Prince Rupert's Castle is almost at the highest point in Liverpool. It is, as local apocrypha has it, that Prince Rupert laid siege to the now vanished Liverpool Castle. In 1888, Everton Football Club adopted the Castle - actually a Gaol - as the symbol of their Football Club. Meanwhile, not a half mile down the road, Spring Heeled Jack appeared on the rooftop of Saint Francis Xavier's Church in Salisbury Street. A demonic presence with something of technology and something of pandemonium about
it. Indeed Spring Heeled Jack has been the subject of
Internet Radio or PodcastingOne of the big problems of radio storytelling is the need for many voices.
Voice Of Midnight achieves more with substantially less story than
The River Of Crime. Which is a shame,
The River Of Crime has the potential to become a criminologists
The Golden Barge By
Michael Moorcock but it fails. The River is an outstanding analogy that Moorcock uses as exposition for a very human hero, Tallow. Tallow ruins the lives of everybody he meets.
The River Of Crime does no such thing.
Instead,
The River Of Crime is an experiment. Like many experiments, it fails. The
Spring Heeled Jack stories are polished and have a completeness that
The River Of Crime does not achieve. There are too many loose ends. The notions of
collecting crimes, of crimes being attracted to a person, of crimes being a river are all powerful and yet,
The Residents fail to build anything of these. Which is compensated for by a veneer of American, 1950's Pop Culture.
The truth is that
The Boy Who Collected Crimes declaring
It was the best day of my life is the kind of cultural exuberance that
River of Crime needs more of. True,
The Residents created an online community event and experimented with new physical distribution methods, but those achievements vanish behind the ordinariness of the final product. Which is what
The River Of Crime is: a product.
The music is professional and tight. It does not wander off into the cul-de-sacs of
The Commercial Album or explore tonality as
Fingerprince. It is a professional performance with a polish and a definite feel of walking on, performing, walking off. There is nothing broken or open to speculation in the presentation. Like the
Narrator all of the loose ends have been gathered up and filed and sorted. It is
The Residents' equivalent of an advertising hoarding.
Each Episode is too self contained. Wrapped inside the competence of great musicians doing great music and the
Narrator doing his part. It sounds like someone was working for a living. Great work if you can get it; but, work. Which, apart from the new means of online distribution and the videos at the
Museum Of Modern Art.
One of the big problems of radio storytelling is the need for many voices.
Voice Of Midnight achieves more with substantially less story than
The River Of Crime. Which is a shame,
The River Of Crime has the potential to become a criminologists
The Golden Barge By
Michael Moorcock but it fails. The River is an outstanding analogy that Moorcock uses as exposition for a very human hero, Tallow. Tallow ruins the lives of everybody he meets.
The River Of Crime does no such thing.
Instead,
The River Of Crime is an experiment. Like many experiments, it fails. The
Spring Heeled Jack stories are polished and have a completeness that
The River Of Crime does not achieve. There are too many loose ends. The notions of
collecting crimes, of crimes being attracted to a person, of crimes being a river are all powerful and yet,
The Residents fail to build anything of these. Which is compensated for by a veneer of American, 1950's Pop Culture.
The truth is that
The Boy Who Collected Crimes declaring
It was the best day of my life is the kind of cultural exuberance that
River of Crime needs more of. True,
The Residents created an online community event and experimented with new physical distribution methods, but those achievements vanish behind the ordinariness of the final product. Which is what
The River Of Crime is: a product.
The music is professional and tight. It does not wander off into the cul-de-sacs of
The Commercial Album or explore tonality as
Fingerprince. It is a professional performance with a polish and a definite feel of walking on, performing, walking off. There is nothing broken or open to speculation in the presentation. Like the
Narrator all of the loose ends have been gathered up and filed and sorted. It is
The Residents' equivalent of an advertising hoarding.
Each Episode is too self contained. Wrapped inside the competence of great musicians doing great music and the
Narrator doing his part. It sounds like someone was working for a living. Great work if you can get it; but, work. Which, apart from the new means of online distribution and the videos at the
Museum Of Modern Art leaves very little to recommend
The River Of Crime. A marvellous concept that simply avoided becoming something of the graveyard by being in the right place at the right time.
It is not a bad thing. The five episodes are enough. Like the twelve episodes of
Fawlty Towers. The sheen. The finish. The competence. It is all too good. Unlike the stumbling thuds of
You, Yes Yes Yes which manage to be more than their parts,
The River Of Crime is a potboiler that falls towards the centre instead of floating beyond. The sounds are no longer building blocks of tape cutting but the digital cut and paste. The effortlessness of trying something new because technology allows it begins to show.
Unlike
The Voice Of Midnight where the story grew,
The River Of Crime is a story that diminished. Hiding behind the music. Which is not the worst thing to happen. But I like stories. Stories that are bigger than the distillation of
It was the best day of my life. Stories that seep into the landscape only to emerge again later. Which never really gels with
The River Of Crime. Perhaps a few dozen more listens might make it all fall together. Perhaps.