daddy cool...

Apparently we’re in the middle of a vinyl revival. In 2015, it was the fastest growing musical format and accounted for 2% of all musical sales. Alright, so the numbers aren’t all that large, relatively speaking (Ed Sheeran has sold more copies of X on CD this year than the entire vinyl category put together), but they are growing and it was over a million units sold this year. Big enough for people other than specialist retailers to take notice, anyway. Tescos are about to start selling vinyl, for goodness sake.

There’s an official vinyl chart now too.

So who’s buying this stuff? Well, I think the chart for this week tells its own story:

Alright, so Adele tops the chart…. But ELO? New Order? Nirvana? The Pulp Fiction OST? The Clash? Led Zeppelin? the Stone Roses? The Smiths? NWA!

I’ll tell you who’s buying vinyl…people like me.

It doesn’t get much more contemporary as you go further down the top 40 either, Alongside albums by Taylor Swift, Sam Smith and the 1975, we have Dark Side of the Moon, Rush of Blood to the Head, Let it Bleed, Houses of the Holy, Nevermind, Rumours, Sgt Pepper, The Number of the Beast, AM and Whatever People Say I am That’s What I’m Not by Arctic Monkeys, Definitely Maybe, Bad, Abbey Road, Legend by Bob Marley, The Wall….

Let’s face it, this is a hipster chart, isn’t it? You can practically see the beards and smell the excellent artisanal, cold-filtered coffee.

As you do....

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Of course, I bought my record player, started buying vinyl and grew a beard way before it became a thing.

Way before.

if we don't stop now we'll be dead by summer....

D.I.D. @ Nottingham Bodega, Monday 1st December 2014

The artists formerly known as Dog is Dead returned to their old stamping ground for one of their now-traditional Christmas gigs.  They've been "the next big thing" on Nottingham's music scene for a few years now, and with their debut album reaching number 45 in the UK charts in 2002 and Clifton's Jake Bugg leaving them gasping in his wake, this is a band that have everything to prove with their forthcoming second album.  Make or break time, boys.

As the band said themselves when they booked the gig:

“Recording the first album was a learning curve of which we worked with 4 different producers from completely different backgrounds, from psych-maniac David Kosten to 80s legend Trevor Horn. Sometimes it takes a long time to learn where the best place for you to write and record is, both metaphorically and literally. We knew this time around we wanted a finished product before we went and toured the world over rather than going back and forth to the studio. What we took from the first record is that we knew we wanted to starve ourselves of luxury and write and record in Nottingham at our favourite studio (random recordings) in the middle of an industrial estate. No luxury 12 foot mixing desks and symphony orchestras lying about meant that we could focus on the pure essence of song and stay true to the progression of the band with no eye on being 'current'. This process meant we had to have the discipline to sacrifice playing live shows until now which has only made us more hungry to get on the road and cause trouble."

The kids love them, anyway.  They've been featured on "Skins" and a sold-out crowd at the Bodega is both extremely youthful and very, very excited.  They say that we've reached "peak beard", well perhaps that's true, but without a word of exaggeration, every single man in the room who is able to grow a beard (with the notable exception of LB) has grown a beard.  Or at least attempted to grow a beard.  You really have to admire some of the wishful thinking on display here.  Long bumfluff is still basically  just bumfluff, right? No matter how much you want it to be a proper beard.  Bless....

But I digress.

I've never seen Dog is Dead before.  Perhaps that's a remarkable thing for someone who reviews Nottingham music to say, but there it is.  I'm barely familiar with any of their work and can thus approach this gig with a fresh perspective.  Well, with that fresh perspective, let me first tell you that the guitarist looks a little like Westley from the Princess Bride with a top-knot and a big ginger beard.  My first (proper) observation is that they sound a lot more substantial live than they do on record.  Their debut album is good enough, and grows on me with every play, but they're a little bit vanilla for my taste.  The singer's voice lacks subtlety and nuance (or he is not being very adventurous on record), with the end result that every song sounds more or less the same.  It's all very pleasant, and one or two of the songs really soar, but they stubbornly refuse to take flight for me.

Live, they're a different proposition; they're much more muscular and, when the fancy takes them, they really get their rock on.  They certainly make the whole Bodega shake when they get the youth jumping up and down (although, to be honest, when I see a crowd getting that excited when an otherwise fairly mild band starts to rock out, I can't help but think that they really need to go and watch Metallica or someone with proper riffs, but that's probably just me.....)  The old songs sound better than on record and are joyously received by the bearded, exuberant youth of Nottingham; new songs like "Killer Whale" and "Hotel" sound pretty damn good too.

