Monday music

Monday music, click here and enjoy!

B x

Weekend music

Some music for the weekend, not particularly wintery but continuing the series this is A Winters Day 3. Enjoy.

B x

Boyzillians (?!)

With this article in London’s Evening Standard it appears things have gone too far…

Commisioned simply because Simon Cowell has allegedly had his chest waxed, this article...wait a minute, did you say Simon Cowell? Him of the global entertainment industry, purveyor of awful muzak and responsible for the dilution of our culture, him of the bad hair, bad clothes and perma tan? Why on fuck’s earth would I want to emmulate him?

The other examples of “men” who like to be a bit smoother than the rest of us include David Beckham and Cristiano Ronaldo – again why would you want to emmulate these fannies anyway?

I am not sayng that you shouldn’t groom, far from it but I would suggest you might try somewhere like Pankhurst, the barber at Alfred Dunhill or Murdock London, gentleman’s grooming at it’s best. Plus they probably still ask you whether you would like “Something for the weekend?” and they are not talking about Sunday morning television.

So go out there and grow some (hairy) balls!

A (sort of) manifesto and a bit of a rant

There are a lot of things I dont understand. Working in the media one of the things I dont understand is the popularity of Men’s Health magazine, bizarely this is now the most read men’s magazine in Britain. Its true that over the last few years the men’s magazine market has taken a battering, mainly its own fault in that it has become hugely out of step with modern man – w**k mags like Nuts & Zoo sell well to teenagers and fair play to them, you know what your getting,

There have been major casualties over the last year or so, Arena has folded and Maxim is now only on line, GQ continues to sell well but is manily a mouth piece for Dylan Jones and his increasingly worrying Tory views (oh, is that another “can I pleeeeaaaaasssseeee suck your cock David” David Cameron interview....erm, yes it is). If you needed any other reasons not to read you could try this months cover and the fact that he who shall not be named writes for them. Esquire sells a piddly amount – but amazingly the only “quality” mens mag still flying off the shelves is Men’s Health.

Every month a toned adonnis graces the front cover, each months cover star indistinguishable from the last, not unlike the airbrushed identikit “babes” that adorn your traditional “lad mag”. Adonnis is surrounded by bold proclamations (loose 5 stone in one month, eat your way to a great torso, write Glamour at the top and it looks identical to the cover of that publication). MH now also comes in handy hand, oh sorry, i meant Man – bag size.

This is Man today then, worried about calories, about having a washboard chest, its metrosexuality gone completely mad. We desparately need to redefine Man, being a man isnt about spending hours in the gym knocking back protein shakes and pumping iron, this is aspirational nonscense and is no doubt leading to all sorts of neurosies, manorexia and the rest.

Manual is about feeling better, bettering yourself but not through greed or want or competition, it’s about having a connection with the world around us. Cutting through that layer of PR, advertising and image and connecting with something that is real and tangible. Yes, at times this is going to sound romantic or idealistic but that is the way it’s going to roll, we arn’t hippee’s though. We wont be sporting tie-dye t-shirts or wearing compost shoes or getting in touch with lay lines, we’ll be doing real things and we wont be seen in a gym, knocking back protein shakes (or leafing through Men’s Health). So welcome along, we hope you enjoy the ride.

The last words are those of Geoff Barrow of Portishead (click here to download their track Chase The Tear, all proceeds go to Amnesty), they are worth thinking about....

'You've got the surface world - the absolute unreal world that everyone is supposed to live in - and then there are the actual real things that are happening, and then there's this ginormous layer of media which divides the two,'

Boak and Bailey

I don't know what it is, but everyone I know who lives in Walthamstow loves talking about beer. Boak and Bailey's beer blog is written by two Walthamstow based home brewers and self-confessed beer geeks, in search of the perfect pint. It seems like a good place to start learning about beer as their beer-based blogroll is about as long as your arm. I am also going to keep my eye on the CAMRA website for future beer festivals, apparently I just missed the Pig's ear beer and cider festival in Hackney.

