#Interview With Beagle 2

Not personal. 

Keeky Delbrannon gets up close but not so personal with Beagle 2.




Unless you've been living on Mars for the last 17 years you may know Beagle 2 as the eccentric, no nonsense Svengali and entrepreneur, responsible for managing innovative bands such as Homosexual Dog, Revolving Heads, Mustard Gas, Imploding Austro Hungarian Assassins' and current signing Mork and Mork. For years he's been dogged by rumours and many urban myths, due to his reclusiveness. He runs his own legal firm, deals in his own currency (the Hound) and is considering going into the energy industry. 'Beagle Energy. Think about it.' What makes all these exploits all the more remarkable is the fact that he is a beagle hound.


His latest venture The Horse and Flipchart that he co-owns with Fox Tavern and Smirnov Kool, is a funky, urbane, retro bar-pub-restaurant-space to breathe located in the Northern Quarter of Manchester. Beagle 2 tells me he wanted to relocate to the Trafford Centre. 'The fucking business traffic in that place? All those Asians with disposable incomes! Fucking loaded!' Unsatisfied with what he describes as an area 'gentrified with Velma's, start up cunts, cultural shitehawks and serial killers' he's along with his business partners come up with the novel idea of packing up and taking the bar on tour.


BEAGLE: It's cheaper and more fun than a franchise. If Depeche Mode or, I don't know, Take That can throw everything into a few vans and piss off round the world for 18 months, why can't we?

KEEKY. Um...tax things, license's...

BEAGLE. Fuck off, don't talk to me about that! I know my way around shit. Fucking pups play, that.

KEEKY. I understand the bands and DJs you manage will be coming along.

BEAGLE. Suppose.

KEEKY. According to this press release, there'll be special guests...Dulux Gloss, Faux Richard Marx Tribute, Fax Machine Gunners, Charli XMA, The Gooches...

BEAGLE. Might be.

KEEKY. According to the locations of these residencies I have before me...odd choices. Murren, Pyongyang, Anchorage...Leigh...

BEAGLE. So?

KEEKY. How did you manage to get permission?

BEAGLE. I ask the questions around here. Got that!? If you don't mind I happen to be thirsty and in that room there, yeah, there's a tap and water will flow from it. Watch me walk...

And yes, folks. He really is a beagle.



The Horse and Flipchart on Tour 2012

March-Murren, Jonkoping, TBA

April-Leigh, Pyongyang, TBA

May-Anchorage, Turin, probably somewhere n Malta

June-November-TBA

Competition time!
Ever fantasised about getting your art work on Tony Hart's gallery on Hartbeat, or wishing you were as great as Patrick Caulfied? Here's your chance. Beagle 2, Fox Tavern and Smirnov Kool want you to design a new logo for The Horse and Flipchart. Yes, that's right! Something simple, iconic and functional that can not only go over the door, be printed on beer mats and t-shirts, stationery but can be used as a cute twitter profile pic. Go on, have a go and you can win a mystery prize. Truth is, we don't have a proper tour poster and our in house artist, Claude Doctor, is having his appendix out.

Rules
1. Anyone can enter. Anyone!
2. Try and not rip it off too much.
3. Closing date next Friday.

Send you entries to www.twitter/smirnovkool
Just to reiterate. The winner selected will win a prize. Really.

#Two Thousand And Eleven

FOX TAVERN. Hey, my mad hipsters and lovers... welcome to a special edition of Autobahn 1.

BEAGLE 2. Let's be fair, Fox. Every edition of Autobahn 1 is a special edition. 

FOX. Indeed, my lickle dog. We'll be having a round up of some of our favourite songs and videos of the year, and the stuff that has been making The Horse and Flipchart gallop!

BEAGLE. Doubt it. But it'll be better than all the other pointless End of Year specials.

FOX. Indeed. On with the show. 

BEAGLE 2. I love that song.
FOX. Yeah, me too. Hey Beagle, my dear little hund, what was your favourite track of 2011?
BEAGLE. Well, as if anyone cares it's this one...