They're a good band, and it's a good night.  Besides, how could I not get behind a bunch of lads who hail from leafy and genteel West Bridgford?  It's not the natural habitat of a rock band, is it? This is a big few months for them and with a following wind and these songs, their second album could really see them go all the way.  Fingers crossed.

VERDICT: 7 / 10

Setlist: Two Devils, Fast Food, Do The Right Thing, The State We’re In, River Jordan, Any Movement, Glockenspiel Song, Funny Bones, Hotel, Killer Whale, Teenage Daughter.

LB reviewed this gig for the Evening Post (and was good enough to get me in as his 'plus one').  His vastly more informed review of the band he first interviewed in 2012 can be found here.

I'm falling out of grace....

I had a meeting with someone at work today who I haven't spoken to in a few weeks. As I rolled up to her desk, the first thing that she said to me was - and I swear I'm not making this up:

"Wow. You're really rocking the Jesus look"

Dammit.  I knew I should have left the bloody sheep at home.

Mind you, as an atheist, I probably shouldn't be taking that as quite as much of a compliment as I am, right?

After all, WWRD: What would Richard Dawkins do?*

*Fire off a vicious and satirical paper mocking the manifest stupidities of organised religion in as pompous a way as possible, but that's not important now....

fuzz....

I'm ambivalent about this beard.

I managed to survive twelve months with it throughout 2012, but for some reason I'm finding it harder to live with this time around.  I grew it after we got back from Glastonbury, partly by an accident of not shaving and partly to hide the sunken cheeks that are making me look as though I'm ill.  It's a touch longer this time around, but otherwise pretty much the same as before.  And yet I keep thinking I want to shave it off.

So why not just shave it off and be done with it?

Well, it's not quite as simple as that.  For one thing, the sunken cheeks that I'm trying to cover are still there.  And, well.... people keep telling me I shouldn't shave it off.  Female people.  I had a reasonable background level of coverage envy and beard fascination from men last time around, so I was expecting that.  This.... this is new.  I don't think I'm a vain man, but even I'm not dim enough not to take a hint if it is repeated often enough.

It started with my wife: no sooner had I grown the beard back than C. was telling me how much it suited me.  Why she didn't tell me this before I shaved it off in December, I don't know.  I'd spent most of the year assuming she was simply tolerating it.  Still, better late than never.  Then Sarah told me that the beard was "a good look" for me.  Just this week, one of my running buddies told me, out of nowhere, that she wasn't sure if the beard made me look older or younger - at the grand old age of 24, I'm just old to her full stop - but that I definitely looked better with it than without it.  I even went to the barber the other day, and apparently I'm not safe there, either.  I wanted a long overdue trim, but asked the lady cutting my hair to leave the beard alone as I preferred to trim it at home.  When I went to pay, we got to chatting about my beard for some reason.  Yes, since you ask, I will definitely be giving it some attention as soon as I get home.
She looked concerned, as if she had detected something in my tone.
"You won't be getting rid of it entirely, will you?"
A colleague of hers, who also sometimes cuts my hair but was waiting around with foil in her hair, chipped in too.
"You shouldn't.  You definitely shouldn't.  My husband can't grow a beard like that...."

What?  Why all the sudden interest in my beard?  I'm not complaining, exactly, but I'd quite like to understand why.  Why?

Meanwhile, I'm keeping it.

Obviously.

Mmm.  Rugged.

don't try to fight, just get freaky with a beard tonight...

For reasons that I can't fully explain, THE BEARD IS BACK.

It started out as Glastonbury stubble, but after six days without a shave, I just decided to trim around the edges and keep the rest.  It's a combination of reasons really, but it's mostly because I saw myself in a photo the other day and I just looked hollow-cheeked, pale and gaunt.  Not a good look.  One of my oldest friends said to me a couple of weeks ago that the beard had covered that up, and I think I must have taken that to heart. Anyway, here I am.

