A farewell treat: more 'hoopy' basslines

Although I am hoping to still add a few more 'Top Five' music posts retroactively to my 'Music Week' at the start of this month (my grandiose plans for that were much disrupted by my VPN and Internet connection going on the fritz), this will officially be my final music post before the end of the world on Friday. Well, OK, the penultimate music post; I've got one more lined up.

Today, we have a long planned conclusion to my Great Basslines series, a further roundup of what I have come to call 'hoopy' basslines, where the playing is more varied and intricate, rather than just propelling the song along.

Since this is the last entry in the series, I should perhaps apologise for some of my more egregious oversights in compiling it. I just haven't had time to consider jazz, for example. Or reggae, which is noted for its deceptively tricky lilting basslines. And, while I am aware that there are some outstanding exponents of the bass in the realms of funk and soul, these are not areas of music that I know very much of. I'm sure I probably could have had at least one 'Top Five' just of James Brown numbers, but I'm not famililar enough with his oeuvre (oh, go on, then - have a little blast of William 'Bootsy' Collins playing bass for him on Soul Power, from a great live show in Zaire in 1974). Michael Jackson is perhaps an even more glaring omission: songs like Billie Jean, Thriller, The Way You Make Me Feel and Smooth Criminal are certainly amongst the strongest and most recognisable basslines recorded (apparently it was Louis Johnson who played for him on the Off The Wall and Thriller albums, and Nathan East on Bad - although he is mysteriously not credited in Wikipedia entries on the individual songs). But, while I can't help but like such hooky songs, I never liked MJ; even before all the weirdness, the plastic surgery disasters and the paedophilia allegations, even when he was a little kid, there was something about him that just creeped me out. And that feeling got worse when he relaunched himself as an adult star; I never could stand that high-pitched voice, and his attempt to reinvent himself as a rock'n'roll bad boy - all that swagger and sneer, and the crotch-grabbing - struck me as ludicrous. So - sorry, Jackson fans, it has been a conscious prejudice of mine to leave him out of this series.

Having got that out of the way, here we go....

Another Top Five 'Hoopy' Basslines

5)  This Is Not A Love Song

We had Public Image Ltd in the first of these 'hoopy' selections as well, but you can't have too much of a good thing. I confess, though, I had thought this was still the great Jah Wobble playing. Music Mike pointed out in the comments below that he left the band after their third album, and this, from their fifth, actually has Louis Bernardi on bass. [The video for the album version is here.]

4)  Pusherman

Joseph 'Lucky' Scott is widely considered to be one of the greatest of all bass players, and this Curtis Mayfield track (from his score for the 1972 blaxploitation classic, SuperFly) may be his finest hour.

3)  War Pigs

We've had Black Sabbath in this series before as well, with Paranoid being one of the essential bass 'chuggers'. On this song, though, especially in the introductory section, Terry Butler isn't just the band's engine, but really gets to show off what a technically accomplished bass player he is. [This is a great live performance from 1970. You can listen to the album version instead here.]

Trivia note: There's an interesting coincidence here. Terry Butler is, of course, invariably known by his nickname 'Geezer'; and it just so happens that Jah Wobble chose Memoirs Of A Geezer as the title for his autobiography. And what a great title that is!

2)  Taxman

A special treat for Music Mike, who has been a regular comment-thread sparring partner of mine over the last year or so and was the main inspiration for me getting started on this series... and is also perhaps the world's biggest Beatles fan, and thus regularly complains about my omission of Paul McCartney from this series so far. I've been delaying this post largely for the fun of antagonising him.

And just to antagonise him some more, I kept Macca out of the top spot here. What do we have instead?

1)  The Mayor of Simpleton

I've never been a particular fan of XTC, but they did produce some undeniably hooky tunes, and Colin Moulding's bass playing always commanded attention. A friend reintroduced me to this number a couple of years ago, and it has become a favourite.

Top Five Bars in Cambodia

12th AUGUST 2016

Just a few days after I shuttered this blog, as I was in the midst of finalising my intended departure from China for good.... out of the blue I was offered quite an exciting new job, which kept me in China for another two-and-a-half years or so. At least it got me out of Beijing, moved me down to the Suzhou-Hangzhou-Shanghai area. I was completely burnt out on Beijing; but I was pretty much done on China too, and after having to endure another couple of years of the place, I was determined I had to leave and never come back.

During this rather fraught 'China extension', I had the good fortune to discover Cambodia for the first time. Well, I had long been interested in, fascinated by the country. And I had laid plans for an extended visit when I quit Beijing at the beginning of 2013 - but got deterred by the likely difficulty of travelling there around the time of the late King Sihanouk's funeral. In fact, I didn't manage to make my first trip there until Christmas 2014. I took to it at once, and returned twice more within the next few months..... and then relocated permanently to Phnom Penh towards the end of 2015.

By August 2016, after considerable travels around the country, I am in a position to add a little 'Best Bars in Cambodia' roundup to my old drinking blog here (sneakily backdated into my 'Farewell Tuesday').

Yes, it is a little sad that there are no Phnom Penh bars in this list. Perhaps I haven't researched my 'home turf' quite enough yet. I have in fact spent very nearly as much time 'on the road' visiting other parts of the country as I have 'at home' in PP. And I have for most of this past year been drinking only very moderately, or not at all - very different from my wild Beijing days of a few years ago! When I'm off 'on holiday', I let my hair down a little bit, sup a little more. While in PP, I spend much of my time hunkered down in my very pleasant apartment, and sometimes don't venture out from one week to the next. (Also, I worry that I may be something of a jinx: the two best beloved watering-holes of my early months here were both soon demised - one fatally losing its mojo after just a couple of months of near-perfect-bar-ness, and its replacement in my drinking affections being suddenly demolished a scant three months after that! This city, alas, suffers many of the same woes of hasty, greedy, ill-conceived 'development' as Beijing. I have caught it on the cusp of momentous changes, and I fear that everything I now love about it is likely to be swept away in the next few years.)

