This is lovely, from an article in todays Guardian about the effects the retractable roof has on the tennis at Wimbledon. It amplifies noise, amongst other things. Barnay Ronay writes:
"Even the impact of ball on strings sounds like an octopus whirled about by it's tendrils and violently whapped against a rock."
Ace.
On Saturday morning, having put it off for as long as possible, I submitted to necessity and went to get my hair cut - a long way from being one of my favourite chores, not least because of the seemingly compulsory chit-chat one is compelled to partake in.
On this occasion, there could only really be one subject for discussion.
"What did you, er, what did you make of Michael Jackson dying, then?", I was asked.
"I felt a bit sad", I replied. "but mainly just cos it seemed like he was living a pretty lonely, unsatisfactory life".
The barber nodded. "Yep", he said. "Still, what's got to be considered is, he was a paedophile".
I made a sort of non-commital noise. Child abuse, like football, is traditionally one of the subjects I try to avoid discussing when having my hair cut.
"Yep" his colleague agreed. "All them kids".
They shook their heads.
I sat in silence, leaving them to their conversation while my barber snip-snipped around my ears. Occasionally the two of them would cease their work, and their conversation, to stare at the skimpily dressed teenaged girls, most of whom were perhaps 15,16, as they walked past the barbers and down into town.
I elected not to point out the irony.
I’ve been having laptop troubles this week, so I’ve lost the Blur review I’ve been working on, so it’ll be a little while before I get a write up posted of last week’s Southend gig. In the meantime, you’re probably up to speed with how effective and moving a reunion their return is proving, courtesy of last night’s (annoyingly brief) Glastonbury highlights on the BBC. Today’s papers seem to echo my view; that although the band started ever so slightly slowly, before long they gelled perfectly, and played pretty much the perfect festival set. Here’s a quick run-down on the reports I’ve been reading in the Nationals…
Tim Jonze from the Guardian was fabulously impressed, choosing to contrast Blur’s hi-energy performance with the workmanlike sets of Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen. He writes:
"Tonight Blur are sticking their fingers up to dad-rock by falling in love all over again with the dumb art of playing pop music – and playing it loudly. Girls and Boys literally throbs with sordid energy, Song 2 sees the crowd threatening to pogo themselves off the earth's axis, and Parklife turns every man, woman and anarcho-crustie into a cockney geeza. It's hit after hit after hit. From She's So High to the Universal, via Popscene, For Tomorrow and Country House, it's nothing short of relentless.
(…) But for all their energy, it's the sad songs that work best: To the End, The Universal, This is a Low. Weirder still is the reaction to Tender, a song never really rated (at least by me) as a classic, transformed into a joyous hug-a-long that reverberates around the crowd after the first encore and the second encore.
It's at this point – when previously dismissed tracks acquire a new life of their own – that you realise something truly magical is going on. Because tonight's headline slot is not just about the music. It's not even about nostalgia. It's about friendship – and the truly heartwarming sight of two best friends throwing aside their differences and starting afresh."
Nick Hasted, writing for the Independent, noted the emotional undercurrent in the band’s performance, too:
"When Damon Albarn starts to grin five songs into their great Glastonbury comeback, Blur start to look like a band again. And when he breaks down weeping near the end, you know how much it meant. "Beetlebum" is the song where Albarn's errant guitarist and childhood friend Graham Coxon fizzes up his effects pedals, bassist Alex James starts to spin, fag dangling, and you remember Blur were the 1990s' great psychedelic band. (…) It is just before "This Is A Low", the best of Albarn's often deeply personal songs, that he sits on the stage and weeps, utterly overcome by all the times that have just been unstopped. Getting up to sing it is almost heroic."
Here’s Pete Paphides in the Times.
"As for Blur, a simple “Wow!” from Damon Albarn hinted at the scale of their reception. The love their music continues to inspire was measurable in countless moments: the sight of four fans who had gone to the trouble of dressing up as the sad-faced milk cartons in the video of 1999’s Coffee and TV; the spontaneous communal “Yesss!” that greeted Girls and Boys; the way almost everyone present continued to sing the “Oh my baby” refrain of Tender — even after a hair-raisingly beautiful seven-minute performance of the song — so that Blur eventually had to start Country House over it.
If there was one thing that the group’s warm-up gigs of the previous weeks had lacked, it was a fitting arena for Britain to show how much it had missed them.
