Heating up the soup - the Pet Shop Boys’ Hotspot

In my mum’s kitchen lurks a book which, I suspect, can be found lurking in many a British kitchen. It is The Dairy Book Of Home Management, a hefty tome containing all sorts of practical guidance on home life - from cookery tips to DIY. Its ‘general editor’ is one Neil Tennant, pre-Smash Hits, and better known to the rest of us for almost the last 40 years as one half of the Pet Shop Boys. Now, I’m not suggesting that Tennant, as the duo's chief lyricist, has taken the banality of domestic living into his pop career, but for all the giant silver hats, circus dancers and other emblems of arch ironic camp that the PSBs have displayed over the years, there has always been a marked understatement about them.

Indeed, think of the Pet Shop Boys and immediately you have a profile image of the tall, languid Tennant, standing in front of the shorter Chris Lowe, “the quiet one”, who has seemingly and quite happily taken a step back from his elder bandmate, stabbing away at a keyboard. And thus, 39 years after Tennant met Lowe in a Chelsea hi-fi shop and decided to make electronic music together, the Pet Shop Boys are back with their 14th album, Hotspot, and from one perspective you could argue that it’s more of the same: pulsating rhythms, a couple of cosy synth ballads, and Tennant’s distinctive vocals, set some way back in the mix, almost acting as a keyboard layer in themselves (and don’t just think of PSB material for this - Tennant’s voice was instrumental in Electronic’s Getting Away With It and Robbie Williams’ No Regrets). But such a statement belies two things: one, Tennant’s gift for lyrics that can be as matter-of-fact as guidance on putting up shelves earlier in his career, but at the same time convey wit, emotion and pathos; and two, Lowe’s gift for creating a vibe, be it a HiNRGhe club pulse or the soothing washes that first drew me to West End Girls.

With any music genre - be it rock, funk, R&B, whatever - repetition is inevitable. Signature cues, once established, come easily. It would be hard to receive a new album by the Rolling Stones anonymously and not know who you were listening too. Thus, the Pet Shop Boys provide the same familiarity with Hotspot, opening with Will O The Wisp’s immediately recognisable Euro disco and mildly saucy lyric. To be honest, I could do with fewer of these electronic anthems from the PSBs. They’ve done them for years and today musically they bring little new to their canon, even as perfectly good as they are, and as lyrically sharp. More interesting, more appealing, even, are the subtle shifts to something else. Burning The Heather - a song, simply, about a summer heath blaze Tennant witnessed - adds Bernard Butler’s guitars to give it a folky treatment; You Are The One is a ballad as lush as Rent, in which Tennant and Lowe apply their best combination of assets, Tennant’s voice as an instrument and Lowe’s orchestrated keyboard pads.

With Tennant now almost 66 and Lowe 60, there is a temptation to view some of Hotspot as nostalgic, but given the duo's historic anger at perceived ageism, lyrically, there is plenty on the album to be considered forward looking and fresh. Dreamland, a collaboration with Years & Years, is a bright and breezy piece of sumptuous pop music, while Monkey Business takes an electronic turn into Nile Rodgers territory. Irony, a word that surprises me has never been used in the PSBs’ history of single-word album titles, continues to run lasciviously through this album, with wry (and subtle) statements about the state of things, from Brexit to same-sex marriage. Indeed, now I think of it, much of this band’s 35 years of recorded music has been notably ironic. Ever-so gently, they’ve not taken themselves too seriously while producing some joyous music. Hotspot may not be their best, but on the other hand, there’s plenty on it to slot nicely into the overall library of 14 studio albums, most of which contribute justifiably to Tennant and Lowe being afforded national treasure status. And, while it might appear incongruous to see two men in their 60s still, effectively, mounting further celebration of the dancefloor, a brief aside: last week the 79-year-old ‘Godfather of Disco’, Georgio Moroder, was pictured DJing at a corporate event in Las Vegas. You’re never too old to boogie.

