Wednesday 17 December 2008

The Wedding Present, Leeds, 16th December

I first heard The Wedding Present when I was living in a shared house just after dropping out of University nearly twenty years ago now. Dear God how time flies.
Aggressive, almost thrash guitars, driving through angry songs about men whose relationships had just broken up, or were just about to. One album in particular spoke to me for some reason. Were these songs written buy a stalker, or wittily observed stories about the kinds of men who stalk?
No, I sent you that letter
To ask you if the end was worth the means
Was there really no in between?
And I still don't feel better
I just wondered if it could be like before
And I think you just made me sure!

After a while they split up and the songwriter formed a new band, Cinerama. Instead of the angry guitars, now there where lush sweeping strings, and songs about men whose relationships had broken up stalking their former lovers and obsessively stalking girls they barely know

But of course none of this has happened at all, yet
We've not even spoken, but i'll bet
Once you're through my door
You'll want to stay for ever more
Because i will hold you so tight, i'll make you see how
You are the right woman for me now
Just give me a glance
To show me that i've got a chance

A few albums later and Cinerama morphed back into the The Wedding Present. The music is less angry than before, but the same themes are there. Pain, confusion, betrayal, lust.

I thought I saw a flying saucer last night but of course it was just an aeroplane
I thought I saw Winona Ryder but my eyes were playing tricks again
Some things look wonderful but then they’re different when you look again

And that’s what’s so funny, honey
You’ve looked like my girl for so long that I thought you would always be beside me
But I’d be the first to admit I was wrong

I'm still not entirely sure I understand the songs. There's a profound misogyny to them when taken on face value. Yet there's a subtlety to the lyrics that move them beyond the ranting. They are perhaps satire, and like all satire it has to sound believable. Or it's just skilfully crafted misogyny. Can't rule that out.
Tonight they are playing Leeds.

All the above written safely before the gig. Leeds Student Union. Tiny compared to all the big stadium things I've been to over the last few years. Maybe 500-800 people. Under ten metres from the stage. An hour later my ears are returning to normal.
Marvelous. Rockier and thrashier than their recent albums. Very quick. They're on just after nine and finish at about ten twenty five. Twenty odd songs in that time. No hanging about for drum solos.
Apparently they're playing Bristol tomorrow... You know if I got off work at four I could probably make it...

Sunday 7 December 2008

Ticket to Ride Dice


Ticket to Ride is probably my favourite recent Spiel des Jahres winner. Some years the prize seems to have been going to rather dubious games: I quite like Zooloretto, though it is just a reworking of an earlier game. The same is also true of this year's winner, Keltis, which I've not yet played, and seems to have got somewhat mixed reviews.
Ticket to Ride, winner in 2004, is probably the last really great game to have scooped the prize. It's by Alan Moon, and therefore involves a lot of wanting to do three things at the same time - collecting cards that let you build things, spending the building cards and collecting ticket cards that earn points by connecting cities. Since other people are trying to get cards in the same suits as you, and connect cities using railway lines you had you eye on, you're generally torn between piling up building cards and rushing to get routes built, with the destination tickets a bit of an afterthought, even if it is an afterthought that winds up winning the game for you.
Since publication there have been a slew of variants and spin offs. The original American map was followed by Europe, Germany, Switzerland and Scandinavia, most of which offer different little twiddles. Europe is probably the most balanced. There's a pure card game, but it's the kind of memory game I'm no good at. Now we get a dice game.
The dice game's actually not a game of itself, it's an alternative to building railway connection through collecting and spending cards. There are five dice, showing track, stations or locomotives. You throw the lot and re-roll as many as take your fancy. The two different types of track let you build on single or double lines of track, the stations let you collect additional tickets. Un-used pairs of dice let you collect tokens that give you an additional build your next go. There are three penalty dice that come in while building tunnels in Europe, Switzerland or Scandinavia.
So how does it compare?
The big difference between the cards and the dice is that the game goes much quicker. In traditional cards based TtR the game goes in fits and spurts. There's a degree of brinkmanship going on as everyone starts collecting huge hands of cards, eventually though someone starts building and there's a phase of everyone laying track as fast as they can, or at least until their hands of cards run out, at which point people go back to collecting cards, perhaps collecting new tickets and the whole thing starts again.
With the dice there's none of that. Every turn you throw the dice, throw some of them again, and then you either build or collect tickets. in the game we played last week, Europe with three players, we only a couple of times went for tickets, everything else was throw and build, throw and build. There was never any reason not to get on and build. In the card based game there comes a point half way through, when the initial objectives are secure and the cards available to be drawn look unhelpful, that you want to get some more tickets, if nothing else to give you an objective to build towards. With the dice you don't get that breathing space, even with two players who're famously fond of collecting lots of tickets we just didn't find ourselves with the time to do it.
It's a different game, but it seemed to work. I'd certainly try it again.