Is it wrong that I derived an enormous amount of masculine satisfaction at my ability to grow an honest-to-goodness beard in about a week?  No matter how much I might like to deny it, I most certainly did and I do.  Growing a proper beard makes me feel more manly on a very primal level.  No question.  I'm already getting comments from other guys about how much they envy my beard coverage, and a surprising number of remarks from the ladies - not least my wife - about how much they think it's a look that suits me.  I've been described as "rugged looking" already (by a 20 year old!), which is nice.  If I'd known it got this much love, I don't think I would have shaved it off in January in the first place (diving trip and inevitable beard related mask-leak notwithstanding).

Someone also said today that I looked like Andy Murray... now, that's clearly nonsense, but I'll take it.  He's not even got a beard, has he?



Beards FTW!  Billy Bragg has one at the moment too.  What more reason do you need?

is that the question?

Once in a while, I like to take the dusty path through the stats for this site.

I've been doing this for long enough now (a little over 9 years, would you believe) that I've long since reconciled myself to the fact that I'm never likely to get a book deal out of my blogging and I don't tend to obsess over my visitor numbers.

I write for me, man....which, looking at the data, is probably just as well.

That said, I never fail to be entertained by the search terms that bring people to this humble corner of the Internet.

My current favourite?  "Do beards smell?"

Really?

Well, in the hopes of perhaps increasing my readership, I'll take this one.

Are you ready for this?

OK.  Do beards smell?  Well, I can't claim to speak on behalf of all beards - indeed, I shaved mine off in December, so perhaps I shouldn't really be speaking on behalf of *any* beards - but mine didn't smell.  

Well, I don't think it did.... perhaps lightly of Sex Panther (60% of the time, it works every time...).  Other than that, largely odourless.

There.  That's it.  Happy to help.

Good luck with your enquiries, random passing stranger from the world wide web.  If you have any further questions, please feel free to swing back any time.

That's me: mass appeal blogging since March 2nd 2004.  Any interested literary agents can contact me via the email in my profile.

the shaving razor's cold and it stings....

Did I mention that the beard has gone?

As soon as we got home from spending Christmas with my parents and my brothers and their families, it got the chop.  Boxing Day.  I started growing it just before Christmas last year, and it seems that about a year is my beard tolerance level.

Apart from anything else, I really just wanted to get my hair cut really short.  Having a beard kind of cramps your style from that point of view: I don't know what you think, but I reckon that when someone's beard is longer than their hair, unless they have a completely shaven head, it just looks weird.  So I chopped the beard off, and the very next morning popped out to get my head clippered too.

I think my wife was a bit alarmed.  She's joked about how my beard worked because it made my cheeks look less sunken, but I think that over the course of the last twelve months, she actually got used to the beard to the extent that, when I was threatening to shave it off, she said that it was a bit of a shame as she kind of liked it.

Too bad.  I'd had enough.  Beards, brogues and tweed caps might well be all the rage, but I will now officially only be rocking two of the three on-trends.  I will be accessorising with a Paul Smith modal scarf in signature stripe with frayed ends, mind.

When I got back from the barber, she took one look at me and told me that I looked like I had cancer.  "Leukemia chic", I think she called it.

Charming.

Hmm.   Maybe she had a point.

Well, anyway.  I'm enjoying being out from underneath it.  You have facial hair like that for too long and you sort of get trapped behind it as people forget what your face looked like without the fuzz.  Well.... mine looks kind of the same as it's always done: sallow, sunken-cheeked, thin-lipped and with a big, red, wonky hooter.

.....on reflection, perhaps I should grow it back.  Bigger and bushier and more all-concealing.  Gandalf-stylee, perhaps?  I am going to Canada in March.  That's long enough to grow a three foot beard that I can tuck into my belt, right?

What do you think, Internet?

hairy...

 God. Bearded.

Given that I’ve been growing the damn thing since the third week of December, you would imagine that I would be getting used to comments about it by now.... but not really.

Hold, on. Let me try that phrase the other way around: wouldn’t you think that, after a couple of months, my colleagues and friends might be getting used to the damn thing by now?  I've only had three people - all from the same team at work, make of that what you will - amusingly remark that my head is on upsidedown... but people still seem endlessly amused and fascinated by my beard: the colour; the thickness; the length; the patches of grey.  You name it, someone has asked me about it.  The less socially adept of my friends have just reached out and copped a feel, perhaps unable to restrain themselves.

On the other hand, given that I still double-take my own reflection, why should I expect everyone else to be used to it by now?

 Moses.  Bearded.