Not here though. Not a chance. A guesting Phil Daniels came on for Parklife and 100,000 people absolutely bellowed the chorus into the night sky. It was perhaps at this point that our memory of how good they were intersected most dramatically with their readiness to confirm it. Had we just witnessed the greatest headlining set in the festival’s history? The eno-o-ormous sense of wellbeing that swept through Worthy Farm suggested we most definitely had."
And lastly, back in the Guardian, the most lyrical, evocative description of the lot, courtesy of Laura Barton.
"The audience, elated, even a touch delirious, wills them on; when Albarn's voice gives way a little in Beetlebum, the crowd rushes to catch it. Tender, one of the set's many highlights, is greeted with a warm rush of approval. "I'd forgotten they're a singalong band!" says the man to my right, as the band stops and starts, revs up the chorus once more and then falls silent, the sudden quiet filled by several thousand festival-goers softly singing the song's chorus: "Oh my baby," they lilt, "Oh my baby. Oh why. Oh why." It is one of the sweetest moments of the festival. Their efforts are duly rewarded with an ebulliant rendition of Country House, a song which acquires greater resonance here tonight for the muddy-booted masses. And for Alex James of course.
They haul out the hits: Parklife, This is a Low, To the End, to an increasingly enthusiastic reception. Returning to the stage for a rousing rendition of Song 2, and then again for The Universal, the band looks genuinely delighted as they look out over the flags, over the crowd with its sunburned noses and glitter-smeared faces, and peacock feathers in its hair, and far off to the countryside of Somerset and the floating candles flaring up into the sky. There is a pause as they seem to take in the magnificence of what they have done. And then comes the guitar, and the great singalong continues."
This morning, waking up to find that Michael Jackson has died, feeling a small impact, like the sort of punch a small animal might administer, in my gut, I thought of Maria, who was my next door neighbour when I was growing up in Barnet.
I was never a Jacko fan, although I think I'm right in saying that the first ever album I bought on vinyl (I'd requested a turntable for a birthday and was stocking up in advance) was his 'Bad' LP. But Maria, who was a few years older than me and a cherished companion in my pre-teen years, was - in a way that only Michael Jackson fans can be - absolutely obsessed with him. Rightly too, as well, because he was at that point, with the possible exception of Glenn Hoddle, by far the most interesting and important person on the planet. Or so it felt at the time.
For me, Michael Jackson truly was Peter Pan like, but not in the sense that he would have us believe. For me, he simply stopped ageing in something like 1989 because the Jacko that existed after that point seemed to be a different person altogether. So the Michael Jackson of my imagination has never ceased to be the strange, exotic, alluring creature who made 'Thriller' and 'Bad' (and, best of all, 'Off The Wall', which I didn't discover 'til I was in twenties). The Michael Jackson that followed, the Earth Story Jacko, the baby-dangling Jacko, was someone else entirely, and I felt no interest in him, and feel only a passing, regretful sadness at his death, and the way he lived his last years.
The world has, however, subsumed to Jacko-grief. It's hard to know what to make of it really. I think I feel sad, and uncomfortable, and relieved, all at the same time. It was a strange, unsatisfying life, one feels. I'm very sorry for those who are upset though, and particularly for Maria. Nevertheless, I was pleased to note that however gripped the world is, Guardian readers still have their priorities right - just.
UPDATE: There's a really rather beautiful, terrifically sad article about Michael Jackson by Danny Baker in today's Times: it's well worth a look. Extract below.
"I remember watching the video to the song Bad some time later, the one Martin Scorsese shot as a gangland fight in a subway station. In the film Jackson was at his peak, a cutting-edge pop star playing the coolest member of a streetwise gang setting the pace and breaking the rules. Everybody wanted to be Jackson at that point — especially Jackson. Instead here was a confused and frightened boy who though totally comfortable, assured even, headlining Madison Square Garden, had not the slightest idea how to walk to the corner shop and buy a loaf of bread. In the real world he was a sham, and the worst thing about that was not only did he know it, but he wasn’t allowed to forget it by those once close to him"
This morning, sat on the train, I’m joined by three young men who start an earnest discussion around me. It’s about moving to Brighton now that they’ve finished their sixth form.
“Seriously”, one says, “let’s do it. Imagine. Even if we were only there for the summer. We could easily afford it if we shared”.
“Do you think?”, another replies. “Brighton is WELL expensive”.
“It’d be amazing though”, the third chips in. “I’m totally up for it. If we can afford it”.
“Rent will be NO PROBLEM”, the first insists. “Credit crunch, isn’t it! All the rents have gone down MASSES”.
