"...AND MONKEY MUST SCORE."

Like a lumbering centre forward with no goals for a while, I’m suffering from a lack of confidence. Chances are being teed up but instead of smashing them in, I’m bottling it completely or laying off a little sideways pass to a team mate. Just about keeping up with play but the fans are getting twitchy. Let’s think back to those wasted opportunities.

There was the Angelheaded Hipsters morning at the National Theatre where the Beat Generation was discussed by a panel including underground figures Barry Miles and Michael Horovitz; actors read Ginsberg, Kerouac, Cassady and Corso; and even a trumpeter had a sad horn to play. Horovitz was incredible. He could’ve spoke, given half the chance, for 90 minutes without pausing for breath and kept the audience entertained with his staggering array of anecdotes, quotes, cultural references and razor sharp wit and intelligence. He then popped up last week to wax lyrically on Jarvis Cocker’s Sunday Service show on 6Music (listen on BBC iPlayer).

Also last week I bought, amongst other things, the new LP, Hunger, by Frankie & The Heartstrings and an old LP, Free Jazz, by The Ornette Coleman Double Quartet. The plan was to discuss and contrast the formulaic, backward facing, rattling three minute pop song approach of the Heartstrings to the challenging, groundbreaking, and – let’s be honest - patience testing of one 37 minute piece of jumbled improvised free jazz. It would of course have been like comparing an ear to an eye, and the conclusion being I’d want to keep them both.

A new interpretation of Graham Greene’s 1938 novel Brighton Rock his hit local picturehouses. I must ‘fess up to having not read it but I like the 1947 film version. This new one is set to the backdrop of rioting mods in 1964 and gave me a chuckle spotting mates as extras. Sam Riley as Pinkie, the young upstart attempting to “run” Brighton, was unconvincing (his firm consisted of an elderly Chalky from Quadrophenia and the lanky Wigan Casino dancer from SoulBoy - hardly menacing) and trying to pass Eastbourne off as Brighton was distracting. There was one sequence where Pinkie was sitting in a London café, ran down an Eastbourne street, and then ended up in Brighton, without even breaking into a sweat. Yeah, I know, it’s a film not a documentary. Those things apart it wasn’t the worst way to spend an evening and moved Greene’s book further up the to-read list.

A couple of offshoots from The Horrors should’ve got a mention. Rhys and Joe as part of The Diddlers gave Bo Diddley the full throttle, echo laden, Cramps-rock stomp treatment at the 100 Club, and very entertaining it was too; whilst Faris has turned up to sing at the Vatican (yes, the Vatican) with his new project Cat’s Eyes. The result is as spectacular as it is surprising. See it on YouTube.

Morgan: A Suitable Case For Treatment has been on DVD before but is out again, in shoddy cheap packaging, with no extras, and at a unjustifiably high price. But, it is a smashing film as the words Vanessa Redgrave, David Warner, 1966, Arthur Mullard, Irene Handl, Karl Marx, monkeys, gorillas, King Kong, sanatorium and John Dankworth testify.

So, no goals but hopefully a boost to the assist column.

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SPOTIFY PICK #4: MONKEY PICKS OF 2010

Every man, woman and blog is doing their end of year “best of” list so here are my favourite 20 songs from 2010. They aren’t in order of preference but sequenced for your listening pleasure. Spotify users click on the link at the bottom.

Oh, if I had to pick only one "Heartbreaker" by Girls just edges "You Are Not Alone" by Mavis Staples. Roky Erickson wins best album for True Love Cast Out All Evil.

The Jim Jones Revue – High Horse
The Vaccines – Wreckin’ Bar (Ra Ra Ra)
Frankie & The Heartstrings – Tender
Girls - Heartbreaker
Roky Erickson with Okkervil River – Ain’t Blues Too Sad
The Silver Factory – The Sunshines Over You
Race Horses – Cake
The Black Angels – Telephone
Demon’s Claws – At The Disco
Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan – No Place To Fall
The School – I Want You Back
Belle and Sebastian – Little Lou, Ugly Jack, Prophet John
Mavis Staples – You Are Not Alone
Pete Molinari – Streetcar Named Desire
Paul Weller – Fast Car/Slow Traffic
Gil Scott-Heron – Running
The Coral – Two Faces
The Clientele – Minotaur
Pains of Being Pure at Heart – Say No To Love
Manic Street Preachers – Golden Platitudes

Click Here for Spotify Playlist: Monkey Picks of 2010

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FRANKIE & THE HEARTSTRINGS at the BETHNAL GREEN WORKING MEN'S CLUB

My finger is nowhere near the pulse of up and coming bands. My hand stays tucked in my pocket, nice and warm and cozy, only occasionally poking for life in the chilly outside world that left me behind over a decade ago when I hung up my “indie DJ” headphones.