Moreover, the majority of Phnom Penh bars come up seriously lacking in one way or another. The city has an awful lot of bars, but most of them aren't really much good; and even the good ones are a long way short of great. (It's not quite so ill-served as Siem Reap, which is a very, very disappointing bar town; or the big coastal resort of Sihanoukville, which is the armpit of the world, surely the ugliest city in SE Asia... and has not a single decent bar.) There will probably be a 'Top Five Bars in Phnom Penh' post appearing shortly, but for now.... here's my pick of The Best from the rest of Cambodia.

The Top Five Bars in Cambodia

5)  Picasso (Siem Reap)

Picasso is a challenge to find: very inconspicuous signage, not open during the daytime, hidden down a tiny back-alley (but parallel to and just yards away from the raucous awfulness that is the city's main 'Pub Street'). And it's a terrible name for a bar, a name that cries "twee bistro food" rather than "hardcore dive bar". But the latter is what it is, and thank god for it. I think it used to be more of a tapas type of place in its early days, but it has gradually evolved into the city's best drinking den. It's the decor that makes it: an arched faux brick ceiling gives it the grungy intimacy of a cellar bar (although it's actually at ground level). And it has a long, stone-topped U-shaped bar, almost a complete 'island'; it's the only one of its kind I've found in the country, and it is quite magical how it conduces to opening up casual conversations with other drinkers - whether next to you, or on the opposite side of the narrow room.  The feisty young manager, an Aussie girl called Sam, also plays a big part in maintaining the friendly, chatty atmosphere of the place. Cheap drinks and a small but good offering of bar snacks - and an ongoing obsession with trying to set a new Jenga world record - complete its appeal. It's one of the most sociable bars in the country - and streets ahead of anything else in Siem Reap. Its all-evening 'happy hour' on Wednesdays is one of the country's great drinking events too, a rather dangerous attraction (it's not wise to schedule your bus out of Siem Reap on a Thursday!!).

4)  Indo Bar (Kampot)

Again, a pretty terrible name, but... this unassuming little spot, on a quiet street a block or two in from the river, has managed to recreate the ambience of a traditional British pub - the only place I know in the country to have pulled this off (having the cheery young Brit owner behind the bar most of the time certainly helps; but there are a lot of other foreign-owned bars around, especially in this town, that dismally fail to conjure any particular atmosphere or character). The TV behind the bar is fairly small, but it makes it a good spot for watching football matches (well, it's pretty much the only option in town for this). And they offer a small but very good (and very generously portioned) selection of Indian set meals from the nearby Curry House (I think there's some shared ownership between the bar and the restaurant). My only gripe is that the bar itself is tiny, and you usually have to arrive pretty early in the evening if you're going to stake a claim to one of the handful of barstools. (This is a common problem with the footprint of the typical 'Chinese shop-house' property - long and narrow. If I were turning one of these spaces into a pub, I'd put the bar along the side wall, not at the end of the room.)  [Well, damn - the jinx strikes again! I returned to Kampot just after writing this post, and discovered that Indo had closed down over the summer of 2016. Oh Neil's (see below), luckily, is still going strong. But Kampot becomes a much less compelling destination when its number of attractive boozers is reduced to ONE.]

3)  The Riverside Balcony (Battambang)

Does exactly what it says on the label! Not a terrible name, this time, though rather unimaginatively prosaic - but we're probably stuck with it now. I gather this place has been going for several years, was one of the first foreign bars to open in Battambang - but had got itself a bit of a bad reputation under the last owner. Since the end of 2015, it's been taken over by a young Scot and his Australian girlfriend, and they have completely revitalized it. It is a lovely, lovely space, a large covered terrace on the first floor of a traditional wooden stilt house, overlooking the small river in the bucolic southern fringes of Battambang. The only reason this doesn't make the top spot is that it's a bit too fancy: it feels more like a 'special occasion' kind of drinking destination, somewhere you'd go on a date rather than just for everyday tippling. The temptation to explore their interesting list of cocktails (and/or their very fine selection of single malt Scotches) threatens to make it a bit too expensive for a regular haunt, too. But there is no finer place in the whole country to slake the day's thirst while watching the dusk gently fall, and I make a point of dropping in at least once or twice whenever I'm passing through Battambang. (Their pizzas are also extremely good, and boast some unusual but very effective combinations of toppings.) I am amazed - and resentful! - that there is nothing like this, nothing remotely as good as this in the capital.

2)  Here Be Dragons (Battambang)

OK, this name is perhaps a bit too determinedly quirky, and it doesn't quite fit the traditional templates for bar-naming - but it works. It's actually a very apposite warning, given the hazards of repeated and prolonged drinking that beckon within: it is the 'Bermuda Triangle' of Battambang! On the quiet east bank of the river, just north of the Wat Sangke temple, Here Be Dragons is one of the country's most popular backpacker dorms. (My days of slumming it in ultra-cheap bunk beds are behind me; but, luckily, they have a few quite decent - and also very cheap - private rooms upstairs, so it has become my favoured place to stay in the city.) By some happy alchemy, the young Brit couple who own the place have managed to create such a welcoming atmosphere that many people who arrive anticipating just a couple of days' battery-recharging before they head on to Siem Reap or Phnom Penh or Thailand, end up.... staying rather longer.... sometimes indefinitely. Most of the bar staff are backpackers who couldn't bear to leave. That's how fabulous this bar is! And in addition to its lively - though mostly transient (and mostly very, very young) - population of guests, it's also established itself as the major social hub for much of the expat community there. It tops Picasso [above] as a sociable bar because it's super-lively almost every night of the week (not just Wednesdays) and you're likely to meet a broad mix of people, many of them long-term residents in the city (not just tourists). The food is - mostly - very good, and the menu's extremely varied; the prices are pretty cheap; and they put on a slew of special events (cheap cocktails all night every Friday, themed parties or live music events most Saturdays, the best trivia quiz in the country on Wednesdays). Ah yes, and they don't really close. Nominally, they do, at about 12.30. But the barmen usually like to have a few to unwind themselves after that; and if the owner's in, he'll often settle in for an all-night session. This is the only place in the country where I have found myself repeating my crazy Beijing lifestyle, staying up drinking until 2am or 3am for days in succession (I fear I don't have the stamina to do that at all regularly any more; but it is nice to be able to revisit that over-indulgence just once in a while). The only slight demerit (there's always one!) is that, owing, I believe, to some cock-up in Imperial-to-Metric conversion, the bar is absurdly too high; and the rickety rattan stools you are obliged to perch on if you want to be able to lean your elbows on it are ridiculously uncomfortable. I hope that one day they'll make enough money to rip it out, and replace it with one about 8" or 10" lower. It might then become the perfect bar.....