The others lean forward. “Seriously?”, they chime in?
He nods confidently.
I leave them to their planning.
There's a super article by Roy Hattersley in the Guardian today; I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels frustrated by Prince Charles' intervention in the Chelsea Barracks architecture debate, and Hattersley takes my thoughts to their logical conclusion with a stinging, thoroughly enjoyable assault on our hopeless heir to the throne.
"Prince Charles is clearly a philistine – a quality which would not be a handicap in his line of work were it not for the presumption that prompts him to believe he is an expert on subjects about which he is ignorant. He knows nothing about architecture"
...and then it starts.
Here's a youtube clip of Blur's comeback gig at Colchester on Saturday. Wow.
Right, it's been absolutely ages since I last posted one of my songs up here - so here is a recent composition, 'Passing Song', which is set to a video that myself and Dan edited together last weekend. The song itself is not very clear, lyrically, but it's about hearing something hopeful in a sad sentence. Being told one thing, but hearing the promise of something else altogether.
Disclaimer: I'm not that ill at all. But I wrote the following so that I could spare my friends from having to hear me whinge.
I have a heavy head, which
aches with the weight of my eyelids.
I hate my cold.
I shuffle to the door, peer outside,
and offer it a walk.
It declines.
I venture an experimental cough,
wondering if it's got to my chest,
timber creaking,
bending my lungs and my ribcage.
Calculating aspirin doses,
mineral water.
I remember when having a cold
conferred luxury, back home.
Swaddled, indulged,
my discomfort traded for blackcurrant juice
and videos.
So I offer to wrap my cold up warm, console it.
It glances ruefully at cracks in the window sill.
Then I call it names.
Alone in my flat, swearing.
It lets me get a bit of sleep in the afternoon.
But I wake up dry mouthed, bruised,
sorry for myself.
Then, pretending I'm friends with it,
I take my cold to a pub, buy a beer
and try to leave it at the bar,
tip-toeing away on peanut shells.
I concentrate.
I click my neck.
I close my eyes.
I wait for it to pass.
There are lots of 'fake' twitter accounts on the internet, and most are either deliberately misleading or blunt, unfunny attempts at satire. Since it was created a couple of days ago, however, the @realnickgriffin account has been consistently hilarious. No idea who's behind it, but the tweets are much more than isolated gags - instead the timeline of posts works as a kind of absurd, hilarious soap opera, purporting to present the BNP leader's fatuous racism and daily trials at the hands of the PC liberal media and the European Parliament which he is now compelled to attend. It is there that he is forced to interact with the Parliament's other resident thug, Jean Marie Le Pen.
The gags are often crass and a bit childish - but it works, and has a tremendous amount of fun with the idiotic figure that is the BNP leader. Incidentally, there are a host of anti-BNP tags being used regularly on twitter, but my favourite so far is the tag people tend to use when talking of Griffin: #fathitler.
Anyway - here's a selection of the @realnickgriffin tweets posted so far.
arrived in Brussels. guess what? it's only full of bloody foreigners. i can see i'll have a right job on.Here's the link to the twitter feed. Genius. It's like a racist Adrian Mole.
moved into my new office. guess which way it faces? east! that's right. someone thinks this is funny, no doubt
that idiot Le Pen left a whoopie cushion on my office chair. there was a note: "I'm sure you'll find Europe's a GAS! haha" - cretin
awful biscuits here at the Euro Parliament, too. not a custard cream in sight: just sneering, cosmopolitan macaroons
SO bored in my first day of the new job. sat at my desk drawing the golliwogs back onto jars of (politically correct) jam.
policy ideas: a golliwog for every child. dynamite the Channel Tunnel. some sort of phrenology initiative. more coastguards.
stupid European vending machines. tried to ram in my BRITISH pound coin anyway. hurt hand. lost coin. no Twix. fuck Europe.
off to hit up that sniveling little bollock Le Pen for some lunch money.
snuck into Le Pen's office and wiped my glans around the rim of all his cups. haha!
just had a pathetic, tearful phonecall from J M Le Pen, saying he wants to "mend bridges". suppose i'd better go and see what he wants.
someone snitched to Le Pen about the cups! the "meeting" was a trap. i was held down by his advisors and forcibly teabagged by JMLP himself.
furious. i will REPATRIATE the fucking french and anyone who talks french or likes french fucking food.
i can't wait for my tea. i'm having an Indian. just kidding! i'm having a Chinese. just kidding! i'm having moussaka. just kidding!
i'm having sausages
reading Brick Lane. kidding! reading The Buddha Of Suburbia. kidding! reading The Kite Runner. kidding!
reading nothing
all those astronauts up there, different races, all rubbing up against each other in a solar powered tin can. it makes me sick to my stomach
still not happy about my new easterly-facing office. perhaps a nice rug would jolly it up a bit.
sending my secretary out to shop for a rug
bloody hell. sent my secretary out to buy a rug for the office, she came back with THIS. it will have to do. http://twitpic.com/6ypya
and now in my fury i've dropped a contact lens. i'll just kneel down to pick it up....
