Gary – an 8 foot tall ornament – dutifully welcomed visitors to a garden centre in Scotland for a decade before he was stolen last year. As you can see, he did his bit during the pandemic by wearing a face mask and has also been known to get into the Christmas spirit by donning a Santa hat.
Gary – well, most of him anyway, as the thieves had sawn a bit of him off – was reunited with his owner, a Mr Andrew Scott (not the guy who played Moriarty in Sherlock or the ‘hot priest’ in Fleabag), in March this year.
This truly bizarre crime feels uniquely British. As we know from Netflix, the US is full of incredible true crime stories that usually involve murder. Here, we get an 8ft Gorilla ornament nicked from the entrance to a garden centre.
It’s a story that has captured the imagination of one of my favourite bands, Blossoms. They have announced that their new album will be released in September and that it is named after our gorilla friend.
The band’s frontman, Tom Ogden, wrote the album’s title track about the story of Gary the Gorilla and used some of the lines from news reports about him in his lyrics. He mentions that ‘Mr. Scott hasn’t seen him since’ and the second verse goes like this:
I heard there’s been a breakthrough A registration plate His movements they were able to track But, you see, hе comes from a fairly extendеd family Don’t know how many brothers he has
This refers to an actual incident:
Blossoms also look like they had a lot of fun recording the two videos that we’ve seen so far from the album. The band have concoted a story where they are Gary’s captors – but they have been sent on a special mission by, er, Everton manager Sean Dyche. In the follow-up, Mr Scott appears to be played by Rick Astley!
All that’s left for you to do is watch the video and listen to the song. I think it’s great, I hope you do too.
The slightly prententious title to this week’s piece is not me trying to come across all earnest – it’s actually a lyric from the Arctic Monkeys song Anyways (which you can listen to below).
I’ll be honest, I have been finding things a bit difficult recently. My anxiety remains, thankfully, at arm’s length but it is its ugly brother depression that’s been gathering in a cloud over me.
That voice inside my head has been getting louder. ‘You’re useless’. ‘No one likes you’. ‘God, you’re such a loner’. I’ve been trying to use the techniques I was taught during my CBT sessions to shut that voice out, but it’s been difficult. Things came to a head on Sunday when work felt like an almost impossible task. I wasn’t fit for human consumption. I hid myself away in the kiosk. On the positive side, with some help, I got through it and was much better on Monday and Tuesday. But it can be jarring to think that the darkness can encroach at any moment. You’re never safe from it.
So much for Project Happy, eh? Well, anyway, that can wait for now. The best thing I can do is look after myself right now and tackle it again when I’m feeling brighter.
A book I recommend: I don’t read a lot of fiction but recently I’ve been engrossed in Danny Wallace’s 2012 novel Charlotte Street. I found it in a charity shop. The protagonist, Jason, sees a girl drop what she was carrying onto the pavement while she’s getting into a taxi and stops to help pick her things up. They exchange a lingering smile, then the taxi drives away. But Jason doesn’t notice that he’s still holding something of hers – a disposable camera. And from there an obsession begins!
A song I’m into: Stockport indie band Blossoms released their new single this week, a collaboration with Jungle called ‘What Can I Say After I’m Sorry?’ – the video for it features Everton manager Sean Dyche. Yep. I’ve been playing it on repeat since it came out and constantly have the chorus stuck in my head. Listen below!
If you’ve made it this far, thanks very much for reading and I’ll see you again soon.
A short round up of things on my mind. Things I’ve seen, read, heard etc. From my point of view, it will help me keep my eye in with my writing. As the name suggests, it will be semi-regular and published on Thursdays.
A bit of news: That Mary Earps won the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award last night and I couldn’t be happier for her. I’m not trying to be right-on or anything like that when I say I love watching the Lionesses. They seem to be more of a team than their male counterparts – and more successful. Earps is a brilliant example of the virtue of never giving up. Four years ago, she felt like her football career was going nowhere and was preparing to try something else. Last night, she received the prestigious SPotY award as a Euros winner, World Cup finalist and comfortably the best goalkeeper in the women’s game. Apparently oxygen thief Piers “Morgan” Moron has been whining (for a change) about it. I find a good rule for life is that whatever he doesn’t like is probably a good thing. Well done Mary.