But for now, I give the coveted top spot to.......

1)  Oh Neil's (Kampot)

Yep, yet another terrible name - but a wonderful, wonderful bar. There are many other bars on the Kampot riverfront offering views of the often spectacular sunsets beyond the Elephant Hills on the far side of the river, but this is by far my favourite. The ambience is more thatched-roof tiki bar than Irish boozer, but in a tropical climate, this seems to work; in fact, this place seems to combine the best of Irish and Caribbean culture (as my favourite bar back in Oxford 25 years ago briefly did). Actually, the Irishness is confined to a few Irish whiskeys behind the bar, and a few Irish items on the menu (I was delighted to find colcannon here - for the first time in years! - but disappointed that the Irish stew, though heartily thick, is made with beef rather than mutton). The general feel of the place is more American, with background music - played at sensibly audible-but-not-obtrusive volumes - sourced from online radio stations specialising in blues and classic rock. Owner Neil seems a nice guy, and is usually on hand himself - in the evenings, at least - to make sure all is running smoothly; although there's never too much of a worry about that, as he has managed to find himself some unusually friendly and efficient Cambodian bar staff. And, unlike nearby Indo [above, in the No. 4 spot], the bar is along the side wall, affording plenty of barstool perches (even so, the place is so popular that it can be difficult to get a seat). Excellent food, excellent service, excellent music, keen prices, and a super view from the small outdoor seating area at the front - this is dangerously close to 'bar perfection'. The fly-in-the-ointment here is the clientele: mostly quite middle-aged, nearly all expat rather than tourist - not nearly as varied as in most of the other venues on this list. Moreover, Kampot expats can seem tiresomely smug and self-satisfied: they're often rather too pleased with themselves that they were able to retire early and set up a moderately successful business there, or just that they were among the first to 'discover' that Kampot was the coolest spot in the entire country. I've had a number of interesting conversations at Oh Neil's, but on the whole I prefer the company (largely NGO workers) at Here Be Dragons; it's a very tight call between those two, for me. Oh Neil's just edges it on the food... and the music... and the hint of Irishness (I'm such a Plastic Paddy!).

A Top Five 'Magic' Letters

Reflecting on my strange (and terrible) romantic history, I am struck by the curious fact that the ladies I have been attracted to seem to form clusters. There are certain names that I seem to have a particular weakness for. More than this, even, I seem to be drawn to girls with names that start with particular letters of the alphabet.

I have never been attracted to - nor could I imagine being! - a Belinda or a Beryl or a Briony or a Bernice. Nor a Mary, Marian, Miriam, Millicent. Nor any Annas or Angelas (and only an isolated Amanda and Annabel).

On the other hand, I seem to have an astonishingly high strike-rate with these few letters of the alphabet....

Froog's Top Five (or so!) Fateful Letters of the Alphabet

5=)  N

But only for Natasha, a name which causes butterflies in my tummy merely typing it. Natalia, Nadia, Nadezhda etc. might also be in with a chance, I imagine. Bit of a Russian fetish, I confess. I blame Tolstoy.

5=)  F

But only because I have a huge soft spot for Fiona - possibly my favourite female name. I struggle to think of any others. I suppose the similar-sounding Fionnula and Fennella might be in with a chance. I've never much liked Felicity or Fay.

4)  K

K is the letter that haunts me. I love the name Kirsty, but I've never gone out with a girl of that name (nor with a Kirsten, or a Kristen). Kates and Katherines are mighty fine too; but I always seem to find myself with girls who use the C spelling (see below). And I absolutely swoon for the idea of a Kitty (blame Tolstoy again) - but it remains an abstract fixation.

3)  R

Rose, Rosie, Rosemary, and Rosalind, Rachel, Rebecca, Rowan and Rowena.

2)  C 

Several Carolines (and a Carolyn), a Cathy or three, a Cindy and a Candy and couple of Christines. I've never much liked Carol, funnily enough - although given my obvious propensity to fall for other C-names, I wouldn't rule out the possibility one day.

But what has been the most fateful letter in my romantic life, the most haunted page of my address book??

1)  S

Several Sarahs and Susans, a Selena and a Simone. And a Sally or two. It's a tight competition, but I think S shades it for me - on both quantity and quality.

Top Five Beijing bars I miss

I'm surprised I haven't got around to doing this list before. I really must do it now, since I'm shuttering the blog, and planning to move on from Beijing. In ten years of drinking here, there have only been a handful of bars that I developed a real fondness for; and - such is the way of this crazy city - most of them only lasted a year or so.

Froog's Top Five Defunct Beijing Bars

5)  Handsome Café

In around about 2004, this was the only bar I'd go into around Sanlitun. An awful name, but it had a good vibe: cheap'n'cheerful, with friendly owners. It lasted barely a year, I think. There's something jinxed about that space (the semi-basement below what is now Luga's Villa); despite its very central location, nothing in that building ever seems to prosper.

4)  Yugong Yishan (the original one)

I had a lot more work over on the east side of town in those days ('04-'07, I suppose), so I was quite often passing through the Sanlitun/Gongti area in the evenings mid-week, and whenever I was, I would invariably look in on the cosy YGYS to see if anything was going on. Even if there wasn't (Tuesdays were almost always dead), I'd stop to play a few games of pool with the barman.

3)  Room 101

Some readers might have expected this one to rank higher, since it was my principal resort through much of 2008. However, it was always struggling for direction (haphazard in its food offerings, its 'happy hour' promotions, its staging of live music, and other intermittent special events), and never looked likely to endure for long - particularly after Olly came on board in the early summer and convinced the other partners to try to make it more of a restaurant. The tiny stage in the corner was kind of fun. It had a beautiful little island bar - the only one I can remember in Beijing. It had a great music selection (much of it dictated by - and, indeed, donated by - me and my main drinking buddy of that year, Crazy Chris). And, for a while, it had the cheapest draught Stella in the city. But I really only dug the place during the few months when my old pal Jackson Bai was running the bar.

