Macbeth, by SUDS: Review

SUDS ‘Macbeth’, hyped as Shakespeare meets Guy Ritchie, actually had very little Ritchie but plenty of what you would expect from one of Britain’s literary greats. Straight from the off, it was the pure brilliance of acting and recital of ludicrously long pros that drove the play forward. Dressed in modern attire, but still conversing in the archaic nature true to that of old Bill’s original script, the actor’s ability to portray the sense of chaos surrounding Mr and Mrs Macbeth was extremely impressive. Macbeth, played by Adam Welsh, was exceedingly good at convincing the audience of the increasing psychological problems haunting his soon to end life. The intensity and madness in his eyes was simply menacing. As they say, behind every great man there is a great woman; Macbeth was no exception. Along with Ross Middleton and John Bruce, Katrina Allen playing Lady Macbeth stole the show as she showcased her talents and persuaded Macbeth into her plans of regicide. Like Welsh, Allen succeeded in luring the audience into her increasingly guilt smothered psyche, to the point where the audience were taken to the core themes of the Shakespeare’s ‘Scottish play’. Director Halon’s creative touches to the play added much in places and the stand out scene was that of Banquo’s (Middleton) return to haunt Macbeth at a banquet; his makeup horrifying. However, whilst the acting on average was extremely high, the lack of props and the minimal mise-en-scene maybe lacked a little originality to accompany the high standards set by the performers. It really was the acting and direction of the play that made it so gripping and one of marvellous art showcasing some terrific talent along the way.

Tracks of 2011 so far: Playlist

He's a 10 track playlist of some of the best songs released this year - feel free to comment or create your own in response!

Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds: A Review

Anyone that was slightly disappointed with Liam Gallagher’s attempts to prove he was the brain behind Oasis will probably be more than uplifted with Noel’s response. Noel Gallagher and the High Flying Birds would mostly definitely be one of Oasis’ finest releases since the release of (What’s The Story) Morning Glory were they still together today.Such highly anticipated albums by artists such as Noel Gallagher, one of Britain’s most successful singer songwriters over the past two decades, have in the past had a habit of not living up to their hype. Noel Gallagher and the High Flying Birds is an exception. It seems this album is where he’s been storing a back catalogue of songs for a number of years.

The long awaited release starts with “Everybodys on the Run”, an epic opening anthem with a beautiful mix of strings and female vocals accompanying an irresistibly catchy chorus, which bleeds emotion.

However, like most of Oasis’ albums since 1996, only half the tracks are of an outstanding quality, but when it shines, it shines like the sun, to use Noel’s lyrics. Three tracks in and you’ll find ‘If I Had A Gun’, one of the most beautiful songs he may have written. Its delicacy shows maturity in Gallagher’s songwriting. Whilst in the past Oasis wrote anthems, this is a ballad that has the perfect blend of sentimental emotion and raucous guitar backing his impressive vocal range, fully showcased for the first time.

Any doubters of Oasis in the past may want to reconsider their stance on Noel. One of the main criticisms of his former work was the inflexibility of his songwriting and an inability to produce anything other than generic guitar based anthems. His latest single from the album, AKA What A Life, demonstrates he’s catching up with contemporary ‘popular’ music with a track more based on the melody of the piano rather than that of his guitar. It is a track he confesses is the first song he’s ever written which “you can dance to”.

And it is AKA What A Life, along with Everybody’s on the Run and If I Had a Gun that standout on an album people can genuinely get excited about. Upon the release of the first single from the album (‘The Death of You and I’), Noel noted the fact it was the only single in the 40 by a) someone over the age of 45 and b) a guitar based track. It has already proven a hit, beating the debut album of last year’s XFactor winner Matt Cardle to the top spot in the album charts in its first week, something Noel might consider a small victory for music. It appears one of the true greats from a hazy period of great music, which formed the soundtrack to many people’s golden days, still has it.
4/5 Stars.

Brave Hearts Can't Beat The English

Tottenham’s 5-0 thumping of Hearts last week illustrated a definite bridge in quality between a Europa League finish in the SPL and the EPL.

However, just how big is the gap in class between the two leagues and why?

John Hartson today wrote how he believed Stoke would win the Scottish Premier League should they join. If you said that to a fan of the Old Firm, they’d claim you were mental. But in reality, it’s not too strong a statement to make.

What would happen if Celtic and Rangers joined the EPL like they’ve been trying for years? Realistically, it’d be hard to see them in the top half of the table with the squad of players each have. If Samaras wasn’t good enough for Manchester City when they were a bottom half side, he certainly isn’t going to be in a team pushing for the Champions League spots now.

Kris Boyd has currently scored more goals than any other player in the history of the Scottish Premier League with 164. He scored just 6 during his stint with Middlesborough, who were playing in only the second tier of English football. It’s hard to find players who’ve scored bags of goals in England and made the transition to Scotland because it hasn’t really happened.

