A celebration of the many Kevs

I was rummaging in the extensive Beans Archive today, looking for inspiration, when I stumbled across this post, made ten years ago today. It marks the occasion on which Mr. Kevin Head turned 24 years old. Well, as you can imagine, I immediately got my calculator out, and blow me if that doesn’t mean that today is very likely to be Mr. Kevin Head’s birthday again. He will be older than 24 today, though I’m not entirely sure by how much.

What better day, then, to celebrate our acquaintance with the Beans’ resident DIY expert and master Giant Magical Computer Appeaser, Kevin “Kevindo Menendez” Menendez?

2005 calling

It’s now thirteen years since I first had a phone with a camera built into it and decided that I wanted all my phone contacts to be associated with photos of that person on the phone, so when my phone rang it looked like I could see them on the phone.

Since I didn’t get pictures of anyone hanging up, I can only assume these sad, lonely ghosts of 2005 are still on the line, listening to an engaged signal, patiently waiting to talk to me.

I will not answer you, ghosts of the past. Stop calling me.

Playdays – The Extended Edition

During the 1990’s children all over the UK were enthralled and entertained by ‘Playdays’, a pre-school television programme by the BBC. I was an addict and I would happily sit and watch as many and as much of it as I could. It was before the days of binge watching, or box set binging. You could say that I was, once again, way ahead of my time. It was short and it had lots of colours and silly people in it. I’m sure there was some sort of lesson or hidden educational agenda tucked away between Dave Benson Phillips and a series of puppets; for me though it just wasn’t getting through.

There was a particular stop for each day, so on Mondays you were treated to the Why Bird Stop, which had a multi-coloured Scouser bird who erm flapped about a bit. On Tuesdays it was the Playground Stop, possibly involving a playground. And so on. The BBC had to keep everything light and fluffy.

Recently a document has been uncovered which reveals another five days worth of stops which were considered but never used during the scheduled programming. Here, in atypical and popular list Beans format, are those alternative stops:

The Ice Cube Stop – rapper Ice Cube lives in a igloo made of ice. He encounters problems as he struggles to cope in a harsh, desolate environment. Sometimes he has to fight a polar bear. Sometimes his food rationing makes him pale and illegible. He raps to pass the time, teaching children about why living so far from human civilisation is such as bad idea.

The Cushion Fortress Stop – Emily built a cushion fortress in the middle of her parent’s house and refuses to take it down. The fortress has stood for 167 days straight, blocking her parents’ view of the television, getting in the way of her brothers trying to study for their GCSEs. Her wacky friend Rodross, a mop with a banana for a nose, sings to her and they learn about wildlife in the back garden, where the fortress is beginning to infringe upon.

The Tiny Shop Stop – Tina and Lloyd run a shop in Cheam, but it’s no ordinary shop. It’s a shop where they only sell really small items such as paper clips, washers and single strands of cous cous. If someone comes in asking for anything bigger than a pen lid they blow the magic horn and Dunlop, a flying burglar, flattens them with a series of heavy rocks.

The Undisclosed Medicine Stop – Woofers, a dog puppet, is the most helpful animal you’ll ever meet. Sometimes he comes across unusual plastic containers on the floor, leftover prescriptions that have been lost by people during their busy lives. Woofers takes the medicine to see what it is, and the children watching get to observe what certain drugs will do to you without any proper intervention.

The Ravi Shankar Stop – it’s a collection of relaxed people sat on futons listening to a full hour of Indian music. People are encouraged to meditate, gaze thoughtfully at the sunrise or just talk quietly in the background. Instruments are scattered around for anyone wanting to join in.

It would have been interesting to see how this week would have panned out. All we are left with is the idea of what could have been. If only the BBC hadn’t cancelled ‘Playdays’ in 1997. Ah Poppy Cat, where are you now?

Eleven today

Let’s take a moment to remember that it was eleven years ago today that Kev made the first ever post to the Beans.