2)  B2M (aka 'The Moatside')

The first - and best - of many out-of-the-way hobby bars I've happened upon over the years, and subject of one of my earliest posts on here. It was tiny, difficult to find, far off the beaten track - and only survived on the custom of friends of the owners. But it was a homely little space, and a regular hangout during the '03-'04 winter. The Chairman and I gave some very serious consideration to taking it over when its original begetters, an Australian girl and her Chinese fiancé, departed on their epic bike ride from Beijing to Melbourne (the source of the bar's cryptic name).

But in the top spot we have...

1)  Huxley's

Its second incarnation on Yandai Xiejie, that is. Yes, of course, it's still there. But, really, it's NOT. Nowadays, the booze is mostly fake, the staff are charmless and often downright surly, and the clientele is mostly tourists or American high schoolers (it seems to have become the Houhai counterpart of the horrendous Pure Girl). It has lost the unique ambience that made it the best bar in the city during its first couple of years ('05-'07), when Jackson Bai was running it. Ah, I miss those days. I miss being serenaded by that Norwegian girl who was an operatically-trained semi-professional singer. I miss discussing the future of the planet with a young German climate change scientist. I miss wooing The Poet there (and then losing her again!). I miss staying up all night in there with Nick O'Pix and Tennessee Tom. I miss the free shooters that Jackson would dispense whenever it appeared that we weren't getting drunk fast enough. If they'd had draught beer, and if Jackson had stayed there a bit longer, that place would have been my favourite Beijing bar of all time; as it is, it's only just behind 12 Square Metres and the Pool Bar (which, mercifully, are still with us... though perhaps not for very much longer).

Top Five New Bar Openings In Beijing This Year

Amongst many 'Top Fives' I was contemplating for this week, today, I suppose this is the most 'urgent' - since it is a preliminary to my last Annual Bar Review, which I'm aiming to compile this weekend or early next week.

There won't be any order of preference for these, because, although I have significant reservations about all of them, I suppose I'll have to choose one of them for my Most Promising New Bar accolade - and I ought to try and maintain some suspense about that.

So, here we go....

Froog's Top Five New Bar Openings In Beijing in 2012

Plan B

A great name for a bar, and particularly for an expat bar in Beijing, where so many of us - like the unfortunate owner, Trevor Metz - have to adapt to violent disruptions of our personal and business lives and try to start afresh. It's a great resource if you happen to live in that housing complex, but doesn't have the oomph factor to make it a destination bar - even, I would suspect, for folks from nearby Shuangjing. Minnie is a great bartender, but the space is small, awkwardly laid out, has rather random decor - and there's a very limited selection of booze. The strong local following is what really makes this place; but I'm afraid it's a bit too small - and too remote, too hard to find - to rate a recommendation to the general populace.

Brussels

I think manager Kenn Bermel deserves some kind of award for the effort that he's put in to building up awareness of this venue through hosting special events, and even trying to rally fellow bar and restaurant owners in the area to engage in some joint promotion to try to establish an identity - or even just a name - for that unappealing wasteland of semi-redeveloped industrial estate that sprawls behind the now mothballed Pacific Century mall on Gongti Beilu. But I fear he's got his work cut out trying to make a viable business with that venue, in that location. It's a hopeless barn of a space, completely lacking in atmosphere; and the pointless 'Belgian' theme that he inherited is something of a further handicap (I'm sure I'm not the only person who finds that the image of the Mannekin Pis puts you off your food, or drink). The keen prices - and the dire state of Sanlitun's other 'sports bars' - give it some chance, I suppose; but I don't envisage it becoming a long-term survivor.

Cellar Door

My journo pal Mr Sex was rather taken with this place over the summer, wooed mainly by their price competitiveness against their well-established neighbour El Nido. Perhaps during the summer it was drawing bigger crowds, or it was more attractive to sit outside on their narrow sliver of sidewalk. I've looked in a couple of times for curiosity's sake, but I found nothing to lure me back. It seems to lack any distinctive charm of its own: it's just another squitty little hutong bar trying to ape El Nido - but it has far too little space, and also lacks Xiao Shuai's savvy in building a clientele.

Más

I love the idea of a bar just off Guijie; that's something we could have done with years ago. Unfortunately, this place shares the failings of Cellar Door: it's too small, and is an utterly undistinguished space. It has a bit of continental panache about it, though: there's a much better selection of drinks. The cubbyhole around the bar is quite cosy (though so cramped it is difficult to access); but the bar itself is much too high (this is becoming a more and more common vice, it seems), the music is played a notch or two too loud (and it tends toward the more modern interpretation of Latin American music, heavy on the bass and going on too repetitively and too long), and the main area - with its tiny formica tables and rickety chairs - feels like an elementary school classroom. I have my doubts about the strength of the drinks, as well, although the recipes are interesting.

Chill

I've already reviewed this one on here a couple of months back. It's a great location for me (actually my nearest readily accessible bar), and a very comfortable space, but... it's just too damned comfortable for my taste, more a lounge than a bar - and a strangely soulless one at that. It makes a great event space, but I can't imagine anyone treating it as their 'local'. The dire name is a serious handicap as well, in my view. And the decision to close the shutters on the courtyard bar in early autumn was unfathomably perverse; that little bit of bar space is the only part of the place I'd ever be tempted to hang out at regularly.

I suppose there are a few others that might be in contention, too; it's been quite a busy year for bar openings. Hidden Lounge is an intriguing concept (creating a cosy little destination bar in a converted apartment, and combining a cocktail lounge vibe with attractively retro prices), but the owner seems to have an overdeveloped talent for rubbing people up the wrong way. Cuju I'd like to like - nice snacks, nice rum collection, have known the owner for ages - but again I find it too small and too characterless, struggling to create any sense of identity for itself. Serk I've heard a few good things about, despite its awful name; but I haven't yet tried it myself, and I suspect that like all of these other new hutong bar openings, it's probably just a quirky little hobby bar, too small to attract a wide following. Dada seems to have become quite popular with the younger crowd, but it's really more of a nightclub. Mai hasn't quite lived up to the hopes I had for it at the end of last year; Jeff means well, bless him, but he's a bit of a headless chicken sometimes in his promotions, and he still hasn't done anything to upgrade the spartan furnishings. And Malty Dog, his new excursion into the craft brew craze, seems pointless and doomed to me.

