneuve came damn close to winning his first race in 1996. He came close to winning that championship. He went on to win the Championship in 1997. But after that, his career was so shoddy that it became just one big embarrassment to the entire concept of the 1997 World Drivers’ Championship.

Something tells me that the next issue of F1 Racing won’t have the headline, “LEWIS HAMILTON: The next Jacques Villeneuve!”

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Obscure Pulp YouTube extravaganza!

19 December 2006 12:36

Categories: Entertainment, General, Internet, Music, Personal, Technology, Television

Pulp has been one of my favourite bands ever since I was nine. Maybe that’s why I turned out so weird. To think that I grew up listening to that mucky man’s tales of debauchery. I can’t have known what he was on about until I was well into my teens. I remember asking my parents what Jarvis was on about when he said, “Grass is something you smoke, birds are something you shag.” How embarrassing!

Still, I think I can be proud of the fact that I was heavily into such a good band when I was as young as nine. I did take a bit of a detour in my early teens, but we can gloss over that.

A lot of people might think that it’s a bit strange that I’m still heavily into Pulp. But it actually makes a lot of sense. When I was young, it was their futuristic, spacey sound that initially captured my attention. Pulp were influenced more by techno and Steve Reich than the insipid Britpop bunch they were more commonly associated with. How many of those bands had a member whose primary instrument was the violin?

There has never been another song that sounded like ‘Common People’. When I saw them perform this song on Top of the Pops I was amazed. (I must be one of the last people in the world to have been moved to buy a single by a performance on TOTP…) ‘Disco 2000′ is simply genius for the way it builds up and up without employing ham-fisted techniques like upping the tempo or the volume. And Jarvis’ songwriting is responsible for just about the only times I’ve been interested in a song’s lyrics as much as its sonic qualities.

With the triumphant return of Jarvis Cocker with his new solo album, I’ve entered a bit of a Pulp nostalgia trip. I’ve even dug out all of the old books and other paraphernalia I collected ten years ago, at the height of my obsession. Pulp’s story is probably one of the most interesting in the music business. Most people probably don’t know that they were hanging around the fringes of Sheffield’s music scene for over a decade before they hit the big time in the mid 1990s.

It would be easy to think that their early music must have been a bit rubbish if it took them that long to become successful. The band members certainly had plenty of derogatory remarks about it. But in truth their early songs were quite good, even if they weren’t quite as polished as their more successful songs.

Pulp’s relationship with their record company, Fire, was not easy. For their second album they were given the budget of £600, and had just a week to record it! The end result was slightly rushed and rough around the edges, even though the songs had plenty of potential. The producer refused to have his name associated with it!

Still, the budget stretched to the odd video. I had read about these videos, but I thought I would never see them. Enter YouTube, the intarweb’s single greatest invention. All manner of obscure videos can be found on YouTube. And the other day, while I was idly searching for Pulp videos I found a few gems that have got me very excited. I present them to you below the fold.

Click “click for more” for more.

Click for more »

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Why do I hate the NME again?

23 February 2006 21:27

Categories: Entertainment

This is another one that slots into “obvious”, but I’ve just read the list of winners at the NME Awards, and what a load of steaming shite it is. No awards even for Maxïmo Park, who are one of the few vaguely interesting bands in that scene. Shocker.

Instead, all the awards went to the immensely overhyped Arctic Monkeys. In five years we’ll all be saying, “who?”, just like The Strokes. How can such a bland band have the fastest selling album ever? Well, it comes with the territory — Hear’Say used to hold the record.

If you mapped humans on a scale of ‘barely evolved’ to ‘genius’, would you put Ian Brown, who has spent his entire life doing a prolonged chimp impression, anywhere near the ‘genius’ end? And then stick a ‘GODLIKE’ in front of the word?? Kids, it only encourages him.

Hero of the Year was awarded to Bob Geldof. I just vomited. Meanwhile NME.com was voted Best Website. I can’t help feeling that it might have had a slight advantage…

Sexiest Man went to Pete Doherty. Being incapably off your face is so hott. And Best Dressed went to Ricky Wilson, even though he dresses like a tramp. Cos poor is cool, right?

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Beat 10shit

10 January 2006 17:06

Categories: Edinburgh, Fife, Music, Radio, Scotland, University

Last week one of the local radio stations (well, I say local, but its studios are actually in Glasgow — as if enough of the media didn’t already come from Glasgow), Beat 106, changed its name to Xfm Scotland. Snappy.

