There was a moment at the very end of Platonov at the Barbican when the talking was over and I suddenly felt released from 3 ¼ hours of concentration on the actors (performing in Russian), whilst at the same time reading the surtitles which were placed very high in the theatre, and trying to take in all the other things happening on stage: the lights dimmed and then glowed; the dead Platonov lay floating in the onstage river; up above, other characters were sat around a dining table, frozen in time; the light had a golden quality to it; rain poured down onto the set. At that moment it dawned on me, and everyone else in the theatre I suspect, what an incredible event we had just witnessed. I didn’t realise it earlier simply because I had been so absorbed in it all.
An old lady behind me described it as total theatre. I think in particular she was comparing the Maly Drama Theatre of St Petersburg to Johan Cruyff’s 1970s Dutch team for whom the phrase “total football” was coined. The point of total football was that any player could perform in any position, so defenders would attack and attackers defend. Here similarly the actors swam and jumped, played music and sang, shifted furniture and laid tables for dinner.
The set was magnificent and multi-layered, including the river, a beach, and three levels of house. This allowed there always to be something going on in the background, with characters drifting in and out of scenes, which made sense given Chekov’s complicated multi-layered text.
But what most impressed me was that strange power of osmosis that can exist where things are communicated without being spoken. In particular was a sense of claustrophobia and “stuckism” and ennui. These characters are bored, stuck in their provincial estate, with nothing but gossip and seduction to keep them entertained – in such a backwater a brilliant man like Platonov once was can quickly stagnate into a boorish drunk without anyone noticing. Platonov himself, like his hero Hamlet, is cursed with knowledge of his own inevitable tragedy. All he can do is warn the various women infatuated with him of the inevitable consequence of pursuing him, and admit that he will not be strong enough to resist them if they insist. They cannot resist of course.
Platonov was an early, sprawling, and very long work by Chekov, and whilst there were times in the second half when the production threatened to lose control and shape, it managed to cling onto coherence, gathering momentum in its closing scenes until that final wordless image.
In a word, marvellous.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Sunday, March 18, 2007
AIR - The Forum - 16/3/07
Sometimes you know words can't describe. It was lovely. Here are some photos instead.
Optronica - Semiconductor/Atlas/Fennesz
So how do you listen to music? Do you concentrate on every note, perhaps following the score as someone at the Mahler gig was doing? Or just let it wash over you, and enjoy the way your mind wanders?
I spent a large part of my visit to Optronica, London’s leading festival dedicated to the fusion of music and visuals, or something like that, contemplating this question. The visual part of the mix was somewhere between the kind of vj (as opposed to dj) experience you get in clubs, and digital art, and was mixed or generated live, so a similar question to that posed above arises – how do you watch it, in the absence of narrative, plot, characters and conventional aesthetics?
I went to a double header at IMAX.
First up were Semiconductor showing two pieces. In the first the visuals were generated by the soundtrack, which was kind of tinkly abstract electronica. The visuals were a bit frantic, mostly lines or polygons, and, large on the IMAX screen, all the frenetic flickering was somewhat nausea inducing. I could see one of the artist’s laptop monitor and it looked much better on that than on the big screen. The best parts resembled a digital walk through of some weird architect’s world where physical objects seemed to grow and mutate organically and a little sinisterly.
The second piece, Brilliant Noise, was much more interesting, and originated from Semiconductor’s period as artists in residence at NASA. The visuals were I think taken from film of activity on the sun’s surface. It started off looking like the northern lights in reverse, but became more abstract and affecting, cosmic and sinewy and Blakean. Again the soundtrack was abstract electronica, I think they said generated by the brightness of the images.
The second half was a collaboration between Charles Atlas (him again – see my review of Anthony and the Johnson’s Turning last year) on visuals and Christian Fennesz on laptop and guitar. Fennesz is one of a number of electronic music makers heavily influenced by those heroes of the noisey shoegazing fraternity, My Bloody Valentine, so there were lots of droney loud guitar noise-soups, although I preferred his quieter ambient moments. Atlas cut up bits of old films with some sparingly used and pretty special effects in much the way a laptop musican would, layering loops on top of each other with variations and variable synching. The result was hypnotic and yes did seem to send my mind racing in a way similar to a pure musical experience, and I found I had to abandon concentrating on specific images and just let the general feeling of them wash over me. Particularly effective was the repeated image of a flame being applied to handcuffed hands which writhe as they try to escape. I also enjoyed a segment where the left side of a face kept blurring which had me wondering if something was going wrong with my neurological system. I would even go so far as to describe some of it as being Lynchian, that peculiar hybrid of the weird and the curiously, emotionally, affecting, and there’s no higher praise in my book
In conclusion, the musical aspects were a little disappointing – nothing new or original there. The visuals were interesting, but at the time left me wondering whether they were as ephemeral as the visuals in a club, or as unsatisfying as the video art that’s all the rage these days. But to my surprise, both the sunspot piece by Semiconductor and Atlas’s work have stayed with me, so I have to allow that indeed there was something interesting and meaningful going on.
I spent a large part of my visit to Optronica, London’s leading festival dedicated to the fusion of music and visuals, or something like that, contemplating this question. The visual part of the mix was somewhere between the kind of vj (as opposed to dj) experience you get in clubs, and digital art, and was mixed or generated live, so a similar question to that posed above arises – how do you watch it, in the absence of narrative, plot, characters and conventional aesthetics?
I went to a double header at IMAX.
First up were Semiconductor showing two pieces. In the first the visuals were generated by the soundtrack, which was kind of tinkly abstract electronica. The visuals were a bit frantic, mostly lines or polygons, and, large on the IMAX screen, all the frenetic flickering was somewhat nausea inducing. I could see one of the artist’s laptop monitor and it looked much better on that than on the big screen. The best parts resembled a digital walk through of some weird architect’s world where physical objects seemed to grow and mutate organically and a little sinisterly.
The second piece, Brilliant Noise, was much more interesting, and originated from Semiconductor’s period as artists in residence at NASA. The visuals were I think taken from film of activity on the sun’s surface. It started off looking like the northern lights in reverse, but became more abstract and affecting, cosmic and sinewy and Blakean. Again the soundtrack was abstract electronica, I think they said generated by the brightness of the images.
The second half was a collaboration between Charles Atlas (him again – see my review of Anthony and the Johnson’s Turning last year) on visuals and Christian Fennesz on laptop and guitar. Fennesz is one of a number of electronic music makers heavily influenced by those heroes of the noisey shoegazing fraternity, My Bloody Valentine, so there were lots of droney loud guitar noise-soups, although I preferred his quieter ambient moments. Atlas cut up bits of old films with some sparingly used and pretty special effects in much the way a laptop musican would, layering loops on top of each other with variations and variable synching. The result was hypnotic and yes did seem to send my mind racing in a way similar to a pure musical experience, and I found I had to abandon concentrating on specific images and just let the general feeling of them wash over me. Particularly effective was the repeated image of a flame being applied to handcuffed hands which writhe as they try to escape. I also enjoyed a segment where the left side of a face kept blurring which had me wondering if something was going wrong with my neurological system. I would even go so far as to describe some of it as being Lynchian, that peculiar hybrid of the weird and the curiously, emotionally, affecting, and there’s no higher praise in my book
In conclusion, the musical aspects were a little disappointing – nothing new or original there. The visuals were interesting, but at the time left me wondering whether they were as ephemeral as the visuals in a club, or as unsatisfying as the video art that’s all the rage these days. But to my surprise, both the sunspot piece by Semiconductor and Atlas’s work have stayed with me, so I have to allow that indeed there was something interesting and meaningful going on.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
weird bird
anyone know what that bird is that seems to be everywhere at the moment making a noise like a ruler being twanged on the side of a desk?
Monday, March 12, 2007
Mahler 2
At the very core of String Theory is the idea that the universe, when divided into the smallest indivisible unit of stuff, is made of one dimensional vibrating strings. This theory is exciting to new age types because, well it’s the vibes man.
It’s an attractive theory to me because it might go some way to explaining why music has the ability to so utterly transform us. It’s not just the melody, although that can make us cry or transport us instantly to where we were ten or so years ago, as we sat in a little Crêperie up a mountain in France hearing Air’s “Kelly Watch the Stars” for the first time. It’s not just the rhythm, although that can, with a grunt from the Godfather and a riff from the funky drummer hitting it on the one, make us dance like crazed animals. It’s not just the lyrics, which, in a tune like the Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back”, can make you declare undying love for an ex-girlfriend in the middle of an office party on a boat on the Thames with no possible escape from the humiliation.
No, there is more going on. It’s the frequencies.
“Can we change these frequencies?
Can we trade them in for dreams?
Can we stay asleep for them?
And Lucifer, if we say please, can we keep them?”
sang Thee More Shallows in their post-rock classic “Walk of Shame” and yes indeed, although for another day, we know that popular music is the devil’s music, stemming as it does from the moment Robert Johnson stood at the Crossroads and sold his soul in return for immortality. But all that tells us is that the vibes can be used as a force for good or a force for evil (although the devil has all the best tunes).
In some of last years more experimental gigs, particularly Ryoji Ikeda at the Barbican, you could feel the vibrations of different low end frequencies scanning your body, the bass mashing up your legs, stomach, and chest. Similarly some of the weird noises in the Photophonic Experiment you felt as much as heard.
And some music has the ability to make you feel like your head is being washed and massaged – in this category I would include Mystical Sun. His cd “Primordial Atmospheres” boasts of using “brain entraining binaural beats” to “induce and enhance the body’s autonomic responses to primordial sounds”. You are advised to listen through headphones as some of the tracks are designed to co-ordinate and balance the left and right hemispheres of your brain. If you think that sounds daft, consider that it has long been suggested that listening to Mozart’s works for two pianos will improve children’s intelligence; the suggestion is that something in the interweaving patterns stimulates the brain.
All of which is a round about way of explaining how it came to pass that, in my efforts to open up the channels in my brain, I found myself saying to Big Ol that I was thinking of exploring classical music. “Try Mahler’s Second” said Big Ol. That was Tuesday last week. And with remarkable serendipity, I went on the net and found the LSO were performing Mahler 2 (as they call it) last night and that there was one seat left in the whole of the Barbican Hall, in a good position, and it quickly had my name on it.
It must be 8 years since my last classical gig, a solo recital on the fortepiano (as opposed to the pianoforte) by a Russian lady with very small hands who my colleague Lady M. of K. had helped secure a UK passport for. Lady M was now trying to secure a nice Jewish husband for her client. I was to be that man. I took my brother along for moral support and it was a good job I did because I could not keep my eyes open during the concert at the Wigmore Hall. Only his constant nudging saved me from humiliation. Well I didn’t fancy her (small hands you see, no good) so that was that.
Back at the Barbican, I allowed myself a coffee (from a big metal flask behind the bar, no milk – The Latte Days would not have been impressed) and, a little nervous, settled into my seat. My goodness there were a lot of people on stage. 200 odd at least.
They say Mahler was Jewish but I have my doubts because 100 or so were singers who just sat there until ten minutes before the end – you’d never have got away with that at Farnham & Co – “do you really need 100, can’t you make do with 50, and give them something to do, you can’t just have them sitting around doing nothing, I’m certainly not going to pay them for just sitting there…And all those violins, ach!)
The first movement or act (whatever you call it) went quite well – I got myself into a good mental zone. Then there was a little break and an outpouring of suppressed coughing from the audience, accompanied by some childish sniggering at the silliness of the coughing. And I made a fatal error. I popped a Halls Soother in my mouth. I thought there would be a longer pause, but no, they were off, and into a very quiet section. I could hear the sweet rattling against my teeth – I should say that there was an effect not unlike meditation, whereby every sound around you becomes amplified. Every time I swallowed, the glandular squeezing sound seemed to echo around me, and to make it worse my saliva ducts went into frenzied overdrive. The lady next to me seemed to be staring hard at me from the very corner of her eye (or maybe it was my imagination). Time slowed. The sweet would not dissolve. Oh if only Big Ol were here, I moaned (silently), he would not have let me make such a schoolboy error. The second act finished and I crunched the Soother away with relish and relief.
From there on things seemed to go very quickly indeed. There were some lovely bits, some loud bits, another ghostly experience when the orchestra fell silent, but the conductor carried on and music wafted in from outside (at first I thought it was pre-recorded, but I saw in the programme notes there were a bunch of people listed as being “outside the hall" – strangely enough I saw the other side of this the night before - waiting to go into the Mira Calix gig – as the fella was toasting my mozzarella and tomato panini in the hall of the Queen Elizabeth Hall, some musicians gathered by the entrance to the theatre, played a burst of some marching music, then buggered off).
Things got very dramatic, the chorus rose, then a bit later they sang too. A couple of women in nice frocks did some singing too. Then everyone played and sang together – it was loud, dramatic and very nice. Suddenly it was Austin Rover, game over. Everyone looked very happy. There was a lot of clapping. And I was home by 10.
Well, I enjoyed it. Maybe I was a little uncomfortable, as in out of my comfort zone, which is always a good thing. I know my mind was racing for a lot of the time with quite profound thoughts, but as soon as it was over I couldn’t remember any of them. The time passed very quickly too, which must be a good sign. I would definitely do it again.
There was a lady in the orchestra who looked a bit like a pretty Asian girl who was at Farnham & Co. In the night, I had a very pleasant dream about that girl, culminating in her enveloping me in her surprisingly warm and soft breasts (like freshly baked rolls they were).
And waking up this morning, I do feel as though my brain has had quite a good work out.
Must have been the vibes.
It’s an attractive theory to me because it might go some way to explaining why music has the ability to so utterly transform us. It’s not just the melody, although that can make us cry or transport us instantly to where we were ten or so years ago, as we sat in a little Crêperie up a mountain in France hearing Air’s “Kelly Watch the Stars” for the first time. It’s not just the rhythm, although that can, with a grunt from the Godfather and a riff from the funky drummer hitting it on the one, make us dance like crazed animals. It’s not just the lyrics, which, in a tune like the Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back”, can make you declare undying love for an ex-girlfriend in the middle of an office party on a boat on the Thames with no possible escape from the humiliation.
No, there is more going on. It’s the frequencies.
“Can we change these frequencies?
Can we trade them in for dreams?
Can we stay asleep for them?
And Lucifer, if we say please, can we keep them?”
sang Thee More Shallows in their post-rock classic “Walk of Shame” and yes indeed, although for another day, we know that popular music is the devil’s music, stemming as it does from the moment Robert Johnson stood at the Crossroads and sold his soul in return for immortality. But all that tells us is that the vibes can be used as a force for good or a force for evil (although the devil has all the best tunes).
In some of last years more experimental gigs, particularly Ryoji Ikeda at the Barbican, you could feel the vibrations of different low end frequencies scanning your body, the bass mashing up your legs, stomach, and chest. Similarly some of the weird noises in the Photophonic Experiment you felt as much as heard.
And some music has the ability to make you feel like your head is being washed and massaged – in this category I would include Mystical Sun. His cd “Primordial Atmospheres” boasts of using “brain entraining binaural beats” to “induce and enhance the body’s autonomic responses to primordial sounds”. You are advised to listen through headphones as some of the tracks are designed to co-ordinate and balance the left and right hemispheres of your brain. If you think that sounds daft, consider that it has long been suggested that listening to Mozart’s works for two pianos will improve children’s intelligence; the suggestion is that something in the interweaving patterns stimulates the brain.
All of which is a round about way of explaining how it came to pass that, in my efforts to open up the channels in my brain, I found myself saying to Big Ol that I was thinking of exploring classical music. “Try Mahler’s Second” said Big Ol. That was Tuesday last week. And with remarkable serendipity, I went on the net and found the LSO were performing Mahler 2 (as they call it) last night and that there was one seat left in the whole of the Barbican Hall, in a good position, and it quickly had my name on it.
It must be 8 years since my last classical gig, a solo recital on the fortepiano (as opposed to the pianoforte) by a Russian lady with very small hands who my colleague Lady M. of K. had helped secure a UK passport for. Lady M was now trying to secure a nice Jewish husband for her client. I was to be that man. I took my brother along for moral support and it was a good job I did because I could not keep my eyes open during the concert at the Wigmore Hall. Only his constant nudging saved me from humiliation. Well I didn’t fancy her (small hands you see, no good) so that was that.
Back at the Barbican, I allowed myself a coffee (from a big metal flask behind the bar, no milk – The Latte Days would not have been impressed) and, a little nervous, settled into my seat. My goodness there were a lot of people on stage. 200 odd at least.
They say Mahler was Jewish but I have my doubts because 100 or so were singers who just sat there until ten minutes before the end – you’d never have got away with that at Farnham & Co – “do you really need 100, can’t you make do with 50, and give them something to do, you can’t just have them sitting around doing nothing, I’m certainly not going to pay them for just sitting there…And all those violins, ach!)
The first movement or act (whatever you call it) went quite well – I got myself into a good mental zone. Then there was a little break and an outpouring of suppressed coughing from the audience, accompanied by some childish sniggering at the silliness of the coughing. And I made a fatal error. I popped a Halls Soother in my mouth. I thought there would be a longer pause, but no, they were off, and into a very quiet section. I could hear the sweet rattling against my teeth – I should say that there was an effect not unlike meditation, whereby every sound around you becomes amplified. Every time I swallowed, the glandular squeezing sound seemed to echo around me, and to make it worse my saliva ducts went into frenzied overdrive. The lady next to me seemed to be staring hard at me from the very corner of her eye (or maybe it was my imagination). Time slowed. The sweet would not dissolve. Oh if only Big Ol were here, I moaned (silently), he would not have let me make such a schoolboy error. The second act finished and I crunched the Soother away with relish and relief.