The clock is ticking, Mr. Bond

Facebook/James Bond 007/Eon Productions

Prior to a screening, the other night, of Sir Sam Mendes’ breathtaking and thoroughly deserving Oscar contender, 1917, we were treated to the full-screen, full-length IMAX trailer for No Time To Die, the 25th ‘official’ Bond film and starring Daniel Craig in his final outing as 007. As good trailers should do, it only whetted my appetite for a film I'd been pretty well whetted for already, but in doing so it simply cranked up the expectation even further.

The release date for No Time To Die is 2 April which, by my reckoning, is just 11 weeks away. Principal photography wrapped in October, and judging by the extent of scenes in the trailer, much of the editing has been done too. Which just leaves - eek! - the music. US composer Dan Romer was supposed to have scored the film, but owing to that old chestnut “creative differences” (he was said to be going in too experimental a direction), he's been replaced by Hans Zimmer (I’ll spare you any “who’d been in the frame” jokes), the Oscar-winning film composer with blockbusters like the Dark Knight trilogy, Dunkirk, The Lion King (the animated original), the Pirates Of The Caribbean series, Gladiator and Crimson Tide to his name.

So, with No Time To Die’s premiere less than three months away (and February’s extra day this year doesn’t help much), the clock is ticking for Zimmer in a rectum-squeezing fashion not dissimilar to the perils Bond himself gets into. The German composer is the second key figure to be parachuted in, 007-style, to the production, following director Cary Joji Fukunaga who was brought in after original helmer Danny Boyle stepped down, also citing creative differences. All of this suggests underlying turbulence, especially as there were earlier departures from the writing team. In fact development of No Time To Die began in early 2016, only a few months after the previous Bond film, Spectre, had come out, but it took another two years and the courting of several directorial options before Boyle was hired. Boyle, not exactly known for Bond-style action films (though Skyfall and Spectre’s Mendes had a largely theatre background), was something of a left-field choice, and according to rumours had some bold - some might even say challenging - ideas for the film, including the idea of killing off Bond altogether (which would have created an interesting problem for Eon Productions whenever they came to making a Bond 26).

With Fukunaga on board, and Fleabag writer Phoebe Waller-Bridge fashionably drafted in to help with the script (supposedly to give it a sharper wit), filming of No Time To Die barrelled through from April to October last year, having previously been scheduled to commence the previous December but delayed by Boyle’s departure. Tick-tock. The trailer's slick scenes notwithstanding, much rests on the final cut being nothing less than excellent. The James Bond franchise is the longest in cinema history, having begun almost 60 years ago with Dr. No. Craig himself will have been the longest-serving actor, by years, to have played Bond, having been in the role since Casino Royale introduced a new style of 007 (namely shortish, blond and with emotional issues) in 2006. Craig has admitted that after Spectre he was pretty much finished with the character (“I think I was ready to go,” he tells the latest edition of Empire magazine), mostly due to the punishing filming regime and the fact he’d suffered a broken leg early in production. But, after a lot of speculation, he wasn’t quite finished yet. “Somehow it felt like we needed to finish something off,” he revealed to Empire. “If I’d have left it at Spectre, something at the back of my head would have been going, ‘I wish I’d done one more’.” And so he has. The four Craig films have, hitherto, been fantastic (yes, even the bizarrely-maligned Quantum Of Solace and Spectre), bringing a welcome modernity to the franchise, together with a more steely approach to the Bond narrative than the era of Craig’s predecessor, Pierce Brosnan. This was necessary, given that when Casino Royale came out it was already having to compete with the Jason Bourne franchise and Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible series, with their gritty, handheld-camera fight scenes, and be notably less camp than Brosnan’s Bond outings brought to the table.