Le Pen walked in while i was on all fours searching for the contact lens i dropped on that gaudily-patterned mat in my east-facing office.
obviously now Le Pen is laughing his head off telling all the other fringe MEPs that i've "gone Cat Stevens". fuck fuck fuck. i hate him.
Morris dancers are a funny lot, no? When I was younger, and thought it necessary to be dismissive 50% of the time and sarcastic the other 50, I would have argued without giving a moments thought that Morris dancing was something deserving of scorn; anachronistic, backward-looking, the preserve of little-Englanders and social outcasts. The sort of thing that punk was supposed to sweep away.
I was a mess of contradictions. I hated all that olde England bollocks, and bookended my days by listening to Blur's 'Modern Life Is Rubbish', which mined exactly the same conceptual map of England for reinterpretation and examination. I didn't get the subtlety at all. They used to slag off America, too, which I brainlessly echoed.
So when I was younger, and thought it necessary to be dismissive 50% of the time and sarcastic the other 50, I would have argued without giving a moment's thought that America was something deserving of scorn; culturally empty, false, lacking in integrity. If I went to America, I thought, I'd find the place intolerable - fascinating in places, sure, but a wasteland of consumerism in others.
Of course, I've been to America plenty of times now, and don't recall a single moment when I wasn't enamoured with the place. I was comprehensively, immaturely wrong. And when I was there last, wandering through Central Park, I turned a corner and came upon a troupe - twirling and skipping incongruously in the Manhattan sun - of Morris dancers. From the tips of my toes to the corners of my widening smile, I felt real warmth towards them; surprise and delight. I don't want to intellectualise the reasons for my changed attitude - but when I encountered more Morris dancers outside the Basketmakers in Brighton the other day, the thought that crossed my mind was this is surely the most harmless activity in the entire world. That in itself is reason to love it.
I wrote a new song last week. It's not about Morris dancers - but me and Dan spent Saturday afternoon editing together footage of the dancers we saw in Brighton, creating an impromptu promo video for the song. I'll post it here in the next couple of days.
I love it when newsreaders make mistakes on air; for some reason it's particularly amusing when people invested - generally speaking - with such dignity and poise slip up, either through a rare and temporary lack of composure on their part or a technical glitch which visits a moment of humiliation upon them. Just now Jon Snow - just about the most unflappable of news presenters - became absolutely and comprehensively flustered at the top of the 7 o'clock news. He just stood, for a moment, like a rabbit in the headlights. 'Um', he said.
A minute later his calm was restored. "I apologise", he said, "for the technical difficulties".
An apology was far from necessary. In my flat, wonderfully distracted from hanging out my washing, I was cackling happily.
No idea who is responsible, but there's a road in Brighton, Upper North Street, that houses some of the city's most unusual, and temporary grafitti. The other day I walked along there with some friends and spotted – it was early evening, with the sun beginning to dip behind the houses – that someone had etched the outline of a postbox's shadow onto the pavement; one shadow for the shade it cast when caught in the sun, another for when the streetlights were turned on. The next day it had gone.
A couple of days later, I walked the same route, and spotted this.
Sat dozing on the train to work, this morning, I overhear a girl complaining.
“I’ve done it again”, she says. “The Brighton Festival season is over and I didn’t attend anything. Again. I never attend anything”.
Her companion tries to provide consolation.
“Everything is so expensive. And the good stuff always sells out early”.
There was a pause.
“No. I’m just crap. I couldn’t really find anything I wanted to see. I’m not cultured enough for Brighton”.