From there on things seemed to go very quickly indeed. There were some lovely bits, some loud bits, another ghostly experience when the orchestra fell silent, but the conductor carried on and music wafted in from outside (at first I thought it was pre-recorded, but I saw in the programme notes there were a bunch of people listed as being “outside the hall" – strangely enough I saw the other side of this the night before - waiting to go into the Mira Calix gig – as the fella was toasting my mozzarella and tomato panini in the hall of the Queen Elizabeth Hall, some musicians gathered by the entrance to the theatre, played a burst of some marching music, then buggered off).
Things got very dramatic, the chorus rose, then a bit later they sang too. A couple of women in nice frocks did some singing too. Then everyone played and sang together – it was loud, dramatic and very nice. Suddenly it was Austin Rover, game over. Everyone looked very happy. There was a lot of clapping. And I was home by 10.
Well, I enjoyed it. Maybe I was a little uncomfortable, as in out of my comfort zone, which is always a good thing. I know my mind was racing for a lot of the time with quite profound thoughts, but as soon as it was over I couldn’t remember any of them. The time passed very quickly too, which must be a good sign. I would definitely do it again.
There was a lady in the orchestra who looked a bit like a pretty Asian girl who was at Farnham & Co. In the night, I had a very pleasant dream about that girl, culminating in her enveloping me in her surprisingly warm and soft breasts (like freshly baked rolls they were).
And waking up this morning, I do feel as though my brain has had quite a good work out.
Must have been the vibes.
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Mira Calix / the Man of Mode
On stage, against a black curtain, stand two musicians, each wearing a black suit and black t shirt. The only light comes from a small bulb set into the music stands in front of them. One holds a violin, the other a cello.
They have been playing a repeated riff for some time. Only now do I realise that their hands have ceased to move, although the sounds of their instruments fill the room.
Further along the stage is a table draped in a black cloth. On the table is a box with a dozen or more wires poking out. Next to the box is a silver laptop. The only light comes from a small lamp in the corner of the table and from the half bitten apple logo on the laptop.
Sitting behind the table, mostly hidden from view, Mira Calix is weaving a ghostly magic as compelling as any Victorian table turner. Instead of ectoplasm, her materials are electricity and sound – electroplasm.
I am in the Purcell Room at the South Bank. Next door, in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment are recreating a long lost opera. In here, I feel that I am listening to the Orchestra of the Age of Disenlightenment, a new variant classical music for our time of confusion and disarray. It is a thick sound, like quicksand, a sound you sink into. But sinking in, you find a strange sense of calm, of space to think in.
Some of the audience, expecting beats and bleeps, walk out. They are young and our society has lost the ability to sit and listen, the pleasure of losing oneself in music. Their thumbs ache to get back to texting and gaming. I am only just relearning the art of stillness, and this proves the perfect gig at the perfect moment.
Earlier we were entertained by Gong Gong, an arty French electro outfit who also used chamber instruments in their act, to more punk-funk effect. Members of the group busied themselves hanging pieces of cardboard or balloons around the set onto which frantic images were projected. It was impossible to dislike them although I won’t be rushing out to buy their music.
Earlier still, earlier even than the couple of hours spent in a very weird pub opposite Waterloo, a kind of Swiss ski-ing chalet, an alpine wooden box, squeezed into a railway arch, where I watched the United game, I was at the National to see The Man of Mode.
The best thing about it was the production, meaning the design and thinking behind the thing. It was set in a very contemporary London of Sunday supplement interior designs, Selfridges, mobiles and laptops, hoodies and free running. Very flashy and stylish. One of the subplots, concerning an arranged marriage, was played by Asian actors cos like you get arranged marriages in some Asian families (they could have gone Charedi but I don’t think the black hats and coats would have fitted the colour scheme very well). Ok, so, I enjoyed the cleverness of how they made the text fit the setting, or was it vice versa.
I had two main problems though. First was the very poor vocal projection of the actors, particularly Tom Hardy in the lead role of Dorimant, and I was in the front stalls – I hate to think what it was like for the people at the back. I couldn’t help feeling he was picked for his physique (he spent large parts of the show with his shirt off) than for his acting. The second problem was that I just did not find the acting sparky enough – Restoration sex comedies hang entirely on the idea of the deliciousness of the seduction game. Of the three women pursued by Dorimant, only Harriet, played by Amber Agar, had a sense of sparkle and energy about her. Again Tom Hardy’s flat Dorimant was part of the problem – the character is frequently described as a “wit” as opposed to a “fop” but you got no sense of this from his performance, nor was there any sizzle between him and the ladies he was trying to seduce, with the exception of one moment when he found his head between the legs of Mrs Loveit. Aside from that moment, you were hard pressed to believe that Mrs Loveit loved it at all.
I wondered whether this was intentional – that in giving the play a modern setting, Nicholas Hytner's direction had gone a step further and attempted to capture the casualness of modern crass sexual behaviour, driven by mass media and boredom booze pills and throw(n)away morality, but I am not convinced. In any event that would be where the comparison between the Restoration period and now would end. For there was nothing casual about the sex in Restoration times – it was a very serious pursuit, a science and an art. Maybe I wouldn’t have been so down on the play if I could have heard half of what the actors were saying! Then again, maybe all the surface flashiness masking the emptiness lying beneath really was a production for our times?
They have been playing a repeated riff for some time. Only now do I realise that their hands have ceased to move, although the sounds of their instruments fill the room.
Further along the stage is a table draped in a black cloth. On the table is a box with a dozen or more wires poking out. Next to the box is a silver laptop. The only light comes from a small lamp in the corner of the table and from the half bitten apple logo on the laptop.
Sitting behind the table, mostly hidden from view, Mira Calix is weaving a ghostly magic as compelling as any Victorian table turner. Instead of ectoplasm, her materials are electricity and sound – electroplasm.
I am in the Purcell Room at the South Bank. Next door, in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment are recreating a long lost opera. In here, I feel that I am listening to the Orchestra of the Age of Disenlightenment, a new variant classical music for our time of confusion and disarray. It is a thick sound, like quicksand, a sound you sink into. But sinking in, you find a strange sense of calm, of space to think in.
Some of the audience, expecting beats and bleeps, walk out. They are young and our society has lost the ability to sit and listen, the pleasure of losing oneself in music. Their thumbs ache to get back to texting and gaming. I am only just relearning the art of stillness, and this proves the perfect gig at the perfect moment.
Earlier we were entertained by Gong Gong, an arty French electro outfit who also used chamber instruments in their act, to more punk-funk effect. Members of the group busied themselves hanging pieces of cardboard or balloons around the set onto which frantic images were projected. It was impossible to dislike them although I won’t be rushing out to buy their music.
Earlier still, earlier even than the couple of hours spent in a very weird pub opposite Waterloo, a kind of Swiss ski-ing chalet, an alpine wooden box, squeezed into a railway arch, where I watched the United game, I was at the National to see The Man of Mode.
The best thing about it was the production, meaning the design and thinking behind the thing. It was set in a very contemporary London of Sunday supplement interior designs, Selfridges, mobiles and laptops, hoodies and free running. Very flashy and stylish. One of the subplots, concerning an arranged marriage, was played by Asian actors cos like you get arranged marriages in some Asian families (they could have gone Charedi but I don’t think the black hats and coats would have fitted the colour scheme very well). Ok, so, I enjoyed the cleverness of how they made the text fit the setting, or was it vice versa.
I had two main problems though. First was the very poor vocal projection of the actors, particularly Tom Hardy in the lead role of Dorimant, and I was in the front stalls – I hate to think what it was like for the people at the back. I couldn’t help feeling he was picked for his physique (he spent large parts of the show with his shirt off) than for his acting. The second problem was that I just did not find the acting sparky enough – Restoration sex comedies hang entirely on the idea of the deliciousness of the seduction game. Of the three women pursued by Dorimant, only Harriet, played by Amber Agar, had a sense of sparkle and energy about her. Again Tom Hardy’s flat Dorimant was part of the problem – the character is frequently described as a “wit” as opposed to a “fop” but you got no sense of this from his performance, nor was there any sizzle between him and the ladies he was trying to seduce, with the exception of one moment when he found his head between the legs of Mrs Loveit. Aside from that moment, you were hard pressed to believe that Mrs Loveit loved it at all.
I wondered whether this was intentional – that in giving the play a modern setting, Nicholas Hytner's direction had gone a step further and attempted to capture the casualness of modern crass sexual behaviour, driven by mass media and boredom booze pills and throw(n)away morality, but I am not convinced. In any event that would be where the comparison between the Restoration period and now would end. For there was nothing casual about the sex in Restoration times – it was a very serious pursuit, a science and an art. Maybe I wouldn’t have been so down on the play if I could have heard half of what the actors were saying! Then again, maybe all the surface flashiness masking the emptiness lying beneath really was a production for our times?
Friday, March 09, 2007
The Seagull
“Was that Ibsen or Chekov?” said the very smartly turned out old boy in front of me as we shuffled out of the Royal Court theatre. I know the feeling. After two Ibsens, time for the first in a series of three Chekovs, the next two in Russian with English surtitles, so this was a good warm up.
One of the Sunday Telegraph’s critics (not Charles Spencer, who seems to find everything wonderful) is part of something called CRAP (I kid you not) – the Campaign for Real Acting Performances or something like that, though it could as easily have been Critics Really Are Planks. What CRAP object to are “movie stars” taking a turn on the West End stage thereby displacing the “better” traditional thesps. They appear to have taken a particularly dim view of Daniel Radcliffe waving his quidditch about on stage.
This was one of those kinds of performance that CRAP object to, with a cast including Mackenzie Crook, Kristin Scott Thomas and, erm, Art Malik.
Just to prove what a load of crap CRAP is, this was a wonderful production. There wasn’t any sense of “isn’t that the bloke off…” although I would admit to a little frission down below when the lovely KST made her entrance.
It was acted in a very naturalistic, downbeat style which is much talked about but little seen. For me it is a style that works much better that the declamatory, shouty “I am an Actaaaw” style still prevalent.
The Royal Court was instantly one of my favourite theatre spaces – small with an old fashioned feeling in the auditorium, comfy light brown leather seats, a rather nice looking bar and restaurant area. I felt very much at home with the over 60s who made up the majority of the weekday matinee crowd.
All in all good fun, and the best thing KST’s done since “Under the Bitter Cherry Moon.”
One of the Sunday Telegraph’s critics (not Charles Spencer, who seems to find everything wonderful) is part of something called CRAP (I kid you not) – the Campaign for Real Acting Performances or something like that, though it could as easily have been Critics Really Are Planks. What CRAP object to are “movie stars” taking a turn on the West End stage thereby displacing the “better” traditional thesps. They appear to have taken a particularly dim view of Daniel Radcliffe waving his quidditch about on stage.
This was one of those kinds of performance that CRAP object to, with a cast including Mackenzie Crook, Kristin Scott Thomas and, erm, Art Malik.
Just to prove what a load of crap CRAP is, this was a wonderful production. There wasn’t any sense of “isn’t that the bloke off…” although I would admit to a little frission down below when the lovely KST made her entrance.
It was acted in a very naturalistic, downbeat style which is much talked about but little seen. For me it is a style that works much better that the declamatory, shouty “I am an Actaaaw” style still prevalent.
The Royal Court was instantly one of my favourite theatre spaces – small with an old fashioned feeling in the auditorium, comfy light brown leather seats, a rather nice looking bar and restaurant area. I felt very much at home with the over 60s who made up the majority of the weekday matinee crowd.
All in all good fun, and the best thing KST’s done since “Under the Bitter Cherry Moon.”
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
The Illusionist / Peer Gynt
I spent so much time at JBW (see below) that when Monday came round I had that peculiar feeling you have when you get back home after a couple of weeks on holiday; you are back in the routine but everything seems just a little bit different, fresher perhaps.
This would seem to have been the perfect mood to encounter The Illusionist. It stars Edward Norton who, like his brother Graham, is an odd looking chap, if only marginally less camp. He plays somebody called Abramovitch, who changes his name to Eisenheim to escape persecution by Arsene Wenger and his goon(er)s who don’t like him trying to shtup some posh bird called Sophie. Or something like that. He is haunted by his inability to disappear out of trouble and hence becomes a magician and medium. He is also haunted by the apparition of a terrible goatee beard and a Melvyn Bragg like bouffant hairdo. He is not the only one. “I imagined you with shorter hair and no beard” says Sophie when they are reunited years later; arguably the funniest line in cinematic history since “I want an extreme close-up on the kugel”.
It’s a bit dull and plodding and even I, who never can, could see the big twist coming a mile off. The time out reviewer tried to persuade me of a “Usual Suspects” like double twist (like the twist might only be a twist in the mind of the narrator, and can we really trust him) but I don’t buy that.
It’s shot in nice sepia tones and the magic performances, in a creaky old theatre not unlike the creaky old theatre I saw “Under the Lintel” in with my creaky old friends, are atmospheric, as is the depiction of turn of fin de siècle Vienna. Despite the name business, the film shies away from any suggestion that the aristos are motivated in their hatred of Abramovitch by anti-Semitism, or even mentioning that he might be Jewish, instead employing a semiological approach whereby Abramovitch and his “peasant” cohorts are signified by their wearing Pinter hats. Also Norton can’t seem to decide if he is going for a Viennese or Golders Green accent.
Talking of weird accents (nice and smooth transition if I say so myself) the evening found me at the Barbican for the National Theatre of Iceland’s production based on (rather than of) Peer Gynt. I took the precaution of reading the play beforehand, not knowing what language it would be in (they performed In English as it happened). I was glad I did, because I found the diction of the cast to be poor. OK English isn’t their first language but it was all a bit shouty.
Having said that, in the first half it didn’t matter at all, as the visual poetry of the production carried me along. Set in a lunatic asylum of dirty white walls and old fashioned hospital beds, the characters and actors were able to weave in and out of consciousness as though conjured by Peer Gynt’s, or Ibsen’s, or my imagination.
The second half was heavily edited from the text and as a result seemed to lose its centre; ironic in a play that’s all about whether the central character has been true to himself. The humour and energy of the first half seemed to dissipate and I found myself losing interest in Peer’s existential struggle. Then there was the crass reference to the Iraq war thrown in for good measure. And finally the production downplayed any sense that Peer finds redemption in the love of the long suffering Solveig, preferring a bleaker ending.
So a game of two halves, a powerful and memorable production but one which seemed to go astray somewhere after the interval.
This would seem to have been the perfect mood to encounter The Illusionist. It stars Edward Norton who, like his brother Graham, is an odd looking chap, if only marginally less camp. He plays somebody called Abramovitch, who changes his name to Eisenheim to escape persecution by Arsene Wenger and his goon(er)s who don’t like him trying to shtup some posh bird called Sophie. Or something like that. He is haunted by his inability to disappear out of trouble and hence becomes a magician and medium. He is also haunted by the apparition of a terrible goatee beard and a Melvyn Bragg like bouffant hairdo. He is not the only one. “I imagined you with shorter hair and no beard” says Sophie when they are reunited years later; arguably the funniest line in cinematic history since “I want an extreme close-up on the kugel”.
It’s a bit dull and plodding and even I, who never can, could see the big twist coming a mile off. The time out reviewer tried to persuade me of a “Usual Suspects” like double twist (like the twist might only be a twist in the mind of the narrator, and can we really trust him) but I don’t buy that.
It’s shot in nice sepia tones and the magic performances, in a creaky old theatre not unlike the creaky old theatre I saw “Under the Lintel” in with my creaky old friends, are atmospheric, as is the depiction of turn of fin de siècle Vienna. Despite the name business, the film shies away from any suggestion that the aristos are motivated in their hatred of Abramovitch by anti-Semitism, or even mentioning that he might be Jewish, instead employing a semiological approach whereby Abramovitch and his “peasant” cohorts are signified by their wearing Pinter hats. Also Norton can’t seem to decide if he is going for a Viennese or Golders Green accent.
Talking of weird accents (nice and smooth transition if I say so myself) the evening found me at the Barbican for the National Theatre of Iceland’s production based on (rather than of) Peer Gynt. I took the precaution of reading the play beforehand, not knowing what language it would be in (they performed In English as it happened). I was glad I did, because I found the diction of the cast to be poor. OK English isn’t their first language but it was all a bit shouty.
Having said that, in the first half it didn’t matter at all, as the visual poetry of the production carried me along. Set in a lunatic asylum of dirty white walls and old fashioned hospital beds, the characters and actors were able to weave in and out of consciousness as though conjured by Peer Gynt’s, or Ibsen’s, or my imagination.
The second half was heavily edited from the text and as a result seemed to lose its centre; ironic in a play that’s all about whether the central character has been true to himself. The humour and energy of the first half seemed to dissipate and I found myself losing interest in Peer’s existential struggle. Then there was the crass reference to the Iraq war thrown in for good measure. And finally the production downplayed any sense that Peer finds redemption in the love of the long suffering Solveig, preferring a bleaker ending.
So a game of two halves, a powerful and memorable production but one which seemed to go astray somewhere after the interval.
TWTJBWTW
So that was the Jewish Book Week that was.
Here’s a list of things I never thought I would hear spoken there.
“My brother was the first soldier to be thrown out of the IDF for practising paganism.”
“I’m a great fan of perversions – I’ve tried to engage in as many of them as I can.”
“Have you read the New Testament? It’s a beautiful thing. It’s all there in Isaiah you know. Would you like a leaflet?”
“I gather Kristeva and Butler are out, Lacan is in.”
Highlights for me were Etgar Keret for his warmth and ability to reduce great stories to a very macro human level, and Joann Sfar for his energy and enthusiasm.
I also enjoyed Edgardo Cozarinsky and Gabriel Josipovici who both spoke very interestingly about their creative struggles and techniques.
Duds of the week were Jonny Geller / “Sol Bernstein” for the least funny discussion of Jewish comedy since the children of Israel started worshipping the Golden Calf, and Judith Butler for managing to speak for half an hour deconstructing the idea that Israel was acting in self-defence during the Lebanon war last year, whilst not once mentioning Hizbollah.