But now and again a band cross my radar and catch my attention. Frankie & The Heartstrings are one. To start with, I like their name - it has a ring of Wigan Casino about it. I like they mention Mike Leigh’s Naked in one of their songs and watch Ken Loach films on their tour bus. I like their forthcoming LP is named after Knut Hamsun’s Hunger. I like they are from Sunderland, free from associations with the usual tired cities. All these things score heavily in my book without them even playing a note.

I’m conscious I’m twice the age of most of those here to see them. Predicting this would be the case I shaved before leaving the flat, removing the festive white whiskers from my stubbly chin. It took weeks off me. As I hover around the edges of the club I’m hoping the hip young scenesters think I’m the cool mysterious head of Pieface Records. Instead I bet those even seeing me think I’m the bass player’s – hopefully groovy - Dad. Maybe I could pass for the guitarist from a half remembered Brit Pop band? “I used to be in The Bluetones don’tcha know.” On second thoughts, “that’s my son up there”.

Up there, the Heartstrings and Frankie do their thing and do it well, mixing infectious twitchy pop with epic torch burners. Singer Frankie Francis adopts two stances: a camp spasticated dance that’s less Ian Curtis and more Freddie Garrity for the bouncy songs, and the pained furrowed face of the crystal meth woman for the wounded soul numbers. The later style is more impressive. Not the face but the thoughtful romanticism of “Fragile”, “Ungrateful” and the brass backed “I Want You Back” which elevate them above the latest Orange Juice obsessives. Edwyn Collins’s son is manning the t-shirt stall, which makes perfect sense. It’s all good yet falls short of being exceptional or offering anything unique or inspiring – they’re simply a decent pop band. Nowt wrong with that, and one or two "make it" for a brief moment, but I’m not going to sign them to Pieface. Without a huge investment I can’t see where I’d get my money back (although having Steve Lamacq, Simon Price and Ryan Jarman among the hundred people in attendance on a freezing Monday night suggests they’re being backed by someone). Even megabucks Peter Jones got his fingers burned with Hamfister on Dragons’ Den.

Fortunately for the Heartstrings they’re signed to Pop Sex Ltd/Wichita and don’t need my investment, so I’m out. I shall invest in their album though and play it through the spring when I’m doing the washing up and sing along, annoying Mrs. Monkey with my tuneless caterwauling and incorrect lyrics. I’ll spot them on Later With Jools Holland and go all sniffy because I saw them ages ago and they were better then. In July they’ll open for Pulp in Hyde Park and all us Heartstringers will claim them as our own. Then they’ll get forgotten about, eventually knocking out a second album that I’ll never listen to. Finally, before you know it, some old git is saying “I used to be in Frankie & The Heartstrings don’tcha know” and no one will be any the wiser.

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JUNE PLAYLIST

Some stuff that has taken my mind off the football…

1. Ernie Tucker – “Can She Give You Fever” (1960)
Thumping R&B throat ripper out of New York City. Fifteen quid well spent.

2. The Ones – “You Haven’t Seen My Love” (1967)
Tucked between the smashes Motown was having in ’67 was this curious blue-eyed soul release from Midwestern teenagers The Ones. An organ led ballad that both The Tempts and The Zombies would’ve been proud of.

3. James Carr – “I Sowed Love and Reaped A Heartache” (1968)
Look, it’s James Carr and a song called “I Sowed Love and Reaped A Heartache”. Marriages are seldom as perfect.

4. Public Image Ltd. – “Banging The Door” (1981)
The Flowers of Romance is one of the more challenging records in the collection. There’s a very fine line being trod here.

5. The Prisoners – “I Am The Fisherman” (1985)
I spent most of 1985 hunched over a ZX Spectrum playing countless games of Chuckie Egg and Manic Miner whilst listening repeatedly to The Last Fourfathers. Computer games have come on somewhat but there have been few better albums.

6. The Field Mice – “September’s Not So Far Away” (1991)
The Field Mice didn’t jingle-jangle as frequently as their reputation suggests which is a shame because when they did, they did it well.

7. Harlem – “Psychedelic Tits” (2008)
Not the best track from their Free Drugs ;-) album but how can you resist that title? Bit like an early White Stripes with the miserable blues shit replaced with fun pop hooks recorded in a biscuit tin by a bunch of doolally druggie slackers.

8. Teenage Fanclub – “Sometimes I Don’t Need to Believe In Anything” (2010)
Two albums in ten years. What do Teenage Fanclub do with their time? Sit around the house twiddling their thumbs? Serve pints of McEwan’s in their local boozer? It doesn’t sound like they spend time honing their craft - which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

9. Pete Molinari – “Minus Me” (2010)
Molinari borrows more from Presley than Dylan on his new album but “Minus Me” is close enough to “You’re A Big Girl Now” to make up for it (but it doesn't forgive his cheesy videos that almost makes me never want to listen to him again).

10. Frankie & the Heartstrings – “Tender” (2010)
Looking for a new indie hope to hang your straw trilby on? Then you’ll do worse than get behind this Sunderland quintet drawing from the white poppy, vaguely northern soul spirit of Dexys, Aztec Camera and even The Housemartins. Nice video too.