Yes, oh dear, that's it for the crop of newcomers this year. It might be hard to make an award in this category.

Oh, I noticed just the other day that there seems to be a new bar next door to El Nido. No name on it yet. It might even be an offshoot of El Nido - although there doesn't seem to be any inside connection between the two spaces (in fact, there's a narrow alleyway between them; but that doesn't preclude common ownership). It looks rather promising, actually; the best bar counter I've seen in a long time.

Another major disappointment is the Slow Boat Brewery Taproom, which held its launch day the weekend after I did this post - too late for consideration for any of this year's awards, but it seemed a likely contender for prizes next year. I want to like Slow Boat; I think they're a much friendlier crowd and much better at marketing and PR than their 'craft brew' rivals Great Leap (though that's not saying much!); but alas, their beer invariably disappoints. It doesn't hold its carbonation well, and it tends to taste a bit thin and watery. (I'm not a great fan of Great Leap's brews either, but at least they have a bit of body about them.) What's more, I find their beers all taste rather similar: there's a dominant undertone of some sort of fruit (mango is most often cited as the nearest parallel). In fact, when they christened their two taps at MaoMaoChong a couple of months back, several of us couldn't tell which beer was meant to be which, and rather suspected that they had muddled up the lines (the beer that was supposed to have a mango savour was actually much less mangoey than the one that wasn't!). Slow Boat and Great Leap are both in thrall to the current American fashion for creating ales with silly novelty tastes, rather than simple, straightforward beers. And they're not even doing it all that well; there were several beers at a recent 'Homebrew Festival' at PassBy Bar that eclipsed any of their offerings. They're trying it on a bit with their pricing as well: beer that you're knocking up in small batches in your backroom really shouldn't cost anything like as much as an internationally famous premium brand that's had to be transported half way around the world; it certainly shouldn't cost more. There were supposedly some 'special prices' for the opening of the Taproom (though it wasn't made clear what these were), but only a couple of the brews were 25rmb per glass; most were 35rmb; a few were 45 or more. That is TOO MUCH - for what is essentially 'homebrew'; and rather undistinguished homebrew, at that.

Even worse, though, than the offputting prices and so-so quality of the product, is the pig's ear they've made of their space. There are enough people who crave idiosyncratic beers - even beers of this American style - that this place could easily become a leading destination bar (its obscure and slightly out-of-the-way location notwithstanding). They've got a reasonable amount of space to play with; and they've done absolutely NOTHING with it. The bar is a complete waste: too small and too high - it acts as a fortress for the staff, clearly intended as a serving point only, not somewhere that customers will be encouraged to hang out. Ridiculous! It doesn't even extend the whole way across the shorter axis of the room. I can't see any reason why they couldn't have put it on the longer wall, or made it an L-shape, covering at least a substantial part of two walls. If they'd done that, it would be a place that people would come and hang out, singly or in small groups. (And, let's face it, beer tends not to be a major enthusiasm amongst the ladies; so, this is going to be the kind of place that guys come to on their own, when they get 'a night off'.) The canteen-style tables and benches - in regimented formation, like a schoolroom - might seem a logical solution for maximising the seating available in a limited space, but they make for an austere ambience. And some decor would be nice, chaps - even if it's just a few posters on the walls.

I'm sorry to say, this might well prove to be a colossal failure. Almost everybody I overheard talking about the beer was bitching it. And I saw two or three people throwing away the discount cards that were being handed out: the offer of every eleventh drink free holds no appeal for people who realise they're probably never going back there. A great pity. A major opportunity wasted.

Unexpected tastes

For a final entry in this 'Music Week' (although I'm still playing catch-up after a week of problematic Internet access, hoping to insinuate a few more posts into empty slots earlier in the week - so keep an eye out lower down the page), I thought I'd review some of my slightly more left-field enthusiasms, the musical predilections that people tend to find a bit surprising about me.

A Top Five Unexpected Musical Weaknesses

5)  Early rock'n'roll

And the cheesier, the better! I'm not quite sure when I developed this vice. I suppose I must have had some exposure over the radio when I was a kid, but there was none of this good stuff in my parents' record collection (their tastes were very, very middle-of-the-road). I imagine George Lucas' American Graffiti must have been an important influence; that soundtrack album was probably one of the first (of many) '50s/'60s anthologies I acquired over the years. The Shangri-Las Leader of the Pack epitomises all that is so wonderful - and terrible - about this area of music: cheesy as all hell, yet an utterly irresistible singalong. Here's a 1964 TV performance of the song - ropey sound quality, but worth it for the visuals, especially the hilarious depiction of Johnny the motorcycle rebel. [You can listen to the album version here.]

4)  Henry Rollins

How can anyone not like Henry Rollins? He's so loveably crazy! But sensitive and literate with it. I like quite a lot of American music out at the more punk-ish edge of things (Dead Kennedys a favourite during my college days), but Rollins' work has more depth to it than most of these. Here's the Rollins Band doing Next Time. [Audio only, unfortunately. You can also check out a live video here: terrible picture quality, but a fun performance.]

3)  Country & Western

I mentioned my susceptibility to this yesterday (although I try to keep it hidden around my buddy The British Cowboy, because he proselytises a little too hard). It can be trite and cheesy, yes. But accessibility is not a bad thing. And, thanks to its folk roots, it is distinguished more than most other genres by its tunefulness and its lyrical craft. Hey, beyond just liking C&W, I actually like Canadian C&W. Well, I had a lot of exposure when I lived in Toronto for a year back in the '90s. And the dedicated TV channel there (CMT, I think it's called - Country Music Television) is way better than its American counterpart GAC. This, She's Got The Kind Of Heart That Breaks by Chris Cummings, is one of those earworm songs that got permanently lodged in my head during that year of watching CMT (The Cowboy probably wouldn't even admit this to the C&W fold; too poppy for his taste!). And it's a lovely little video too - a bit of a Gregory's Girl thing going on, with the goofy boys bewitched by the pretty girl who also happens to have superior skills on the hockey rink (so Canadian: they really are all obsessed with ice hockey!). [It's a pity it's such dreadful picture quality (transcribed from a VCR??), but this seems to be all that's available on YouTube at the moment; and likely to be pulled shortly because the record company are such fascists about their videos. As a back-up, here's a nice live performance from 2008.]