Here’s a list of things I never thought I would hear spoken there.
“My brother was the first soldier to be thrown out of the IDF for practising paganism.”
“I’m a great fan of perversions – I’ve tried to engage in as many of them as I can.”
“Have you read the New Testament? It’s a beautiful thing. It’s all there in Isaiah you know. Would you like a leaflet?”
“I gather Kristeva and Butler are out, Lacan is in.”
Highlights for me were Etgar Keret for his warmth and ability to reduce great stories to a very macro human level, and Joann Sfar for his energy and enthusiasm.
I also enjoyed Edgardo Cozarinsky and Gabriel Josipovici who both spoke very interestingly about their creative struggles and techniques.
Duds of the week were Jonny Geller / “Sol Bernstein” for the least funny discussion of Jewish comedy since the children of Israel started worshipping the Golden Calf, and Judith Butler for managing to speak for half an hour deconstructing the idea that Israel was acting in self-defence during the Lebanon war last year, whilst not once mentioning Hizbollah.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Chi in the Park
In between
The rain storms
In between a gap in the rainstorms, I took myself up for a stroll around Avenue House, as I frequently do in the search for inspiration and perspiration.
On the paved section in front of the hut that stands for a caff, a man was practising advanced tai chi moves with a sword. As a tai chi novice of 6 weeks, I stopped to have a chat with him about tai chi. Our chat was interrupted by the appearance of two police offices. “’Ello ‘ello ‘ello” said one, no really, “we’ve had reports of someone in the park wielding a sword”.
Anyway the tai chi chap explained what he was doing and that the swords (he had two) were blunt. The coppers inspected them and took his details. His name was something like Naftali Goldblatt. I’m thinking he was Israeli. There was an awkward moment when after one question too many he asked the coppers if they wanted to know the name of the last girl he shagged. I interjected that I did, but I was ignored. “That won’t be necessary” said the primary copper. After a pause, the copper said “I detect a note of sarcasm.” Yeah well done mate! Anyway the awkward moment passed and tai chi man packed up his swords and the coppers trundled off.
“What I shame” I said to him, as I had been looking forward to seeing his moves and taking some photos for you lovely readers. We had a further chat about tai chi and the importance of balance in movement and he asked me if I knew the Taoist Walking Meditation. As I didn’t, he explained it to me. You inhale for two steps, hold your breath for one step, exhale for two steps, hold for one step. 1 - 2 - 1 -2 - 1-2 et seq.
I did a further perambulation of the park, and found the Meditation surprisingly difficult to keep up, but when you get into a routine you really do lose yourself in it. Recommended.
The rain storms
In between a gap in the rainstorms, I took myself up for a stroll around Avenue House, as I frequently do in the search for inspiration and perspiration.
On the paved section in front of the hut that stands for a caff, a man was practising advanced tai chi moves with a sword. As a tai chi novice of 6 weeks, I stopped to have a chat with him about tai chi. Our chat was interrupted by the appearance of two police offices. “’Ello ‘ello ‘ello” said one, no really, “we’ve had reports of someone in the park wielding a sword”.
Anyway the tai chi chap explained what he was doing and that the swords (he had two) were blunt. The coppers inspected them and took his details. His name was something like Naftali Goldblatt. I’m thinking he was Israeli. There was an awkward moment when after one question too many he asked the coppers if they wanted to know the name of the last girl he shagged. I interjected that I did, but I was ignored. “That won’t be necessary” said the primary copper. After a pause, the copper said “I detect a note of sarcasm.” Yeah well done mate! Anyway the awkward moment passed and tai chi man packed up his swords and the coppers trundled off.
“What I shame” I said to him, as I had been looking forward to seeing his moves and taking some photos for you lovely readers. We had a further chat about tai chi and the importance of balance in movement and he asked me if I knew the Taoist Walking Meditation. As I didn’t, he explained it to me. You inhale for two steps, hold your breath for one step, exhale for two steps, hold for one step. 1 - 2 - 1 -2 - 1-2 et seq.
I did a further perambulation of the park, and found the Meditation surprisingly difficult to keep up, but when you get into a routine you really do lose yourself in it. Recommended.
Zen Temple Food (Shojin Ryori)
The Latte Days sent me the following question:
“Do u ever buy frozen edemame? If you do, do you find that after boiling them there are still remnants of a little worm, in at least one soya bean, who has managed to break-in seeking solitude perhaps or a good meal.
I just wondered as you appear to have taste for sushi.”
Hmmm.
Edemame, also known as edamame, is a green vegetable more commonly known as a soybean, harvested at the peak of ripening right before it reaches the "hardening" time. The word Edamame means "Beans on Branches," and it grows in clusters on bushy branches.
Personally I don't go for frozen (or fresh) edemame beans, so I have never experienced the worm effect. I should have thought that the worm should be treated with the same concern as one would if one found one in an apple or other vegetable or fruit product. Of course they say that sushi is riddled with worms, but I think they are talking about microscopic organisms invisible to the naked eye.
My advice would be to follow the principles of Zen Temple Food; namely that a meal should be taken just to escape hunger, as this is the best way to heal the body. Luxurious food is not allowed. Whilst a meal should be simple, this does not mean that it needn't have many different ingredients (see picture attached, taken in the Ikkyu restaurant in Kyoto - they purvey vegetarian food to the monks of the Daitoku Temple.)
If that fails then maybe try buying one of those miniature Zen gardens and see if that will entice the worms out. Even if it doesn't help the worm, it may help your soul.
“Do u ever buy frozen edemame? If you do, do you find that after boiling them there are still remnants of a little worm, in at least one soya bean, who has managed to break-in seeking solitude perhaps or a good meal.
I just wondered as you appear to have taste for sushi.”
Hmmm.
Edemame, also known as edamame, is a green vegetable more commonly known as a soybean, harvested at the peak of ripening right before it reaches the "hardening" time. The word Edamame means "Beans on Branches," and it grows in clusters on bushy branches.
Personally I don't go for frozen (or fresh) edemame beans, so I have never experienced the worm effect. I should have thought that the worm should be treated with the same concern as one would if one found one in an apple or other vegetable or fruit product. Of course they say that sushi is riddled with worms, but I think they are talking about microscopic organisms invisible to the naked eye.
My advice would be to follow the principles of Zen Temple Food; namely that a meal should be taken just to escape hunger, as this is the best way to heal the body. Luxurious food is not allowed. Whilst a meal should be simple, this does not mean that it needn't have many different ingredients (see picture attached, taken in the Ikkyu restaurant in Kyoto - they purvey vegetarian food to the monks of the Daitoku Temple.)
If that fails then maybe try buying one of those miniature Zen gardens and see if that will entice the worms out. Even if it doesn't help the worm, it may help your soul.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
I must have been the first Jewish boy for about 2000 years to have been given the first name Jesus. Given, note, not Christened. Jesus is not my Christian name.
My Pop, bless his soul, had read how they kept finding these graves, ossuaries they called them, in Jerusalem, in the Holy Land, with the names Jesus Joseph and Mary engraved on them. The experts said they couldn’t have been the Jesus Joseph and Mary because they came from the Gallilee so wouldn’t all have been buried in Jerusalem, and in any event, and this was the bit that got Pop, Jesus and Joseph and Mary were common Jewish names in those days.
Well thought my Pop, if Jesus was a good Jewish name and we’re talking about the times of the second temple here, then I’m going to call my little puppy Jesus. A good Jewish name. In any event, it was a common name in Latin countries, as my Pop knew from his love of Cuban music and cigars, and it might prove an invaluable insurance policy if the bad times came again. What bad times he was thinking of I was never rightly sure. Maybe another inquisition.
And so I was named. To the rabbi I was Jesse, father of David, but to everyone else, I was Jesus. Jesus Goldblatt.
I’ve got to hand it to my Pop. At least he was consistent. He called my sister Mary.
My Pop, bless his soul, had read how they kept finding these graves, ossuaries they called them, in Jerusalem, in the Holy Land, with the names Jesus Joseph and Mary engraved on them. The experts said they couldn’t have been the Jesus Joseph and Mary because they came from the Gallilee so wouldn’t all have been buried in Jerusalem, and in any event, and this was the bit that got Pop, Jesus and Joseph and Mary were common Jewish names in those days.
Well thought my Pop, if Jesus was a good Jewish name and we’re talking about the times of the second temple here, then I’m going to call my little puppy Jesus. A good Jewish name. In any event, it was a common name in Latin countries, as my Pop knew from his love of Cuban music and cigars, and it might prove an invaluable insurance policy if the bad times came again. What bad times he was thinking of I was never rightly sure. Maybe another inquisition.
And so I was named. To the rabbi I was Jesse, father of David, but to everyone else, I was Jesus. Jesus Goldblatt.
I’ve got to hand it to my Pop. At least he was consistent. He called my sister Mary.
Monday, February 26, 2007
Notes on a Scandal
My abiding memory of Zoe Heller, who was in the year above me at Oxford, was her shoving copious quantities of cigarettes down Anglo Saxon tutor Vince “Dizzy” Gillespie’s top at our welcoming party. I remember her being a little scary, rumoured to be very bright, and that’s about it. Probably never spoke more than a dozen words to her.
Not much of a scandal, but I try my best.
I’ve settled into quite a nice routine now on Mondays. Pilates, salmon terryaki bento box, and cinema.
You will have guessed that this week it was the Screen on Baker Street and the film was Notes on a Scandal. I was very impressed. A very tight film, with little slack, it gets stuck in pretty much from the off and the pacing is good right to the end.
Dame Judy is fantastic and definitely Oscar worthy. I loved Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth but rapidly went off her due to her dull, worthy and overly serious “off screen persona”, but here she is very good – in fact her slightly irritating feyness works to the film’s advantage.
To me there was something of the quintessence of the Jacobean or Elizabethan tragedy about the plot – I’m thinking especially of the Changeling and Othello - as the two principal characters, with their fatal character flaws (lust, pride, envy, neediness) circle around each other like wayward kites bound to wrap their trailing ropes around each other and drag each other down to the ground.
Marvellous.
So good it either stopped the crinkly wrappers wrinkling or I didn’t notice.
Not much of a scandal, but I try my best.
I’ve settled into quite a nice routine now on Mondays. Pilates, salmon terryaki bento box, and cinema.
You will have guessed that this week it was the Screen on Baker Street and the film was Notes on a Scandal. I was very impressed. A very tight film, with little slack, it gets stuck in pretty much from the off and the pacing is good right to the end.
Dame Judy is fantastic and definitely Oscar worthy. I loved Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth but rapidly went off her due to her dull, worthy and overly serious “off screen persona”, but here she is very good – in fact her slightly irritating feyness works to the film’s advantage.
To me there was something of the quintessence of the Jacobean or Elizabethan tragedy about the plot – I’m thinking especially of the Changeling and Othello - as the two principal characters, with their fatal character flaws (lust, pride, envy, neediness) circle around each other like wayward kites bound to wrap their trailing ropes around each other and drag each other down to the ground.
Marvellous.
So good it either stopped the crinkly wrappers wrinkling or I didn’t notice.
Under The Lintel
There was a moment late on Thursday evening when I came to realise that Richard Schiff, star of television’s West Wing and currently appearing in “Under the Lintel” at the Duchess Theatre in the heart of London’s West End, really is a great actor. The moment came not during the show, but during a “Q&A” afterwards, when someone asked him whether he could give them advice for dealing with their post-West Wing withdrawal symptoms. Schiff screwed up his face and psychically conveyed the expression “get a life” whilst pretending to search for an appropriate answer so as not to give offence.
I liked the Duchess Theatre. Like my companions for the evening, it was small, old and creaky. It struck me as the sort of place where bad things really would happen if an actor were accidentally to give name to the “Scottish Play”.
“Under the Lintel” proved in its own way to be quite a creepy play. A monologue, in the form of a lecture by a Dutch former Librarian who becomes obsessed with tracing an overdue (over-jew?) book which he thinks leads to the trail of the Wandering Jew of Christian legend. As his quest develops, he loses job, girlfriend and eventually sanity, himself becoming a lonely decrepit figure, cursed to wander the world delivering his talk to half-filled theatres mostly containing slightly perplexed Jews who have been sold the play on the basis that it is somehow about them (which it clearly isn’t).
I enjoyed it. The text was well structured and had some lovely moments where themes looped round and repeated with variations. I wasn’t so keen on the accent, but otherwise Schiff was convincing and managed to hold my attention with little danger of my falling asleep (see the Auden reading below!)
Afterwards I ate too much cake and I think my pal Ricardo Silverfish was rude to the waitress who may have spiked my decaf coffee with caffeine in revenge – I dunno, but I had a very troubled night’s sleep. Maybe it was just the ghost of the Wandering Jew.
I liked the Duchess Theatre. Like my companions for the evening, it was small, old and creaky. It struck me as the sort of place where bad things really would happen if an actor were accidentally to give name to the “Scottish Play”.
“Under the Lintel” proved in its own way to be quite a creepy play. A monologue, in the form of a lecture by a Dutch former Librarian who becomes obsessed with tracing an overdue (over-jew?) book which he thinks leads to the trail of the Wandering Jew of Christian legend. As his quest develops, he loses job, girlfriend and eventually sanity, himself becoming a lonely decrepit figure, cursed to wander the world delivering his talk to half-filled theatres mostly containing slightly perplexed Jews who have been sold the play on the basis that it is somehow about them (which it clearly isn’t).
I enjoyed it. The text was well structured and had some lovely moments where themes looped round and repeated with variations. I wasn’t so keen on the accent, but otherwise Schiff was convincing and managed to hold my attention with little danger of my falling asleep (see the Auden reading below!)
Afterwards I ate too much cake and I think my pal Ricardo Silverfish was rude to the waitress who may have spiked my decaf coffee with caffeine in revenge – I dunno, but I had a very troubled night’s sleep. Maybe it was just the ghost of the Wandering Jew.
Thursday, February 22, 2007
What's with all these crazy album names
Ahh Pocket Symphony. The new album from Air. It’s every thing I hoped for – so lush. I play it softly at night and it gives me nice dreams.
By the way, and to show that many a true word is spoken in jest even if you don’t know it at the time, the new album from Gruff Rhys – Candylion – is a very strong and lovely piece of work. Also a bit lush.
And some news of the Múm album – release date unknown but it is to be called go go smear the poison ivy, let your crooked hands be holy. Ahh
As for CocoRosie, they are going with The Adventures of Ghosthorse & Stillborn about which they say… “Rainbowarriors are on a crusade for the kind of drug-free America where the elected officials are tranny shaman and the religious leaders are winged evangelists who speak in tongues of Happy Core.
Rainbowarriors horse gallop through miles of balmy grass roads all the way to the swingset swamps. They witch water(???) and have witches for fathers; they hear disharmonies of sadness sung by drunken glowworms. They sleep in swollen barns; they sleep through silver nights.
Rainbowarriors live by the hero myth; Rainbowarriors ain’t nothin’ to fuck with.”
Birthed through an intricate process of prank phone calls and clairvoyant documentation, The Adventures of Ghosthorse & Stillborn follows CocoRosie and their crew of miscreants through the Mechanical Forest of Feelings.
“It was there we first confronted the Warlock, Laughing Crow, and buried the Black Dove.”
This album is a departure from the obscured blur of stained glass rêve to a more self-exploitive memoir. Parts are dreamy and parts are savage, but, as with an opera where death represents a secret heaven, the whole record feels like a black diamond in the snow. From her humble beginnings in the South of France, the saga sailed the Seven Seas all the way to that icy crack in the Earth’s crust just outside of Reykjavik. Uponher return to her Parisian homeland, she shared a mystical rendezvous with beautiful sailors Pierre et Gilles, the album cover being the consequence of that affair.
“We definitely moved to the afterhours of life and unpacked our bags for this endeavor.”
Sierra comes from the classical world: control, mastery, dominance. And the classical world has its own bulimia. Ballet, torturous feet and leg bending contraptions --classicalism is like contortionism. It’s a cruel circus, like hunting unicorns or killing My Little Pony.
Bianca, on the other hand, she’s more of a lazy-toed lobster, somewhat of a psychological pistol. Much in the same way as Bianca, “Stillborn” is definitely the littlest champion. She’s always ruminating on blurry words and they, in turn, are always mutating, changing, transforming.
If Jean Genet was the muse that inspired Noah’s Ark, the spirit guide for this album was Wee Willie Winkie. A pre-pubescent idol who never changes out of his bedtime clothes, Wee Willie Winkie runs through town, upstairs and downstairs in his nightgown, knocking on the window, crying through the lock "Are the children all in bed? It’s past eight o’clock.” He might have been an O.R.W. (original rainbowarrior).”
You only have until 10th April to wait.
By the way, and to show that many a true word is spoken in jest even if you don’t know it at the time, the new album from Gruff Rhys – Candylion – is a very strong and lovely piece of work. Also a bit lush.
And some news of the Múm album – release date unknown but it is to be called go go smear the poison ivy, let your crooked hands be holy. Ahh
As for CocoRosie, they are going with The Adventures of Ghosthorse & Stillborn about which they say… “Rainbowarriors are on a crusade for the kind of drug-free America where the elected officials are tranny shaman and the religious leaders are winged evangelists who speak in tongues of Happy Core.
Rainbowarriors horse gallop through miles of balmy grass roads all the way to the swingset swamps. They witch water(???) and have witches for fathers; they hear disharmonies of sadness sung by drunken glowworms. They sleep in swollen barns; they sleep through silver nights.
Rainbowarriors live by the hero myth; Rainbowarriors ain’t nothin’ to fuck with.”
Birthed through an intricate process of prank phone calls and clairvoyant documentation, The Adventures of Ghosthorse & Stillborn follows CocoRosie and their crew of miscreants through the Mechanical Forest of Feelings.