I’ve had quite a rocky relationship with Beat 106. When it first launched in 1999 it offered a chink of light in a tunnel filled with the BBC stations (which is fair enough, except that we get poor reception for FM BBC stations where I live), and the generic local stations, Forth FM (which is too Edinburgh-centric) and Kingdom FM (which is too Fife-centric). Not to forget the absolutely hilarious Scot FM (complete with thistle logo… doh!).

Rumours spread that this new Beat 106 station promised to play reasonable music, and not the mixture of cheese-pop and ‘classic tracks’ offered up by the existing stations. Listening to the test transmission, even the sample adverts had a distinctive ‘offbeat’ style.

Well, it turned out to be a whole load of shite. The original plan for the station seemed to last about a month. Ever since then the station seems to have been in a permanent identity crisis, not knowing whether it was meant to be a credible dance station or a credible rock station, or both, or neither.

That identity crisis was only made worse when Capital Radio bought it, and decided that injecting a dose of the sort of music that you could easily find on every single other station was just what the listeners of the central belt needed. The identity crisis deepened. I’m sure there was, at one point, a misfired attempt to rename Beat 106 to Beat FM. It is worse than ITV1.

When it launched I listened to Beat 106 all the time, but I eventually got fed up with the transformation towards the same old stale format, with DJs who think they own the show and can’t help yelping their inane babble over the music.

The final straw for me came when the presenter of the late-night indie show described Radiohead’s ‘Knives Out’ as a return to form. That is indie-snob code for “it can only be proper music if it’s got guitars in it.” I gave up with music radio and turned to Radio Five Live instead.

Last week, in the face of declining listening figures, Capital Radio have gone the whole hog and decided to completely rename Beat 106, and pair it up with the famous Xfm. It must be quite a successful brand name (it must be one of the few local radio stations that people outside the transmission area have actually heard of), because apparently there is going to be an Xfm Manchester launching this year. I can only assume that the decision to rename Beat 106 was very recent, because just a few weeks ago there were Beat 106 fly posters near the university.

There was this guy handing out flyers as well — but he wanted to ask me questions. I was in a rush, but I managed to answer his question, “Do you ever listen to Beat 106?” It have me great satisfaction to be able to turn round and say right in his face, “I used to, but not any more.”

In the mid-to-late-1990s — before the days of digital radio and broadband — I remember being quite jealous that I couldn’t recieve Xfm because everybody seemed to be going on about it — interesting programming, decent music, a genuine alternative. It sounded like the kind of station that we needed up here. And now we’ve got it!

Er, maybe not. As far as I can tell, the programming is much the same. That indie guy who slagged Radiohead is still there in the same slot, right now! And it’s all the same old presenters (mostly failed television presenters, including the bloke who presented GamesMaster over decade ago; somebody who fronted the disastrous final series of Live & Kicking; and the token northerner off Scotsport).

Music-wise it seems to have finally decided that it wants to take the rock route (somewhere between Virgin Radio and Zane Lowe), with a few specialist dance shows at the weekend. Which is what it always should have been. Although without the unbearable hyperbole. Xfm Scotland seems to have taken the NME approach of just saying things like “they’re the best live act of the year,” and “the best new band since The Smiths,” about every. single. new. band that comes along, in the hope that some of it will stick and they can say, “Look at us, we praised [wank guitar band x] before you ever heard of them — aren’t we great?!”

Just listen to those fawning Dominik Diamond inserts which are being peppered around the schedule. He is going on about how you must check out the latest nonentity of a band, because the lead singer looks like Julian Casablancas, the guitarist looks like he’s from Jet, and “the bassist looks like a roadie — and that’s how all rock bands should be!” Why am I supposed to trust Dominik Diamond’s music recommendations?

Beat 106 might have been like that recently anyway though. I don’t know, I have hardly ever attempted to listen to it in the past few years. Ultimately, the relaunch doesn’t seem to mean much, except for the fact that they can freeride on Xfm London’s success by putting Ricky Gervais’ mug on their website.

What would be cool would be if Xfm could network some programmes, so that all three stations could share each other’s best output. I’m sure the London gets loads of juicy stuff that Xfm Scotland would never be able to get hold of.

doctorvee ver. 1999 would have loved today’s Xfm Scotland, but it leaves doctorvee ver. 2006 feeling pretty ambivalent. There’s not much point in me trying to get into music radio any more though, because, knowing me, even if there is ever a radio station which caters for my taste in music, my taste in music will probably have evolved beyond all recognition and we’ll be back to square one.

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