Facebook/James Bond 007/Eon Productions

Bond films are never just about one thing. They are not just about 007 and not just about the actor playing him, though that is crucial. They are also about the supporting cast - the actors playing M, Q and Moneypenny, the villain, the villain’s principal henchperson - the filming locations, the cars and, yes, the Bond Girls, as ridiculously out of date as that is. The film's music must be added to this list - both the score and, always the source of great argument, the theme tune. Yesterday I was engaged in a social media discussion with a couple of chums as to who’d make a good choice for the theme tune: there is much love for the John Barry ‘sweeping strings’ approach of You Only Live Twice, From Russia With Love and Goldfinger, with a Matt Monro croon or Shirley Bassey blast over the top. Oddly enough, this wasn’t far off Adele’s approach to the Skyfall theme, but the end result fell flat with a dreariness only topped, so to speak, by Sam Smith’s almost suicidal (and forgettable) Writing's On The Wall for Spectre. Amazing that both songs won Oscars. One obvious choice, to me at least, that came up in the discussion was Sheffield's finest, Richard Hawley, though sadly he just doesn’t have the sort of audience appeal that the Bond producers like to go for (though that wouldn’t rule out Robbie Williams recreating his John Barry-pastiche Millennium and its clearly Bond-spoofing video...). Bond films have attempted some Top 40 vogueishness down the years, such as Lulu’s wah-wah pedal-heavy, sub-70s porn Man With The Golden Gun, Duran Duran’s Barry-collaboration A View To A Kill and even A-Ha’s excellent The Living Daylights. And then there was Madonna’s execrable Die Another Day. But let’s leave it right there.

The matter, however, is now closed: just as this blog post was about to go on air, 18-year-old Billie Eilish was confirmed to be recording the theme song for No Time To Die, making her the youngest artist in history to get the Bond gig. "It feels crazy to be a part of this in every way," she wrote in an Instagram post. "To be able to score the theme song to a film that is part of such a legendary series is a huge honour. James Bond is the coolest film franchise ever to exist. I’m still in shock". The song has been co-written with Eilish's brother and regular collaborator Finneas. The news has also been confirmed by Bond producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G.Wilson, who said in a social media post: "We are excited to announce that Billie and Finneas have written an incredibly powerful and moving song for No Time To Die, which has been impeccably crafted to work within the emotional story of the film." From a credibility point of view, the American teenager couldn’t be closer to the mark, but the Bond title song is a precious commodity that woke doesn’t always favour, even if Eilish already has eight gold and four platinum singles to her name and last year picked up six Grammy Award nominations, including nods in the four main categories. The song Eilish and her brother have recorded will have to deliver and deliver well for No Time To Die. Daniel Craig will want to leave the franchise behind with all guns blazing. And that includes the theme song of his final film as Bond, James Bond. No pressure, then.

I remember when this was all Fields

It seems so long ago that I can’t actually remember exactly when it was. But somewhere in the second half of last year I was driving back from my girlfriend’s one Monday morning, listening to Mary Anne Hobbs’ BBC 6 Music show, when I thought I'd stumbled across a new single from Talking Heads, or at least David Byrne. The slightly awkward white funk was there, the somewhat strangulated vocal too, and most of all, an absolutely compelling rhythm. Rarely have I made note of the release date of a parent album on the basis of one single track, and so far ahead of time, but Hobbs’ declaration that Field Music’s Only In A Man’s World would be out on a full album in early 2020 was enough to chalk it up in anticipation.

So, here in the present, the album Making A New World has arrived, and it is a genuine delight, heard from a certain perspective. There’s a concept behind it, too, but I’ll come on to that later. My starting point, however, is as always the music: here the brothers Brewis have tapped into a veritable suitcase of influences, a subtle evolution of their last fifteen years making music with a discernibly old head on it. Whether the influences I’m about to come on to were conscious in the Brewis brothers’ thinking is not clear, but from the beginning of Making A New World there are some exceedingly comforting (to these ears at least) nods to the late '70s and early '80s. The aforementioned Only In A Man’s World is one of two songs which could have been companion tracks to the Heads’ Once In A Lifetime. Talking Heads were often regarded by sniffy critics as one of those ‘clever-clever’ bands, professional smartarses who produced songs with complex themes, complex structures, or complex instrumentation. Bands like Steely Dan, Supertramp, Genesis (in the post-Gabriel, pre-MTV days) and XTC, bands that wouldn’t fit any one categorisation - neither pop nor rock, New Wave, prog or anything else, even if the music press tried to pin labels on them. Well, guess what? There’s no shame in that. Which is why, lazily, I’ll end up resorting to comparisons when it comes to Field Music’s latest effort.