“It was there we first confronted the Warlock, Laughing Crow, and buried the Black Dove.”
This album is a departure from the obscured blur of stained glass rêve to a more self-exploitive memoir. Parts are dreamy and parts are savage, but, as with an opera where death represents a secret heaven, the whole record feels like a black diamond in the snow. From her humble beginnings in the South of France, the saga sailed the Seven Seas all the way to that icy crack in the Earth’s crust just outside of Reykjavik. Uponher return to her Parisian homeland, she shared a mystical rendezvous with beautiful sailors Pierre et Gilles, the album cover being the consequence of that affair.
“We definitely moved to the afterhours of life and unpacked our bags for this endeavor.”
Sierra comes from the classical world: control, mastery, dominance. And the classical world has its own bulimia. Ballet, torturous feet and leg bending contraptions --classicalism is like contortionism. It’s a cruel circus, like hunting unicorns or killing My Little Pony.
Bianca, on the other hand, she’s more of a lazy-toed lobster, somewhat of a psychological pistol. Much in the same way as Bianca, “Stillborn” is definitely the littlest champion. She’s always ruminating on blurry words and they, in turn, are always mutating, changing, transforming.
If Jean Genet was the muse that inspired Noah’s Ark, the spirit guide for this album was Wee Willie Winkie. A pre-pubescent idol who never changes out of his bedtime clothes, Wee Willie Winkie runs through town, upstairs and downstairs in his nightgown, knocking on the window, crying through the lock "Are the children all in bed? It’s past eight o’clock.” He might have been an O.R.W. (original rainbowarrior).”
You only have until 10th April to wait.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
A Life Less Audenary
Yeah check it. One two one two. You’ve gotta check yaself before ya wreck yaself. I’m here wid my main man, Mister Double-you Haitch Smith.
Or to put it another way, I’m just back from the British Library-hosted readings of poetry by WH Auden, today being the centenary of his birth.
Well the great and the good, or in this case a multitude of pale faced and serious looking people, crammed into the Shaw Theatre in various states of balding (men and women)
and beardage (men and women); there was a yarmulke, a couple of Pinter hats, an elderly lady with a magnificent Bardot style reddy coloured bouffant hairdo and big vintage 70s style glasses, and a fair smattering of homosexual couplings and Americans in exile.
Well I’m afraid to report that it was all very Audenary.
Whether it was the heat in the packed theatre, or the soporific torporous tones of the first couple of readers, but when the lights went down, I just could not keep my eyes open.
Things improved with the next two readers, though whether it was the sudden blast of cool air con or the improved diction of the readers I could not say.
Things then went back downhill as people’s mobiles went off (in a poetry reading oi!) and speakers mumbled.
Added to all this is the fact that I find listening to poetry not the easiest thing to do – you can’t re-read a line and any lapse in concentration and you are lost. Added to this Auden (as read here) is not the easiest poet anyway. The poems which worked best were the jokey sing song ones with nice rhymes.
In the end I found it best to stop trying to process the words, and just to listen, as though to a piece of music, and let it wash over me - the better readers managed to convey a sense of what I would call educated melancholy.
Or to put it another way, I’m just back from the British Library-hosted readings of poetry by WH Auden, today being the centenary of his birth.
Well the great and the good, or in this case a multitude of pale faced and serious looking people, crammed into the Shaw Theatre in various states of balding (men and women)
and beardage (men and women); there was a yarmulke, a couple of Pinter hats, an elderly lady with a magnificent Bardot style reddy coloured bouffant hairdo and big vintage 70s style glasses, and a fair smattering of homosexual couplings and Americans in exile.
Well I’m afraid to report that it was all very Audenary.
Whether it was the heat in the packed theatre, or the soporific torporous tones of the first couple of readers, but when the lights went down, I just could not keep my eyes open.
Things improved with the next two readers, though whether it was the sudden blast of cool air con or the improved diction of the readers I could not say.
Things then went back downhill as people’s mobiles went off (in a poetry reading oi!) and speakers mumbled.
Added to all this is the fact that I find listening to poetry not the easiest thing to do – you can’t re-read a line and any lapse in concentration and you are lost. Added to this Auden (as read here) is not the easiest poet anyway. The poems which worked best were the jokey sing song ones with nice rhymes.
In the end I found it best to stop trying to process the words, and just to listen, as though to a piece of music, and let it wash over me - the better readers managed to convey a sense of what I would call educated melancholy.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
The Science of Sleep
So after pilates yesterday, and a big bento box of salmon teriyaki, I scootled up to the Everyman in Lionel Hampstead to see The Science of Sleep.
I haven’t been to the Everyman for a very very long time – even longer than Donkey’s years.
It was very nice – a big auditorium filled with comfy looking armchairs and sofas instead of the usual cinema seats. There were only a couple of other people in there so it all looked set to be a great experience.
Trouble was the armchair style seat wasn’t as comfy as it looked – no lumbar support – even, if you can imagine such a thing, an anti-lumbar – it kind of caved in at the crucial point. And the screen is high up, whereas the chair focuses you straight, so you have to crick your neck up. And some people walked in halfway through and laughed in an annoying fashion.
Still I really liked the film. It hasn’t had the best reviews, but then the same was true of The Fountain which has really stayed with me (this I find to be the test of a good film).
The Science of Sleep is about Stéphane, a man who has difficulty distinguishing dreams and reality. At first he fancies Antoine De Caunes’s daughter, but then he sees the light and goes for Serge Gainsbourg’s daughter instead. Sorry that’s me not being able to distinguish the actresses' lineage from their characters. Very French.
One of the ignorant reviewers complained how dowdy Charlotte G is made to look, but one of Director Michel Gondry’s strokes of genius is to make her look both her mother’s daughter and her father’s daughter, often at the same time – and this fusion of dream shiksa and jewish princess I found to be strangely, almost irresistibly, sexy (readers interested in researching her genealogy further are invited to http://www.myspace.com/janebirkin050505.)
Anyway out of my reverie and back to the film. Like Stéphane, the viewer finds him or herself struggling to distinguish dream from reality and as a consequence the narrative becomes a little too fractured in parts, but its good sexy French fun, so you don’t really mind, although by the end I started to wonder if in fact Stéphane was certifiably meshugge, and I’m not sure whether any real woman (except maybe one who’s dad was Serge) would have put up with lines like “can I see your tits?” He didn’t even say “please”!
Like “Amélie”, the Paris of the Science of Sleep is one free from black faces, from violence, from poverty, from free running, from urban decay. Unlike Amélie, no one seems to have kicked up a fuss; further happy evidence I suspect of the decay of Parisian left wing intellectualism.
Stéphane is played by Gael García Bernal whom I understand to be popular with the ladies.
The film’s official website is rather good if a little fiddly – see http://wip.warnerbros.com/scienceofsleep/.
There’s a bit on there where they do dream analysis – below is a screen shot of mine, and you will see immediately how remarkably accurate it was!
I haven’t been to the Everyman for a very very long time – even longer than Donkey’s years.
It was very nice – a big auditorium filled with comfy looking armchairs and sofas instead of the usual cinema seats. There were only a couple of other people in there so it all looked set to be a great experience.
Trouble was the armchair style seat wasn’t as comfy as it looked – no lumbar support – even, if you can imagine such a thing, an anti-lumbar – it kind of caved in at the crucial point. And the screen is high up, whereas the chair focuses you straight, so you have to crick your neck up. And some people walked in halfway through and laughed in an annoying fashion.
Still I really liked the film. It hasn’t had the best reviews, but then the same was true of The Fountain which has really stayed with me (this I find to be the test of a good film).
The Science of Sleep is about Stéphane, a man who has difficulty distinguishing dreams and reality. At first he fancies Antoine De Caunes’s daughter, but then he sees the light and goes for Serge Gainsbourg’s daughter instead. Sorry that’s me not being able to distinguish the actresses' lineage from their characters. Very French.
One of the ignorant reviewers complained how dowdy Charlotte G is made to look, but one of Director Michel Gondry’s strokes of genius is to make her look both her mother’s daughter and her father’s daughter, often at the same time – and this fusion of dream shiksa and jewish princess I found to be strangely, almost irresistibly, sexy (readers interested in researching her genealogy further are invited to http://www.myspace.com/janebirkin050505.)
Anyway out of my reverie and back to the film. Like Stéphane, the viewer finds him or herself struggling to distinguish dream from reality and as a consequence the narrative becomes a little too fractured in parts, but its good sexy French fun, so you don’t really mind, although by the end I started to wonder if in fact Stéphane was certifiably meshugge, and I’m not sure whether any real woman (except maybe one who’s dad was Serge) would have put up with lines like “can I see your tits?” He didn’t even say “please”!
Like “Amélie”, the Paris of the Science of Sleep is one free from black faces, from violence, from poverty, from free running, from urban decay. Unlike Amélie, no one seems to have kicked up a fuss; further happy evidence I suspect of the decay of Parisian left wing intellectualism.
Stéphane is played by Gael García Bernal whom I understand to be popular with the ladies.
The film’s official website is rather good if a little fiddly – see http://wip.warnerbros.com/scienceofsleep/.
There’s a bit on there where they do dream analysis – below is a screen shot of mine, and you will see immediately how remarkably accurate it was!
Saturday, February 17, 2007
chair for sale
yeah - chair for sale - made by farstrup - (check http://www.farstrup.dk/page59.aspx ) comprising recliner with lumbar pump, neckpillow and footstool - recommended by back specialists (i'm one and I recommend it).
one careful owner - about 8 years old (the chair, not the owner) - would costs about £1000 new, and i'm looking for £100 or nearest offer. Sold as seen. Purchaser to arrange carriage. And for that I'm prepared to throw in a whole world of memories and, if you examine very closely, in a purely metaphysical sense you understand, just
Thursday, February 15, 2007
erratum et erectum
It appears that I have made a terrible error in that the picture posted a few entries ago purporting to be of "Davina Ravensburg" was in fact not "Davina" at all, but rather "Emma", who may or may not work behind the bar at the Ram Jam Inn. Well it's easy to get confused as Des Lynam once said. So here now is the correct picture of "Davina" for your delectation. Any resemblance to Amy Winehouse is entirely co-incidental. They tried to make him go to rehab but he said "no no no."By the way, nice curtains mate!
For your consideration / My name is Albert Ayler
After an early pilates session on Tuesday, I enjoyed a cinematic double bill.
First up was For Your Consideration, from the Spinal Tap/ Mighty Wind/Best in Show people. You won’t believe me based on what I am going to tell you, but it really was a mighty let down - not enough decent gags, and the plot sagged due to the lack of impetus towards a big finale such as the dog show in Best in Show. The film mockumented the trials and tribulations of the cast and crew of a low budget film: “Home for Purim”; about the dysfunctional Pischer family, which picks up some Oscar buzz. Best line, and one of the greatest lines in the history of cinema, is the director shouting something like “this time I want an extreme close-up on the kugel”. See, you are laughing already, and the film within the film is fantastically silly, but that makes up about ten minutes of it. Not enough. Still for those who worry more about Jewish continuity than artistic values, I did find myself surprisingly nostalgic for a good old family Purim.
To reset myself for the second movie, I toddled over to the Wallace Collection. I’ve been meaning to go there for donkeys years (how long is a donkeys?). It is the sort of stuff that makes me feel like a bull in a china shop (would a donkey fare better?) – lots of porcelain and ceramics and delicate artefacts, and a fine collection of Roccoccocco (CocoRosieCleoRoccos?) painting. Being a plebeian Northerner it wasn’t really the sort of art / objet d’art that I can appreciate, although it was pretty mindblowing, as well as pretty and mindblowing. In particular there was an exhibition of work by maiolica (yeah, a type of pottery) painter Francesco Xanto Avelli (c.1486-c.1542), very lovely. Mostly fine scenes of classical mythology, but my favourite was one called something like “Dick Head” (I kid you not) which was a face made up of about thirty cocks, including one with a spectacular Prince Albert. Imaging eating your supper off that!
I also took in Brian Eno’s installation “77 million paintings” at Selfridges (see picture, left), which comprised self-generating art projected onto plasma screens with a nice ambient soundtrack, set in a darkened room mostly filled with snoozing office workers. I didn’t quite manage to reach a chilled out enough state. As Eno would say, “what are the sections sections of? Imagine a caterpillar moving.”
Then off to the second part of the double header – My Name is Albert Ayler at the ICA. It was a sell out in the small cinema, and my goodnees there were some smelly people there – it smelt liked boiled tramp. Ayler (check out http://www.myspace.com/albertayler) was the most out there of the out there free jazzers of the 1960s, dying sadly young at the age of 34 (did he fall or was he pushed?) by drowning in New York. The film was intense, meditative, peopled by weird and wonderful characters. It left many more questions than answers – one suspects that Ayler had many demons which the film chose not to explore, and the question remains as to whether he was a genius or a bluffer.
Meanwhile big Ol has come down after the Juana Molina gig.
Talking of which, check out this genius animated blog with interview and concert footage of the lovely Juana: http://www.woebot.tv/
Toodlepip.
First up was For Your Consideration, from the Spinal Tap/ Mighty Wind/Best in Show people. You won’t believe me based on what I am going to tell you, but it really was a mighty let down - not enough decent gags, and the plot sagged due to the lack of impetus towards a big finale such as the dog show in Best in Show. The film mockumented the trials and tribulations of the cast and crew of a low budget film: “Home for Purim”; about the dysfunctional Pischer family, which picks up some Oscar buzz. Best line, and one of the greatest lines in the history of cinema, is the director shouting something like “this time I want an extreme close-up on the kugel”. See, you are laughing already, and the film within the film is fantastically silly, but that makes up about ten minutes of it. Not enough. Still for those who worry more about Jewish continuity than artistic values, I did find myself surprisingly nostalgic for a good old family Purim.
To reset myself for the second movie, I toddled over to the Wallace Collection. I’ve been meaning to go there for donkeys years (how long is a donkeys?). It is the sort of stuff that makes me feel like a bull in a china shop (would a donkey fare better?) – lots of porcelain and ceramics and delicate artefacts, and a fine collection of Roccoccocco (CocoRosieCleoRoccos?) painting. Being a plebeian Northerner it wasn’t really the sort of art / objet d’art that I can appreciate, although it was pretty mindblowing, as well as pretty and mindblowing. In particular there was an exhibition of work by maiolica (yeah, a type of pottery) painter Francesco Xanto Avelli (c.1486-c.1542), very lovely. Mostly fine scenes of classical mythology, but my favourite was one called something like “Dick Head” (I kid you not) which was a face made up of about thirty cocks, including one with a spectacular Prince Albert. Imaging eating your supper off that!
I also took in Brian Eno’s installation “77 million paintings” at Selfridges (see picture, left), which comprised self-generating art projected onto plasma screens with a nice ambient soundtrack, set in a darkened room mostly filled with snoozing office workers. I didn’t quite manage to reach a chilled out enough state. As Eno would say, “what are the sections sections of? Imagine a caterpillar moving.”Then off to the second part of the double header – My Name is Albert Ayler at the ICA. It was a sell out in the small cinema, and my goodnees there were some smelly people there – it smelt liked boiled tramp. Ayler (check out http://www.myspace.com/albertayler) was the most out there of the out there free jazzers of the 1960s, dying sadly young at the age of 34 (did he fall or was he pushed?) by drowning in New York. The film was intense, meditative, peopled by weird and wonderful characters. It left many more questions than answers – one suspects that Ayler had many demons which the film chose not to explore, and the question remains as to whether he was a genius or a bluffer.
Meanwhile big Ol has come down after the Juana Molina gig.
Talking of which, check out this genius animated blog with interview and concert footage of the lovely Juana: http://www.woebot.tv/
Toodlepip.
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
boys and girls
They say Jewish girls turn into their mothers sooner or later. What they don't tell you is that so do Jewish boys, given enough rouge. Here's my mate "Davina Ravensburg" to prove it. Uncanny.
The Fountain
After a bout of punishing physio, I took myself off to see the Fountain down t’Odeon (by the way I should mention that my passion for cinema has been re-ignited after watching the rather excellent Bertolucci film “the Dreamers” – as well as featuring spectacular nudity from “Bond Girl” Eva Green, it took me back to that very French belief in the intellectual magic of the silver screen).
The reviews of the Fountain that I read all said that it wasn’t as bad as one had been led to believe – however as these were the only reviews leading me to believe anything, I therefore hadn’t been led to believe that it was bad. Anyway, all in all, I’d agree that it wasn’t as bad as I’d been led to believe.
It reminded me a lot of Pan’s Labyrynth; both films weaved sad, naturalistic “real world” plots with fantasy/magic plots, leaving it open ended as to whether the fantasy plots were projections of the people in the real plots, or were to be taken at face value. In a way Volver did the same thing with the ghost story.
The Fountain was indeed confusing, and refused to spell out exactly what it was going on about, but I tend to like that in a piece of art. In our jaded pre-post-post modern world where we’ve seen it all and done that, ambiguity and fractured narrative seem as good a way as any to tell a story.
The low-budget special effects were excellent, particularly the use of micro-organisms grown in Petri dishes which were used to create the scenes of nebulous star systems. And the music was fantastic – Glass-like / Reichian repeating ambient patterns contributing to the dreamlike atmosphere.
The cinema was delightfully empty, but of course some bastard ended up next but one to me crinkling a heavy plastic packet of sweets and slurping on a giant cola, rattling his ice, and tapping on the plastic for good measure. Why oh why do cinemas sell that crap?
The reviews of the Fountain that I read all said that it wasn’t as bad as one had been led to believe – however as these were the only reviews leading me to believe anything, I therefore hadn’t been led to believe that it was bad. Anyway, all in all, I’d agree that it wasn’t as bad as I’d been led to believe.
It reminded me a lot of Pan’s Labyrynth; both films weaved sad, naturalistic “real world” plots with fantasy/magic plots, leaving it open ended as to whether the fantasy plots were projections of the people in the real plots, or were to be taken at face value. In a way Volver did the same thing with the ghost story.