2)  African music

Like most Brits of my generation, I got my introduction to this field through the wonderful Sowetan township sounds that Paul Simon incorporated into his Graceland and Rhythm Of The Saints albums in the mid-1980s. That led me to start checking out some compilations of '70s and '80s township bands, as well as, of course, the wonderful Ladysmith Black Mambazo choir who had performed with Simon. A little later, Peter Gabriel's Real World record label started introducing me to people like Youssou N'dour, Geoffrey Oryema, Daby Touré, and the Kenyan nyatiti master Ayub Ogada. And a guy I became friendly with while backpacking around Fiji in the early '90s later sent me a CD of Missa Luba, another tremendous choral record by the Muungano National Choir of Kenya. However, the fountainhead of modern African music - as I only started to discover in the later '90s, not long before his death - was Fela Kuti, the mercurial Nigerian who pioneered the 'Afrobeat' sound, a heady brew of jazz, funk and psychedelia infused with native African rhythms. Here's one of his great instrumentals, Expensive Shit.

And here's a live performance from some time back in the '70s. [You should also check out this great little excerpt from a 1971 documentary about him, shot by legendary drummer Ginger Baker.]

But the top spot today goes to....

1)  Michelle Shocked

I'm sorry - I'm an über-fan. I was completely blown away by her 1988 debut Short Sharp Shocked, and have bought everything else of hers I can get my hands on since. I saw her play live at the Apollo Theatre in Oxford (unaccountably renamed the New Theatre a few years ago) round about 1990, and it was one of the most enthralling shows I've seen (actually, not wonderful all the way through; she was experimenting with a 'big band' sound that didn't really suit her, and wasn't entirely winning over the audience; but then there was an interlude in the middle where the band left the stage and she played three or four songs solo on her guitar - and that was a shivers-down-the-spine experience). She is, I think, possibly the greatest female singer-songwriter of my generation - and certainly the ballsiest, the most politically engaged.

This song, Come A Long Way, is a particular favourite of mine, one that I often play to pep myself up before heading out for the evening. The beautiful tune gives it a very upbeat feel, although the subject - riding around the soulless streets of Los Angeles all day on her motorcycle to try to avoid having it repossessed - is actually rather downbeat.

An autobiographical anecdotal postscript:  In a bar I used to drink at quite a lot during my Oxford days, the student Beer Cellar in New College, they had an entire Shangri-Las album. This was just after CD jukeboxes had started to appear (so, I suppose it must have been during the early '90s, when I was working back in Oxford for a while, rather than when I was an undergraduate in the '80s). I wasn't a member of this college, but a mate of mine had been the elected student Bar Steward there for a while, and I'd hung out drinking with him so often that most of the staff had got to recognise me - and come to assume that I was a member of the college (it was stricter than most in trying to limit access to members only). I was still able to get away with this four or five years later, when I started hanging out there again - this time, in pursuit of a girl! On one occasion, I even managed to persuade them to grant admittance to two of my Oxford Union drinking buddies of the time, passing them off as my father and my younger brother - a somewhat implausible blag, since their ages were ten years either side of mine. But I digress....

Yes, I was fascinated to discover a whole Shangri-Las album - none of which I'd ever heard before, apart from Leader of the Pack, of course. I wasn't sufficiently fond of the group to check out many of the other songs, though. And other punters in the bar were apt to be intolerant even of my frequent selection of Leader of the Pack; I might have provoked a riot if I'd cued up any of their more obscure tracks. Once, I did a bad thing: I succumbed to a sudden mischievous impulse to feed pound coins into the machine until I could select the whole album, 10 or 12 Shangri-Las songs back to back. I never heard them myself, of course; I fled the scene of the crime as soon as Leader of the Pack had finished. And I didn't dare to go back to that bar for quite some time.

Bonus Treat  -  Henry Rollins on modern 'music'

Drinking Song leftovers

I just did a post this morning on Froogville about the 'leftover' candidates who hadn't quite made it into my 'Fantasy Girlfriends' series over there.

In similar vein (since these blogs of mine are going to end in less than a fortnight, even if the world isn't), I thought I'd offer you on here today a 'Top Five' never-quite-made-it possibilities for my Great Drinking Songs strand.

A Top Five Drinking Songs

5=)  Hank Williams Jnr. - Whiskey Bent and Hellbound

A special treat for my buddy The British Cowboy, who, after studying law at Vanderbilt University in Nashville a decade ago, has become a huge C&W fan - and keeps on trying to convert me. I am more susceptible than I usually let on to him. [Another good version here, where Hank's duetting with Kid Rock.]

5=)  Van Halen - Take Your Whiskey Home

Women and Children First is my favourite Van Halen album, and this is one of my favourite tracks from it. Here's a fun live performance from a gig in Baltimore in 1980 - but audio only, unfortunately. [You can try the album version here.]

4)  The Doors - Alabama Song

The Brecht/Weill show tune is a classic drinking song, but - despite Jim Morrison's notorious drinking proclivities - it was a quirky choice for a rock band. The Doors' version of it, though, has become one of my favourites. [Although I also have a weakness for Ute Lemper doing this, obviously.]

3)  Sam Cooke - Chain Gang

Not an obvious drinking song choice, perhaps, but I once sang it in the tiny back bar at the Bullingdon Arms in East Oxford, with an impromptu chorus of friends and strangers. I have such happy memories of that, I dream of repeating the experience some day.

2)  Chumbawamba - Tubthumping

I recall there seemed to be a reaction against this song at the time, or shortly afterwards, perhaps because it got rather overplayed for a while, or perhaps because the band's in-your-face style got a bit too uncomfortable for most people. Me, I never tired of it. I think this is one of the best singles of the '90s; though it is also, curiously, one of the less impressive songs from the eponymous album, which I think was my 'album of the decade'.

And what am I saving for the No. 1 spot this time?

