Please remember, a charitable upgrade to your subscription (using the button below), may help me to secure a ‘traditional’ publisher for ‘Challenge 69’.
Happily blessed with glass three-quarter full genes, Stuart had never been overcome by black moods, he rarely even saw red; yet today he was feeling uncommonly blue. The Taj Mahal was turning green!
All the result of insect poo apparently, or, to be more entomologically exact, an excess of Chironomus Calligraphus crap.
The environmental activist Stuart heard interviewed on the radio earlier had explained that a plague of these midges, the result of, “explosive breeding,” had been busy fouling the famously white (pre-poo) temple for more than two years. Meanwhile, the campaigner continued, Uttar Pradesh’s politicians had simply, “held their noses and dragged their heels.” With chemical waste having been pumped into the nearby Yamuna river for ages, the resultant pollution had caused the water to stagnate; killing off the fish that would otherwise have, “kept the insect population in check.”
The bugs weren’t to blame for this problem, the expert had argued, they were simply doing what came naturally, nor indeed were the poisoned fish. Instead, as too often seems to be the case, the fault lay squarely with humankind. Far too late in the day the Indian authorities had, eventually, ordered an inquiry; set up to, “trace the factors behind the problem and find a solution.” Yet the answer they claimed to be seeking was surely fairly obvious. Just clean up the bloody river!
This faecal fable had then been followed, immediately, by yet another worrying environmental news item; although conversely, this time, one where humans had chosen to intervene. Not necessarily, Stuart suspected, to positive effect.
China was apparently planning the launch of the world’s largest ever weather-control programme; aiming to increase rainfall over the Tibetan Plateau (an area similar in size to Alaska), improving flows into the Yangtze, Mekong, and Yellow rivers in order to provide more irrigation for the area’s fertile farmlands. Tens of thousands of ‘rain machines’, being located right across the region, would each produce millions of silver iodide particles which, once lifted into the atmosphere by upwelling winds, should cause clouds to form that wouldn’t otherwise occur naturally, and, in turn, lead to extra, artificially induced precipitation.
The Chinese authorities were suggesting this system had the potential to produce additional rainfall equivalent to seven percent of the nation’s annual water consumption, sorely needed to meet the needs of their growing 1.4 billion population.
It was difficult, on the face of it, to argue that would be a bad thing; yet of the two stories Stuart had heard this morning it had been this one that had stuck with him, and worried him the most. The reporter’s phrase he had been unable to forget was the one, casually thrown in, about clouds that, “wouldn’t otherwise occur naturally.”
Could we really rely on the Chinese, infamously dismissive of green issues, to properly consider any unexpected consequences that might stem from their actions? And even if they did, could we then trust them to act on this knowledge, or would they simply choose, conveniently, to ignore any unnatural impacts?
Much as a shit-shaded Taj Mahal may look unsightly, seriously damaging its reputation as a monument to love, this would surely be a minor problem, Stuart decided, in comparison to the scale of climactic catastrophe China might unleash if they started buggering around with the weather.
A quick Google investigation into the dangers of cloud seeding (a technology surprisingly first mooted back in 1946) had, as Stuart feared, revealed some known risks. There were allegations this process can, “result in flash flooding, or sudden unexpected temperature drops,” while the silver iodide (required in extraordinarily large quantities) had been linked to, “temporary incapacitation in some mammals.”
Having reflected on this story, with an increasingly heavy heart, Stuart had, in the end, managed to summon a final, if revengeful, thought that cheered him. Perhaps there were some mammals, he concluded vindictively, those who (theoretically at least) were responsible for running our planet, for whom a little ‘permanent incapacitation’ might be exactly what was needed. Could be what they deserved?!
“What are all these songs you’ve been playing,” asked Anne, helpfully distracting Stuart from any further consideration of global governmental genocide, “they’ve all been pretty good. Apart from the Bright Eyes one, that was too shouty.”
Stuart was delighted by her intervention. Anne’s unexpected enquiry gave him the perfect opportunity to back announce, in a slightly rambling manner (just as Peel would have done), the string of songs he had subconsciously been playing as a soundtrack to his environmental meditations. His immediate access to almost any song these days, thanks to Spotify premium, had fed a growing new habit; translating his thoughts into tunes, in real time, at the mere click of a button.