Making A New World is, according to the band themselves, “pretty much a concept album about the aftermath of the First World War”, which sounds ominously like another Roger Waters exorcism of the father he lost to German guns at Anzio but in fact, lyrically, the record is about the social impact of The Great War. Indeed, the album wasn’t meant to be an album at all, but instrumental elements of an Imperial War Museum exhibition about the conflict. That original staging plays a key role in the sequencing of Making A New World which, in the traditions of prog rock’s great concept albums, is a 19-song continuous cycle of tracks of varying lengths (from one coming in at just 41 seconds to the longest at just over four minutes), with a varying topography of time signatures driving the entire 42-minute album through a variety of tempos and timbres. This concept is not, however, what warms me to it, as clever a narrative as it offers up. No, it’s the musical return to the music I was listening to as I entered teenage that makes Making A New World so enjoyable. While it may be set in 1919, the musical tonality is set in 1979. From the outset, dark stabs of Yamaha CP80 piano recall Talk Talk, or Peter Gabriel’s glorious third album, while the vocals on Coffee Or Wine, Best Kept Garden and Between Nations immediately resonate 10cc (a band, by the way, deserving of far greater reflection - and, as an aside, I’m excited to hear that Liam Newton’s long-out of print book, 10cc: The Worst Band In The World, is getting a re-release next month). XTC’s Sgt. Rock appears, in spirit, on Nikon Pt.2, a 55-second coda to Nikon Pt.1, a brace of tracks which reflect on what happened to those who came back from the war in France. In fact, everywhere there are nods and ticks of familiarity. Whether by accident or by design, I don’t care, as the entire piece is just so satisfying.

Of course, if you naturally loathe concept albums, or the era of music I’ve referred to and the bands therein, then Making A New World, is not for you. But since I was schooled in exactly that music, this album didn’t just serve up a plate of piping hot comfort food nostalgia, but restored my faith that bands do still exist who can produce instrumentally rich albums that warrant a complete listen from start to finish, and can maintain the listener’s interest no matter what tangents it might indulge itself in.

Is it any wonder?

And so the anniversary of David Bowie's death comes around again. A properly balanced individual would simply get over it, as they would the deaths of any figure they'd held in high regard but never knew personally. Bowie is, though, one of only two artists I’ve properly mourned for, the other being John Martyn. And when I say “mourn”, I don’t mean the lowering of flags and wearing a black veil for a month, but a profound reflection on - as irrational as this sounds - the loss. In the case of Bowie, it was the loss of a creative soul who’s music, and all the different phases of that music - the winsome folk, the glam, the soul, the post-punk, the pop, the grunge...the endless reinvention, basically - captured my interest almost inadvertently. 

But in the wake of Bowie dying, on this day four years ago and just 48 hours after releasing his final album, Blackstar, I discovered another Bowie, one that I have also come to miss as much as a personal and now absent friend. In the flood of archive video clips that started surfacing on social media, documenting both live performances as well as the few on-camera interviews he did, I encountered a Bowie brimming with warmth and a distinct south London charm. Unencumbered by the addictions and foibles of the 1970s, the 1990s Bowie was funny and relaxed. Indeed, backstage footage of The Dame on what would be his final tour saw not a rock deity but a bloke you would willingly want to spent time with, down the pub, in a restaurant, out on the town. 