The Fountain was indeed confusing, and refused to spell out exactly what it was going on about, but I tend to like that in a piece of art. In our jaded pre-post-post modern world where we’ve seen it all and done that, ambiguity and fractured narrative seem as good a way as any to tell a story.
The low-budget special effects were excellent, particularly the use of micro-organisms grown in Petri dishes which were used to create the scenes of nebulous star systems. And the music was fantastic – Glass-like / Reichian repeating ambient patterns contributing to the dreamlike atmosphere.
The cinema was delightfully empty, but of course some bastard ended up next but one to me crinkling a heavy plastic packet of sweets and slurping on a giant cola, rattling his ice, and tapping on the plastic for good measure. Why oh why do cinemas sell that crap?
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Welcome to Dreamland at Carnegie Hall
Reference the Welcome to Dreamland gig I mentioned a couple of posts back, this kind gentleman has reviewed it and posted some piccies so we can enjoy the event vicariously.
Kushi Tan: Welcome to Dreamland at Carnegie Hall
Kushi Tan: Welcome to Dreamland at Carnegie Hall
Ghosts
So off I toddled last night to start my new role as perplexed theatre critic. I guess I’ve gone off the theatre of late, lost my ability to suspend my disbelief. This was however without doubt Theatre of the very finest kind.
I went to see Ghosts at the Gate Theatre.
I’ve never seen Ibsen performed live - I’ve read a few Ibsen plays but not this one.
The Gate is a 70 or so seater above the Prince Albert pub in Notting Hill. You could hear some of the inane banter wafting up during quieter moments, but it was very muffled and didn’t affect my enjoyment (if that’s the right word for the experience of an Ibsen play). Someone’s mobile set to vibrate was a little more irritating – switch the bloody thing off why don’t you – even without a ringtone you get a buzzy noise.
Seats are unreserved , and the queue to go in forms some 30 minutes before doors. This is not a happy proposition for someone of my disposition, especially when there was some poor queuing etiquette (ie pushing in). Overall I was about 14th in and happy with my seat position, if not my seat, which was a little hard, little better than a padded bench in truth, with a particularly hard backrest primed to press against the area where I am sore from physio. Nevertheless I managed to subsume the physical agony into the overall Ibsenian experience – I wasn’t there to have fun you know.
The audience I have to say were impeccably well behaved save for that instance of the vibrating ‘phone – no bangles in this part of London baby.
You will also want to know that at the front of the queue, a great British actor held forth. It might well have been the Great Gambon; if not he was certainly Gambonesque. A fine triangular beard jutted forth from his chin – it was the sort of beard that could only be worn by an actor as part of a role (“no stick on beards here, I’ll grow my own thank you”.)
Anyway the play was rather brilliantly acted – not too hammy or self-conscious, just natural and sometimes even subtle. If not exactly suspended, my belief was certainly pressed upwards, and you could tell the effectiveness of it by the trouble people had in walking afterwards (and I’m sure that wasn’t just due to the hard seats.) I was amazed that no fights broke out outside as, one after another, dazed theatre goers walked straight into the local hoodies waiting at the bus stop just by the door. That’s what I would call a good night out. And I was back home by 10.
I went to see Ghosts at the Gate Theatre.
I’ve never seen Ibsen performed live - I’ve read a few Ibsen plays but not this one.
The Gate is a 70 or so seater above the Prince Albert pub in Notting Hill. You could hear some of the inane banter wafting up during quieter moments, but it was very muffled and didn’t affect my enjoyment (if that’s the right word for the experience of an Ibsen play). Someone’s mobile set to vibrate was a little more irritating – switch the bloody thing off why don’t you – even without a ringtone you get a buzzy noise.
Seats are unreserved , and the queue to go in forms some 30 minutes before doors. This is not a happy proposition for someone of my disposition, especially when there was some poor queuing etiquette (ie pushing in). Overall I was about 14th in and happy with my seat position, if not my seat, which was a little hard, little better than a padded bench in truth, with a particularly hard backrest primed to press against the area where I am sore from physio. Nevertheless I managed to subsume the physical agony into the overall Ibsenian experience – I wasn’t there to have fun you know.
The audience I have to say were impeccably well behaved save for that instance of the vibrating ‘phone – no bangles in this part of London baby.
You will also want to know that at the front of the queue, a great British actor held forth. It might well have been the Great Gambon; if not he was certainly Gambonesque. A fine triangular beard jutted forth from his chin – it was the sort of beard that could only be worn by an actor as part of a role (“no stick on beards here, I’ll grow my own thank you”.)
Anyway the play was rather brilliantly acted – not too hammy or self-conscious, just natural and sometimes even subtle. If not exactly suspended, my belief was certainly pressed upwards, and you could tell the effectiveness of it by the trouble people had in walking afterwards (and I’m sure that wasn’t just due to the hard seats.) I was amazed that no fights broke out outside as, one after another, dazed theatre goers walked straight into the local hoodies waiting at the bus stop just by the door. That’s what I would call a good night out. And I was back home by 10.
Monday, February 05, 2007
a slow start to a fast year
Well yes it has been a slow start as Rabbi Rabbit has commented. In truth I’ve been a tad under the weather and undergoing some somewhat painful physiotherapy, and this in conjunction with the long wait for my new ergonomic therapeutic all singing all dancing office chair has led to the current state of affairs. And I’ve started my new novel, working title “2007 project”, and no, I’m not going to tell you all anything about it. Firewalls have ears, don’t you know.
But that’s not to say that it has been an entirely quiet Jan.
First gig of the year saw me and big Ol machete-ing our way through a dense forest of facial hair and student odour to the Roundhouse for the O Degrees of Separation Tour, organised by the Contemporary Music Network, the people who brought you last year’s Photophonic Experiment and Kitchen Motors Tours. This gig was a four ball featuring Weird Folk guru Devendra Banhart’s backing band Vetiver, goofy electro-nerd Adem, annoyingly dippy hippy pleased with herself but wonderfully named Vashti Bunyan (yes a relative of Pilgrim’s Progress Bunyan, but not of Queen Vashti) and last and, in truth the real reason we was there, the very wonderful indeed Juana Molina (pictured below) – check out http://www.myspace.com/juanamolina
Formerly Argentina’s favourite television comedienne, JM has produced three stunning albums of lilting honey dripping electronic tinged loveliness. I have tried on several occasions to catch her live but for some reason the gigs were cancelled. Was it worth the wait? I would admit to being biased but even the “professional reviewers” agreed she blew the others off the stage with her self-sampling sweet brew of mellow and delicious electro-acoustic harmonies. Can’t wait to catch her doing a full gig of her own.
My waiting for Juana was as nothing however compared to my waiting for Genty. 15 years in fact since the Compagnie Philippe Genty last performed on the London Stage, but they squeezed themselves on to the too too small stage of the Queen Elizabeth Hall with their latest production Vanishing Point. It is almost impossible to describe what their shows are or what they do to you. Mesmerising and meditative, they combine elements of puppetry, dance, mime and extraordinary visual effects to induce a dreamlike state in the viewer. Cardboard cut-outs morph into people, people morph into other people or into puppets, faces melt, the stage sags and expands, a giant insect tears away from its puppet masters, beating its legs to form a wild clackering sound. Wondeful stuff and I hope I won’t have to wait another 15 years for the next show. Check out http://www.philippegenty.com
So that was January, but oh what a year we have in store. So much to look forward to. New albums and tours from the big 4 – Air, Múm, CocoRosie and Bjork. And intriguing cross-pollenisations – Bjork working with Antony, CocoRosie with Icelandic contemporary classical musicians, Air incorporating traditional Japanese classical instruments into their repertoire. And two of the great German electronica acts return – Pole and Laub. Really I should take out shares in Amazon.
There’s no doubt that this is a critical and possibly defining year for this extraordinary electronic/contemporary classical/ffreakyfolky/music without labels new music. A couple of days ago saw a headline gig hosted by David Byrne at the Carnegie Hall in New York featuring erm Vetiva/Vashti Bunyan/Adem, CocoRosie, and the lovely and yet to be seen live by me Cibelle in a grand celebration of dreamy loveliness. Me and Big Ol were seriously considering flying out to New York for that one, just because it seemed so IMPORTANT. So it seems remarkable that the BBC in their infinite wisdom, have chosen this moment to cancel Mixing It on Radio 3. This wonderful programme has been my main source of discovery of new music; they gave me my first hearing of all of the bands in today’s bulletin bar Air, as well as, off the top of my head, the Necks, Deerhoof, Clogs, the Notwist, Tarwater, Jackie-O Motherfucker, Four Tet, Mira Calix, Susumu Yokota, Tunng, Dorine_Muraille, Matmos – oh the list goes on and on. Shame on you BBC.
SACK JEREMY BOWEN, NOT MIXING IT!
I’m also embarking on a new theatre initiative, ie going to the theatre, quite a lot it seems in the next few months.
Plus there’s the launch of the Latte Days Book Group Inc.
And yes I will be continuing to stick my cultural thermometer up the arse end of the contemporary world, so stay tuned.
But that’s not to say that it has been an entirely quiet Jan.
First gig of the year saw me and big Ol machete-ing our way through a dense forest of facial hair and student odour to the Roundhouse for the O Degrees of Separation Tour, organised by the Contemporary Music Network, the people who brought you last year’s Photophonic Experiment and Kitchen Motors Tours. This gig was a four ball featuring Weird Folk guru Devendra Banhart’s backing band Vetiver, goofy electro-nerd Adem, annoyingly dippy hippy pleased with herself but wonderfully named Vashti Bunyan (yes a relative of Pilgrim’s Progress Bunyan, but not of Queen Vashti) and last and, in truth the real reason we was there, the very wonderful indeed Juana Molina (pictured below) – check out http://www.myspace.com/juanamolina
Formerly Argentina’s favourite television comedienne, JM has produced three stunning albums of lilting honey dripping electronic tinged loveliness. I have tried on several occasions to catch her live but for some reason the gigs were cancelled. Was it worth the wait? I would admit to being biased but even the “professional reviewers” agreed she blew the others off the stage with her self-sampling sweet brew of mellow and delicious electro-acoustic harmonies. Can’t wait to catch her doing a full gig of her own.My waiting for Juana was as nothing however compared to my waiting for Genty. 15 years in fact since the Compagnie Philippe Genty last performed on the London Stage, but they squeezed themselves on to the too too small stage of the Queen Elizabeth Hall with their latest production Vanishing Point. It is almost impossible to describe what their shows are or what they do to you. Mesmerising and meditative, they combine elements of puppetry, dance, mime and extraordinary visual effects to induce a dreamlike state in the viewer. Cardboard cut-outs morph into people, people morph into other people or into puppets, faces melt, the stage sags and expands, a giant insect tears away from its puppet masters, beating its legs to form a wild clackering sound. Wondeful stuff and I hope I won’t have to wait another 15 years for the next show. Check out http://www.philippegenty.com
So that was January, but oh what a year we have in store. So much to look forward to. New albums and tours from the big 4 – Air, Múm, CocoRosie and Bjork. And intriguing cross-pollenisations – Bjork working with Antony, CocoRosie with Icelandic contemporary classical musicians, Air incorporating traditional Japanese classical instruments into their repertoire. And two of the great German electronica acts return – Pole and Laub. Really I should take out shares in Amazon.
There’s no doubt that this is a critical and possibly defining year for this extraordinary electronic/contemporary classical/ffreakyfolky/music without labels new music. A couple of days ago saw a headline gig hosted by David Byrne at the Carnegie Hall in New York featuring erm Vetiva/Vashti Bunyan/Adem, CocoRosie, and the lovely and yet to be seen live by me Cibelle in a grand celebration of dreamy loveliness. Me and Big Ol were seriously considering flying out to New York for that one, just because it seemed so IMPORTANT. So it seems remarkable that the BBC in their infinite wisdom, have chosen this moment to cancel Mixing It on Radio 3. This wonderful programme has been my main source of discovery of new music; they gave me my first hearing of all of the bands in today’s bulletin bar Air, as well as, off the top of my head, the Necks, Deerhoof, Clogs, the Notwist, Tarwater, Jackie-O Motherfucker, Four Tet, Mira Calix, Susumu Yokota, Tunng, Dorine_Muraille, Matmos – oh the list goes on and on. Shame on you BBC.
SACK JEREMY BOWEN, NOT MIXING IT!
I’m also embarking on a new theatre initiative, ie going to the theatre, quite a lot it seems in the next few months.
Plus there’s the launch of the Latte Days Book Group Inc.
And yes I will be continuing to stick my cultural thermometer up the arse end of the contemporary world, so stay tuned.
Monday, January 08, 2007
Manifesto for the year
Interesting to read the thoughts of Rabbi Dr Nathan Lopes Cardozo in this weeks JC, where he was talking about people having lost the art of asking the right questions.
The Rabbi said "I would like to write a guide to make people perplexed."
Sorry old chap, got there before you.
The Rabbi said "I would like to write a guide to make people perplexed."
Sorry old chap, got there before you.
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Monday, December 18, 2006
My First Award
Well I am very pleased to announce that I have won my first award, and it’s a big one too - Time Magazine’s Person of the Year. And I’m not joking!
The only downside is I’m not alone, as they have awarded the award to “You”. Who? You. Me? No, you. You who? Anyway us, including me. The citizens of the new digital democracy as they call it. Anyone who had written a blog, posted a video on YouTube, or who has a profile on My Space. So I’m a treble winner.
I don’t want to be ungrateful, but I'm not that happy about sharing the award with quite so many reprobates, ranging from the (as at today) 140.2 million plus profiles on my space, to the Israeli dancing girls to the newly censorial The Latte Days to whoever it was who posted this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_1QyOQDx6w
And as I endeavour to prove on a regular basis, I am not part of a digital democracy, but a digital mediocracy.
So I say, enough power to the people; give the power to the pixies!
The only downside is I’m not alone, as they have awarded the award to “You”. Who? You. Me? No, you. You who? Anyway us, including me. The citizens of the new digital democracy as they call it. Anyone who had written a blog, posted a video on YouTube, or who has a profile on My Space. So I’m a treble winner.
I don’t want to be ungrateful, but I'm not that happy about sharing the award with quite so many reprobates, ranging from the (as at today) 140.2 million plus profiles on my space, to the Israeli dancing girls to the newly censorial The Latte Days to whoever it was who posted this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_1QyOQDx6w
And as I endeavour to prove on a regular basis, I am not part of a digital democracy, but a digital mediocracy.
So I say, enough power to the people; give the power to the pixies!
Sunday, December 17, 2006
Gig Review: Circulus v Chrome Hoof
And as a year of strange and unique gigs draws to a close, probably the strangest gig of all…
To give it its full title: “Come closer I have something to tell you – An evening of music with Circulus and Chrome Hoof.” Purcell Room 16/12/06.
Who what when why?
Circulus describe themselves as “a gentle fist fight between a group of under nourished sixteenth century court musicians and an acid soaked bunch of hippie rockers from the early seventies.”
Chrome Hoof describe themselves as – well they go on a bit but here’s an extract: “the sound of a radio dial snatches fragments of disparate musiks, the remorseless warrior charge of doom, abstract gasses that hiss and mingle, a distant piano ripples a melancholy refrain, wind instruments hail a clarion call to arms, motorik bass and wild drums rear up to create a vortices of dust and fire And LO, The Hoof is on the Rise!” You get the picture. One of their fans describes them as a “jazz infused doom disco death knell” which is probably a bit closer to the mark, although this is metal jazz in the Norwegian style – dark heavy and malicious (reminded me a bit of Supersilent to those who know them.)
But the evening begins with Wyrewood, a boy/girl combo playing medieval instruments with samplers to create added textures. They play the sort of instruments not seen since Howard Goodall’s “How Music Works” such as those drone producing boxes you play by rotating a handle. The boy wears a very smug self-satisfied smile throughout in that Nigel Kennedy / Gary Rhodes kind of way. Some ruffians talk all the way through.
A man in a cassock comes on stage, accompanied by a boy and two girls in golden tinfoil spacepeople costumes, and begins the narration. The evening is themed around the teachings of the Aetherius Society, in particular the book “Contact With the Gods From Space” by George King and Richard Lawrence, which tells how man is the reincarnation of aliens who blew up their own planet, founded and destroyed Atlantis, and are now hell bent on destroying the earth in nuclear armageddon. A sad tale is best for winter.
Worryingly, this is not my first contact with the Aetherius Society – I attended a gong recital / guided meditation / kundalini yoga session given by the great Gongmaster Don Conreaux at the Aetherius Society’s hq off the Fulham Road early last year. It was held in a chapel like room dominated by a huge photograph of George King.
Circulus come on first in Blackadderish tunics and play a couple of jaunty numbers; then the Hoof arrive, in full length shiny silvery cloaks and face masks and a pounding ominous song called “Nordic Curse.” I fear I am about to have a panic attack.
Things settle into a kind of routine: narration, Circulus, a woodwind/string interlude with some members of both bands, Chrome Hoof, then the cycle repeats.
Factionalism emerges amongst the fan base, with swathes of Circulusties heading for the exits whilst the Hoof are on; swarms of Hoofsters chanting “Hoooofffff” heading for the bar whilst Circulus are on.
There is a kind of amateur dramatics do pantomime feel about the whole thing; the video projection pixellates and dies (but is restored for the second half); Circulus take on the role of the innocent earthlings while the Hoof become the dark alien magi; the lead singer of Circulus gets his cue wrong and is stuck on stage with two flimsy cardboard scimitars before being molested by the Hoof and made to wear a 5 foot silver hat with circular saws for eye pieces before being banished from the stage with what feels like real venom; the Hoof’s singer reads lyrics pasted on the back of a large hat.