“Well, I started with New Order’s ‘Everything’s Gone Green’, for the Taj Mahal,” Stuart explained, “it’s turning that colour due to insect droppings, and the Indians are doing nothing to stop it.”
“Unlike the Chinese,” he continued, following his phonographic flow, “they’re meddling with the weather, creating fake rain. That’s why you got Kate Bush’s ‘Cloudbusting’ next. They reckon they can increase rainfall by 7% which, a bit obvious I admit, led me to The Eurythmics.”
“Fucking with the weather can’t be good though, which got me thinking Armageddon.” Stuart was now reaching the crux of his convoluted playlist logic, “so I chose Bright Eyes’ ‘Don’t Know When …’ (which, by the way, isn’t shouty), cos if Conor’s right about a day coming when, “there won't be a moon, and there won't be a sun,” then I reckon we’ll have the Chinese to blame. R.E.M. was just me getting a bit more literal about the end of the world. As they know it!”
“So, I follow all that, just about,” said Anne, wearing a familiarly perplexed yet resigned expression, “but how did Robert Smith get in on the act?”
Stuart, while mentally applauding his wife’s spontaneous spotting and naming of The Cure frontman, simply settled verbally for an explanation of the even more tenuous rationale that had sat behind his final song selection. “That was ‘Seventeen Seconds’, the title track from their second album. Don’t really know if it’s what Robert meant, but I’ve always taken his words; about time slipping, light fading, and everything going quiet, as an apocalyptic prediction.”
“The inside of your head must be a strange place to be,” Anne observed, “not sure I’d want to live there,” but at least she was laughing about it, not sending for an ambulance.
“Just popping to the shops,” she continued, “I’ll be back by ten for the ‘Challenge’, always assuming some Sino/Cure conspiracy hasn’t put an end to the world first.”
As he heard the door click shut behind her, Stuart glanced at the clock. Easily enough time left, he thought, to compose himself with the full ‘Seventeen Seconds’ album.
Indisputably, Stuart had some quizzing nerves that needed calming. His reflection last month (following their marathon, yet ultimately successful, Saltaire ‘Challenge’) that an added momentum might be gained through deadlines, had seemed truer the more he had thought about it since. With the qualification thresholds now well below a thousand (and still dropping rapidly), faced with an ever more committed rump of ‘Challengers’, it was clear rapid solutioning was becoming ever more essential.
He had recently undertaken some analysis on their ‘Challenge’ finishing places to date. This was all a bit approximate (you were never provided with a precise, individual ranking) but, from Stuart’s best assessment, they had always finished within the first thousand successful solutions, at an average position of about 550th.
This was promising, but with the net forever tightening there was a good chance, soon, it may not prove good enough. Even if last month’s answer had, through necessity, taken several days, their finishing position (at around 180th) had been one of their best to date. Yet this already felt like a level that would need to be maintained, a new ‘minimum performance’ benchmark.
The nub of Stuart’s strategic suggestion; to employ artificially imposed cut-offs as a performance enhancing stimulant, may have started off as one-part jest to two parts relief (that he hadn’t let Anne or her dad down, nor ruined their holiday), but the more he had considered it since the more sense it made. He had decided to aim for a maximum two-hour turnaround today (though he hadn’t had the confidence to share this aspiration with Anne), and it was in this context, to help alleviate his ‘deadline dread disorder’, that Stuart felt a little Cure might be exactly what the doctor ordered.
Never too concerned about hi-fidelity, having always cared more about perfect balance in the songs themselves, Stuart had little time for the intricacies of bass, treble, or any other technical fripperies. He had once read that a perfect audio reproduction, “totally eliminates any noise or distortion,” but felt, as an argument, that this simply missed the point. Those were often the best bits.
Despite such sonic agnosticism however, even Stuart was surprised how well his 1980 first pressing of ‘Seventeen Seconds’ still played. A little crackle perhaps, but not nearly enough to mask the perfection still etched into its thirty-eight-year-old grooves. That same article had suggested that anything above two hundred plays of an LP can result in, “a substantial deterioration in sound,” but that was patently bollocks. This slice of vinyl must have sailed past that mark before he had even left Sheffield, yet to Stuart it was like a vintage wine; still maturing, and still increasing in value!