Somehow this not only completed my picture of Bowie, but also my appreciation of him, as if the incredible body of music and the bold artistic adventure hadn’t been enough. The cap of it all was a train journey back to Paris from the Montreux Jazz Festival when I watched the entire concert film of Bowie’s Reality Tour. Recorded in Dublin in 2003, and running to almost two-and-a-half hours, over 30 songs it not only captured Bowie at his best and captured Bowie’s best, but faithfully portrayed the relaxed, funny, easy-going Bowie that bandmates like Gail Ann Dorsey and Earl Slick would later tell a BBC documentary was what typified him on that tour. 

Sad, then, that health issues ended his live career in 2004, and until the bombshell of 2013, when the single Where Are We Now and, later, The Next Day album, appeared out of the blue, his public appearances were limited to a few guest slots, such as performing Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb with David Gilmour at the Royal Albert Hall in 2006, and his hilarious cameo in Ricky Gervais’s Extras (“Chubby little loser!”).

Since his death there has been no shortage of posthumous releases of archive material and rarities, all of which this fan has been more than willing to Hoover up. Yes, I’m the record company’s dream punter, buying super deluxe editions without question, but just as I will defend most live albums (if recorded well enough and capture a genuinely great performance), the Bowie box sets have provided new opportunity to appreciate the music, the charisma and the artist anew.

And, there seems, plenty more to come. On what would have been Bowie’s 73rd birthday two days ago, Parlophone announced the next set of baubles to prise open the fan’s wallet. Over the next six weeks an EP, David Bowie: Is It Any Wonder?, will be released online in six increments, starting with - and available now - a previously unreleased version of The Man Who Sold The World. The EP’s following five tracks will be released on a weekly basis from 17 January onwards. Then, on this year’s Record Store Day, 18 April, Parlophone will release ChangesNowBowie, effectively a recording of studio rehearsals for Bowie’s 50th birthday concert at Madison Square Garden on 8 January, 1997. Track listings have not yet been released, but the concert featured classics like Space Oddity, The Jean Genie, Queen Bitch, Scary Monsters (And Supercreeps) and other more obscure gems and a cover - with Lou Reed - of The Velvet Underground’s I'm Waiting for the Man. And, of course, I’ll be in the queue at 6am to buy it.

Can't wait for Season 21 of The Crown!

Picture: Instagram/@sussexroyal

Finally, we plunged in. After two complete seasons of the media raving about The Crown, with even me living down the road from the Old Naval College in Greenwich (where exterior scenes of Buckingham Palace for it were filmed), my girlfriend and I started bingeing the Netflix series over Christmas. As a battle-hardened veteran of The Sopranos and Breaking Bad box sets, I’ve always been somewhat averse to soapy shows that might appeal more to Hello! readers rather than gritty drama. Even more, I've always been wary of dramatisations of contemporary stories, especially involving actors playing real people who are still alive (they never seem to get the casting right). On top of this, most previous attempts at portraying the royals in film and television have invariably been awful, Helen Mirren in The Queen being a noted exception.

But in we went - and I’ve been pleasantly surprised by what we’ve watched so far. The casting has been almost exclusively terrific (standout performances by Claire Foy as the younger Queen Elizabeth and John Lithgow mesmerising as Winston Churchill), but more importantly, there has been less of a soap opera about it all and more an insightful depiction of British and global history in the second half of the 20th century. Episodes in the first two seasons have covered the Second World War, Suez, the Kennedy assassination, the complexities of royal heritage and duty, Churchill’s demise and the prescient scramble to succeed him within the Tory party, and even the suggested Nazi associations of the Duke of Windsor, the abdicated king. Like The Sopranos - and with clear parallels to an established family structure being challenged by modernity and its own moral ambiguities - The Crown has thus far been rip-roaring entertainment and thoroughly addictive. So, given last night’s blockbuster news that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex - Harry and Meghan, to you and me - are to "step back as 'senior' members of the Royal Family" and "work to become financially independent", you wonder how, in future seasons of The Crown, the royal soap opera that has periodically spilled into public life over the last 30 years will be portrayed by the show.

