Just clearing the decks from 2010.
The Award for the Worst Recruitment Agency has been won by the agency discussed here. Of course I can't remember their name beyond that it had three names. So for convenience I've decided to name them "Barnyard, Cover And Loaf". Well done. You had some tough competition, and only the arrival of a conciliatory e-Christmas card from the other main contender clinched BC&L the award.
As usual with these things there is an expectation to list the best of the previous year, not so much to demonstrate your taste, but rather prove how "in touch" you are. So the best album? The Divine Comedy album was patchy, featuring two great tunes, and a lot of filler. Chicane's "Giants" frustrated more than impressed. Honestly? Under the autotuned vocals and deliberate pastiches there is "something" interesting going on. But currently Chicane falls far short of the sum of its parts. So, by default, the best album I heard in the last year was Carbon Based Lifeform's "Interloper", who thanks to being Swedish, and being straddled with the worst name for a band since "Porcupine Tree", seem doomed to inhabit the unknown side of obscurity. Which is a pity as this album is darn good. As for the rest? Single, Movie, TV show, Day Of The Week? It hardly matters, beyond saying the good stuff was significantly outnumbered by the bad.
I was going to post something about the new UK Comic "Clint". But having read it, I find I can't be arsed wasting more than these two sentences on something so piss poor**.
Much has been written in the last couple of weeks about the decline (demise?) of HMV, mostly from a perspective harking back to some misty-eyed neverland when HMV was "better". Needless to say the reasons for HMV's decline have been squarely blamed on "internet piracy" and downloads, although some have noted that HMV's response to these challenges has left a moribund retailer with no clear identity and less idea of the niche it is supposed to fill. Of course, I'd argue that HMV are largely to blame for their own predicament, having utterly failed to realise how things have changed, People still want to buy music. But HMV just don't seem to be able comprehend this, preferring to devote space to products their competitors sell, usually more cheaply and in environments more conducive for the consumer to make a purchase. Case in point? I was fielding questions from woman about a Philips blu-ray player in my local HMV a couple of weeks before Christmas. So why did I assist? Simple. The poor guy who'd been approached by the customer had no idea about the product, what it did or why it was cheaper than one and more expensive than another. So rather than watch him flounder I helped. All those years spent in electrical retailing finally coming to someone's rescue. Now normally something like this would irk me. But in this instance I thought it just summed up HMV. They have products for sale, which unlike CD's or games actually need to be "sold" rather than simply be selected by the customer. And it's certainly not, in this instance, the employees fault that they don't know anything about a (seemingly at least) randomly selected consumer durable, or it's benefits beyond how much it costs. And that's the point. Why would they? Now if this had happened in a Currys I'd be howling in derision. But it's not Currys. It's HMV who, I'm forced to conclude, don't realise that people need to be guided as to why one consumer durable is better than another one, nor that during the decision making process the customer might just ask a member of staff for advice. While I can't judge whether this is typical or not, even this possibly isolated incident demonstrates the problems a retailer faces when they sell products outside their core range, and it strikes me even if this is atypical then they still haven't thought this expansion into selling other products through very well. If you can't sell a £99 Blu-ray player with a free copy of "The Expendables" without a third party helping what chance do they have selling those £270 headphones they stock? But I digress.
Nor do HMV understand that their lead pricing promotion of 2 CDs for £10 harks back to a time when they only had to compete against other High street retailers, not the internet. The news they will start closing branches isn't very surprising, coming on the heels of last Summers change of ordering system which resulted (so I'm told) in a purge of stock. I suspect though, having had personal experienced an organisation attempting to survive by branch closures, that the actual savings they make won't be as much as they anticipate. Of course you can close a shop but, for example, if it is on a long term lease you'll still pay rent on the premises - empty or otherwise. Then there is the "actual" logistics of closing branches. Stock has to be moved, bills transferred (and the rest) before you even get to the inevitable cost of redundancies. Long term contracts with suppliers and the associated early termination fees can result in a situation where it makes just as much sense just to keep a place open***, but that rarely happens once the commitment to closure has been made. I suppose I'm missing the point. Closing branches does at least give the impression of doing something, even if in the short term it makes little difference to an organisations' bottom line.
HMV's decline comes at the same time as an interesting development in Belfast. The arrival of a new CD retailer - a company called "Head". And, quite incredibly, they actually sell CDs. And not just chart stuff. They even pass the "Neu!" test, having the first two "Neu!" albums for sale at prices not a kick in the balls away from those on the net. Needless to say, even in my current skint state, my CD buying habit has kicked back in. (To give you an idea - I bought Oasis "Definitely Maybe", ABC's "The Lexicon Of Love" and REM's "Out Of Time" for a fiver. That's not a fiver each. That's three CD's for a fiver. That's what I thought as well). The fact is "Head" feels like a CD shop. Yeah they sell DVDs, but they also have a Vinyl section which makes me want to sort my old Rega Planar out once and for all. Honestly? It's well worth a visit.
*Yeah my muse has returned. Along with my inability to string two coherent sentences together. I've lost count of the number of revisions I've made to this since I posted it earlier today. Even now I'm not happy with it, but I'm tired of trying to batter the English language into submission, so it will just have to do.
**Just in passing it's nearly a year now since I stopped, after 33 years, buying 2000AD. A quick browse of the last issue doesn't make me any more inclined to start picking it up again, as it features amongst its stories, one stiffly drawn, illogical thing about a war between angels and demons, which was the very story which made me realise I was just buying 2000AD out of habit, rather than for enjoyment. Last year this story had one of the protagonists use a mobile phone in Hell. Now just get your head around that image for a moment. So how would that work? Presumably it means there is an entire mobile infrastructure in Hell, no doubt complete with call centres whose job is to sell demons upgrade handsets or contracts whilst at the same time deal with the usual customer service issues you'd associate with such a provision. You know crap reception, stolen phones and handsets dropped into fiery pits.. And surely it then follows that there would be Mobile phone shops as well. I mean where else would demons get their mobile phones from? Unless they send away for one via a small ad in the back of The Sun. If this was the case then Hell would need a postal service, or at least couriers for it to work. And then there is the more practical problem of how a mobile phone network would actually work in Hell. Would demons complain if someone built a mobile mast beside one of the pits of eternal damnation because it "spoilt the view"? Unless of course the mobile network works by Magick (which always has to be spelt with an extra "k" at the end when "evil's afoot"). But if that was the case why do they need handsets? With a dial for entering telephone numbers? It's utter nonsense. I mean can you imagine a "Carphone Warehouse" in Hell? I picture something just like the one in the Abbey Centre, albeit missing the overpowering smell of brimstone and employing slightly fewer damned souls.
***Which is a tale in itself. Actually it's an entire book. Just to give you some indication of how bad things had gone a year or so before the end, there were multiple transactions being processed through where it would have been more profitable simply to hand the customer £20 out of the till before asking them to leave the shop. Of course transactions like this were automatically flagged up thanks to a clever bit of mucking about with Business Objects. I got a nice little email which I would investigate. By this point though the people you'd expect to be interested had long since passed caring. The company was haemorrhaging money so violently it had lost all sense of perspective. Two months after I'd left, the company, with 70 odd years worth of history, collapsed. No-one was surprised.
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