The album’s second track ‘Play for Today’ had always been one of Charlie’s favourite songs, and was forever now known to both of them by its alternative title, ‘Plaaare F’t’daaare’, in perpetual memoriam of the unidentified Sheffield native who, in the broadest conceivable accent, had spent every between-song lull of the Cure’s 1980 Top Rank gig calling out for the song to be played next. This was the only phrase Stuart ever attempted in a Northern accent, something he remained utterly useless at, but the song could simply no longer, properly, be referred to by its original shorter title.
Stuart had always considered ‘Seventeen Seconds’ the nigh-on perfect confirmation of another of his long argued musical theories; the pre-eminence to be found in a band’s second album. This contention had its roots in another of their regular post-gig pub discussions. “At what point is a band at its best?” was the purist way Stuart preferred to frame the question, but this had segued over the years into a simpler, more monoline, debate over, “which is better, a band’s debut or their second album?”
Most received, critical wisdom followed Charlie’s usual line of argument. Bands were likely to have spent years ‘paying their dues’ as they built up to signing their first deal; so the first chance they got to commit all that pent up enthusiasm, naivety, and raw energy to record was likely to capture a unique snapshot of their talent, an essence they would subsequently find hard to replicate. The push for a second album, this argument runs, particularly if the first has been successful, will likely expose a group unsure on direction, with a deficit of new songs (having used all the best on debut). Hence the descriptor, so popular with the music press, of the ‘difficult second album’.
There were plenty of prime examples of this. ‘Give ‘Em Enough Rope’, despite a couple of great tracks, was a huge let down after The Clash’s incendiary opener. They had clearly needed more time and space to come back with the classic, musically mature, ‘London Calling’. The Sex Pistols meanwhile had never even made it, with any hint of originality at least, beyond ‘Never Mind the Bollocks’.
Yet Stuart, as was his inclination, had always liked to take a contrary line of argument. He contended there were just as many good, often brilliant, sophomore albums as there were stinkers.
He had long maintained, argued well into many nights, that a band’s second or third tour was the ultimate moment to see them live. None of their enthusiasm had drained away (still too early for cynicism), yet you could visibly spot their confidence (gained from playing in front of bigger, more appreciative crowds) growing exponentially in front of your eyes. It was the precise point that a group finally realised, “we’re bloody good at this,” with their talent and belief peaking in perfect unison, which marked Stuart’s oft declared observation that they were now, “at their best.”
With one added proviso, the ability to have written more than the ten good songs required for their debut, this, “one moment in time,” theory could equally well be applied to some near faultless second albums. Stuart was listening to an impeccable example right now.
This would always be a question without a single correct answer of course. Ultimately, Ed’s typically blunt line of reasoning, during such debates, was probably the fairest one, “you’re over thinking this, like always. There’re just good records and bad ones, it’s an art, not a fucking science!”
Theoretically, this should be an opinion hard to dispute, but it had never proven enough to dissuade Stuart from entering the fray anyway. To him such disagreements all helped build a richer musical tapestry.
In conclusion, he largely concurred with Robert Smith’s logic for dismissing any such dispute. “Tell me I'm wrong, I don't really care,” Stuart thought, and he had a freshly constructed list of ‘far from difficult’ second albums with which to back up his argument:
5) ‘Nevermind’ by Nirvana – had needed to battle with PJ’s ‘Rid of Me’ to secure this slot, but won the day due to its never surpassed genre-changing impact. As the man himself had perceptively suggested; if we were here, then we needed to be entertained.
4) ‘Peloton’ by The Delgados – another from the long list of bands Stuart had arrived at through Peel. A peculiar Scottish concoction of whimsy and noise which, somehow, amalgamates here to form one perfectly co-ordinated whole.
3) ‘Born Sandy Devotional’ by The Triffids – David McComb’s poetic lyrics by now melding perfectly with a band oozing confidence, making for a flawless album. One that Stuart had always found really did hold, “an aphorism for every occasion.”
2) ‘Closer’ by Joy Division – released in such sad circumstances, ‘Closer’ can, in equal measure, be viewed as either a fitting epitaph for Ian, or a painful reminder of his lost potential. Finishing with the sublime ‘Decades’, it’s probably both; at the same time.
1) ‘Seventeen Seconds’ by The Cure – Still probably Stuart’s most played album ever. A copyrightable blueprint for the group’s unique blend of hypnotic doomery and precision pop; both included here in perfect harmony.
Footnote: With a projected Discogs value of £247 for these five LPs (Joe would be impressed), this perhaps suggested Stuart’s amygdala wasn’t quite as abnormal as previously suspected.