The second half takes the feel of Man United v Chelsea. Circulus wear spangly red shirts with white details and have the flair players; at the back the superlative Parfitt Brothers stand firm under the onslaught. The Circulusties are prettier, better dressed and more sophisticated. The Hoof play the Chelsea role, loutish beery fans, they don’t play pretty but you have to admire their dogged almost brutal determination to grind out a result. Circulus take the lead with a triumphant anthemic “Power to the Pixies”. The Circulusty Pixie People go wild. The Hoof look to the bench and bring on a twenty foot silver demon with glowing green eyes. Young children and old people run screaming from the hall (quite what they were doing there is another question entirely). It has the desired effect. Scores level. Circulus’s lead man recites “Alas, will this night go on for ever?” and I know how he feels.
Decorum in the audience has now broken down gloriously under the onslaught of booze and bass. The narrator is heckled as he begins his final plea to save the earth. The Hoofsters in the audience are winning the clash of civilisations. Some hairy bloke who may or may not be called Thogdin Ripley, co-conceiver of the evening, attempts to finish the story but is too pissed to speak and is forced to concede that yes he is reading a load of bollocks. Someone hands him a popper which he sniffs with a flourish.
Injury time and the bands combine in a shambolic finale; the pixie people dance like wild things, the hoofsters hoof, and Ollie Parfitt turns up his synth to sprinkle fairy dust sine waves over the chaos.
Both sets of fans seem happy with the result and all that is left is to look at the match stats:
1. Coolness of crowd: Circulus attract a surprising number of attractive looking women in flowery dresses – 4/5; Hoof bring loutish beer boys and grungy hairies 0/5; overall 4/10.
2. Bob quotient: 3/10, you can guess which side the good hair was on.
3. Annoyment factor: 9/10 – the initial talking during Wyrewood is annoying, but the developing shambolic waves of comings and goings and hoofing and dancing badly add to the atmosphere.
4. Sound quality: 8/10 – well its certainly loud; but it all gets a bit mushy with so many musicians on stage.
5. Comfort: 7/10 – nice seats in the Purcell Room.
6. Sexytime: 4/10, courtesy of the pixies.
7. Percussion / sound effect function: 8/10 for use of medieval/ Elizabethan instruments, lots of tambourine action, and some power drumming.
Overall: 43/70 – a curate’s egg, a game of at least two halves, and jolly good fun.
Merchandise: A nice if tatty souvenir programme, a Circulus LP (vinyl)
Visuals: A feast for the eyes – sparkly costumes, dancing girls, a twenty foot demon.
Gruff Rhys?: Nah.
You can watch very poor footage taken by me of the shambolic finale here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glN3cFfgltY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vo4l94SB2-Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWM8qs9ia0s
To give it its full title: “Come closer I have something to tell you – An evening of music with Circulus and Chrome Hoof.” Purcell Room 16/12/06.
Who what when why?
Circulus describe themselves as “a gentle fist fight between a group of under nourished sixteenth century court musicians and an acid soaked bunch of hippie rockers from the early seventies.”
Chrome Hoof describe themselves as – well they go on a bit but here’s an extract: “the sound of a radio dial snatches fragments of disparate musiks, the remorseless warrior charge of doom, abstract gasses that hiss and mingle, a distant piano ripples a melancholy refrain, wind instruments hail a clarion call to arms, motorik bass and wild drums rear up to create a vortices of dust and fire And LO, The Hoof is on the Rise!” You get the picture. One of their fans describes them as a “jazz infused doom disco death knell” which is probably a bit closer to the mark, although this is metal jazz in the Norwegian style – dark heavy and malicious (reminded me a bit of Supersilent to those who know them.)
But the evening begins with Wyrewood, a boy/girl combo playing medieval instruments with samplers to create added textures. They play the sort of instruments not seen since Howard Goodall’s “How Music Works” such as those drone producing boxes you play by rotating a handle. The boy wears a very smug self-satisfied smile throughout in that Nigel Kennedy / Gary Rhodes kind of way. Some ruffians talk all the way through.
A man in a cassock comes on stage, accompanied by a boy and two girls in golden tinfoil spacepeople costumes, and begins the narration. The evening is themed around the teachings of the Aetherius Society, in particular the book “Contact With the Gods From Space” by George King and Richard Lawrence, which tells how man is the reincarnation of aliens who blew up their own planet, founded and destroyed Atlantis, and are now hell bent on destroying the earth in nuclear armageddon. A sad tale is best for winter.
Worryingly, this is not my first contact with the Aetherius Society – I attended a gong recital / guided meditation / kundalini yoga session given by the great Gongmaster Don Conreaux at the Aetherius Society’s hq off the Fulham Road early last year. It was held in a chapel like room dominated by a huge photograph of George King.
Circulus come on first in Blackadderish tunics and play a couple of jaunty numbers; then the Hoof arrive, in full length shiny silvery cloaks and face masks and a pounding ominous song called “Nordic Curse.” I fear I am about to have a panic attack.
Things settle into a kind of routine: narration, Circulus, a woodwind/string interlude with some members of both bands, Chrome Hoof, then the cycle repeats.
Factionalism emerges amongst the fan base, with swathes of Circulusties heading for the exits whilst the Hoof are on; swarms of Hoofsters chanting “Hoooofffff” heading for the bar whilst Circulus are on.
There is a kind of amateur dramatics do pantomime feel about the whole thing; the video projection pixellates and dies (but is restored for the second half); Circulus take on the role of the innocent earthlings while the Hoof become the dark alien magi; the lead singer of Circulus gets his cue wrong and is stuck on stage with two flimsy cardboard scimitars before being molested by the Hoof and made to wear a 5 foot silver hat with circular saws for eye pieces before being banished from the stage with what feels like real venom; the Hoof’s singer reads lyrics pasted on the back of a large hat.
The second half takes the feel of Man United v Chelsea. Circulus wear spangly red shirts with white details and have the flair players; at the back the superlative Parfitt Brothers stand firm under the onslaught. The Circulusties are prettier, better dressed and more sophisticated. The Hoof play the Chelsea role, loutish beery fans, they don’t play pretty but you have to admire their dogged almost brutal determination to grind out a result. Circulus take the lead with a triumphant anthemic “Power to the Pixies”. The Circulusty Pixie People go wild. The Hoof look to the bench and bring on a twenty foot silver demon with glowing green eyes. Young children and old people run screaming from the hall (quite what they were doing there is another question entirely). It has the desired effect. Scores level. Circulus’s lead man recites “Alas, will this night go on for ever?” and I know how he feels.
Decorum in the audience has now broken down gloriously under the onslaught of booze and bass. The narrator is heckled as he begins his final plea to save the earth. The Hoofsters in the audience are winning the clash of civilisations. Some hairy bloke who may or may not be called Thogdin Ripley, co-conceiver of the evening, attempts to finish the story but is too pissed to speak and is forced to concede that yes he is reading a load of bollocks. Someone hands him a popper which he sniffs with a flourish.
Injury time and the bands combine in a shambolic finale; the pixie people dance like wild things, the hoofsters hoof, and Ollie Parfitt turns up his synth to sprinkle fairy dust sine waves over the chaos.
Both sets of fans seem happy with the result and all that is left is to look at the match stats:
1. Coolness of crowd: Circulus attract a surprising number of attractive looking women in flowery dresses – 4/5; Hoof bring loutish beer boys and grungy hairies 0/5; overall 4/10.
2. Bob quotient: 3/10, you can guess which side the good hair was on.
3. Annoyment factor: 9/10 – the initial talking during Wyrewood is annoying, but the developing shambolic waves of comings and goings and hoofing and dancing badly add to the atmosphere.
4. Sound quality: 8/10 – well its certainly loud; but it all gets a bit mushy with so many musicians on stage.
5. Comfort: 7/10 – nice seats in the Purcell Room.
6. Sexytime: 4/10, courtesy of the pixies.
7. Percussion / sound effect function: 8/10 for use of medieval/ Elizabethan instruments, lots of tambourine action, and some power drumming.
Overall: 43/70 – a curate’s egg, a game of at least two halves, and jolly good fun.
Merchandise: A nice if tatty souvenir programme, a Circulus LP (vinyl)
Visuals: A feast for the eyes – sparkly costumes, dancing girls, a twenty foot demon.
Gruff Rhys?: Nah.
You can watch very poor footage taken by me of the shambolic finale here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glN3cFfgltY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vo4l94SB2-Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWM8qs9ia0s
demon days
spangled carnage
Trouble with the Neighbours
I live in a three-storey 1960s town house. It is the middle one of a block of five.
Well I have to tell you, the neighbours on the left, Tommy and Sue, they were making a terrible racket last night, singing at the top of their voices and banging around ‘til gone 3.30. Well I thought, it is Saturday night and maybe they are having an X Factor party. One has to be tolerant and all that, but they could at least have warned me.
But then I was woken up at 9 this morning and it was all going on again. A terrible commotion. I peered out of the front window, and there seemed to be a lot of people milling about. Then I noticed that on the end house, the one on the other side of Tommy’s, in their front garden had appeared one of those pub style wooden tables with attached benches, and there were four Hassids, black hats, beards, the lot, sitting at the table stuffing their faces.
I went downstairs to investigate. My hallway was packed with people and the front door was open. ‘What the hell is going on?’ I thought. I went out the front. There was a man standing outside Tommy’s with a fluorescent sleeveless jacket, like the ones fire wardens and building site workers wear. “If you would just like to wait in there please” he said pointing at my house to a couple coming down the garden path.
“What the hell is going on?” I said to him.
“We’ve opened a sushi bar” said the man.
“What?” I said.
“We’ve opened a sushi bar.”
“But you haven’t got planning permission” I said.
The man in the yellow jacket shrugged.
“I demand to see the manager” I said.
“I am the manager” he said.
“Where’s Tommy?” I said.
“He’s in the back” said the man, looking towards Tommy’s house “trying to get some work done. He’s locked himself away.”
I went back into my house.
“Get out of my house” I said to no-one in particular, but no-one moved.
I went into the kitchen. A hole had been knocked through in the wall separating my kitchen from Tommy’s. I have to say it was a neat job, but the cheek of it; they hadn’t even given me any warning. On Tommy side I could see gleaming spotlights in the ceiling and a shiny silver counter with a couple of chefs working feverishly away.
I called the police. The woman who answered chastised me for calling 999 when it was not an emergency, and said I should ‘phone my local station. It took a while to find the number. There was a recorded message saying that they were shut - well it was a Sunday - and that out-of-hours police work had been outsourced to a private sector service provider. I called them and got another recorded message – “to help us deal with your enquiry please choose from one of the following options… for physical assault press 1, for burglary and theft press 2”. I pressed # “for any other enquiry”. There was a crackle and a hiss and a lady in a thick Indian accent asked how she could help. There was a disconcerting delay on the line. I explained what had happened and the lady told me that it was a civil matter not a police matter. She suggested that I contact the “relevant regulatory authority.” I asked her where she was based and she hung up.
I rang the local council but they were also shut.
I squeezed myself a fresh grapefruit and orange juice and went to sit down, but there were people sitting in all the chairs.
“This is my chair” I said to a young man with overly slicked hair.
“Oh is it” he said, carrying on reading my paper.
“Yes it is. Can you please get up.”
“Gonna make me?” he said.
“Yes, if needs be” I said.
He ignored me.
I pulled the chair back and lifted him up by his armpits. I landed a hard hook to his midriff with my right hand and, as he hunched forward, swung a beautiful upper hook with my left, catching him clean on the chin, following up with a right cross.
Somebody grabbed me from behind. I elbowed him, swivelled around and swung a left jab, followed by a left back hand and a quick right.
That was the last thing I remember before waking up here.
Well I have to tell you, the neighbours on the left, Tommy and Sue, they were making a terrible racket last night, singing at the top of their voices and banging around ‘til gone 3.30. Well I thought, it is Saturday night and maybe they are having an X Factor party. One has to be tolerant and all that, but they could at least have warned me.
But then I was woken up at 9 this morning and it was all going on again. A terrible commotion. I peered out of the front window, and there seemed to be a lot of people milling about. Then I noticed that on the end house, the one on the other side of Tommy’s, in their front garden had appeared one of those pub style wooden tables with attached benches, and there were four Hassids, black hats, beards, the lot, sitting at the table stuffing their faces.
I went downstairs to investigate. My hallway was packed with people and the front door was open. ‘What the hell is going on?’ I thought. I went out the front. There was a man standing outside Tommy’s with a fluorescent sleeveless jacket, like the ones fire wardens and building site workers wear. “If you would just like to wait in there please” he said pointing at my house to a couple coming down the garden path.
“What the hell is going on?” I said to him.
“We’ve opened a sushi bar” said the man.
“What?” I said.
“We’ve opened a sushi bar.”
“But you haven’t got planning permission” I said.
The man in the yellow jacket shrugged.
“I demand to see the manager” I said.
“I am the manager” he said.
“Where’s Tommy?” I said.
“He’s in the back” said the man, looking towards Tommy’s house “trying to get some work done. He’s locked himself away.”
I went back into my house.
“Get out of my house” I said to no-one in particular, but no-one moved.
I went into the kitchen. A hole had been knocked through in the wall separating my kitchen from Tommy’s. I have to say it was a neat job, but the cheek of it; they hadn’t even given me any warning. On Tommy side I could see gleaming spotlights in the ceiling and a shiny silver counter with a couple of chefs working feverishly away.
I called the police. The woman who answered chastised me for calling 999 when it was not an emergency, and said I should ‘phone my local station. It took a while to find the number. There was a recorded message saying that they were shut - well it was a Sunday - and that out-of-hours police work had been outsourced to a private sector service provider. I called them and got another recorded message – “to help us deal with your enquiry please choose from one of the following options… for physical assault press 1, for burglary and theft press 2”. I pressed # “for any other enquiry”. There was a crackle and a hiss and a lady in a thick Indian accent asked how she could help. There was a disconcerting delay on the line. I explained what had happened and the lady told me that it was a civil matter not a police matter. She suggested that I contact the “relevant regulatory authority.” I asked her where she was based and she hung up.
I rang the local council but they were also shut.
I squeezed myself a fresh grapefruit and orange juice and went to sit down, but there were people sitting in all the chairs.
“This is my chair” I said to a young man with overly slicked hair.
“Oh is it” he said, carrying on reading my paper.
“Yes it is. Can you please get up.”
“Gonna make me?” he said.
“Yes, if needs be” I said.
He ignored me.
I pulled the chair back and lifted him up by his armpits. I landed a hard hook to his midriff with my right hand and, as he hunched forward, swung a beautiful upper hook with my left, catching him clean on the chin, following up with a right cross.
Somebody grabbed me from behind. I elbowed him, swivelled around and swung a left jab, followed by a left back hand and a quick right.
That was the last thing I remember before waking up here.
Friday, December 15, 2006
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Thursday, December 07, 2006
The Grebson Family History
I’ve been doing some research on my lineage – nothing new there, and I have discovered quite an extraordinary article on the Grebsons called “The Greystoke Lineage” By Philip Jose Farmer - http://members.aol.com/kickaha23/grebson.html. Extracts of that article are reproduced here with gratitude and a flagrant disregard for copyright.
The article is about the lineage of the original Tarzan, namely Lord Greystoke, but the Greystoke family appear intimately connected with the Grebsons. Now I cannot definitively prove that these are my Grebsons, but as you will see what a wonderful thing it would be if I were.
Farmer begins by saying “the lineage herein is as if taken from the pages of Burke's Peerage. The real coat of arms and lineage of "Lord Greystoke" cannot be presented here, of course. But over half of the people and almost all of the places in the lineage are true. The others are not really fictional; they are just disguised.” Hmmm Interesting.
The lineage begins with WESTERFALCNA, b. ca. 578, son of King Aelle of Deira by Osburgh, a Wessex woman, claimed descent from the God Woden through Waegdaeg, of south Denmark, c260 A.D. The present monarch of England also claims descent from Woden.
Westerfalcna, who called himself Graegbeardssunu (Old English for "The Son of The Grey-Bearded One," an epithet for Woden) fled after Aelle was slain and Aethelric, king of Bernicia, seized the throne. In what is now the North Riding of Yorkshire, Westerfalcna erected on a peak a wooden fort, GREBSON’S HOLD.
Next up is GODWULF OF GREBSON who married a daughter of Komak Sigurdsson, Irish-Norwegian lord of the neighbouring holding eventually known as Sigerside.
His son, GODWULF, married a daughter of the lord of Greystoke, Cumberland.
GODWULF, Godwulf's grandson, married a cousin, and fell at Stamford where the invading Norwegian, King Harald Haardrada, was killed. Godwulf's brother, Westerfalcna, who had married a sister of his brother's wife, was also present at Stamford. He marched with King Harold of England to Hastings and was slain.
BEOWULF, Westerfalcna's son, was born posthumously with his cousin, Godwulf's son.
The lordship of GREBSON then passed into the hands of RAINULPH FITZGILBERT, brother of Richard FitzGilbert, or De Clare, who received 176 lordships after accompanying William the Conqueror into England. Rainulph married Westerfalcna's widow, and, his six children dying in infancy because, it is said, of a curse, adopted Beowulf as his son and heir on the condition he change his name to Rainulph FitzRainulph (an early sign of the Grebson ability to disappear up oneself?).
Apparently the Grebsons were suspected of being secret worshipers of the pagan god, Woden, and, indeed, for four centuries thereafter, many Grebsons were burned or hung for witchcraft, though none in the direct line of descent.
Lord FitzGilbert and Rainulph swore fealty to King William Rufus, son of the William the Conqueror, and perhaps related to Rufus of Rufus and Chaka Khan fame. This giant Norse king, one of the great warriors and travellers of the Viking age, is said by William of Malmsbury to have been thrown down to a lion while a prisoner in Constantinople but to have strangled it with his bare hands.