She just didn’t look hard enough. The Brighton Festival is a lovely event in my city’s calendar, and one that I’m prepared to admit I hardly ever get the best out of. Sometimes I feel the same way my fellow passenger did; there’s nothing much for me – it’s all scones and conversation with Joanna Lumley or ancient sonatas with the Royal Symphony Orchestra. Other times I don’t even look, feeling depressed about money or ambivalent about engaging. I’m being an idiot on all counts, of course, because there’s loads of amazing, challenging, interesting stuff happening above and below my radar, and plenty which is free, or cheap, or worth the risk. Usually Festival season slips by and I’ve barely scratched the surface, and I’m left as irritated as the girl I overheard this morning. Why didn’t I do more.
This year I did, well… I did a bit, and feel glad that I did, and only a little bit disappointed that I didn’t do more. There are things I really wish I’d got my finger out to see, and others that I reflect I might have taken a punt on, but it’s hard to feel too left out because Brighton (apologies, readers, for the smug tone) is just always brimming with possibilities. The Brighton Festival is over. But Brighton is always in festival season, really, regardless of when the posters and bunting are up. The last few weeks have seen The Great Escape (where Brighton disguises what is essentially a big 3 day long pub crawl as ‘Europe’s Leading Festival for New Music’), the Spring Festival in St. Anne’s Well Gardens, all the Festival Fringe events, and the Festival proper. And there are simply loads of events on the horizon which I’m minded to attend: the Loop festival, Hanover Day, Pride, the Brunswick Festival, Beachdown. The lesson on under-attending the month-long Brighton festival is not ‘I must do more next year’, it’s ‘I must engage more, generally’.
At the Spring Festival – a very middle class, cosy celebration of the part of town where I live (7 Dials) – I sat in the park with a friend, drinking coffee and watching a tangle of children and animals weaving through seated figures on the grass. Parents fanning themselves with their Weekend Guardians, children chasing dogs, dogs chasing children, dogs chasing dogs.
“Don’t you think”, my friend said – as we watched people mill around the stalls, munching on cupcakes – “that we’d all be a lot happier if we took more active roles in our communities?”
The answer is surely yes. We work all day so that we can live in the communities of our choosing, and yet when we arrive there we so often limit our interaction to the newsagent and the supermarket, a pair of pubs (one good for winter, one for summer), and the friendship groups we’ve already established over time. I think we should all get dogs. I want a dog and I want to be stopped on every corner by another dog owner, and I want them to know my name. I want to paint watercolours of Montpelier Crescent, St Luke’s Church and Vernon Terrace, and for the paintings to hang on my neighbour’s walls. I want to write for the local newsletter.
I don’t really want this.
I sort of want it.
I do want the feeling of pride I get when I look around the Open Houses during the Brighton festival – where I admire the lovely abstract paintings of Sarah Shaw and Natalie Edwards, the lovely sewn images of Lou Trigg, the mischevious cats screenprinted by Eve Poland (whose own cats used to climb through my window and terrorise me when I lived nearby) – and think "this is the work of my community, my peers, the people I share my city with".
I feel a bit bad about how infrequently I update my blog, because if I’d have been organised, I could have told you this earlier, in time for you to trace my footsteps through the Festival, if you'd wanted to.
Brighton's finest music festival, The Great Escape, begins tomorrow - hurray!
I've been meaning to provide a list of artists and shows I recommend, but it's looking increasingly like I won't have enough time - so all I can do is let you know what I think I'm doing tomorrow, and invite you to amble over and say hello if you find yourself in the same place.
Great escape, Thursday:
12.30 - William Fitzsimmons, The Arc
2.30 - Moi Non Plus, The Arc
3.15 - King of Conspiracy, The Hope
Nap
6.45 - Apple, Revenge
7.15 - Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, Po Na Na
8.15 - Emmy The Great, Digital
9.15 - EVAN DANDO!, Digital
11.45 - Birdengine, The Basement
12.30 - Blue Roses, The Basement
If you want to know what I'm up to during the day - because I'll inevitably stray off-course at some point, you can check my twitter at http://www.twitter.com/jonathas
And if you don't like any of the bands above, can I suggest you consider these alternatives:
Mika Miko and Danananaykroyd at Audio
Twilight Sad and Brakes at JAM
Hjaltalin at the Komedia
Cursive at the Ocean Rooms
The Week That Was and The Acorn at the Pavilion Theatre
Marnie Stern, Vivian Girls and Micachu at Po Na Na
Blue Roses at Red Roaster (9.45 show)
GaBle and Soap&Skin at the Unitarian Church
Teitur at Duke of Yorks.
I wish I could see everything.
Can we save Labour? Polly Toynbee thinks it's time to bring in Alan Johnson.
Here's an analysis of his voting record, via They Work For You.
Voted strongly for introducing ID cards.