By the time he had flipped ‘Seventeen Seconds’, to reach the outskirts of ‘A Forest’, running towards nothing, “again, and again, and again, and again,” Stuart found himself on an unstoppable contemplative roll. He started to consider whether it might be possible to extend his earlier sophomore supremacy schtick to life more generally. There might be other places, it suddenly occurred to him, where you could make a similarly strong case for things often working out better second time around.
Take marriages for example!
It hadn’t been Charlie’s bombshell alone, back on the streets of Hammersmith, which persuaded Stuart his ‘age of innocence’ could be drawing towards its close. He may have been clinging on to a mindset that working hard and playing hard was enough, but he had witnessed his fellow players withdrawing from that game one by one; getting married, having children, generally setting their course towards responsibility.
While it might be easy, with hindsight, for Stuart to realise he hadn’t needed to rush to join that bandwagon, certainly not before finding himself a fully operational maturity compass, he could see now, looking back, that he may have panicked. Before acquiring such an instrument he had, instead, found himself heading in a polar-opposite direction; hurtling down a path clearly signposted ‘irresponsibility’.
Stuart hadn’t had a serious, long-term relationship since Ann (without an e), but around this time there had been a girl at work, Louise, who fascinated him. An untamed free spirit, fun to be around, totally lacking any ambition beyond simply enjoying each day as it came. She became the short-term fix for Stuart’s directionless-ness. This made for a rollercoaster relationship; plenty of ups and downs, a fair bit of screaming, but always an exhilarating thrill-packed ride. Substituting adrenaline for love was bound to prove a mistake, he had realised too late, albeit an experiential one. Stuart and Louise had been married in a year, and both regretted it within another.
Their honeymoon period hadn’t lasted long (not far past Jamaica) before Stuart had realised his error of judgement. Louise hadn’t proven untamed, more untameable. With the passing of time since he now understood it was him who needed to shoulder the lion’s share of blame for rushing into a marriage which, in all honesty, had been destined to fail from the start. Louise had never pretended to be anything other than the person he had soon become incompatible with.
It had been Stuart’s error to think he could take the good and curb the excesses. That was certainly immature, quite probably condescending, and he had been guilty on both fronts. Thankfully, they had both accepted the marriage as a mistake and parted on amicable terms. While Stuart had never stayed in touch, he hoped Louise had enjoyed a good life. He was wholly confident it wouldn’t have been an uneventful one.
This was an episode Stuart had quickly chalked up to experience. His very act of immaturity had, in itself, proven maturing. Emotional recovery had though been helped immensely by the fortuitous timing of his ‘newly separated’ status making him the most viable (and cheapest on expenses!) candidate for a much coveted work secondment. Three months working in Sydney, living by the beach at Manley, had certainly helped to sort his head out.
As this Antipodean interlude had neared its end, Stuart had been offered the chance to stay, to permanently relocate. After agonising over this decision, and being sorely tempted, he had eventually concluded that emigration would feel too much like running away, and chosen to return home. This turned out to be a decision he never regretted, especially once he had met Anne (with an e) at his ‘welcome home’ party.
Anne had similarly suffered a recently failed marriage, Stuart discovered, yet neither let their common, chastening experience deter them. Having encouraged each other to jump back into the water, their respective ripples had miraculously merged to create a new, virtuous whirlpool.
It had been this recollection, Stuart now realised, that he had taken as further, demonstrable proof of the extendibility of his ‘second time around’ theory.
While he and Anne could both, fairly, be accused of having made dodgy debuts, together they had managed to collaborate on a hugely successful sophomore song. A ‘gold disc’ still riding high in the charts, years later.
As the Cure album, which had strangely morphed into a harbinger of so much more, neared its end, ‘At Night’s prescient, closing lyric that, “someone must be there,” neatly mirrored the welcome return of Stuart’s soul/bandmate, armed with her shopping!
“Two minutes to go,” Anne announced, clearly intent on reinstating the ‘Challenge’ input she had needed to pass up in Saltaire, “let’s get logged on.”
Reminded of the ambitious, self-imposed noon target he had set himself earlier, Stuart made sure to maximise their time available by joining the site on the stroke of ten:
###
(To be continued, at 10am tomorrow. Can you solve ‘Challenge 31’ in the meantime? If you think you have got the answer, then please reply direct to this email post, to help keep the ‘challenge’ open for other readers.)