1)  John Otway - House of the Rising Sun

Of course, I like The Animals' version too (it is one of the only things I have ever been induced to sing at a Chinese karaoke session), but it is stalwart British pub entertainer John Otway's idiosyncratic interpretation that I have particularly come to love - through having seen the man live more times than I can count; some dozens, certainly, over the space of about 28 years. I've never got to the bottom of how he hit upon the idea of doing it like this, but I imagine that some time early in his career he genuinely stumbled over a lyric and was offered a mocking prompt by someone in the audience. It soon evolved into a necessary centrepiece of his stage show that this song would be delivered as a kind of call-and-response, with facetious questions from the audience interrupting the singer every half-line or so. I have myself once had the privilege of leading this audience interaction, when the great man turned up to play a poorly advertised and thinly attended gig in Toronto while I was living there - and I was the only person in the bar who'd seen him before. Here he is, supported - for once - by a full-scale band (most of the time he performs solo, or with his mate Richard playing the fancier guitar bits); it's from a great concert video shot at London's Astoria theatre (my all-time favourite gig venue, now sadly defunct) - some time in the early Noughties, I believe. [I've just learned the old bugger turned 60 a few months ago. And he's still gigging just about as fast and furiously as he ever did!  Happy Birthday, John!!!!!!]

OK, if you insist, you can have Eric Burdon and The Animals doing it as well (since it is a rather excellent HD video).

Top Five Dance Videos

I have been toying with the idea of putting together a list on this theme for a while. But, since I'm not a great fan of what is described as 'dance music' these days (understatement of the century!), nor have I ever been much of a dancer myself, I wasn't confident that I was sufficiently familiar with the field to come up with a strong 'Five'.

I received a little nudge the other day from my blog friend JES, whose latest post contributed the first of these selections.

A Top Five Dance Videos

5)  Saint Motel - Benny Goodman

This new-ish band from LA seem set to make quite a hit with this single from their first album, released this summer. JES's post on this explains the inspiration behind the arcane song title (apparently the great jazz band leader had a similar flirtation with obscurity and failure at a critical moment early in his career) and the video concept in some detail. The precocious little moppet playing a young Michael Jackson is apparently a viral video sensation called Miles 'Baby Boogaloo' Brown.

4)  Kings of Convenience - I'd Rather Dance With You

The Norwegian electronic duo have a way with a catchy tune (what is it about Scandinavians and music?), but their sound is a little thin (and bloopy-bloopy) for my taste. But this is an outrageously charming video. [I've posted it once before, actually, over on Froogville, all the way back in 2007.]

3)  OK Go - Here It Goes Again

The Chicagoan alt rockers make the best music videos in the world (really - just check out the selection on YouTube). But this gym treadmill routine for their 2006 single, in particular, won all kinds of awards and was immediately hailed as a modern classic. There's now a whole video sub-genre of American high school and college students replicating it for talent shows.

2)  The Avalanches - Since I Left You

A charming, surreal, and finally very moving little fable from the Aussie cut-and-paste masters best known for the fabulous Frontier Psychiatrist.

But in the top spot this time, what else could it be but....

1)  Fatboy Slim - Weapon of Choice

I really don't like this kind of music at all. But Spike Jonze's video is fantastic. Watch it with the sound down, if you have to. Walken dances!

Top Five Embarrasing Admissions

I have always maintained that I hated the Eighties musically. It was the decade where I passed through my teens into my early twenties, so it should by rights have been the peak period of my life for exposure to contemporary music. Many people in their forties - especially Americans - seem to have a huge nostalgia thing going for the Eighties these days. But I'd been a precocious brat: I turned on to music early in life, and was already perhaps starting to get a bit blasé about it by my late teens. And the preceding decades seemed to have produced far more worthwhile music: my childhood in the Seventies had seen the exuberance of glam rock and the iconoclasm of punk; the Sixties, which I'd experienced a little vicariously through my parents and my older brother, had seen things like protest folk, the blues revival, psychedelia, and... well, almost everything good that ever happened in rock music, really. And then in the Eighties the music business (re)discovered that there was more money to be made selling records to teenage girls than to teenage boys, so androgynously good-looking male vocalists became the vogue. Somebody thought it was cool that you could use a computer instead of a drummer to lay down the beat. And people started playing keyboards more than guitars. Yep, the Eighties SUCKED.

And yet, and yet, much as I deplored the general trend of the times, I have to admit that in amongst all of that synth-pap and New Romantic bollocks, there were a few really outstanding artists at work, and some fantastic tunes being written. Much as I would like to write the whole decade off as a musical aberration, I do find myself getting sometimes quite wistful about a lot of the stuff we listened to back then - even some of the synthy stuff.

So, here is my shame-faced confession of....

The Top Five Eighties Tracks That Froog Really Likes (Despite Himself!)

5)  Depeche Mode - Master and Servant

These guys epitomised the synthy sound that I hated, but damn, they produced some good songs, particularly on the Some Great Reward album which came out shortly after I started at university. Atheist that I am, I liked Blasphemous Rumours best, but this is unquestionably catchier. And it's hard to resist a song about BDSM (the only other one I'd ever heard was Tom Lehrer's Masochism Tango). [Also quite a good live performance here.]

4)  Thompson Twins - We Are Detective

I don't think I liked anything else this band did, but this was one of the best singles of the decade for me. The warped, witty lyrics, and the odd, lilting, folky feel of the tune - somehow evocative of Viennese café culture (I wonder if they were consciously seeking to conjure reminiscences of The Third Man?) - really made it stand out from the crowd.

3)  Big Pig - Breakaway

Australian Oleh Witer put together this drumming collective towards the end of the Eighties, and their debut album, Bonk!, briefly made quite a splash. Alas, it took them too long to put together a follow-up, and the project fell apart. But they had a really unique sound, and some very solid songs on their first album - and an outstanding vocalist in Sherine Aberaytne. I'm disappointed we haven't heard more from her in the last twenty years. [You should also check out their Devil's Song from the same album: not as catchy, but an even better song.]

2)  The The - Infected

I loved the dark intensity of Matt Johnson's lyrics, and he was one of the few artists of the early Eighties still emphasising guitars over synths (Johnny Marr played with him on a couple of his later albums). His 1986 album of the same name was a strong contender for album of the decade, in my view.

And there's a great live performance of this song here.