Voted very strongly for introducing foundation hospitals.
Voted strongly for introducing student top-up fees.
Voted very strongly for Labour's anti-terrorism laws.
Voted very strongly for the Iraq war.
Voted very strongly against an investigation into the Iraq war.
Voted very strongly for replacing Trident.
It's a no, isn't it?
I'm a bit (alright, totally) obsessed with the new Peggy Sue single, 'Lover Gone'. It's just the most beautiful, wistful, two-minute pop song. When I first saw Rosa and Katy a year or two ago I really had no idea of how good they’d become, nor how coherently they’d form a signature sound, a set of sounds, images and ideas so evocative and true. Every new song they do is their best yet – which makes you wonder just how good they'll get.
'Lover Gone' – which is out on March 18th; you can pre-order it from their myspace - opens with a delicate, quiet combination of plucked strings, piano, and unspecified, distant percussion. Like lots of Peggy Sue's songs, the low key, muffled sound belies the soaring melody to follow. At first, the vocals, too, are gentle; the first lines sad, confident.
"Lover gone - this song is a good one,
In four years I'll be anyone
But for four years I was there
where you are".
Rosa and Katy's singing style is, technically, amazing, but the key is the intuitiveness of their approach – they sound instinctive rather than practised; the way that their vocals overlap and rise and fall together. And when Olly starts hitting the snare and they open up their voices they seem to occupy so much space that the sparse arrangement sounds suddenly huge.
The lyrics, meanwhile, are simultaneously a lament and a celebration – an elegy for a dead relationship, where the protagonist "gave to you four years out of my twenty four"; reflecting not on where things went wrong but what remains; the tan on skin from a summer on the beach, the confidence nourished through four years of support. And yet things change. It's just immensely moving…
When the song ends, suddenly, prematurely, a mere two minutes in – it closes in a moment of perfect, satisfied completion, acknowledging its brevity – like a sad, soft parting breath.
"This song is not a long one.
But for four years we played safe
In a place that was warm".
On Saturday afternoon I boarded a train from Brighton station, noting uneasily that I appeared to be the only sober person aboard, a consequence of Brighton & Hove Albion's valiant escape from relegation that afternoon. Pockets of men with flushed cheeks and sandpapery heads stood, swaying, breaking into the occasional chant. It wasn't threatening at the least, but I sensed a lively journey. I weaved through the carriage, looking for a seat, and at last found one next to a couple of teenage girls, noting approvingly that they weren't drunk, and told them so, figuring that I'd managed to guarantee myself a couple of fairly sensible companions.
The train pulled out. The hubbub quietened down a little as inebriated football fans became drowsy and began to snooze. I smiled in a friendly way at one of the girls, as if to say "looks like we won't have such a noisy journey, after all". She smiled back, and turned to her companion.
"So", she said, in a surprisingly loud voice, "how's your swine flu coming along?".
They collapsed into giggles. Everyone turned to stare.
"Not so bad", her friend replied, even louder. "I still feel rough though".
I allowed myself a smile. Others were shaking their heads disapprovingly. I didn't see anyone looking alarmed, but there may have been someone whose heartbeat rose in tempo.
The train was quiet.
"So", the second of them, said - or half-shouted, "how are your genital warts coming along?"
Some amazing quotes in tonight's episode of the Apprentice. The young bucks are stood in a Charing Cross Road book shop while a pair of studious booksellers carefully examine some literature they've been given to sell. Quietly, diligently, they set about making a valuation. They take their time, because they are methodical people. The Apprentices are outraged at this abuse of their time.
"We can't take any more shit from them" Ben cries.
His colleague agrees. "You know what they're like, though", she replies. "They're book people, they want to waste your time".
He nods, crossly. "I'm fed up with these book people talking shit to me for too long".
Moment of realisation. That's me, isn't it?
A couple of months ago, in the days and weeks after Barack Obama was elected, I had a funny feeling that while American politics was likely to become a great deal more fruitful and worthy, it may well become a lot less interesting as well. The sheer decency of the new President, combined with the size of the task in front of him, seemed to suggest that US politics would become sober, thoughtful, complex, where before it was brash, infuriating and - in the days when the momentum of Obama's campaign was at its height - deliriously full of unrealistic hopes. With Obama in charge, everything was bound to tone down.