I’ve been pleased and pleasantly surprised to receive a few compliments from members of the fairer sex, but what really gets me is the level of fascination/envy from other guys.  Let me tell you: beard envy is a terrible thing and has many manifestations.  Only yesterday, as we were sat at our desks, GJ looked at me for a while and suddenly remarked, seemingly out of the blue: "You've got great coverage.  That's a proper beard that."

Um.  Thanks?  I hadn't realised that the thickness of my facial hair had been on his mind.

GJ isn't envious of my beard, I don't think, and I don't know if he's ever tried to grow one before.... but in a strange kind of way, other guys seem to look at my beard as a sort of projection of the beards that they wish they had themselves.  A fantasy beard, if you like.  A beard for all seasons.

As wikipedia says:

"Over the course of history, men with facial hair have been ascribed various attributes such as wisdom, sexual virility, masculinity, or a higher status; although beards may also be perceived to be associated with a lack of general cleanliness and a loss of refinement."

 Jesus.  Bearded.

Yes. That.  Well... most of that.  All except for that last bit, obviously.

I've never had a beard before, and growing this has been something of a manly voyage of discovery for me.  It's been interesting to discover that other, beardless, men have been keen to come along on this voyage of discovery with me.

 Gandalf.  Bearded.  Seriously.  All the cool kids have them now.

All aboard the good ship beard.

man, you've been a naughty boy, you let your face grow long....

Now, I know that this won't come as a surprise to many of you, but it turns out that I am quite at the cutting edge of fashion.

There I was, just returned from my holidays, sat in a local deli eating a chorizo, emmental and jalapeno panini, drinking coffee and browsing the Sunday papers, when the extent of my fashion credentials became suddenly and startlingly apparent. 

Now, I don't read the Sunday Times much as a rule, considering it to be not worth using to line the cat's litter tray, but as the sports section was available right next to me, I picked it up to catch up on the rugby news that I might have missed whilst away.  Sitting next to me, chomping on a coronation chicken and mango chutney ciabatta, C. was browsing the Style supplement.  Suddenly, she nearly choked on her sandwich and shoved the glossy pages underneath my nose.

Reluctantly putting aside the sport for a moment, I glanced at the proffered page and was slightly taken aback to read of the latest trend in male grooming, apparently a reaction to the pampered, gelled metrosexuals who had, up until now, apparently been taking over the world....... beards. 

Yes, the "Urban Lumberjack" look is so now, my friends.  All the right people - and Ben Affleck - are rejecting the daily grind of the shave and are growing beards as a rejection of all those waxy-faced, Jack Wills garbed, overly coiffed, perfumed automatons.  The article went on to say that to get this look, you should get yourself a beanie and a pair of tan brogue boots.

Now, hold on a minute:

I bought myself a pair of tan brogues back in mid-December (mine are Loakes rather than the Malton Trickers that the Sunday Times suggested, but I am a Northampton boy, so....) and I stopped shaving at around about the same time... and as I generally wear a beanie at this time of year, I reckon that this pretty much makes me the originator of this whole trend.  If you read that article on Sunday and you stopped shaving in the hope of getting MY look, then you are so behind the curve, my friends.  But not to worry: there's no shame in being a follower as you must understand that not everyone can be a bleeding edge fashion innovator.

I feel so powerful. 

If I can bring back the beard, maybe I can bring back anything!  If the editor of Style Magazine happens to be reading this, then let me give you a sneak preview that I'm thinking that next I might go for the Art Garfunkel balding Afro look. 

You laugh now, but come March and you'll all be wanting one..... 

but now and then we wonder who the real men are....

I reckon there's a gap in the market for a proper handbook for men; a MANual, if you will....

I'm 37 years old and you would imagine that I would be getting the hang of things by now, but this simply isn't true.  Apart from anything else, growing this beard has been a voyage of discovery for me pretty much right from the start.

- Why does no one tell you the point at which stubble stops and a beard starts?
- Why has it come out less grey than the rest of the hair on my head?
- To trim or not to trim?
- What do you trim with? How short? How often?
- How far down your throat should you let it grow?
- What about the stubble that grows high up on your cheek bones?
- How long should I expect it to be itchy for?
- What strategies are there to avoid stroking or pulling it all the time?
- Why should growing one be so fascinating to other people?
- What's the etiquette around letting people touch it?
- Beard envy from other guys.  What's that all about?
- Should people not be forewarned about how weird it feels on your pillow?
- Is this actually going to keep my face warmer on the ski slopes?