I once brewed my own beer at university, it was called Burfield 45 and it tasted surprisingly good. After a pint, however, it did have the worrying side effect of completely disabling the ability of your mouth to form words, and may have been a contributing factor to my housemate failing to get a 2:1. I haven't brewed any since then, but I think now it's time to give it another shot. Apparently there are loads of good home brewing kits available, maybe it'll hit up Boak and Bailey for some advice.

D

Turkey Carving.

This year will be the first christmas where I am the eldest man of the house (actually I'll be the only man in the house) a position which brings with it only one real responsibility: Carving up the festive bird. I've never done it before and I plan to take it seriously. My grandad used to use an electric craving knife, which scared the stuffing out of me when I was young, so I think I am going to stick to regular carving knife and take guidance from this dude, who's perfectly carved facial hair bodes well for his turkey:

I'll let you know how I get on.

D

The School of Artisan Food

The School of Artisan Food sounds like an exciting place to me. An institution where you can learn artisan food processes such as bakery, cheese-making, butchery, and brewing. All things I feel I should know about as man . In their About Us section they say that "the emphasis is on foods that ferment", which I think would make a great strap-line, although it sounds kind of disgusting.

They also have a course specifically on the relationship between beer and cheese. Heros.

Music for a winter's day

For your enjoyment: Two playlists of music for these wintery days, nattyily titled A Winters Day 1 and A Winters Day 2

Mr Chapman and the Albam boys (sadly this is not the name of a band)

Thanks to Mr Lee Chapman, who is going to become one of our regular contributers, for this. All very good advice, which we will try our best to heed.

If you are thinking of buying a Christmas present for Mr Dayo James (my very good friend and co-blog founder), you could do a lot worse than something from Albam.

Albam started in a small office in Nottingham, with a philosophy of creating modern, crafted clothing. Today they have two stores in London, one on Beak Street in Soho and the other in Spitalfields Market, as well as mail order through the website. Though it's well worth going to the shops as the staff are very lovely and always happy to talk clothes.

Learning to be a man.

I have soft hands. When I left school I saw one of those career adviser people and she said “well let’s rule out any manual work; your hands are too soft” I felt like Curley from Of Mice and Men, the son of the ranch owner who kept his hands in a glove lined with Vaseline. But it’s true, I’ve never done any manual labour, never spent time at work using my hands for anything other than clacking on a keyboard, clicking a mouse or pressing a button on a photocopier. Never had my hands toughened by pulling rope or cutting wood, my hands are not scarred by the scrapes and strains of doing the things hands seem so well designed to do. I do have one scar on my hand, actually. I got it from a broken glass while doing the washing up. If the claims of washing up liquid brands are to be believed my hands probably came out softer as a result.

But my soft hands are symptomatic of a greater concern: I belong to a large part of a generation of young men who can’t do and don’t know about a lot of the things ‘Men’ are traditionally supposed to. I suppose what I am thinking of is the knowledge and ability to build, grow and produce stuff from the materials around us. Carpentry, growing vegetables, fishing, butchery, making and knowing about beer and whiskey Carving the roast on a Sunday, Car maintenance, plumbing, beekeeping. It essentially boils down to the ability to be, in some way, self-sustaining and not being completely fucked if the power runs out or money becomes worthless. We are much more likely to buy stuff ready prepared and get some other guy in to fix it for us when it goes wrong and stay in total ignorance of the process that was involved. It’s a product of 21^st century city living, which of course is great in so many ways for so many things, but doesn’t readily provide an environment to cultivate these skills and pursuits that men traditionally have.

So in an attempt to reconcile our modern urban lifestyle with our desire to be more involved in the methods of production, we have decided to take up, learn and practice some manly pursuits. This blog is where we will document our growth as we roughen up our hands and begin learning to be a men.