Much has happened since then. Because of his very busy lifestyle it was also, sadly, Kev’s last post to the site, but in the decade that’s passed since then I have posted quite a lot and Ian has reliably turned out his own personal brand of things without a break, so between us we’ve more or less kept the flag flying.

Beans Flashback

There have been no posts to the Beans since the start of April, and it’s the 20th now. What does that tell us? Well, clearly, it indicates that there is nothing of any interest happening this month.

Instead, let us take this opportunity to look back at early 2007 and ask ourselves what was happening on this day in Beans History.

It was in April 2007 that Chris Industries International Ltd. was sold to Richard Branson and became Virgin Petcare. There was controversy over the choice of kestrel as word of the week. And the Saint King thrust himself upon a world that did not yet know his taste for underhanded deceit.

But April 2007 was rather a quiet month on the Beans, and that was because we were all still reeling from the release of a video that I thought I’d lost completely. It turns out I do still have one shoddy, over-compressed version that I am going to post here. Ladies and gentlemen, celebrating its tenth anniversary, I present Seeing Not Doing.

Four Word Reviews: Dead Letters

Last time we met here in the Album Review Auditorium, I had just suffered the ordeal of To The Extreme by Vanilla Ice. This time I have been listening to Dead Letters, the 2003 album by the Finnish sort-of rock band The Rasmus, and I’m a bit concerned that this review is not going to be like the other Four Word Reviews for two reasons. The first is that this album is not quite in the same league of shameful horror as most of the albums that have landed on my doormat over the last year. The second is that, having listened to Vanilla Ice in the recent past, nothing I hear for a long time will seem particularly bad. I think that’s why I’m not particularly down on this album. I thought it was sort of OK.

I mean, let’s not go crazy here. I wouldn’t choose to listen to it again and I’m certainly not going to be singing along to it in the car. But with the likes of Vanilla Ice and Clock, I would seriously consider never listening to any music ever again if I thought it was the only way to avoid a second listen to those albums. This album is just a bit of a shrug by comparison.

Here’s what I didn’t know until I listened to the whole of this. I didn’t know The Rasmus are Finnish and I didn’t know they were still touring now. (I Googled them.) I didn’t realise – perhaps because, when I was used to hearing them on the radio back in 2004, I didn’t really know much about this kind of music – that their style is basically a sort of Europop version of emo. I didn’t know that I would remember their second single, Guilty, when I heard it. (I didn’t honestly remember they had a second single.)

Mostly this is power-pop emo with blasting guitars and tortured, needy lyrics. Some of them play on the band’s northern European origins – there’s definitely a mention of the Northern Lights in there for no especially good reason. Most of them have a delightful, endearing self-pity that suggests this lot came hot on the heels of nu-metal or whatever Lincoln Biscuit called themselves. There’s not a great deal to tell most of the songs apart.

I was lucky enough to be sent the extended album with three bonus tracks, so while most people only get ten songs on Dead Letters, ending in the festival of depression that is Funeral Song, I was able to enjoy a further three songs that were broadly the same as the first ten.

Track	Title	Word 1	Word 2	Word 3	Word 4
1	First Day of My Life	Remarkably	emotional	Scandinavian	rock
2	In the Shadows	Honestly	don’t	mind	this
3	Still Standing	Entering	needy	emo	territory
4	In My Life	Van	Halen	meets	Busted
5	Time to Burn	Attempts	metal.	Still	emo.
6	Guilty	Extensive	“woahs”	and	“yeahs”
7	Not Like the Other Girls	Kettle	boiling,	missed	this
8	The One I Love	Shouty	angst	and	guitars
9	Back in the Picture	It’s	more	power	emo
10	Funeral Song	Dreary	slow	overworked	pap
11	F-f-f-falling	More	of	the	s-s-s-same
12	If You Ever	Harmonies	glitter	this	turd
13	What Ever	Jiggy	tortured	emo	finale

I think in summary, I would describe this album as “not horrendous”. In the Shadows is an OK pop song that I don’t mind hearing every now and then if it happens to come on the radio. The rest of these songs are just songs I’m not very interested in. Like I say, my opinion may be skewed by To The Extreme and perhaps that means Vanilla Ice has ruined me as far as slagging off bad music goes. But for now I can’t lie about the fact that listening to this was reasonably tolerable.