A song I’ve been listening to:Blossoms will be releasing their fifth album next year and the first single from it, To Do List (After The Breakup) is a banger. It’s a collaboration with fellow Stockport musician Findlay and, in true Ronseal style, tells you what you need to do after a break up. I’m a big fan. Watch the video below.
A podcast I’ve been listening to: one I’ve been really getting into recently is The Rest Is Entertainment. It’s a weekly dissection of all things pop culture hosted by Richard Osman (of Pointless, House of Games and Thursday Murder Club fame) and The Guardian journalist Marina Hyde. A recent highlight has been Osman’s insight into this year’s race for the Christmas number one, in which he dropped the bombshell fact that 2004’s Band Aid 20 remains Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke’s only UK number one single. It’s interesting, it’s funny, and it’s been making my journeys to and from work fly by.
Something you should watch this Christmas: it’s not exactly a hidden gem, but nothing gets me into the Christmas spirit quite like the 2008 festive special of Gavin and Stacey. It’s brilliantly observed, and truly captures that sense of anticipation that the big day holds. It makes me miss those big family Christmasses I remember as a child. You can watch it on BBC iPlayer here.
Is that it?
That will do you for this week. Have a very happy Christmas, a great new year and I’ll be back soon.
Just before you go – why are you asking yourself questions?
I love music. I love all kinds of music. It doesn’t have to be a certain genre or style, it just has to make me feel something.
One of my favourite bands is Blossoms, who I was delighted to discover when they were heavily promoted by Radio X (formerly XFM) in 2016. The five piece from Stockport have a knack for catchy riffs and singalong tunes, with every song written by frontman Tom Ogden. Their self-titled debut album reached number one, as did their third effort Foolish Loving Spaces in 2020. On 29th April 2022, the band released their latest: Ribbon Around The Bomb. Here’s my review.
Blossoms. Left to right: guitarist Josh Dewhurst, drummer Joe Donovan, frontman Tom Ogden, bass player Charlie Salt and keyboard player Myles Kellock.
It was soon after 6am on Friday and I was hauling myself into my car for the half an hour drive to work, contemplating the day ahead. It had been a hell of a week. The new Blossoms album had been released at midnight, though, and I was looking forward to having the time to give it a good listen on my journey.
The best thing about music is its ability to take you out of yourself. No matter what you’ve got going on, a song can change your mood in an instant. The very best songs transport you to somewhere else entirely. One of my heroes, Alex Turner from the Arctic Monkeys, sums it up:
“Some of my favourite records, to me, feel like places that you can sort of go to and move in to for a bit.”
Within a few seconds of hearing the strings of short instrumental opener The Writer’s Theme, I had a smile on my face. When it beautifully segued into Ode To NYC – a love letter to the Big Apple and one of four singles released ahead of the full album – I had the feeling that the world isn’t such a bad place after all. The rest of my car journey was serene, totally enraptured by the tunes coming from the radio.
Ribbon Around The Bomb, the title track and my favourite of the four singles, is followed by The Sulking Poet, a highlight of the album and a song inspired by a Blossoms fan account on Instagram that referred to frontman and principle songwriter Tom Ogden as such due to him often appearing to have a ‘face like a slapped arse’ in interviews.
Next is Born Wild, which for me brings back memories of the band’s previous chart topping album Foolish Loving Spaces. Then it’s The Writer, which carries a more than passing resemblance to the Oasis track Half The World Away.
Blossoms show how they have matured on their new album
Everything About You keeps up the album’s theme of marrying intriguing, inward-looking lyrics with cheerful melodies. Care For is a disco-inspired joy, with Ogden waxing lyrical about his new wife. Cinerama Holy Days has perhaps the album’s most repeatable chorus, while Edith Machinist has those wonderful strings adding the cherry on top of the cake.
At 7 minutes, Visions is one of the longest songs Blossoms have ever made and contains its most talked about lyric:
Was I complete at 23?
Visions by Blossoms
Then, with another instrumental lasting less than minute, the appropriately titled The Last Chapter brings us home.