FOX. A good year for Moon Wiring Club in these parts. On to bigger and better things in 2012. My favourite video of 2011 was...

FOX. Best video of the year. There's really no contest.
BEAGLE. Well...
FOX. There's really no contest.

FOX. So Beagle 2 what are your plans for 2012?
BEAGLE 2. Don't know yet. I plan to eat, work, sleep and visit the loo. You?
FOX. Erm. Breathe in and out.
BEAGLE 2. Right. Next video.

BEAGLE 2. I really hated that other single they did.
FOX. Everything goes my way?
BEAGLE 2. A fuck up, that one. Should have never gone on the album. It just smacked of middle class, trivial issues. Hated it!
FOX. Love is not trivial.
BEAGLE 2. Hmm. The singer also looks like the soppy git with the camera in Cloverfield.

FOX. This will be the sound of 2012. Forget Guettaised supermarket pop, 2007 dub/dark/dappyyankeeeuro step. It's this stuff. Field music. What do you say Beagle 2?
BEAGLE 2....

FOX. Shall we play something that will be or should be huge in 2012...already on The Horse and Flipchart's office?
BEAGLE 2. Don't care.

BEAGLE 2. That's from 1990.
FOX. Italian Piano House Music will come back. All these kids in London and the US have fucked up house and rave.
BEAGLE 2. And they'll fuck this up too. Just get on with it. Wind it up now. Or down.
FOX. We'll leave with...reissue of the year...

FOX. How will you be spending your New Year's Eve, Beagle 2?
BEAGLE 2. I'm going to listen to a couple of Mercury Rev albums and watch A Town Called Panic and go to bed. Top night!

#christmas

SMIRNOV. Hola! I don't have to do this for you but I will. The other night the BBC broadcast some so called Christmas-influenced party hits. In short it was a fuck-up. When half the tracks weren't being cut out, they just weren't much cop. So you won't be getting Mariah Carey shit or some weird clips of Anne Lennox dressed as a Victorian dominatrix. You'll get shit like this instead:



SMIRNOV. 'Paul McCartney's Sexual Christmas'.

SMIRNOV. It wouldn't be christmas my friends, without Gary Glitter. A fine christmas song.

SMIRNOV. You can't beat a bit 'o Granddady at Christmas.

SMIRNOV. Enjoying the party? Great? I've got my empty toilet duck plastic bottles out, to light up, to line the roof and put on the tree outside, make the street look really classy. The shopping's done. It's spam and some chocs from Lidl this year. The presents are wrapped courtesy of the ladies in town collecting for charity. 11p it cost me to get one item wrapped! Okay, here's another christmas tune to get all excited about.

SMIRNOV. You see, I do make merry at christmas. Be nice if we had it every two or four years though, eh? It'll be Olympic bloody fever next year.

SMIRNOV. While I remember, and if anyone has bothered to watch this, or is reading this, or is actually interested, the next issue will feature Autobahn 1's videos and songs of the year in some form. Obviously it'll be my personal choice but it'll still be more realistic and rather better than the likes of Pitchfork and Drowned in Sound. Okay? Then in 2012 we'll be tweaking the format a little to encompass not just music videos but interviews, extracts from films and all sorts of quirks. It'll be more of an arts magazine. Kind of.

SMIRNOV. Thought I'd play an actual 'performance' of Frankie not the bullshit video. Nearly at an end. Patience.

SMIRNOV. Best christmas song ever. Right, goodbye. See you soon. I'll leave you with something really festive...

#11

Stevie Wonder


SMIRNOV. This month I'm joined by Keeky Delbrannon. In this issue we'll look at some popular videos of Stevie Wonder. Won't we/

KEEKY. Get on with it.

SMIRNOV. I think 'Living for the city' is my favourite Stevie Wonder song.

KEEKY. Fuck that was good. I feel ot, you know, in ma soul. Hell yes! Give us another one, mother.


SMIRNOV. I taped that off radio when I was a lad.