...and so on.

Every day that I keep this thing, new questions keep popping into my head.  I'm hardly the first man to go through this, and I surely can't be the only one to wonder about these and other important questions of beard etiquette.

Can I?

Or does this handbook for men already exist and I've just missed it?

Or is it passed down, word-of-mouth, from generation to generation?  Did my father neglect to pass this information down to me, or is the knowledge slowly being lost to us men as we lead ever more urban and metrosexual lives where more attention is paid to styling mousse than to basic beard growth and maintenance?

O Tempora, O Mores!

Where did all the real men go?

smell my beard....

As I’ve mentioned a couple of times, I appear to be growing a beard.

My last proper shave was (I think) on the morning of Wednesday 22nd December. The inevitable consequence of this is that, over the course of the last 20 days, I’ve now got an honest-to-goodness beard.

(when Peter Jackson filmed Lord of the Rings, he needed to give Ian McKellan a false nose to make sure that his face didn't disappear into his Gandalf beard.... not a problem I think he'd have with me.)

It started out of laziness, of course. I don’t particularly enjoy shaving, and when I have a few days off work, I tend to let my stubble grow. Like lots of blokes, I reckon I look better with a hint of stubble… maybe two or three days worth. After that, it starts getting a bit itchy and/or I have to go back to work, so I have a shave. This time, I had a clear ten days off work and I just didn’t bother shaving at all. By the time I was due to go back to work on 3rd January, I had enough of a beard that I was prepared to run the inevitable gauntlet of banter and give it another couple of weeks. We’re going skiing towards the end of January, I thought, so why not go with a beard? Every time we go skiing, I come back with what looks like an identical set of photos of us wearing the same skiing gear standing with the same friends on a snowy mountain somewhere. Why not shake that up a bit by going with a beard?

Alright. It’s not much of a reason, I grant you, but there you go.

So I went to work with a beard.

Apparently, bearded men tend to get passed over for promotion more frequently than the clean-shaven. Well, that’s hardly likely to make much of a difference to the glacial rate of progression of my brilliant career, is it? Plus I decided that I simply didn’t care what people thought.

As it turned out, I received nothing but positive comments – almost to the extent that I began to wonder what was wrong with my face before. I’d sort of assumed that a beard would be a guy thing and that most ladies would be generally disapproving. As it turns out, I’ve had a surprising number of compliments from my female colleagues. Most are concerned that I keep it trimmed and don’t allow it to become a free-range, ZZ Top-style affair, but otherwise they seem to like it. Even my wife – who hated my 2008 Movember moustache – seems to have surprised herself by how much she likes it. Well, tolerates it.

I keep surprising myself too; I keep walking past mirrors, catching sight of myself, and thinking “Ooooh! You’ve got a beard!” as though this was a remarkable thing for a man of my age to be able to do. In my own head, I’m still about 16 years old, like most men, and the ability to grow hair on my face still seems an astonishing thing to be able to do. Tina asked me here over the weekend if I’d been out running on Trent Bridge at about noon on Sunday as she’d seen a tall, bearded man jogging as she drove into town. It was me, of course, but it still took a few seconds for the novelty of being described as a “bearded man” to sink in.

Ridiculous. I’m 37 years old. Why should my ability to grow a beard be remarkable to anyone, myself included?

And then, just when I thought I’d done all the hard bits of growing a beard, a colleague of mine returned from holiday today and paused for a moment as he tried to remember who he thought I now looked like.

“Oh. I know…” said the Weapon of the Zombie Apocalypse after some consideration, “…you look like Sir Clive Sinclair”.

Reader, I nearly shaved on the spot… but then another colleague (separately, but also today) came up and told me that, with a trim and a black polo-neck, I’d be a dead-ringer for Steve Jobs. Now that’s a bit more like it. An improvement, anyway. Unless he meant Steve Jobs now…

To be honest, I was really going for a Leonidas…..maybe the beard just needs a little more time and then - what with my physique and all - everyone will be making that comparison.

I think I’ll keep it until we’re back from Austria on 28th January, but after that I reckon it will go. Still, it’s something every guy should do at least once in their lives, eh? If for no other reason than because we can.

It’s a man thing.

Obviously.

Besides, as Kristen Wiig shows here with Zach Galifianiakis, beards are sexy.....

[GJ thinks I look like this guy.  I'm not having it.  I think I'd rather look like Sir Clive Sinclair]