This is an album that I think will prove as pivotal to the longevity of Blossoms as Humbug was to Arctic Monkeys. An evolution, rather than a revolution. The sound of a band maturing and learning with every new track. Work on a fifth record is apparently already underway and I for one can’t wait to hear more. Ribbon Around The Bomb is an album they should be very proud of.
Listen to Ribbon Around The Bomb by Blossoms on all usual musical streaming services, including Apple Music. You can buy the album from their official storehere.
As much as I love football, I am getting a bit tired of the daily dose of games beamed live from empty grounds. I’m really starting to miss crowds now. A living, breathing crowd adds so much to sport. Bordered by empty seats, even the biggest games feel like no big deal – Liverpool v Manchester United might as well have been Tranmere v Oldham.
Last night Arsenal played Newcastle, and, while I would usually have the game on in the background while doing other things, this time I decided to watch something more interesting. I watched Blossoms – Back To Stockport.
It’s a documentary film about the band Blossoms, exploring their origins and showing their preparations for a big homecoming gig in front of 15,000 people at Edgeley Park, home of Stockport County Football Club, which took place on 22nd June 2019.
Blossoms. Left to right: guitarist Josh Dewhurst, bass player Charlie Salt, lead singer Tom Ogden, drummer Joe Donovan and keyboard player Myles Kellock
In case you haven’t heard of them, Blossoms are a five-piece band from the aforementioned town of Stockport, near Manchester. The sort of music they make is probably best defined as psychadelic-indie-rock-pop. They came fourth on the BBC’s Sound of 2016 list, the broadcaster’s annual pick of musicians to listen out for in the year ahead. I first heard about them as I am a listener of Radio X, who included Blossoms on their similar Great X-Pectations list, and gave a lot of radio play to their single Charlemagne.
Charlemagne, the breakthrough single for Blossoms
I was immediately drawn to the band I think, in part, because there was a certain groove, a funk, to their songs – a sound that manages to simultaneously feel both modern and retro. I respect the fact that the frontman Tom Ogden writes all the songs and they all seem genuinely great guys who are living the dream. If you know anything about me, you’ll know that I am a total devotee to Arctic Monkeys, so you can imagine how delighted I was to hear in the film that Blossoms started off doing Arctic Monkeys covers and described Alex Turner as an ‘idol’.
The film is made to a very high standard. It goes in-depth on the back stories of the five members of the band (discovering that all but one of them is younger than me made me feel old), who go against the grain of many rock bands of the past by showing themselves to be best mates in a way that they simply couldn’t put on for the cameras. Footage of the Edgeley Park gig runs as a thread throughout, and there are even little animated inserts to go along with whatever story one of them is telling at that moment.
In Ogden, the band have a figurehead who demonstrates great showmanship on stage – the long hair and the 70s suits – but away from it he’s a quiet guy who just likes walking his dog. The drummer, Joe Donovan, has been Ogden’s friend since they were at school together and is a ball of energy brilliantly described by the others as ‘like having a fan of the band who is in the band’. Bassist Charlie Salt is a sort of older brother figure (he was born in 1991 for Christ’s sake!) who has the air of someone who would be able to charm his way into anything. Myles Kellock plays the keyboards, but seemingly only half as much as he plays video games – there’s one shot in the film where he’s playing what looks like Mario Kart at the back of a recording studio while the others are working on a song. His keyboards certainly contribute greatly to that modern/retro sound I described earlier, though.
That leaves my favourite member of the band, lead guitarist Josh Dewhurst. He has a quality that I admire a lot, and that is being funny with a straight face. He doesn’t go out of his way to make people laugh, he just has a dry wit that makes him naturally funny. I’m someone who relies a lot on sarcasm so I can relate. In one scene, the band are being fitted out with the suits they will wear on stage at the big gig and Dewhurst tells a hilarious story about how he’s had to have pockets made on his trousers because, according to the tailor, ‘you don’t have an arse’. He tells it in such a way that makes Ogden in the background crack up, as did I. Dewhurst is also an incredibly talented musician. On the most recent Blossoms album, Foolish Loving Spaces, on the track Your Girlfriend the cowbell-type sound at the beginning was produced by Dewhurst hitting the wheel of a car.