I don’t wish to be flippant. Every family has its rifts, and the Royal Family - while essentially being also a ‘firm’ - is not immune to them. As The Crown has depicted (and, so I’m informed, faithfully), the frustrations Prince Philip had as royal consort and Princess Margaret endured as the Queen’s sole sibling are possibly no different to those Harry and Meghan have now brought to a head. I’m no staunch royalist, but then again, I have no strong feelings about the royal family’s existence. For the most part, they’re good for the nation. It's not defensive PR spin to say that the royals contribute positively to the British tourist economy - you only have to listen to the gushing coming from coachloads of Chinese tourists as they press their noses up to the railings of Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle - even if there is an increasing sense of republican scorn (on Twitter, obviously, but also in the readers' comments of the discreetly anti-royal Mail Online). Here, Harry and Meghan have run themselves into trouble. Flying on private jets while preaching about climate change is downright provocative, making the flak they're now facing over living rent-free in Frogmore Cottage (for now) which was renovated at a cost to the taxpayer of £2.4 million, understandable.

However, their very public and, it would appear, premature, flounce from the Royal Family has been coming. Harry has never been a fan of media scrutiny, both because it cost him his mother but also because it encroached on him personally, and by marrying a successful American actress, whose career thrived on publicity, fault lines were increasingly being exposed as he grew further into his 30s, especially with no clear royal role for himself. That the couple chose to spend six weeks out of the spotlight as what has been termed "a break" from royal life, should have been seen as a precursor to last night's announcement, modishly issued via Instagram. Rumours had been circling for a while that they might be considering relocating to Canada, and the sight of the couple on Tuesday visiting Canada House in London to thank the country for its "hospitality" during their Christmas holidays with Meghan's mother should have been a clue as to their mindset. The big shock, however, is that their announcement came without the knowledge of Buckingham Palace. Royal insiders have expressed genuine dismay, suggesting that the Queen herself was blindsided. Perhaps worse, still, not even Prince Charles was aware, a strange situation since you'd have thought his youngest son would have at least floated the plan in advance. The Palace's official statement, carefully written but full of nuance, said that discussions with Harry and Meghan on their decision to step back were "at an early stage" and that: "We understand their desire to take a different approach, but these are complicated issues that will take time to work through." Not only a signal that the Sussexes had jumped the gun, but that their cry for freedom was not going to be relieved easily.

These are, then troubling times for the Royal Family. Not quite existential-troubling, but not far off. 2019 was, in the history of royal anni horribiles, a peach: Prince Philip's actual car crash last January was eclipsed by his second son's metaphorical car crash on Newsnight in November; an apparent rift appeared between Princes William and Harry as the latter broke away from the Cambridge's foundation in June; and, then, there have been continuing attacks on the tabloid press by Harry and Meghan suing the Mail On Sunday over the publication of a handwritten letter she had sent her estranged father. As someone who has spent most of his working life in corporate PR, I know that nothing ever happens publically without good reason. It's normally just a good idea to be in full control. For the most part, Buckingham Palace is normally in control. The Crown has faithfully depicted many of these episodes. The Queen's 2019 Christmas speech, accompanied by carefully arranged and deliberately selected pictures of members of her family - but notably sans Harry and Meghan - was no accident. The Sussexes are said to be less than happy about that. And then the release on Instagram of a staged portrait of the Queen, Prince Charles, Prince William and Prince George, was a very clear statement of succession, even with Charles standing on a step and appearing taller than his lanky eldest son (Charles is not tall - I know, I've met him). This is being interpreted as part of the inevitable succession of the crown: Charles is said to be thinking of restructuring the family firm, slimming it down and giving it greater social relevance in the 21st century as one of the last functioning monarchies in the world. That process has already begun, effectively, with Prince Philip officially retiring from royal duties last August at the age of 96, and his second son, Andrew, being retired involuntarily following that Newsnight interview. Harry following suit, "while 'continuing to honour our duty to the Queen, the Commonwealth, and our patronages'," reduces the First Team squad even further, though this is a little like Chelsea shedding one ageing player, losing another to a failed drug test, and Eden Hazard moving to Real Madrid.

