BEATS OF LOVE 

148. Hamlet Hail to the Thief  by William Shakepeare Adapted by Christine Jones with Stephen Hoggett, Music by Radiohead, Orhestrations by Thom Yorke

THAT THIS 424m building is host to some of the most precariously balanced hats I've ever seen is no surprise. We're still dressing like teenagers. Shakespeare's play needs no introduction. It resonated with my younger self as I went mad after my father died. And resonates still.

The correlation Christine Jones makes between Radiohead's spiked existential angst and Prince Hamlet is as opportunistic as inspired. With Yorke on board to orchestrate their work with fresh players and dialogue sacrificed for dark choreography, it could be called a dumbing down exercise.

That said, would I rather be in a smaller theatre watching a faithful three hour production? My answer is a resounding no. The play will still do the rounds five hundred years from now, but this deconstructed version is of its time. Edited for its overworked audience, it provides a sugar rush rather than great depth. Yet Samuel Blenkin's bereaved prince is utterly captivating and convincing. Spinning around the smoky austere set with pathos and energy in equal measure, he helps concentrate on the mind, emphasizing his most resonant words with an idiosyncratic thump. 

The music interjects at the right time and Yorke occasionally cleverly chops the vocals, which allows for meditative phrasing. Something a faithful reproduction doesn't permit. To hell with plot development. What the peripheral characters lose in dialogue they make up for in expressive movement. The music is a device to prize open what is timeless and weighty, re-contextualising it to accommodate the hurts and betrayals of the everyday. The democratization of culture means a big trade off. With so many of us now able to read and write, so few of us actually read and write what endures. 

Preferring instead fragmentary manicured noise, the effect of too much invigorating choice, and this adaptation is perfect in celebrating that. And for this reason, it gets a thumbs up. 

 

BEATS OF LOVE

147. How to Disappear Completely by Radiohead   

LIKE FARAGE, the NHS has failed me.

Unable to afford Harley Street, I spent six agonizing months being misdiagnosed, all the while knowing something was deeply wrong. Eventually, I was referred to a private clinic. I arrived at the hospital before my medical files did, only to find that the promised bedside morphine drip didn't exist. Another six months of waiting followed before I finally received the news: my testicular cancer was not life-threatening.

Some time later, a specialist at Christie's told me I was susceptible to cancer, so better quit smoking. I did, unlike Farage, who's still adamant in public that the doctors have it wrong. After five years of follow-ups, finally getting the all-clear was a great experience with the NHS. Again, unlike Farage, who hasn't forgiven the NHS and Indian doctors for misdiagnosing in the early stages, I still feel a deep gratitude. 

I once romanticised being born earlier, but thank God I wasn't. Medical mortality rates were dangerously high before the 1970s. This utterly dismantles Farage’s angry rhetoric, claiming the NHS nearly killed him. He is simply weaponising public ignorance to spin a non-story into a political headline.

A familiar pattern emerges; folk who didn't know the survival rate is now over 90% probably think stopping a few thousand people from building a life here will make everything great again. Convinced again, wrongly that there has ever been a point in history when the working poor ever felt great. Farage exploits all ignorance, controlling the political temperature with falsehoods.

Like his idea of deregulation won't lead to working in poorer conditions for worse pay and longer hours, or replacing an unreformed NHS with an insurance-based model for us all won't cause controversy and death.

BEATS OF LOVE 

146. Determination by Dean Parrish

MISTER WHITEHEAD, a balding, lanky, short-fused stereotypical PE teacher, introduced me to the adolescent delights of dancing in his aerobics class. Get Up and Boogie was the track that stirred things up.

No idea what the goo in my shorts was, but thought I'd better keep it to myself. I was already called a wanker quite a lot. I hated PE and was truly gutted when those classes ended and I had to try my hand at Rugby instead. 

I've always danced with a crazed element. Crazed and slightly off key. Mastering dancing comes after lots of internal counting, which forces a remove from the listening experience making it cerebral. I like an instantaneous hit to both my ears and body. No remove and no mastery. And no brainpower. 

I struggle with the northern soul dancers in the now, but love sense-stirring tunes like this more than ever. The old folk wear the same styleless tops as dart players and the young folk dance impassioned like self-conscious line-dancers. There was a time in a sweat soaked mecca when appreciation for 60s soul sides like this was dead cool when folk were actually living for it. Or in the nineties when Baldie was doing his thing.

I take my dancing inspiration from Mister Whitehead's wonky aerobics class. Who could see despite my limited ability, I appreciated his music. Thankfully, not realising quite how much.

BEATS OF LOVE 

145. Ode to Beer by Me 

Little Easter folk came to be

That only you could see 

I rallied round, by drinking beer

but me you could barely hear

Warning sign number one was full on

Distracted, when thudding onto the living room floor. 

Or did you mistake the armchair for a door?