And in many ways it has - but American politics remains deeply interesting. The latest incident, the conversion of Arlen Spector from Republican to Democrat, is hugely fascinating. With the election of Al Franken still (temporarily) up in the air, Obama remains tantalisingly close to a workable majority in the Senate. Now that Spector has crossed the floor, he need only wait for the inevitable confirmation of Franken's victory in Minnesota. The implications for Obama's ability to stretch his agenda are profound. The Republicans can't stop him.
And just as interesting are the implications for the Republican Party itself. The GOP looks increasingly to be in the same state that the British Conservative party were in after Tony Blair's election in 1997 - riven with fury at their loss of power and in a tumult over their direction. Like the Tories, the GOP have lurched to the right, and the party's complete lack of focus presents many questions. The modern day Republican party is unrecognisable from the one which was once dominated by sensible conservative moderates like Arlo Spector - politicians of his intellectual calibre are now deeply unfashionable in the GOP tent. So what of the remaining moderates? Will they come over to Obama too? If they do, his potential to affect lasting change is huge.
I hope to heaven that he doesn't waste the opportunity in the way Labour did in the UK.
I was standing outside The Duke Of Yorks cinema in Brighton with Vic, shortly after watching 'In The Loop', the other day. We stood discussing the film, waiting for Andrew to join us. Dimly, somewhere behind me, I heard the beeping of a horn. I ignored it.
"I really thought it was great", I said, "how the last half hour was so angry. It may not have been as funny as 'The Thick Of It', but it had much more energy".
Beep Beep Beep. "Oi, mate", I hear.
I continued prattling on. Vic fidgeted, bored of my critique, waiting for her brother.
"Oi", the voice persists. "Oi! Skinny jeans!"
I turn around. Sat in a small hatchback are four laughing black guys. One is leaning out of the window and pointing at me.
"Aaaaahhh!" he shouts. "Skinny jeans, mate. Naaaaa..." He shakes his head. They all laugh.
Apparently my choice of trousers opens me up to a certain amount of ridicule.
I'm absolutely loving this year for record releases so far. Some brilliant albums. And I've been playing them at the expense of pretty much everything in my record collection, so this week's 'Currently Listening' is kind of a round up of this year's best records so far.
1. The Wave Pictures - If You Leave It Alone LP
2. Emmy The Great - First Love
3. The Horrors - Primary Colours
4. Blue Roses - Blue Roses LP
5. Bat For Lashes - Two Suns LP
6. Graham Coxon - The Spinning Top LP
7. Julie Doiron - I Can Wonder What You Did With Your Day LP
8. It Hugs Back - Inside Your Guitar LP
9. Hatcham Social - You Dig The Tunnel, I'll Hide The Soil LP
10. Darren Hayman - Pram Town LP
There seem to be loads of people who are perpetually surprised by evidence that people who take advantage of online music piracy are also the people who spend the most on records. It seems perfectly obvious to me, and of my friends there's little doubt that the most voracious downloaders and music-sharers are also the people who spend the most cash in Resident Records. The Guardian today prints yet more evidence that supports this observation:
Piracy may be the bane of the music industry but according to a new study, it may also be its engine. A report from the BI Norwegian School of Management has found that those who download music illegally are also 10 times more likely to pay for songs than those who don't.Article here.
Everybody knows that music sales have continued to fall in recent years, and that filesharing is usually blamed. We are made to imagine legions of internet criminals, their fingers on track-pads, downloading songs via BitTorrent and never paying for anything. One of the only bits of good news amid this doom and gloom is the steady rise in digital music sales. Millions of internet do-gooders, their fingers on track-pads, who pay for songs they like – purchasing them from Amazon or iTunes Music Store. And yet according to Professor Anne-Britt Gran's new research, these two groups may be the same.
The Norwegian study looked at almost 2,000 online music users, all over the age of 15. Researchers found that those who downloaded "free" music – whether from lawful or seedy sources – were also 10 times more likely to pay for music. This would make music pirates the industry's largest audience for digital sales.
The other night I dropped by McNally Jackson, a really lovely independent bookstore in New York's SoHo, to see Erica Jong read from her new collection of poems, Love Comes First. I'm a huge fan of Jong's brilliant, fabulously rude 'Fear of Flying', so it was great to see her talk and a pleasure to hear her witty and wise poetry, which is simultaneously accessible and thought-provoking, as you'd expect from a writer of Jong's stature. That's not to say, however, that I'd swap her prose for her poems. I've spent much of my time in the US reading the poems of John Ashbery, and Jong is not in the same class. But that's a mean observation to make, and perhaps an unworthy comment. What's more important is that I really enjoyed Jong's reading, and am very glad I caught it.