However, the real question here is why is there such a gulf between English and Scottish football? For many years Celtic and Rangers competed at the highest level of European football, Celtic winning the equivalent of the Champions League in 1967 and Rangers the European Cup Winners Cup in 1972. For them to today win the Champions League seems unimaginable.

There really are two major factors which link into each other fairly well. The first major factor is that there simply aren’t enough fans to support Scottish football the way English football is. One statistic that sums the problem up fairly well is that the population of Scotland is the same as that of London’s, just one of many major cities in England.

Should Sheffield Wednesday, a League One side, be playing in the top tier of Scottish football, they’d have the third highest attendance in all the leagues, averaging a huge seven thousand larger attendance than Hearts, who do currently have the third biggest attendance in Scottish football.

This in turn leads to the more explainable factor that the just isn’t the money to finance a really quality side. Comparing the champions of each league demonstrates the proof really is in the pudding.

Rangers last year produced a turnover of £56 million, which sounds a lot, until you look at Manchester United’s, which was a whooping £286 million, more than five times the amount of Rangers’.

Today, a lot of revenue is based on television rights, and because of the amount of fans the country boasts, the money goes down depending on who might watch the game. Therefore it comes as no surprise that Manchester United’s revenue from TV rights dwarfs Rangers by generating over 27 times more money annually.

Of course, money isn’t everything. Teams in England have done well without throwing around vast sums of money around. But to be able to compete at the highest level, it’d be foolish to ignore the fact that financial support plays a pivotal part is sustainable success.

Is there any way of closing the gap? Well, no, not really. Unless extreme measures of bringing in caps on squad’s wages are brought in, the gulf will widen between the English and Scottish game, and the best Scottish clubs can do to ensure longevity is to focus on their academy’s and realising that producing quality youth players will go a long way in playing the part of team’s existence and success.

Many poorer teams in Scotland have acknowledged this, like Stirling Albion, who have a job simply competing with teams in and around the third tier of Scottish football. The average age of their squad this year is just 23 years.

A Dodgy Night Out In Fubar

“music isn’t bringing people together and making it work together, I mean at the moment you’ve got JLS and Tinie Tempah, what’s that sorting out?” - Matthew Preist

When most people talk of Fubar on a Friday night, the term ‘dodgy’ is mentioned almost without question. However, as part of Bulge Promotion’s attempts to re-ignite Stirling’s music scene, one forgotten band from the 90s played an intimate set featuring some of the biggest anthems from a hazy golden age of British music.

You might not even remember Dodgy as a band, but two lines from the chorus of their biggest hit ‘Good Enough’ (if it’s good enough for you, it’s good enough for me) will instantly ring a bell. That song hit the heady heights of 4th in the UK Singles Charts whilst their other high hitter ‘Staying Out For The Summer’ was their first foray into the top 40 and paved the way for their future successes.

That song epitomised and embodied much of a new and exciting period in British music. Feel good festival anthems with a ‘summery’ vibe. However, they’re still very quick to distance themselves from the label of being a ‘Britpop’ band. Despite lead singer of the band Nigel Clark describing the phase as ‘spectacular’, he claims they never wanted to be a part of it. When speaking to Brig newspaper, he said “That whole period was to do with imagine, and we were just too much influenced by music to really care”.

In fact, in a damming critique of the music industry and the media, Clark lambasted the significance of image on record sales. “Many artists rely upon their image, where as we’ve always relied upon our music”. Matthew Priest, the band’s drummer said “looking back, you can see, the bands that do go down in history are the ones that really carefully crafted their own myth and were very pretentious about what they said in interviews, and the image they wanted to portray. Damon Albarn was very calculated and pretentious in what he did and in shaping the image of Blur and we would look at him and go ‘what a cunt’, and that’s what journalists lap up. All those bands did well, not necessarily because of their music but because they were very good at cultivating their image and we were never were”.

During the 90s, the band toured tirelessly around the world, racking up well over 250 shows in 1994/1995. Clark jokingly claims the band “never knowlingly turned down a gig” pinpointing the band’s success to their graft.
True musical romantics, Dodgy feel music has the power to unite, however the current music scene is doing the opposite. Matthew Preist said “today, music is about attitude, I’m not so keen on that, music isn’t about attitude its about opening your ears and getting into something. Music isn’t bringing people together and making it work together, I mean at the moment you’ve got JLS and Tinie Tempah, what’s that sorting out?”.

BEYOND THE NEIGHBORHOOD (01-10)

Following the release of their award winning single ‘Wires’, Athlete shot to fame. To date it remains their most recognised song. That’s not to say they weren’t already acknowledged artists. Their debut album Vehicles and Animals itself was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize and a platinum seller, not a bad feat at all from a new band struggling for a foot hold in an increasingly hard music climate to break into.

Following the commercial success of their second album Tourist (which headed the UK Albums Chart in the first week of its release in 2005), it seemed they were destined to be subject of slate from music critics and general snobs. Like many bands before, and many bands in the future, they were unable to turn their commercial success into critical acclaim and have indeed been chucked into the group of bands merely described as ‘middle-of-the-road’, joining the likes of Starsailor and Keane.
Brig Music caught up with drummer Steve Roberts who feels the criticism was unjustified. “Every album we’ve tried to do something different and we’ve attempted a different sound but I don’t think a lot of people choose to see that”.

