song of the week: a coral room
I have hit crisis point.
I don't ever mean to turn this blog into some sort of confessional, but bear with me. For a long while now, I have been kidding myself that things that make me unhappy will go away or change or are even doing me some good. But right now I'm at that point where if you cry once and slightly, you suddenly can't stop crying and the sky starts looking suspiciously unstable.
It's okay, nothing major. I've just realised that I really did want that place to do a masters that I foolishly turned down at the start of the summer, and that I could be starting it right now instead of dreaming about being around books all day at work.
Or at least, I wanted whatever it was that meant I wouldn't be where I am right now, and option #1 has now definitely passed. And I sort of want to kick myself for wasting another year, and I feel a bit more trapped than I normally do in my mortgage and my office dress-code, but also slightly less trapped because I've stopped ignoring the fact that, yes, I'm disappointed and unhappy. So, now I guess there ain't much more to do except change it, because I am all out of tears.
It was Kate Bush what done it. I always listen to her somewhere between late summer and early autumn. I think it's because I always feel fragile around this time of year, because unlike most people, I don't count my years passing in birthdays or new years, but in academic years. This is really the first year where I have had nothing to leave behind and nothing to look forward to in September, but instead, everything is continuing as it did before. And it's because I thought I wanted it to.
I was already feeling a bit delicate when listening to
Cloudbusting, precisely because I remembered listening to it this time last year and feeling completely invincible. Today I just felt very frightened and very young. And then
A Coral Room gave me the nudge I needed, as I realised that I felt as lost and grey as the song, and I wanted something so bad and it had gone. I wasn't crying because Kate Bush was being autumnal. I was crying because in that moment, the song sounded like I felt and was what I needed to feel.
And I'm telling you this, because I think that's essentially what music should do and is there for, and it would be lying somehow if I omitted this from the other, perhaps less personal songs of the week.
song of the week: tropical hotdog night
Okay, I admit it – I don’t get Captain Beefheart. I really tried with Trout Mask Replica, honest I did, but I really believe life is too short to spend trying to force yourself to like something because you 'should'.
Saying that, I have forced myself and been forced to come to terms with peppers, Geoffrey Chaucer and ironing and I now (quite) enjoy all of these necessary evils, so I am prepared to concede that I may, one day, come to terms with Captain Beefheart. Although I'm pretty sure that this day is a fair way into the future, perhaps I'm one step closer.
Homo Ludens very kindly made me an excellent double compilation, entitled, of course ‘I’m playing this music so the young girls will come out to meet the monster tonight’. I immediately stuck it on my i-pod without inputting any of the track's or artist’s names, so imagine my shock when my initial favourite track was by Captain Beefheart. Could it be that he had actually created something my ears found listenable as opposed to torturous and confusing?
So, perhaps there is hope for me yet, as Tropical Hotdog Night is this week’s (belated) song of the week. It’s so daft, I love it.
Superficially I suppose you could argue it sounds rather shambolic, but everything in it conspires to make it a truly genius song. The restrained, low-key opening lulls you into thinking this is a rather conventional guitar-based 70’s party track, especially the poppy little lead into the verse. And then he starts singing / speaking / preaching.
The flirty little carnivalesque backing, muted but enthusiastic parps from a trumpet and '70s guitar jangles provide the perfect accompaniment to, I must admit, one of the greatest vocal performances I have heard in a long long time. Frenzied, raspy, part crazy preacher-man with just the right level of creepy heavy breathing and playfulness, I adore it.
If you’re not familiar with this song, it’s really difficult to describe and do full justice to, so I implore all Beefheart virgins and non-believers to give this a go. I suppose the best I can say is that if Tropical Hot Dog Night was a drink, it would be 5-Alive spiked with the most noxious hooch available to under-age teenagers – random and wrong but makes you feel good.
the war on terror
There was a predictable outpouring of manufactured outrage when the BBC London News featured the
War on Terror board-game earlier this week.
A great game for all the family, it includes a 75x50cm 'World Map' Board, an 'Evil' Balaclava for when you inevitably become a terrorist, an Axis of Evil Spinner, Empire Cards, Terrorist Cards, Oil Counters, Radiation Counters, Empire Counters and as if that wasn't enough, the first 500 people to buy it will receive a signed, limited edition suicide bomber certificate. Genius.
Naturally, the insightful BBC journalist gasped and tutted her way through the interview, grumbling about insensitivity, sensationalism, sick jokes and cynical money spinning before slapping the game developer on the wrist and booting him out of the studio. After all, ladies and gentlemen, terror is not a laughing matter and war is not a game.