Just back from a triumphant, deeply original concert performed by the ceaselessly inventive electronic duo, Matmos, the Brooklyn-based percussive quartet So Percussion, and PLOrk, the Princeton Laptop Orchestra, a collection of sound artists who create, with nine laptops, a symphonic avalanche of noise. The collaboration, staged over two nights at The Kitchen, a charming little venue on the outskirts of Chelsea (the one in New York, rather than London), showcased new interpretations of the artists’ own songs, as well as material from a forthcoming album they’ve created together.
And how to describe it? It’s hard to say. A member of So Percussion is the first to take the stage, and his first action is to lean over a table, take out a box of plastic toothpicks, and start sticking them into a large sweet potato. Once a few have been inserted, he begins plucking at them, noting with satisfaction that each rings with a different note. He starts picking out a melody of percussive clicks. Three bandmates join him on stage and stand around the vegetable. Each leans forward and before long they have established a hypnotic, mesmeric cycle of sounds. I can scarcely believe I’m watching four men play a root vegetable.
It’s at this stage that Matmos make their entrance; as ever Martin Schmidt looks the very image of the mannered academic, prim and serious in his neatly ironed shirt and bow tie. His colleague, Drew Daniel, arrives dressed in blazer and tie, but soon discards them; he's far less formal; a bit of a joker. When Schmidt is explaining the use of beer cans as musical instruments, Daniel can't resist turning on his mic – which he's fixed up with a filter which makes him sound like Darth Vader – to interrupt his partner and get a big laugh from the audience. As So Percussion continue hammering a tune from their doctored vegetable, Matmos start piling complex squiggles and skittering beats to the mix. The sound builds and builds, simultaneously experimental, primal and funny.
This relaxed, complex but cerebral approach defines the set. The Princton Laptop Orchestra join the proceedings, wringing amazing, cascading sounds from their laptops, and each player is thoroughly distinct, courtesy of a custom designed hemispherical speaker which "emulate the way traditional orchestral instruments cast their sound in space".
'Aluminium Song' begins slowly with atmospheric squeaks and squiggles, but climbs up and down through several dizzying tempo changes, organised intuitively by a rotating set of animations on the video screens, which the players patiently watch and follow. 'Ceramic Song' is an absolutely beautiful number which summons up thoughts of Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Gamelan in the way that So Percussion hammer out a beautiful, cyclical melody (this time played on suspended plant pots). It draws gasps from the audience in its latter stages as PLOrk contribute a simply extraordinary, unfathomable panoply of sounds through floor-mounted devices which allow long strings to be pulled up and stretched, changing sound with the players’ movements. At one point the song is so hypnotic and involving that all nine musicians, their arms cycling through the air as one, look like downhill skiers descending a mountain in unison. Jaws are dropping all around me.
The next few songs (and I started losing track of which song was which here, unfortunately) are just as good. PLOrks’s matching set of Apple laptops are clearly fitted with motion and tilt sensors, meaning that the musicians raise and lower their machines, creating an effect analogous with the bending of a string. Any notion that their highly technical approach is not every bit as real or authentic as a traditional orchestra is quickly dispelled by the sight of their highly physical, emotive performance.
One song (perhaps ‘Boomdinger’, perhaps ‘Inlayers’) begins with dark washes of synthesisers and a steady electronic pulse that recalls something early on Warp Records, but switches tack suddenly to embrace a lush, deeply organic collage of faux-natural sounds. PLOrk’s laptops begin to talk to one another, each emitting a different sound, somewhere between a animal’s grunt and alien song, and the musicians face each-other, responding carefully and offering their voices as if in the most natural of conversations. One member, whose laptop offers up a sound like a lamb’s bleat, begins to sweep his laptop down towards the floor, laughing, and enjoying the way the sound rushes through the registers. Suddenly the noise is anguished. The screen, by now showing leaves nestling in water, consolidates the deeply bucolic noise filling the room. The song ends with the sound of rain, and newspapers and bin-liners being scrunched up and torn up close to the microphones. It’s just stunning.
This is an unqualified recommendation, in case you hadn’t guessed. I’d love to know how different these guys sound from show to show, as so much tonight seemed intuitive and improvised – and yet so often sounds came together with such perfect precision that it seemed impossible not to observe great deliberation being employed. Either way, this was a collaboration that was deeply musical, deeply arty, and deeply enjoyable. Am already excited at the idea that this lot might come over to the UK sometime soon.
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