Few can blame Harry and Meghan for wanting a different life for themselves and their son Archie. Harry, in particular, has had to bear the burden of unwanted attention since birth, inflamed by his mother’s death, and then having to endure living in his brother’s shadow as a young adult. His brief tours of duty in Afghanistan may have given him an outlet for fraternal company, but he was merely following royal tradition (his uncle, Andrew, spent the Falklands War piloting Sea King helicopters as decoys for Argentinian Exocet missiles). What gets under the public skin, however, is money. We pay for the royals whether we like them or not. Choosing to just not be one should be something that is discussed, discreetly. No wonder it has caused the Queen "disappointment and hurt", according to sources. Princess Margaret's portrayal as a younger woman in The Crown as a society player struggling to find purpose as the monarch's sister, holds many parallels for Harry today. The press obsession with his mother (which, incredibly, continues today in the UK's mid-market tabloids) has inevitably and tragically informed his view of how the media has treated his own wife. With, now, a baby son in their midst, it would appear that this particular redhead has conformed to stereotype and gone rogue. Good luck to him, I say. It does make the prospect of future episodes of The Crown even more enticing. Just don't expect Meghan to play herself.

Tech me back to all that magic

Picture: CES®

Along with vain attempts at going meat-free and alcohol-dry, one of the hardy perennials of the first full week of the new year is the gargantuan technology fest that is CES (note: not the "Consumer Electronics Show" or "International CES", as the organisers don't like either...). Every January, news feeds and column inches are filled with gadgets and gizmos getting showcased for the first time in Las Vegas that the tech industry hopes might catch on and, you know, even sell. In my day in the business, it was about launching the latest TVs, hi-fi systems and new media formats like DVD, Super Audio CD and Blu-ray Disc. As much as everyone involved would kvetch vigorously about having to give up part of the Christmas holiday to write press releases and CEO keynote speeches, then put up with Las Vegas in general and 4am visits to the Kinko's drive-through copy shop (which I once did in a limo, handing over an entire press kit through the sun roof), there is still something magical about the show, even if now viewed from afar.

Firstly, for those who've never been, Las Vegas is far from the glamour harbour it is portrayed as being. True, once it started to clean up its grubby reputation in the 1980s, and the first mega-“resort” hotels installed minibars and large screen TVs in their rooms (allegedly, against the wishes of the Mob, who wanted punters down on the gambling floors, getting rid of their life savings at the blackjack tables and slot machines), Vegas became something of an anodised version of its former self. Fun for all the family and, initially, of great appeal to the conventioneers who poured into the city in the ‘high desert’ all year round. For those visiting in January for CES, it was usual to recognise rookies as those arriving without overcoats, freezing in the endless early morning taxi queues. Just because it’s set in the vast western desert does not make Las Vegas warm in winter. But once inside the Las Vegas Convention Center, warmth of a million watts of electricity takes over, as the vast venue dazzles the visitor with its endless aisles of new toys.

My involvement, as part of Philips’ PR team, was a combination of accompanying senior executives and facilitating the journalists who rush about the place, breathlessly attending press conferences and keynote speeches, desperate not to miss the next big thing or some CEO’s visionary statement about the future. When the chance allowed, however, it was fun to go off-stand and peruse the dazzling array of what the industry, then, had to offer. This was, however, a long, long time ago. When we launched the first hi-fi system to connect to the Internet, we were given much the same rebuke as the Wright Brothers being told that planes will never take off, so to speak. Now look at it: everything is connected.

Picture: CES®

Reassuringly, this year’s CES hasn’t gone short of traditional introductions like TVs, with the big beasts like Panasonic, Samsung and Sony pushing the boundaries of both screen sizes and picture quality. This was pretty much the story in my day, 20 years ago, but then, when we thought we’d brought about the end of days by launching a 42-inch plasma TV, now we’re seeing 75-inch QLED sets offering 8K picture quality. Which I’m told is very good indeed. We've also seen a $60,000 TV from LG that rolls up and down like a blind. Indeed, thin displays are all the rage this year, with a glut of laptops at CES with foldable displays, the new groovy thing in screen-based devices.