KEEKY. Can we see The Cosby Show one? Please...please. I'll stand on my head for you!

SMIRNOV. Go on then.

SMIRNOV. Yeah so? By the way...Google Chrome is fucking shit!! Sorry Stevie!

KEEKY. It'll be Firefox that's fucking you about, Kool, if you have it open as well as Chrome.

SMIRNOV. Yeah. So?

KEEKY. Big hit, Autobahn 1, is it?

SMIRNOV. Potentially.

#10

SMIRNOV. Hi-ya. It's been a while. Busy as usual. Here's a British, early 80s 'Synthpop' special. Loved hearing this stuff for the first time as a kid. Many acts today try to ape this sound but it's lost something in translation. Will I do a rock special, a folk special? Don't know. No point in putting up videos of stuff I'm not that aware of. Although didn't Neil Young make an electronic album? It's often interesting when bands and artists make something that's not in their comfort zone.

SMIRNOV. I would have hosted the performance from The Old Grey Whistle test but the idiot who's hosting that performance has for some insane reason allowed those annoying adverts, where you have to fucking wait five seconds before you can watch the rest. Fucked up. I enjoy this sound though. Realyl captures the bleakness of early 80s life, in northern towns. Someone, I don't know who, said the 80s never really started until 1983. I kind of agree with that.

SMIRNOV. I was totally transfixed with this when I saw it on Top of The Pops in 1981. Pop music that can chill and spook.

SMIRNOV. OMD. Don't make fun of the jumper. Jumpers like that will be the 'in' thing come winter 2011/12, mark my words. Oh right. I can't find a decent video quality version of 'Underpass' by John Foxx. I was going to put that up next. The one decent video that there was has been ruined by some dumb ass (and I really hate this) anchoring lyrics to it, which ruins it. So here's some early Depeche Mode instead.

SMIRNOV. It was confusing in those days. Those men, Phil Oakey, Nick Rhodes, Adam Ant...all in make-up and looking good. Confusing...

SMIRNOV. I'm getting bored now. I was going to post one more but I can't be arsed. I'm miffed that the woman next door, who seems to have about ten sisters (all of who visit her everyday as she is also best mate's with her own sister) are still fucking about. It sounds like they're hollowing out a hearth, or whatever it's called for a fireplace. Annoying. I can't concentrate on trying to write. Fuck it. What's more annoying is that (as always) she  parks in the place of Mrs Kool, when there's an EMPTY FUCKING DRIVEWAY next door!!

#9 'YELLO'

SMIRNOV. According to the stats (i.e. visitors to this website, page views etc.) I can see you were all really fucking riveted to the 'chillwave' special. To those viewers, thanks for joining me. To those who missed it, and who still haven't watched EVERY VIDEO, fuck you. So this week I'm doing what I want (like I don't anyway). This is a special about YELLO.  It's more of a place to gather some HQ videos of the Swiss pioneers. I was going to give the ignorant a little lesson about Yello but you've heard of wikipedia. Use it. Here's Bostich.

SMIRNOV. Seriously check out these videos and other stuff by them. They are a decent act. They probably get overshadowed by Kraftwerk or are dismissed as the novelty band who made 'The Race' but they are so much more. You'll know this if you had been onto Wiki like I told you.

SMIRNOV. Jungle Bill is a little bonkers but Lost Again is sublime and captures the dark tone of the band. Let's have more!

SMIRNOV. Warning. The next video contains strobes. You've been warned. Don't come twitching to me if foam comes out your mouth.

SMIRNOV. The next video 'On Track' was a massive techno trance favourite and is still cited as a massive influence on many techno DJ's.

SMIRNOV. This next one could be my favourite Yello track. Could.

SMIRNOV. I'll leave you with a classic MTV performance, featuring an introduction from Ray Cokes. (How I miss the old days when MTV was about music).