But my No. 1 this time, somewhat inescapably (since I was myself unable to escape it throughout my student days: it remained permanently lodged on the jukebox playlists of student bars for at least four or five years after its first release), is....

1)  Soft Cell - Tainted Love

Despite the underlying bounce of the tune, it was hard to credit that this song had started life as an early, unsuccessful Motown single (you can hear that original version by Gloria Jones here). Marc Almond made it completely his own. I'm always surprised to read that his version was released in 1981: I didn't really hear it until a couple of years later. And it wasn't until some years later again that I bought the album, Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret (one of the GREAT album names!); I was pleasantly surprised to find that there was a lot of other good stuff on it - not least Say Hello, Wave Goodbye, which somehow passed me by when it was first out as a single. These days, it's hard to conceive of a song becoming such a huge hit with such a terrible video; but video was very young back then.

PS:  I really wanted to include something by the Kane Gang here, but there's still not that much of them around on YouTube. Here are links to my two favourite songs of theirs, Gun Law and Losersville; but the former has rather dodgy sound quality, and the latter is audio only. Better than nothing.

A Top Five Jukebox Favourites

I'm not thinking about just any old jukebox here, but the wondrous contraption they used to have in one of my all-time favourite bars, The Black Swan in East Oxford - a principal hangout of mine in the early 1990s. As I described in that early post on here, one of its unique attractions was an old 1950s style jukebox that contained a record-player and a stack of 45rpm vinyl singles. The machine might indeed have been that old, a gorgeous vintage piece. And many of the records were too: personal favourites, I suppose, of the elderly Irish landlady. There was some fantastic stuff on there, though - records I remember fondly from my childhood, when, from a very early age, I was given free run of my parents' music collection for hours at a time.

One of my happiest discoveries here - the song that I probably used to play on that machine the most - was Roger Miller's King of the Road. But I've already done a post on that; so, here's a rundown of the next best songs from that marvellous selection.

Top Five 'golden oldies' from The Black Swan's jukebox

5)  Frank Sinatra - New York, New York

A great drunken singalong, almost as brashly self-assertive as My Way. This would probably have made it into my 'Great Drinking Songs' series one day, but... I've run out of time.

4)  Sam Cooke - Wonderful World

Which, of course, always calls to mind the cafeteria sequence in Animal House....

3)  The Bellamy Brothers - If I Said You Had A Beautiful Body (Would You Hold It Against Me?)
This cheesy Country classic was a favourite pick of my buddy, The Bookseller - who had a touching but entirely misguided optimism that if he used this line often enough, it would eventually work for him.

2)  Pérez Prado - Cherry Pink (and Apple Blossom White)

The Cuban 'King of the Mambo' has enjoyed a bit of resurgence in popularity in the last couple of decades through tracks like his Mambo No. 5 and Guaglione, but this has always been my favourite - for the exuberantly drunken lurch of the lead trumpet (not sure who's playing this [Pete Candoli, possibly?]; Prado the bandleader played keyboards).

And in the top spot this time (well, No. 2, behind Roger Miller) we have....

1)  Guy Mitchell - Singing The Blues

Not a blues song at all, but I forgive it - because it is the most absurdly perfect little pop song. It was a huge worldwide hit in 1956, a simultaneous No. 1 in the UK and the US - and a great favourite of my parents, from their young married life together, before my brother and I came along to spoil things for them.

Girl power! - A Top Five songs by female vocalists

To kick off the advertised 'Music Week' here on The Barstool, here's a varied roundup - possibly compromising my usual macho image??!! - of girly songs that I rather like.

Not a very considered or definitive pick, just an off-the-top-of-my-head (and what I could find on YouTube) selection.

Froog's Top Five Girly Songs

5)  Lisa Loeb - I Do

Ridiculously hooky little song, with the hint of inner toughness and self-assertion that I always look for in my women (I can't stand drippy "I can't live without him" love songs!). And Ms Loeb is quite a compelling character: she has that librarian-sexy thing going on.

4)  Meredith Brooks  -  Bitch

A song that perhaps goes a bit far to the opposite extreme from the soft-and-fluffy/pathetic/can't-get-by-without-a-man image of femininity, but I've always found this sort of sassiness very appealing - even if it can be scary, vexing, and impossible to live with. I wonder if this song got under my skin so much because it came out just after the great break-up of my life (from a gorgeous Aussie academic I later jokingly dubbed 'The Evil One'): there did seem to be rather too much appropriateness in it.

3)  Sheryl Crow - Strong Enough

A similar stance to Bitch, but not so in-your-face, and with a touching overlay of vulnerability: not so much 'I will make your life hell just for the fun of it' as 'I will make your life hell because I'm a bit of an emotional basketcase'. This one is probably even more appropriate to that break-up, but not so contemporary.

I can't resist adding this duet with Stevie Nicks that I just found.

2)  Throwing Muses - Honeychain

I've mentioned a few times before that I'm a big fan of Tanya Donnelly and her subsequent band, Belly; but I wasn't so familiar with her earlier work with Kristin Hersh in Throwing Muses. My mate Ned introduced me to their 1991 album The Real Ramona, and this song really got under my skin somehow. That line Stare holes into the wall I find particularly haunting.

And at the top of this particular heap...

1)  Transvision Vamp  -  I Want Your Love

I believe someone - it might have been Malcolm McLaren - slightly snarkily dubbed Wendy James "the face of the '80s". It was a backhanded compliment because she and her band didn't break big until the late summer of 1988; and sadly prescient, because the band would soon fizzle and die in the '90s. But oh damn, their infectious pop-punk was tremendous FUN for a while, a late high point in what had been a mostly rather musically uninspired decade. And Wendy James might just possibly be the sexiest female singer Britain has ever produced: not just supermodel gorgeous, but brash, ballsy, smart as a whip - and she had a decent voice too. (Elvis Costello wrote a solo album for her, which suggests that I'm not alone in thinking she had some talent.) I remember the first time I heard this, I had just finished at university, and I was walking through London on a gloriously sunny day, the streets almost deserted on a midweek afternoon; suddenly, there was an open window on an upper floor, and someone had cranked up their hi-fi to full volume to blast out this song. "Damn," I thought to myself, "this is, um... bouncy!" And then I saw the video...