Next up is Sir John FitzJohn of Grebson born 1145 – he had a natural son by a Welsh slave (I’ve always had an affinity for the Welsh) was one of the few Englishmen who accompanied Richard I, the Lion-Hearted, on his crusade. John, knighted outside Acre, returned in 1199 with a Saracen bride, Ayesha, daughter of the half-Persian Abdul el Dehshetli, cousin to Saladin and descendant of both Mohammed and Zarathustra. Do you see where this is going?
Farmer tells us that the sinister crest of the Grebson coat of arms is "a spear or transfixing a Saracen's head gules." That is, a golden spear stuck through a red-hued Mohammedan's head. A Saracen's head usually commemorates an ancestor who has been on a crusade to the Holy Land. The Grebson crest is coloured gules instead of the proper, or natural, colour because of Sir John's use of the severed head of a Moslem while escaping from Acre. After cutting off the head, Sir John threw it, knocked another soldier off his horse, and fled with Ayesha through the momentarily opened gates.
Farmer says it is worth noting that Tarzan's ancestor, Mohammed, belonged to the Qoreish, the dominant tribe of Mecca since 440 A.D. These claimed descent from Qosaiy, whose ancestors were, supposedly, Abraham and Ishmael.
So if I get all this right, not only could I be descended from the pagan God Woden and share lineage with our Royal Family, but I could also be descended from one of the original crusaders and from Mohammed. Maybe that’s where I get my Jewish self-loathing and general identity confusion from? The Viking connection might also explain my love of Scandanavian electronica! Oh yeah, and me Tarzan.
Farmer goes on to list a load of other famous Grebsons including…
RICHARD "THE BLACK LION," 1st BARON GREBSON, so declared by a writ issued by Henry III in 1222. Richard married Catherine O'Brien and returned from Ireland with her and her brother, Finn O'Brien, "The Red Bull of Munster," exiled for having killed his cousin in a quarrel. He lived on the Grebson estate until he married Rebecca, a daughter of John Griffin, ancestor of the Barons Griffin of Braybroke Castle of Northants. This was the first recorded connection between the Grebsons and the Griffins (later known as the Olis)
In Italy he eloped with Alessandra, daughter of Alessandro de Parco, Count of Scarlassi-Longobardo. This illustrious family, now extinct, could trace its ancestry to Julius Caesar, who, in turn, claimed descent from the goddess Venus. The 1st Baron and his wife died in 1238, presumably of poison administered by an agent of Alessandra's father.
JOHN CALDWELL-GREBSON, 3rd BARON, a landless knight claiming to be of Scots descent. The 3rd Baron being slain during an encounter with the officers of Edward I in 1280, his son assumed the lordship of Grebson. There is little doubt that the 3rd Baron was, in actuality, Richard, son of Henry III and Eleanor of Provence, known at one time as Norman of Torn. Richard. Kidnapped at the age of three, Richard was raised as "Norman" of (the ruined tower of) Torn in the hills of Derby by De Vac, a Gascon who hated Henry III, and who taught Norman to hate Englishmen.
JOHN CALDWELL, 4th BARON OF GREBSON. The 4th Baron, outlawed in 1296, fled with relatives and retainers into the hills of Derby. A great bowman, and dressed in Lincoln green, he became known as The Green Baron, or The Green Archer. The story of his long fight against Edward I and Edward II has, according to some, been incorporated into the legend of Robin Hood, along with that of Robert Fitzooth. The 4th Baron was pardoned by Edward II in 1325. The baron died in an attempt to rescue his king, who was imprisoned in Berkeley Castle and was murdered there on 21 Sep 1327.
ROBERT, 5th BARON OF GREBSON. Married Katherine Drummond. The Drummonds, according to unvarying tradition, are of Hungarian origin, Maurice, the first of that family who settled in Scotland, having come from that country in 1066 with Edgar the Atheling and Margaret, his sister, afterwards wife of King Malcolm III of Scotland. Maurice adopted the name Drummond from the Gaelic "druim" and "monadh," that is "back of the mountain." Maurice was the son of George, a younger son of Andreas, King of Hungary. Andreas could trace his ancestry to Arpad, the Magyar king who conquered Hungary (died 907). The 5th Baron's wife disappeared during a visit to her father in 1340, it being presumed that bandits had murdered her and buried her and her cortege. The 5th Baron died a year later of a broken abscess in his ear.
SIR JOHN MALCOLM, 6th BARON and 1st EARL OF GREBSON. Sir John accompanied Edward III's son, The Black Prince, into France and was knighted on the battlefield of Crecy. Sir John sickened of the Black Death in 1348, but, recovering, built a chapel at Grebson and founded a priory outside Macclesfield, where he had recovered. Sir John was made 1st Earl of Grebson in 1357. His lordship died choking on a fish-bone in 1359, and was succeeded by his daughter, Joane, 7th Baroness and 2nd Countess. Lord and Lady Grebson were murdered by their vassals during the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 and were succeeded by Thomas Ralph, 8th Baron and 3rd Earl, born 1366. His lordship died of infection from a foot crushed by a horse.
As you can see, the lineage goes on and on and I won’t bore you with all the details but other noteworthy Grebsons include…
Captain John Dermod Caldwell-Grebson became immensely wealthy through privateering (actually, piracy).
Captain John Charles Caldwell-Grebson, killed 5 Jul 1643 while serving with Sir John, 1st Baron Byron, at Roundaway Down, and succeeded by his second son, Ralph Arthur, famous for his strength and reported to have been able to lift a full-grown bull above his head. Ralph Arthur died of a bee sting.
His son, John Charles Conyers, 12th Baron, born 1668, married the daughter of Dolores Maria Salvador. Dolores's family could trace their ancestry back to Rodrigo Diaz (b. 1043), known as El Cid.
Their daughter, Elizabeth Gracia, Baroness Grebson of Grebson, married the grandson of Harold Cecil, the only child of the 3rd Earl Staveley of Staveley Hall, Islington. The 3rd Earl was descended from George Clayton of Grimsby, ancestor also of Lord Tennyson, the poet, and from John, or Thomas, Horner, steward to the last Abbot of Glastonbury. When Henry VIII dissolved the monastic orders and seized so much church property, the abbot sent deeds to twelve manorial estates to the king to appease him. These were baked into a pie to fool robbers and were delivered by the steward. On the way, Horner opened the pie and appropriated the deed to the estate of Mells. Hence, the nursery rhyme of "Little Jack Horner."
The only son of this union, John, was stolen at the age of two, his abductors proposing to sell him, a criminal practice quite common at this time. The authorities being close on their trail, the abductors disposed of John to a beggar woman who, in turn, sold him to a gypsy woman. She named him Bob (not "Robert") Singleton, the only name he knew during most of his life. The gypsy woman being hanged when Bob was six, he was raised by various parishes. At twelve, he was taken to Newfoundland as a cabin boy on a ship. Much of his life is detailed with more or less validity by Daniel Defoe in the biography Life, Adventures, and Piracies of Captain Singleton, published in 1720. The narrative, however, ends in 1711.
At the age of 18, Singleton, marooned on Madagascar, sailed with 24 other seamen to the coast of Africa near the mouth of the Zambezi River. From there he began a three-year odyssey which ended at Cape Coast Castle in what is now Ghana. This feat, covering a total of more than 5,000 miles through unexplored jungles and deserts and mountains inhabited by lions, leopards, poisonous snakes, and cannibals, and infested with malaria, tsetse flies, and diseases of many and terrible sorts, is unmatched in history.
General Sir William, V.C., K.C.B. [1st Bt.], author of many book and much poetry, born 1 Jan 1799; due to his somewhat colourful life he was the object of much gossip and even caricature in the newspapers, being called "Wandering Willie," "Billy Banns," and "Marrying Bill," or, because of the tendency of his wives to die, "The Bluebeard Baronet" or "Gruesome Grebson." He was buried in the family cemetery by the ruins of Grebson's Hold below the inscription of the family motto, Je suys encore vyvant -- I Still Live.
So in summary I could well be descended from a line that includes:
Woden
Mohammed
Julius Caesar
Venus
Henry III
Numerous North European kings
Tarzan
Robin Hood
The Queen
Alfred Lord Tennyson and
Little Jack Horner.
Respect!
The article is about the lineage of the original Tarzan, namely Lord Greystoke, but the Greystoke family appear intimately connected with the Grebsons. Now I cannot definitively prove that these are my Grebsons, but as you will see what a wonderful thing it would be if I were.
Farmer begins by saying “the lineage herein is as if taken from the pages of Burke's Peerage. The real coat of arms and lineage of "Lord Greystoke" cannot be presented here, of course. But over half of the people and almost all of the places in the lineage are true. The others are not really fictional; they are just disguised.” Hmmm Interesting.
The lineage begins with WESTERFALCNA, b. ca. 578, son of King Aelle of Deira by Osburgh, a Wessex woman, claimed descent from the God Woden through Waegdaeg, of south Denmark, c260 A.D. The present monarch of England also claims descent from Woden.
Westerfalcna, who called himself Graegbeardssunu (Old English for "The Son of The Grey-Bearded One," an epithet for Woden) fled after Aelle was slain and Aethelric, king of Bernicia, seized the throne. In what is now the North Riding of Yorkshire, Westerfalcna erected on a peak a wooden fort, GREBSON’S HOLD.
Next up is GODWULF OF GREBSON who married a daughter of Komak Sigurdsson, Irish-Norwegian lord of the neighbouring holding eventually known as Sigerside.
His son, GODWULF, married a daughter of the lord of Greystoke, Cumberland.
GODWULF, Godwulf's grandson, married a cousin, and fell at Stamford where the invading Norwegian, King Harald Haardrada, was killed. Godwulf's brother, Westerfalcna, who had married a sister of his brother's wife, was also present at Stamford. He marched with King Harold of England to Hastings and was slain.
BEOWULF, Westerfalcna's son, was born posthumously with his cousin, Godwulf's son.
The lordship of GREBSON then passed into the hands of RAINULPH FITZGILBERT, brother of Richard FitzGilbert, or De Clare, who received 176 lordships after accompanying William the Conqueror into England. Rainulph married Westerfalcna's widow, and, his six children dying in infancy because, it is said, of a curse, adopted Beowulf as his son and heir on the condition he change his name to Rainulph FitzRainulph (an early sign of the Grebson ability to disappear up oneself?).
Apparently the Grebsons were suspected of being secret worshipers of the pagan god, Woden, and, indeed, for four centuries thereafter, many Grebsons were burned or hung for witchcraft, though none in the direct line of descent.
Lord FitzGilbert and Rainulph swore fealty to King William Rufus, son of the William the Conqueror, and perhaps related to Rufus of Rufus and Chaka Khan fame. This giant Norse king, one of the great warriors and travellers of the Viking age, is said by William of Malmsbury to have been thrown down to a lion while a prisoner in Constantinople but to have strangled it with his bare hands.
Next up is Sir John FitzJohn of Grebson born 1145 – he had a natural son by a Welsh slave (I’ve always had an affinity for the Welsh) was one of the few Englishmen who accompanied Richard I, the Lion-Hearted, on his crusade. John, knighted outside Acre, returned in 1199 with a Saracen bride, Ayesha, daughter of the half-Persian Abdul el Dehshetli, cousin to Saladin and descendant of both Mohammed and Zarathustra. Do you see where this is going?
Farmer tells us that the sinister crest of the Grebson coat of arms is "a spear or transfixing a Saracen's head gules." That is, a golden spear stuck through a red-hued Mohammedan's head. A Saracen's head usually commemorates an ancestor who has been on a crusade to the Holy Land. The Grebson crest is coloured gules instead of the proper, or natural, colour because of Sir John's use of the severed head of a Moslem while escaping from Acre. After cutting off the head, Sir John threw it, knocked another soldier off his horse, and fled with Ayesha through the momentarily opened gates.
Farmer says it is worth noting that Tarzan's ancestor, Mohammed, belonged to the Qoreish, the dominant tribe of Mecca since 440 A.D. These claimed descent from Qosaiy, whose ancestors were, supposedly, Abraham and Ishmael.
So if I get all this right, not only could I be descended from the pagan God Woden and share lineage with our Royal Family, but I could also be descended from one of the original crusaders and from Mohammed. Maybe that’s where I get my Jewish self-loathing and general identity confusion from? The Viking connection might also explain my love of Scandanavian electronica! Oh yeah, and me Tarzan.
Farmer goes on to list a load of other famous Grebsons including…
RICHARD "THE BLACK LION," 1st BARON GREBSON, so declared by a writ issued by Henry III in 1222. Richard married Catherine O'Brien and returned from Ireland with her and her brother, Finn O'Brien, "The Red Bull of Munster," exiled for having killed his cousin in a quarrel. He lived on the Grebson estate until he married Rebecca, a daughter of John Griffin, ancestor of the Barons Griffin of Braybroke Castle of Northants. This was the first recorded connection between the Grebsons and the Griffins (later known as the Olis)
In Italy he eloped with Alessandra, daughter of Alessandro de Parco, Count of Scarlassi-Longobardo. This illustrious family, now extinct, could trace its ancestry to Julius Caesar, who, in turn, claimed descent from the goddess Venus. The 1st Baron and his wife died in 1238, presumably of poison administered by an agent of Alessandra's father.
JOHN CALDWELL-GREBSON, 3rd BARON, a landless knight claiming to be of Scots descent. The 3rd Baron being slain during an encounter with the officers of Edward I in 1280, his son assumed the lordship of Grebson. There is little doubt that the 3rd Baron was, in actuality, Richard, son of Henry III and Eleanor of Provence, known at one time as Norman of Torn. Richard. Kidnapped at the age of three, Richard was raised as "Norman" of (the ruined tower of) Torn in the hills of Derby by De Vac, a Gascon who hated Henry III, and who taught Norman to hate Englishmen.
JOHN CALDWELL, 4th BARON OF GREBSON. The 4th Baron, outlawed in 1296, fled with relatives and retainers into the hills of Derby. A great bowman, and dressed in Lincoln green, he became known as The Green Baron, or The Green Archer. The story of his long fight against Edward I and Edward II has, according to some, been incorporated into the legend of Robin Hood, along with that of Robert Fitzooth. The 4th Baron was pardoned by Edward II in 1325. The baron died in an attempt to rescue his king, who was imprisoned in Berkeley Castle and was murdered there on 21 Sep 1327.
ROBERT, 5th BARON OF GREBSON. Married Katherine Drummond. The Drummonds, according to unvarying tradition, are of Hungarian origin, Maurice, the first of that family who settled in Scotland, having come from that country in 1066 with Edgar the Atheling and Margaret, his sister, afterwards wife of King Malcolm III of Scotland. Maurice adopted the name Drummond from the Gaelic "druim" and "monadh," that is "back of the mountain." Maurice was the son of George, a younger son of Andreas, King of Hungary. Andreas could trace his ancestry to Arpad, the Magyar king who conquered Hungary (died 907). The 5th Baron's wife disappeared during a visit to her father in 1340, it being presumed that bandits had murdered her and buried her and her cortege. The 5th Baron died a year later of a broken abscess in his ear.
SIR JOHN MALCOLM, 6th BARON and 1st EARL OF GREBSON. Sir John accompanied Edward III's son, The Black Prince, into France and was knighted on the battlefield of Crecy. Sir John sickened of the Black Death in 1348, but, recovering, built a chapel at Grebson and founded a priory outside Macclesfield, where he had recovered. Sir John was made 1st Earl of Grebson in 1357. His lordship died choking on a fish-bone in 1359, and was succeeded by his daughter, Joane, 7th Baroness and 2nd Countess. Lord and Lady Grebson were murdered by their vassals during the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 and were succeeded by Thomas Ralph, 8th Baron and 3rd Earl, born 1366. His lordship died of infection from a foot crushed by a horse.
As you can see, the lineage goes on and on and I won’t bore you with all the details but other noteworthy Grebsons include…
Captain John Dermod Caldwell-Grebson became immensely wealthy through privateering (actually, piracy).
Captain John Charles Caldwell-Grebson, killed 5 Jul 1643 while serving with Sir John, 1st Baron Byron, at Roundaway Down, and succeeded by his second son, Ralph Arthur, famous for his strength and reported to have been able to lift a full-grown bull above his head. Ralph Arthur died of a bee sting.
His son, John Charles Conyers, 12th Baron, born 1668, married the daughter of Dolores Maria Salvador. Dolores's family could trace their ancestry back to Rodrigo Diaz (b. 1043), known as El Cid.
Their daughter, Elizabeth Gracia, Baroness Grebson of Grebson, married the grandson of Harold Cecil, the only child of the 3rd Earl Staveley of Staveley Hall, Islington. The 3rd Earl was descended from George Clayton of Grimsby, ancestor also of Lord Tennyson, the poet, and from John, or Thomas, Horner, steward to the last Abbot of Glastonbury. When Henry VIII dissolved the monastic orders and seized so much church property, the abbot sent deeds to twelve manorial estates to the king to appease him. These were baked into a pie to fool robbers and were delivered by the steward. On the way, Horner opened the pie and appropriated the deed to the estate of Mells. Hence, the nursery rhyme of "Little Jack Horner."
The only son of this union, John, was stolen at the age of two, his abductors proposing to sell him, a criminal practice quite common at this time. The authorities being close on their trail, the abductors disposed of John to a beggar woman who, in turn, sold him to a gypsy woman. She named him Bob (not "Robert") Singleton, the only name he knew during most of his life. The gypsy woman being hanged when Bob was six, he was raised by various parishes. At twelve, he was taken to Newfoundland as a cabin boy on a ship. Much of his life is detailed with more or less validity by Daniel Defoe in the biography Life, Adventures, and Piracies of Captain Singleton, published in 1720. The narrative, however, ends in 1711.