Your Girlfriend, from the 2020 Blossoms album Foolish Loving Spaces
The shots of 15,000 people packed tightly onto the Edgeley Park pitch feel like a window into a different world, one in which no one knew what social distancing was. As hard as it is to believe at the moment, those days will return but for now this film is a wonderful tonic for these locked down times.
I urge you to both give Blossoms a listen and watch the film. Their music appeals to all ages – I gave my mum one of their albums as a present last year and she’s had it on almost constantly in her car ever since – and the film is inspiring, in that a group of lads who a few years ago were playing to fifty people in pubs are now headlining stadium gigs. Watch the trailer below and the film is on Amazon Prime.
There’s a lot going on at the moment that can really get you down. If the coronavirus pandemic wasn’t enough, keeping us away from our family and friends, ruining our plans and making us worry, then the events in the US over the last week or so have only added to the load.
I am a big Twitter user. I find it useful to keep up with what’s going on, connect with a wide range of people and to try to get my writing seen. However, I find it really difficult to avoid getting into arguments on there. With the topic of race right back at the top of the world agenda, I’ve been coming to blows with some who I feel have truly abhorrent views.
To drag myself out of that particular tunnel I have started something called #GoodStuff, where I share things that have made me laugh, smile or simply made this whole situation easier to deal with over the last couple of months. Here are my first selections.
Mark Church’s Garden Cricket
When sport is your thing, a global virus pandemic bringing the whole thing to a sudden halt for a while is tough. Football and cricket are my two biggest loves and there hasn’t been any live action to watch in this country since March – except in Mark Church’s garden.
Mark Church is the cricket commentator for BBC London. Usually at this time of year he’d be busy reporting on all of Surrey’s matches, but the coronavirus has left him with a bit more time on his hands.
He’s been playing in his garden, against his garden furniture. A full schedule of five Test matches, five One Day Internationals and some upcoming Twenty20 games. Some might describe the whole thing as one man’s slow descent into insanity but, trust me, it will put a smile on your face.
This week I should have seen Blossoms supporting The Killers at Carrow Road, but that’s been rescheduled for next year for obvious reasons. I’ve been a fan of the Stockport band for a while and loved Foolish Loving Spaces, their third album, released in January.
They haven’t let the fact that they’ve been locked down in different places stop them making music, though. They have recorded some of their own songs and a few covers in isolation, and the results have been incredible.
My favourite is their cover of Tame Impala’s The Less I Know The Better, with Miles Kane from The Last Shadow Puppets. It sounds great, you’d never know they were recording their individual parts – and at one point drummer Joe Donovan plays a potato peeler. Have a listen.
Elis and John’s Isolation Tapes
I’ve been a big fan of Elis James and John Robins for about three years now. At the time, they presented the 1pm-4pm slot on a Saturday on Radio X and the start of their show would coincide with me driving home from work.
I really liked how the show was basically two mates having a chat. They talked about all kinds of stuff, and it never felt forced or fake. They’re both comedians by trade, Robins an Edinburgh festival fringe comedy award winner and James a proud Welshman who now does a lot of gigs in the Welsh language.
I started listening to the podcasts of their radio show and have done ever since. I went to see them at the UEA in 2018 when they released a book and did a tour of the country to promote it. At the end, I even got my copy signed!
My signed book
Last year they moved to BBC Radio 5 Live and during the pandemic they’ve been recording extra episodes called The Isolation Tapes. I’ve found them a wonderful slice of normality amidst the chaos.
It’s limbs in the studio as a box of brownies and a couple of books have lifted Elis out of a funk. What great news for bookworms with low blood sugar. But the internal glucose alarm isn’t the only one going off as a fire alert causes chaos. We also get psychological as the boys unpick the idea of the inner monologue, and with that the terrifying engine steering John under the bonnet. Would Freud enjoy this? Potentially. Would it frighten him? Almost certainly. And from brains to bodies, the show gets panned as the least erotic thing possible, whilst we have a couple of fantastically zoological Mad Dads.It’s elisandjohn@bbc.co.uk or 07974 293022 on WhatsApp if you’ve got any comments on the above. But please nothing too close to the erotic bone. Keep it PG.
LEE PAYNE 