I’m actually quite excited to see such developments. ‘Traditional’ consumer electronics, we keep being told, are supposed to be dying, as kids prefer to stay glued to TikTok on their mobile phones, Millennials opt for YouTube and even older punters prefer Spotify to actually owning their home entertainment. This sounds Luddite, I know, but I accept that as someone who still buys LPs and CDs, and is clinging desperately to the notion of owning hi-fi separates when my iPad, loosely, offers the same thing, entertainment consumption has shifted. I’m currently in the process of moving out of my flat and into my girlfriend’s house, which means making some choices - some hard, some easy - as to what I declutter. Apart from some dodgy record company promo copies, the vinyl LPs stay; the CDs can be reduced somewhat (I don’t really need two copies of the Heat soundtrack...); and the DVDs - some ‘first generation’ transfers - can go straight to the charity shop. Only a small handful of box sets and Blu-ray collections (Bond, The Sopranos, The Godfather, natch) need remain as everything else is mostly available to stream without taking up cupboard space. There will still be a market for the gear to play all this media on, but even the consumer electronics industry has wisely embraced online distribution, progressively and seamlessly incorporating streaming services into their audio and video boxes over the last decade or so (reminding me what pioneers Philips were with that first ‘Streamium’ hi-fi system in 2002...).

In fact, while home entertainment has long been the primary reason for consumer electronics shows to exist, other tech industries have moved in. Just like the IFA, the venerable Internationale Funkausstellung in Berlin (translated - “International Radio Exhibition”), which converted into a hybrid event of the domestic appliances and CE industry several years ago, CES has, too, brought together traditional home entertainment devices with the likes of 'connected' toothbrushes and - yawn - fridges (that are still not in widespread use, despite being relentlessly featured at such shows for what seems like years). In Las Vegas this week, there are other new tech trends to challenge the show’s traditional interests. Motor manufacturers have seen CES as an opportunity to showcase their in-car tech for a while now, but whereas this used to be largely about entertainment and navigation technology, the car itself, thanks to Tesla, is now more gadget than vehicle. Thus, this year we’ve seen Mercedes-Benz introduce a futuristic ‘pod car’, inspired by the world of James Cameron's Avatar, while Sony - along with traditional launches like its new PlayStation and new TVs - delivered one of the first big surprises of CES by unveiling a car, the Vision-S. Now, this doesn’t mean the Japanese giant is about to take on the increasingly consolidated car industry, but the Vision-S is an electric concept car designed to showcase what Sony is still capable of in diverse applications, from in-car information and entertainment through to battery technologies, imaging and sensors.

Health technology has been a growing part of CES for some time, too, with large tech companies shoe-horning Internet-enabled personal care this-and-thats into the Convention Center, but even cosmetics brands are getting in on the act. This year L’Oréal, Oral-B, Gillette and Neutrogena have been demonstrating gadgets. I’m not sure if, yet, the world needs lipstick that connects via Bluetooth to a mobile phone, or artificial intelligence that looks for imperfections in facial skin (my mirror does that job quite adequately), but they’re on display if that’s your thing. The spin is that this is innovation, and fair play to the wonks in these companies’ labs for ‘pushing the envelope’, as such wonks like to say. Of course, it’s almost a cliché to point out that many of these concepts will never see the commercial light of day, much like Homer Simpson-style car designs at motor events and pilotless passenger helicopters at air shows, but it’s this heady mix of the rational and irrational that maintains the 175,000 people who descend on Las Vegas every year, along with 4,500 exhibitors from 160 countries for the self-styled “global stage for innovation”. And, secretly, I’m a tiny bit jealous I’m not amongst them. Even if it would mean losing measurable years of my life in taxi queues.