Perhaps the biggest change in sound between albums was between that of their debut album Vehicles and Animals to the more sombre Tourist, it also gained significantly more radio time. There was a much lighter electronic bubbly sound surrounding the Mercury Music Award nominee Vehicles and Animals which they’ve never since be able to replicate successfully.

It was a big change in attitude from the press. In just four years following the success of Vehicles and Animals which did seem to get a balanced response from public and press. Fresh sing-along indie tunes such as El Salvador and Westside, neatly accompanied by an electronic vibe throughout the album did offer a lot of promise for their future. However, following the release of Tourist which saw them being viewed as one of many British ‘bland’ bands, they’ve never been able to detach themselves from it, and seem happy enough not doing so.

Their previous two albums, Beyond the Neighbourhood and Swan Song have seen single success with ‘Superhuman Touch’ and ‘Hurricane’ generating radio air time, however, there’s very little deviation from the sound. Catchy three minute sing along choruses have become their forte and ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ appears to be the ideology they’ve adapted.

This does bring into question the ambitions of such bands that seem content to plod along the middle of the road making the most of what they can produce. They’re latest release is a collection of their all their singles between 2001 to 2010, which is currently being accompanied by a nationwide tour to promote it. It must be said however, that due to pressures from record label’s accountants, many bands are rushed to produce marketable content, something Roberts was critical of. “It’s a fact of matter that once your on the accountant’s spreadsheet, then you’re always under pressure to release new material – which has been the downfall of many bands in the past”.

The band have however achieved significant success State side, an achievement many more renowned bands haven’t been able to boast. The ability to crack the States is something that has evaded the likes of Oasis and many others, however isn’t an easy thing to do. Roberts said, “it’s very different from being successful in Britain. For starters, it might take you a couple of weeks to play a nationwide tour in the UK, in America it could take you several months to cover. You’ve then got to worry about gaining airplay on significantly more radio stations than in Britain”.

Despite their apparent inability to escape the shadow of their previous successes, they still put on an impressive live show, which does brag an atmosphere of enjoyment and gives off a vibe of a band enjoying what they’re doing.

Does Aid Work?

Over the last 50 years, over $3trillion has been ploughed into Africa and its development. It remains the only continent to have become poorer in the last three decades. Based on this fact alone, it’d be easy to say ‘aid’ simply isn’t working.

We live in a culture dominated by theories that donating to Africa will help solve their problems and stop their plight. Western aid, given from a sense of pity, is very difficult to challenge. How can you fault someone who tries to help you, especially when our first experience of aid resulted in such a positive outcome (The Marshall Plan in 1945)? Unfortunately, when it comes to Africa, things are never as simplistic as they would be anywhere else – in fact, Zambian author Dambisa Moyo argues aid essentially disadvantages Africa, and with good reason too.

In her book ‘Dead Aid’ she essentially two major reasons aid in Africa doesn’t work.
Unlike other historically successful aid interventions like the Marshall Plan, aid in Africa will always be needed such is the extent of the problems, therefore its continually in need clearly making development unsustainable.

Perhaps most importantly is the fact aid money often doesn’t go into productive causes and consequently corrodes the incentives system in many African countries (Ethiopia and Uganda, for example). Aid is essentially "free money"; therefore, governments do not see the need to generate revenue by growing their economies. Why work with local entrepreneurs when you can always go cap-in-hand to beg the white man stemming sustainable development. As the old saying goes “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” In this context, should you continue to feed African governments, they’ll continue to take, knowing they’ve got cod for dinner all week.

The aid-driven development model, as Ms. Moyo argues, has not and will not deliver economic growth. The money is simply misused by governments. Her solution? Stop donating. It seems like a shocking heartless response however it would teach many governments to become more self-reliant and use what money they have more sustainably. The major downfall of her solution is that the short-term consequences of this would simply be catastrophic. The effects would be that the less advantaged and most under privileged would certainly lose out and many deaths would occur across the whole of Africa.
Aid has created something of a vicious circle. Because governments simply assume there will be a continuous stream of aid trickling into their pockets, many chose to neglect developing and sustaining many social services – leaving charities to pick up the slack. Similarly to aid, this also can have a negative knock-on effect as governments won’t address this issues in the future a third party is attending them.

There are other solutions all of which have pros and cons. Donating to charities that directly do grass roots work in Africa is often a very productive use of funds, however, you often have to accept only a percentage of your money will go towards what you’ve donated to – and the rest might seep into the corrupts hands, the question is, is it worth accepting that so that someone disadvantaged might receive the majority of it? This again comes back to the ‘Dead Aid’’s solution to simple turn the tap to stop aid trickling into Africa. But then who really loses out?

A very complicated complex argument, which still has no flawed solution I’m sure you’ll agree!