#8

SMIRNOV. Hello. I'm back after a mid-summer break. I say that, but I'm bullshitting. Okay, what have I got for you this eve? For today's episode number, I will focus on the genre that is 'Chillwave', or rather what I sonically think are the roots of it. So what is this'Chillwave' thing and who came up with the term and why? Well, I'll try and explain over the course of the videos but I can guarantee that by the time that this episode has been compiled it's probably already evolved into 'Drillwave' or 'Shrillwave' or something like that. Anyway, let's start off with something that might be found in this, this 'field' of music.


SMIRNOV. According to Wikipedia and some bloke who wrote an article in The New York Times, chillwave is characterised by bands with weak lead vocals who trade on the memories of 1980s, specifically electropop, recession-era, low budget, ambient and shoegaze. Hm. Kind of. I'll let you know what my take is after the next video.



SMIRNOV. That was Washed Out, with 'Belong'. Now if you have ears, what you might be able to term from this 'genre' is not really how the New York Times gimp described it but rather how I describe it, which is less 1980s electropop and more a kind of Balearic version of soft synthetic rock of old, fed through a nostalgic-tinted filter of sun-kissed first loves, school disco cola and lazy, warm nights in council estates, dreaming of Miami or New York or Monte Carlo. Something like that. Probably. This is where the roots of this fad comes from, for me.

SMIRNOV. The term 'Chillwave' was reportedly made up by some fucking hipster. Now this might infer that it's a genre for hipsters, theatre producers, graphic designers and lesbian vegans. The youtube comments are rife with hipster dissing, usually from older hipsters. I don't know. It isn't exactly commerical but neither is it sterile and foppish. At a Washed Out gig I stood shoulder to shoulder with a bin-man and a serial killer. I was the least 'hip' of those two. Also I witnessed a couple of pissheads steal a giant Washed Out poster.  I enjoy this music in small doses as it reminds me of stuff like this.

SMIRNOV. Anyhow, most genres and 'movements', as we know, are compartmentalist. There is though, a bit of a trend in America for a certain style of music that evokes hazy memories of 1980s summers. This 'fad' has been going for a couple of years actually. Here's a track from Toro Y Moi.


SMIRNOV. Right, here's something from Neon Indian.

SMIRNOV. What now? Oh let's be post-modern, or pre-modern and dip into the past and see hear more roots from this musical fad.

SMIRNOV. I understand Jay Z fucked with and fucked up the song you just heard. On behalf of Jay Z, I'd like to say sorry for that. Sorry. Don't fuck with Alphaville. Just don't. Now let's bring you back into 2011 with this next act, who I've featured before on Autobahn 1. I'm going to finish my chicken burger.



SMIRNOV. Well I didn't actually manage to have my chicken burger as it wasn't cooked properly, so I made do with toasted cheese sandwich. Here's something which, surely must have influenced Washed Out.


SMIRNOV. For you non-UK residents under 40, that was Noel Edmonds introducing that clip. That hairstyle. I'll tell you something about that in a moment. He's something of a British institution, having worked on Radio 1, hosted saturday morning kids television shows, various game shows and currently Deal or No Deal. He was even killed by Clive Anderson in 1997, courtesy of Chris Morris. He has a reputation for being naff and creating a monster called Mr Blobby. A friend of my dad's had this exact hairstyle, around 1978. Only it was ginger. He came round once to see him but my dad was out so he asked my mum if he could wait. He fell asleep in front of the TV. My dad went apeshit when he came back from the pub. I was only an infant at the time but that hairstyle has awkward memories. Here's one from Memory Tapes. Live in Manchester.

SMIRNOV. Okay, I'm nearing the end of this, a-hem 'Chillwave' special. Here's something which I feel wouldn't sound out of place on  DJ's setlist. Or shouldn't, at any rate, sound out of place. Is it too hip to slow dance with someone anymore?

SMIRNOV. Hahaha what does video and link to Chillwave genre communicate really, that it's essentially conservative yuppie wine bar pop? I hope not. You can make lush, hazy, melancholic pop with a laptop these days. It's not negative. Right since we're approaching the end of summer, I'll leave you with one of my favourite songs of all time. I feel it fits in nicely to this episode's playlist. See you next time.