FALLING APART, SID VICIOUS, AND THE SELF-PROCLAIMED PURVEYOR OF PERIL

Falling Apart, who hail from Ilfracombe, have shot a music video to accompany their new song – Nanny State. In today’s society, people say “it has to be seen to be believed” all the time, to the point where it’s been devalued. But never has such a call to action been more appropriate.

So watch it now - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQY4HoFoA80.

One might expect blood-boiling rebellion from “THE REAL PUNK EXPERIENCE” as their MySpace unpretentiously parps. What they’ve actually created, is a cringingly flaccid insight into their world, which aims at “angry punk band” but gets lost in painful self-ingratiation and trying to be funny. Since when did punk have a comedic edge?

It also does a fairly neat job of blurring the lines between music video and PR video for Barnstaple's Schofields Solicitors, which seems a curious setting for Falling Apart’s blunderings. Until you learn that the guitarist (who’s old enough to know better than to be acting out his lost youth) works there – nice land. Though somewhat at ends with the anti-nannying message of the song and certainly not very punk. I can’t imagine Sid Vicious dispensing legal advice.

The video narrates vocalist “Dangerous” Dean Davey’s world-weary mindset, fed-up with the rules and regulations that govern society. Though quite how far his performance contributes to his “dangerous” credentials remains open for debate. As he enters the solicitors, he is unimpressed with the lists of rules he is handed and told to follow. But surely this self-proclaimed purveyor of peril could have summoned action more anarchic than gaily hurling some papers into the air before flouncing out of the solicitors’ office?

Maybe it would help if he wore tighter trousers.

The mouldy cherry aloft the half-baked cake arrives midway through the video. Pause it at 1’27” and the observant among you will notice that as The Man is dishing out his rules that Davey must abide, “Regulations” is spelt incorrectly. Priceless.

Delusions of grandeur are always funny. And laughing at them always ushers a feeling of guilt. At least the boys are trying and I applaud them for being proactive. They also aren’t short of bookings so they’re doing something right, right? But the video does this band no favours, traversing more levels of wrongness than I have ever previously encountered. Falling Apart? I’d say it’s a safe bet.

Falling Apart are playing at The Wellington in Ilfracombe on 8th July – for a full gig list head to www.myspace.com/fallingapartpunkband.

North Devon Art Students' Exhibition

OK, so I concede that submitting a post about art for that all-important first post in a music blog is wayward thinking, but music is aural art so I’m content that the more visual aspects of the field can occasionally fall under my contextual remit too. Plus, I need to get this off my chest...

I’m not a lover of art. By no means am I a hater. But I’m not a lover - writing’s more my passion. But a visit to an exhibition of work by art students from North Devon College at The North Devon School of Art soon put paid to my ambivalent attitude towards the artistic discipline. Such is the display of talent and inventiveness that I spent the next day in a kind of staggered stupor, adamant that I must swap the written word for the paintbrush, the literary pen for the drawing pencil.

The highlight of my personal foray into the art world is a risible portrait of a slightly ill-looking Tim Henman that was enthusiastically composed in my school days. Except I drew the tennis racket at such an angle that only the frame was visible – it looked more like a light sabre and it was clear that the outlook for my artistic future was pretty bleak.

But in showcasing such patent and utterly inspiring talent, from the jaw-droppingly beautiful to the mind-bendingly wayward, the students’ artistic banquet has resurrected those heady Henman days, and evidences a collection of North Devon artists whose abundant skill and creativity are a credit to the region and for whom I have nothing but the utmost respect.

It’s a haggard old cliché that a picture says a thousand words. This is just pinchbeck romanticism. It’s more than that. Art is about transcending the normal rules of communication and transporting its viewer into a different world that offers the chance to look at things from a unique perspective. It’s a world without limits and where creativity abounds. Walking round the maze of galleries at the exhibition is testament to this.

So, with gasoline poured on the flames of inspiration and a roving eye cast firmly on a discipline that knows no respect for rules or boundaries, it’s once again time to flex my feeble artistic muscle and fully embrace the world of the wonky-lined tennis player that wants to be in Star Wars.

Entitled Sum of the pARTS, the exhibition is showcasing the culmination of two years worth of work by North Devon College’s foundation degree and diploma students in Illustration, Fine Art, and Ceramics. The North Devon School of Art can be found on Pottington Industrial Estate. The exhibition is open Monday – Friday, 9am – 4pm until 3^rd July, entry is free.