My favourite thing about this album is the quote on the inside of the sleeve that explains at some length and in oddly academic language what a dead letter is. It’s in quotation marks but not attributed to anyone, so I choose to assume it’s just lifted from Wikipedia. My least favourite thing is that two of the tracks on this album have the same title as much better songs by other bands. One is “In My Life”, which goes without saying; the other is “If You Ever”, and the fact that I would rate a collaboration by Gabrielle and East 17 more highly than this says a lot about track 12.

I think we can all look forward with baited breath to Gary Wilmot, appearing in this slot next month. I for one have never heard of him.

Remembering is Fun – May 2014 Edition

Hashtag. Hashtag. Like. Dislike. FaceTime Instagram Mcdougall.

All of these things make sense to a lot of people. What these people fail to remember though is that remembering, above all, is fun. They’re too busy trying to WhatsApp a soup bowl to Pinterest to remind themselves that all of it is nonsense and unless they start doing things that they can remember, they will never experience the fun that is remembering is fun.

You can’t remember tapping a slide trap on Tinder or going live on Facebook when Charlie chundered into a sieve. These aren’t the kinds of stories you can recount to your grandkids when you’re eighty-five. Where’s the joy? Where’s the laughter? Who is the fun?

Take for instance the following photo:

This was taken almost three years ago when a certain someone turned thirty. But that was merely something going on in the background that nobody really took any notice of. The main event was the filming of what is commonly known as ‘Essex Highway’. As Chris decided to mention David Bowie earlier on this month, I remembered how remembering was fun and that something involving Mr Bowie had occurred once which was fun.

This was before filming had started. Kevin, a keen perfectionist, had spent three hours getting his hair just right. At the point where he uttered such a bilious scream, and we rushed to expect him having trapped his hand in the plughole, only to find out he had just finished styling his hair and it was the smoothest it had ever been. The hair, donated by Crystal Park zoo, smelled of custard creams and answered to the name Alistair. Kevin would high five it after every successful shot.

Alistair would take most of the directing and producing credits for ‘Essex Highway’ and started a successful catering business once filming was over.

Kevin bought a wind farm and fathered seven children.

Logical Dreamscape: Bowie Flashback special

It’s a year since David Bowie himself – best known as a regular guest on daytime TV series Essex Highway, of course – passed away. To mark the anniversary, let’s look back now on one of the most poignant and touching parts of his life, which is when he appeared in my dream a few years ago.

(harp music, screen goes wibbly)

It all started when I was driving a caravan around a giant campsite. We were trying to find somewhere to set up camp for the night, but most places were full and everyone was sitting outside their tents and caravans having dinner. Eventually I ended up accidentally leaving by a back gate that wasn’t for public use. I drove under a very low railway bridge – which luckily the caravan fitted through – and then went the wrong way around a roundabout to turn around.

I must have eventually got the caravan parked up because the next thing I remember is being at some sort of communal dining table – a big, long, wooden table with people sitting down both sides of it. The atmosphere was like a cross between a picnic and a viking feast. The table was in a long wooden building and it was dark outside. To my surprise, I was sitting next to David Bowie.

There was a lot of food on the table and people were passing plates around and helping themselves to all the lovely food on offer. I served myself a modest plateful, as did most people, but to my surprise Bowie reached across me to a plate piled high with thick slices of ham and helped himself to almost all of it, heaping his plate with lots and lots of ham.

I thought it was very rude that he would selfishly take so much ham for himself, but obviously I didn’t say anything, because he was David Bowie.

(harp music again, screen goes wibbly)

It has to be one of the best dreams I’ve ever had, hands down. It had it all: the feeling of being on holiday, a musician I hold in high regard, and of course an opportunity to go the wrong way around a roundabout. I hope you’ve all enjoyed sharing in this experience as much as I have.

Pouring
Beans

Category: Remembering is fun