At the age of 18, Singleton, marooned on Madagascar, sailed with 24 other seamen to the coast of Africa near the mouth of the Zambezi River. From there he began a three-year odyssey which ended at Cape Coast Castle in what is now Ghana. This feat, covering a total of more than 5,000 miles through unexplored jungles and deserts and mountains inhabited by lions, leopards, poisonous snakes, and cannibals, and infested with malaria, tsetse flies, and diseases of many and terrible sorts, is unmatched in history.
General Sir William, V.C., K.C.B. [1st Bt.], author of many book and much poetry, born 1 Jan 1799; due to his somewhat colourful life he was the object of much gossip and even caricature in the newspapers, being called "Wandering Willie," "Billy Banns," and "Marrying Bill," or, because of the tendency of his wives to die, "The Bluebeard Baronet" or "Gruesome Grebson." He was buried in the family cemetery by the ruins of Grebson's Hold below the inscription of the family motto, Je suys encore vyvant -- I Still Live.
So in summary I could well be descended from a line that includes:
Woden
Mohammed
Julius Caesar
Venus
Henry III
Numerous North European kings
Tarzan
Robin Hood
The Queen
Alfred Lord Tennyson and
Little Jack Horner.
Respect!
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
un-imagine-able
So there we have it. The Beeb’s flagship arts/culture/intellectual programme ‘Imagine’ (appropriately named after the weakest tritest most sentimental nursery rhyme ever recorded) delves into the world of the world wide web and tells us nothing we didn’t already know. All the usual suspects were there – blogs (c.f. girl with a one track mind doing her usual apology about how she is a post-feminist crusader for women expressing their sexual feelings, rather than what I suspect the reality is, which is mild titillation for the dirty apple mac brigade who like reading about how she likes to wank big hard cocks)), wikipedia, my space (c.f. arctic monkeys), you tube, the long tail – and it’s all lovely and wonderful.
The programme finished with Alan Yentob’s Second Life avatar floating into space; very appropriate for a broadcast that was lighter and fluffier than the top of a cappuccino.
Where was the dark side? Porn, chat room grooming, identity theft, scammers and viruses were all absent. There was no discussion of the use of the web by islamo-fascist and neo-nazi propaganderists or the creation of falsified images and news. No discussion of the sociological and psychological effects of online communication and ready access to violent and graphic images. No analysis of the effect of the www on art and literature. No questioning of the reliability of Wikipedia. No mention of how many people’s lives are being ruined by e mail overload and the expectation of instantaneous 24 hour response. This nervous breakdown has been sent to you by my blackberry wireless life-wrecker. Nope, in Yentob’s world, it is all good.
Sporadically Yentob would voice his concern as a TV producer about where the audience had gone, the implication being people no longer watch the telly because they spend all their time watching people eating Jaffa Cakes on You Tube. Sorry Alan but your analysis is rather simplistic. People are not watching TV because most TV is absolute rubbish, as exemplified by your own sorry programme. Build it and they will come, but not if you build it out of feathers and air. Take the Beeb’s current holy artrinity of Imagine, the Culture Show and Newsnight Review. “There is a sense in which” they are all shite. I have tried on three occasions to watch the Power of Art and each time have been forced by rising nausea to switch off after five minutes. These programmes are patronising, dull, and listless. One senses a brooding political agenda, a fear that anything too stimulating will be considered elitist. Heaven forbid that the Beeb should be highbrow.
As for Channel 4, don’t get me started. I read today that their alternative Queen’s Message will be delivered this year by a lady in a full veil. The phrase “she has a lovely face for radio” springs to mind. I can sum up C4 in one example, their advertising for Downfall. By all accounts Downfall was a superb and serious film about Hitler’s last days. But how did C4 advertise it? With full page spreads with the strapline “it has a happy ending – he dies.” C4 never responded to my complaint. The advertising complaints authority rejected my complaint because they judged that it was not offensive to enough people. What they missed was the reason why it was offensive, which was that it was STUPID. It was a stupid thing to say. Simple as that. And since then I have become aware of just how many stupid things C4 says and does. The lady in the veil is the latest example. It is an entirely meaningless gesture. How will she be miked – inside or outside the veil? Inside will be fakery, outside should guarantee her words are fuddled. It is all surface – ooh a lady in a veil. So fucking what. It is the content that should be the story, not what she’s wearing. Then there was that sorry excuse of a Friday night show “made” by 12 ordinary young people (yeah and the rest of C4’s production team). I caught an interview they did with gonzo porn king Ben Dover. When he said he had fucked over 100,000,000 women or however many it was, the audience gave him a cheering standing ovation. An audience with a majority of young women. They should have asked him how many STD’s he had – that would get them clapping.
TV has nothing to fear from the t’internet; it is being destroyed from within, by the Shoreditch Twats and loft dwelling City Centre Manchester idiots (CF Nathan Barley – the idiots have taken control), by the not-Oxbridge liberal left wing intelligentsia (aka The Guardian’s media wing), by people in silly spectacles and daft haircuts. Watching real-life beheadings, throat fucking or jaffa cake munching (and the last one is not a euphemism) on t’internet is no threat to telly. They need to make stuff that is original and stimulating. Doctor Who anyone?
Even more radically, make stuff that is entertaining. That people want to watch. And I don’t mean footage of real life cop chases, reality tv about really awful dull people, and a million make over programmes. I mean a million love songs.
Yes “troubled ITV”. Pretty much everyone I know and at least six or so odd million other people spent Saturday night watching the X Factor / Take That spectacular. Top telly. Build it and they will come.
Deal or No Deal (C4) pulls in something like fifty percent of the available viewing audience at that time every day. Despite Noel and his shirts and hair and beard.
So there’s old hairy Yentob going on about the democratization occasioned by the www, and he gets a young person in to show him how to set up his my space account and so methinks, I’ll befriend him , tell him where he’s going wrong. Maybe I can save telly and also track down my long lost mate Mad Anne (not to be confused with Fat Ann) who is his cousin or something. But can I find him? Na. There was an Alanyentob but he’s been discontinued. Maybe he was one of them identity thieves the real Alan so studiously omitted. There a million plain old Alan’s, mostly self-deferential types obsessed with how their lives have been ruined by being called Alan. A million loveless Alans. But the real Yentob had vanished. Floated away.
The programme finished with Alan Yentob’s Second Life avatar floating into space; very appropriate for a broadcast that was lighter and fluffier than the top of a cappuccino.
Where was the dark side? Porn, chat room grooming, identity theft, scammers and viruses were all absent. There was no discussion of the use of the web by islamo-fascist and neo-nazi propaganderists or the creation of falsified images and news. No discussion of the sociological and psychological effects of online communication and ready access to violent and graphic images. No analysis of the effect of the www on art and literature. No questioning of the reliability of Wikipedia. No mention of how many people’s lives are being ruined by e mail overload and the expectation of instantaneous 24 hour response. This nervous breakdown has been sent to you by my blackberry wireless life-wrecker. Nope, in Yentob’s world, it is all good.
Sporadically Yentob would voice his concern as a TV producer about where the audience had gone, the implication being people no longer watch the telly because they spend all their time watching people eating Jaffa Cakes on You Tube. Sorry Alan but your analysis is rather simplistic. People are not watching TV because most TV is absolute rubbish, as exemplified by your own sorry programme. Build it and they will come, but not if you build it out of feathers and air. Take the Beeb’s current holy artrinity of Imagine, the Culture Show and Newsnight Review. “There is a sense in which” they are all shite. I have tried on three occasions to watch the Power of Art and each time have been forced by rising nausea to switch off after five minutes. These programmes are patronising, dull, and listless. One senses a brooding political agenda, a fear that anything too stimulating will be considered elitist. Heaven forbid that the Beeb should be highbrow.
As for Channel 4, don’t get me started. I read today that their alternative Queen’s Message will be delivered this year by a lady in a full veil. The phrase “she has a lovely face for radio” springs to mind. I can sum up C4 in one example, their advertising for Downfall. By all accounts Downfall was a superb and serious film about Hitler’s last days. But how did C4 advertise it? With full page spreads with the strapline “it has a happy ending – he dies.” C4 never responded to my complaint. The advertising complaints authority rejected my complaint because they judged that it was not offensive to enough people. What they missed was the reason why it was offensive, which was that it was STUPID. It was a stupid thing to say. Simple as that. And since then I have become aware of just how many stupid things C4 says and does. The lady in the veil is the latest example. It is an entirely meaningless gesture. How will she be miked – inside or outside the veil? Inside will be fakery, outside should guarantee her words are fuddled. It is all surface – ooh a lady in a veil. So fucking what. It is the content that should be the story, not what she’s wearing. Then there was that sorry excuse of a Friday night show “made” by 12 ordinary young people (yeah and the rest of C4’s production team). I caught an interview they did with gonzo porn king Ben Dover. When he said he had fucked over 100,000,000 women or however many it was, the audience gave him a cheering standing ovation. An audience with a majority of young women. They should have asked him how many STD’s he had – that would get them clapping.
TV has nothing to fear from the t’internet; it is being destroyed from within, by the Shoreditch Twats and loft dwelling City Centre Manchester idiots (CF Nathan Barley – the idiots have taken control), by the not-Oxbridge liberal left wing intelligentsia (aka The Guardian’s media wing), by people in silly spectacles and daft haircuts. Watching real-life beheadings, throat fucking or jaffa cake munching (and the last one is not a euphemism) on t’internet is no threat to telly. They need to make stuff that is original and stimulating. Doctor Who anyone?
Even more radically, make stuff that is entertaining. That people want to watch. And I don’t mean footage of real life cop chases, reality tv about really awful dull people, and a million make over programmes. I mean a million love songs.
Yes “troubled ITV”. Pretty much everyone I know and at least six or so odd million other people spent Saturday night watching the X Factor / Take That spectacular. Top telly. Build it and they will come.
Deal or No Deal (C4) pulls in something like fifty percent of the available viewing audience at that time every day. Despite Noel and his shirts and hair and beard.
So there’s old hairy Yentob going on about the democratization occasioned by the www, and he gets a young person in to show him how to set up his my space account and so methinks, I’ll befriend him , tell him where he’s going wrong. Maybe I can save telly and also track down my long lost mate Mad Anne (not to be confused with Fat Ann) who is his cousin or something. But can I find him? Na. There was an Alanyentob but he’s been discontinued. Maybe he was one of them identity thieves the real Alan so studiously omitted. There a million plain old Alan’s, mostly self-deferential types obsessed with how their lives have been ruined by being called Alan. A million loveless Alans. But the real Yentob had vanished. Floated away.
Monday, December 04, 2006
On New Music
Watching Planet Earth last night, I was struck once again by the sonic similarities between the natural and electronic worlds. I have noticed before how some of the bleeps and whistles of electronica remind me of the clicks of whales and dolphins; how the vague and threatening booms of bass wash out of the speakers like deep sea depth charges. In last night’s programme on seasonal forests, a tough beaked bird drilled arhythmically against a tree; leaves rustled with the soft shoe shuffle of predators and prey. Listening afterwards to the Kitchen Motors Compilation, the sounds of the forest echo in my head (even though, with a lovely touch of irony, there are no trees in Iceland).
This, as yet unlabelled and indescribable new music, has for me an acute psychological effect – with Bjork and Múm you roam icy craggy aural landscapes; listening to CocoRosie is like regressing to the womb: with some electronica like Mystical Sun it feels like regressing further to a primordial world. Perhaps this electronic simulation of the natural world is connected to the mechanics of how this effect is achieved.
Of course many of my two and a half readers will be wondering what I am going on about; well if you have sound on your pc it is very easy to find out – just let your mouse roam right and down a bit and click the link to my my space site; stick a bit of mouldy cheese there if you like to tempt the mouse.
But the best description of it comes from the lovely Cibelle, and I leave you with her words (taken from her my space site)…
“on another note, music, the way i put it in the juicer or splash it on the canvas, is not about mixing this with that, or that with the other, the genre, the country where one was born or where one lives, it is not about being from this or that scene or this box or the next. If it's just me then, when that piece was done, with all i had inside of me at that second until that chapter got closed when the lights of the studio go off, taking up poems and embracing them with sounds in layers and punctuations, water, powder, bricks. Even better, is to sculpt out of a big mass of collected particles of sound, sweat, glue, lick, purple, silver, air, wood, wind, anything thats been stuck together by living life and all these and other things accumulating inside of me just like breathing and the only things remaining being the ones that match me at that moment, then letting them out, all merged inside me by osmosis, letting it all come out, all that, is that mass, that will be sculpted until it gives me goose bumps and butterflies. then i know it's ready.”
This, as yet unlabelled and indescribable new music, has for me an acute psychological effect – with Bjork and Múm you roam icy craggy aural landscapes; listening to CocoRosie is like regressing to the womb: with some electronica like Mystical Sun it feels like regressing further to a primordial world. Perhaps this electronic simulation of the natural world is connected to the mechanics of how this effect is achieved.
Of course many of my two and a half readers will be wondering what I am going on about; well if you have sound on your pc it is very easy to find out – just let your mouse roam right and down a bit and click the link to my my space site; stick a bit of mouldy cheese there if you like to tempt the mouse.
But the best description of it comes from the lovely Cibelle, and I leave you with her words (taken from her my space site)…
“on another note, music, the way i put it in the juicer or splash it on the canvas, is not about mixing this with that, or that with the other, the genre, the country where one was born or where one lives, it is not about being from this or that scene or this box or the next. If it's just me then, when that piece was done, with all i had inside of me at that second until that chapter got closed when the lights of the studio go off, taking up poems and embracing them with sounds in layers and punctuations, water, powder, bricks. Even better, is to sculpt out of a big mass of collected particles of sound, sweat, glue, lick, purple, silver, air, wood, wind, anything thats been stuck together by living life and all these and other things accumulating inside of me just like breathing and the only things remaining being the ones that match me at that moment, then letting them out, all merged inside me by osmosis, letting it all come out, all that, is that mass, that will be sculpted until it gives me goose bumps and butterflies. then i know it's ready.”
Sunday, December 03, 2006
Gig Review: Jackie-O Motherfucker
Jackie-O Motherfucker at Cargo. 30/11/06
Ah yes. One of the first alt rock bands I discovered when my musical path forked sharply left a few years ago, JOMF are a low key underground outfit. Their name suggests an angry heavy rock band, but in fact they make heavily textured droney free improvised music. The name was designed to ensure they remained under the counter and far away from the temptations and challenges of the mainstream.
After support from Inca Ore (layers of stoner vocals and flutes) and Alexander Ticker (layers of viola and guitar and vocals) failed to quite do it for me – all a bit flakey and lacking depth, things immediately look better when JOMF fill the room with assortments of bells and tambourines, adding guitars and held vocal notes, until my brain starts to wobble. As always, difficult to describe what is going on exactly, but this is a heavy dubby bad cousin of ambient music; one that is tugging at the coat ends of lunacy and dreaming of running off and joining a free jazz circus. Later tracks incorporate blistering polyrhythms and stabbing percussive effects.
1. Coolness of crowd: 6/10. More weird than cool. Seems to be lots of couples, comprising blokes who want to dig the music and lasses who want to be somewhere else very quickly. Very few of them make it through the JOMF set.
2. Bob quotient: 3/10. Poor.
3. Annoyment factor: 6/10. Yes there is some talking and anxious shuffling about, but somehow it doesn’t seem to bother me too much, such is the distracted and heavy nature of the music.
4. Sound quality: 8/10. Good.
5. Comfort: 7/10. A stand up gig, but as the room never gets that packed, I don’t feel locked into position.
6. Sexytime: 3/10. Just isn’t that.
7. Percussion / sound effect function: 7/10. Not much by way of weird instrumentation but all the acts rely on self-sampling and processing and layering to produce their aural soup – watery with the support, heavy and potatoey with JOMF.
Overall: 40/70, perhaps reflecting that it was all a bit weird and heavy, but in a good way.
Merchandise: None. JOMF reject the commodification of the musical environment.
Gruff Rhys?: He wasn’t there. Maybe he was too scared.
Visuals: Some low key projections.
Ah yes. One of the first alt rock bands I discovered when my musical path forked sharply left a few years ago, JOMF are a low key underground outfit. Their name suggests an angry heavy rock band, but in fact they make heavily textured droney free improvised music. The name was designed to ensure they remained under the counter and far away from the temptations and challenges of the mainstream.
After support from Inca Ore (layers of stoner vocals and flutes) and Alexander Ticker (layers of viola and guitar and vocals) failed to quite do it for me – all a bit flakey and lacking depth, things immediately look better when JOMF fill the room with assortments of bells and tambourines, adding guitars and held vocal notes, until my brain starts to wobble. As always, difficult to describe what is going on exactly, but this is a heavy dubby bad cousin of ambient music; one that is tugging at the coat ends of lunacy and dreaming of running off and joining a free jazz circus. Later tracks incorporate blistering polyrhythms and stabbing percussive effects.
1. Coolness of crowd: 6/10. More weird than cool. Seems to be lots of couples, comprising blokes who want to dig the music and lasses who want to be somewhere else very quickly. Very few of them make it through the JOMF set.
2. Bob quotient: 3/10. Poor.
3. Annoyment factor: 6/10. Yes there is some talking and anxious shuffling about, but somehow it doesn’t seem to bother me too much, such is the distracted and heavy nature of the music.
4. Sound quality: 8/10. Good.
5. Comfort: 7/10. A stand up gig, but as the room never gets that packed, I don’t feel locked into position.
6. Sexytime: 3/10. Just isn’t that.
7. Percussion / sound effect function: 7/10. Not much by way of weird instrumentation but all the acts rely on self-sampling and processing and layering to produce their aural soup – watery with the support, heavy and potatoey with JOMF.
Overall: 40/70, perhaps reflecting that it was all a bit weird and heavy, but in a good way.
Merchandise: None. JOMF reject the commodification of the musical environment.
Gruff Rhys?: He wasn’t there. Maybe he was too scared.
Visuals: Some low key projections.
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