Confidence lost with remote still in your shaky hand 

Soldiering on, as these little folk got easy to understand

Warning sign number two was a right to do

Putting the gas on, the new pedal to the metal

It no longer smelt; thus

Melting your plastic electric kettle

Still, I poured a beer

and hid the hobs

There was no warning sign number three, just an almighty crash

Mistaking the massive rubber plant for something else

Something that could hold your weight

Spooning down hospital food, as things quickly disappeared

First the home that you haven't really lived in for months, anyway

Then, hoping to escape the bed,

your strong legs, purposefully pressing against my hand,

Whilst being told they're as much use to you as sand

Killed that hope dead

Then the one-to-one care that's barely there

 A youthful social worker now dreads our calls

almost as much as the tired hospital staff, 

when asked to get another round of beers in

dread yours

Ironic, though in no way meant

you've only gone and quit the beer this Lent

BEATS OF LOVE 

144. I'm Gonna Change by The Velours

AN OCCUPATIONAL hazard of supermarket work is old work colleagues regaling tales at inopportune times or informing me of folk dying. 

One such guy informed me a former colleague was in a coma and asked whether I knew him. Course I did. He was the only guy who ever got barred from the work's drinking hole. 

He threw the contents of his colostomy bag over his girlfriend's head after a heated argument. I then added how unfortunate he was to miss out on redundancy. Leaving months before the announcement. I was abruptly told he did alright, pilfering items from the firm for nearly two decades. Understandably, nobody in security wanted to search his colostomy bag despite strongly suspecting it contained company property. Even a CCTV camera installed over his workstation didn't deter him. Explains why somewhat ironically he had the sweaty, nervous energy of someone in constant need of the John. 

It then hit me that life gets reduced to a couple of these anecdotes by people who are little more than caricatures in our lives. Clothing myself in Christ and not gratifying the desires of my sinful nature will not change anecdotes after I'm dead. It might make me less damaged and better equipped to die. When I was expecting death in my 30s, a death I was spiritually unprepared for, I promised God that if I survived, I would change. What life has taught me since is there's a plethora of deaths, many of which no amount of spiritual change prepares you for. 

My biggest problem with old work colleagues' tales at inopportune times is responding by wrapping myself in flippancy rather than clothing myself in Christ.  

BEATS OF LOVE 

143. Tu Amor by Mamacita

I RECALL my old pal Aidan saying to me in the mid-nineties 'we're on our own in this world.' I felt sorry for him as I lived with my kid sister and felt close to a clubbing community. 

I would never have dreamt of saying such a thing. Unsurprisingly, when my sister moved on and I ditched the old lifestyle, facing massive personal hurdles; loneliness, temptations, and the feeling it was all in vain, his words resonated. Though I prayed deeply, instinct told me to go back to church.

It's easy to register faults with organised religion, and it still tests my faith for sure, but by going back to church, I've become much more like the person I want to be. Now, every day when I wake and every night before I sleep, I talk to God in prayer. I'm far from on my own in this world.

I marvelled at my aunt’s courage as she faced major surgery. She was a true practicing Catholic, far better than me, making an ultimate sacrifice: undergoing an operation not to survive, but to get my sister onto the property ladder. After weeks of failing health in the hospital, she could have chosen palliative care. Instead, she strove to act. She was driven by the divine company she kept in her spirit, guided by a quiet understanding of what it means to be at peace with the world.

With or without God, it appears we've replaced that giving generation with a taking one. One with inherent greed and a sense of entitlement at its core. Unforgiving natures have replaced mercy, selfishness has replaced selflessness, fear has replaced courage, a confusion has replaced assurance, hallucination has replaced faith, and saddest of all, a sense of being on our own in this world has replaced what it means to be at one with each other. 

It needs restating 'we are not on our own in this world.' And restating again, I fear. 

BEATS OF LOVE 

142. Miles Further by Wrekin Havoc

WE UNPACK how artists reverse-engineer music to invent new sounds, making the complex simple, so we can all feel a little more enlightened. 

Well, this week was a real toughie. It was the anniversary of the death of my brother-in-law and to compound things, my nephew, who has been home with my kid sister, has just started a new job, so she was all alone near the Devon coast miles away from us. 

My mother's surviving partner is awaiting the memory clinic's assessment and is losing sight of us more each week and needing more of our attention. And sadly, work was especially weird. I say work because the manager that annoyed me is just programmed to operate in a hostile manner. Luckily for me, I had a couple of freshly bought records to play on repeat. 

The trancey warmth of Hey Mister Mister by Kriss, a massive want after Rob J posted it, has sent me to sound heaven. Weightless arms aloft. I'd settled for a CD version but the brilliant Sound Metaphors stable have thankfully put it out on their Thank You imprint. In the same packet was this absolute gem of a tune. Rob again with his fellow West Midland cohorts, Stuart Robinson and Richard Hall. Who've produced this epic dose of musical madness which eclipses everything I've bought this year. 

Fuck the process, and fuck enlightenment. It is simply emotional pop at its very best. Its memorable vocal refrain teases in, carried mesmerisingly on a floaty bed of synths, then a dramatic guitar lifts it up even higher, and then we have take-off. It all feels way shorter than its nine minutes. My outstretched arms, in a musical hypnosis, are attempting to glide on the magnificence of it all. 

I really pray these special people in my life have things that can make them feel momentarily blissful that puts aside all their heavy burdens, like I have with healing and emotive music.