She then promptly turned to camera, and without batting an eyelid, introduced the next feature about the return of everybody’s favourite boys’ toy, Action Man, now back on shelves in a full collection of military gear, enabling a whole new generation of kids and collectors alike to play old favourites including ‘annihilate the barbarians’, 'teargas the lefties’ and ‘shoot the innocent Brazilian’. Awww.
in print
richie james models A/W 06's hottest look
Following on from the last post, please indulge me and let me talk about clothes a little bit longer.
Sitting on the train into work on Monday, I noticed a lady perched nearby in a garishly yellow faux-leopard-print coat with the collar turned up. Next to her, a middle aged woman had on a thin leopard-print belt and matching head band (just wrong on so many levels – miaow). The girl sitting next to me had the now ubiquitous leopard-print pumps on. And another girl had a rather more muted, perhaps snow-leopard-print cardigan on. No one looked especially tragic (headband lady aside), but looking at these women, and my own grubby zebra-print pumps, part of me did wonder if it wasn’t actually 1993 and we were all off to prostrate ourselves at the feet of Richie James after a particularly rousing rendition of ‘You Love Us’. I mean honestly, girls, we all look like we’re off to a Manic Street Preachers Generation Terrorist’s tribute gig. Or, only slightly better, Bette Lynch. And no, it’s not ironic if we’re all doing it.
London Fashion Geek
Perhaps not one for Debenhams, Mr ConranFirstly, apologies for my absence. I have been sick as a dog with the splutter bug that half of London appears to be suffering with right now. And although I know I haven’t been awol for very long, I still feel guilty as I have been having lots of big, interesting thoughts while contemplating my mortality, which I know you are desperate for me to share with you. Or not, perhaps.
But, in no particular order, here’s what’s been going on in my congested head.
I think most people have a natural tendency to become obsessive, or in other words, nerdy, about things they love. However, it would appear that the universal human nerdy streak is largely attributed to men, or at the very least, as a very male tendency. Whether it’s Minifig’s obsession with lego, a compulsive addiction to Resident Evil, a deep felt appreciation for the curves of a Lotus, a Mac or Bettie Page, or an encyclopaedic knowledge of everything The Fall have ever released ever, ever, ever, many women I know dismiss these as (thankfully) male preoccupations and male foibles.
But, not so. Of course, there are many women who are hooked on kid's anime, old-school Sims and re-cataloging their record collection. Like me. But that's simply child's play, because there is nothing quite so formidable as the fashion geek.
Perhaps I have created this label because I find these women so incredibly intimidating, being a jeans and old dresses kind of girl. Essentially, although some of my clothes have been worn out and replaced, I have been wearing the same garb since I was about 16. Boy jeans and t-shirts, short skirts and black tights, desert boots or mary janes, one pair of trainers per year and the odd dress. This summer I realised skinny jeans meant I had to go hungry (so, not doing that) and ballet pumps are convenient but make your feet stinky and make everybody look a bit like a Sloane Ranger, not Audrey Hepburn. In short, I make some vague gestures towards looking fashionable, but quickly get bored, broke or malnourished and put on something comfy instead.
But not so these women. Fashion geeks can look at you and tell you which shop and which season each item of clothing you wear is from, dating back to the time of crinolines and bustles. They avidly discuss the Max Mara coat or the Biba revival, they know what handbag we’re all supposed to be carrying this week and when the Celia Birtwell collection went into Top Shop (I don’t know who she is, either). They can breakdown a Carrie Bradshaw SATC outfit into its component parts and recreate in minutes, or pick apart a rushed ensemble in seconds.
A case in point, a weird fashion geek lady (very sleek, manicured, attractive weirdo) actually said this to me on the train last week, her voice dripping privilege: ‘God, I love your look – it’s very Grease meets Tatty Devine meets retro-grunge.' I was wearing a t-shirt and a pencil skirt. I don't even know what that means.
So all you women, dressed in your Paper Denim Cloth with your Roxanna/Bethany/Amelia Jamelia bags, your Vivienne Westwood vintage tartan and your dogtooth beret – you’re nothing but geeks.
Chic geeks maybe, but geeks nonetheless.
i need a holiday
I haven't had a break from work lasting longer than a bank holiday since April when we moved house, which wasn't exactly what most sane people would call a holiday. Consequently, I am, as they say, 'cracking up'.
Thankfully, I'm not the only one. I am, as one of my colleagues put it, a closet ditz (only, not so closet now) It's not unusual for minifig to point out that I've put my pants on back to front or my cardigan on inside out. It's a long standing problem. When I was fourteen I accidentally bought a pair of odd shoes - one brown, one black. By the time I had realised it was too late to take them back, so I wore them anyway. Bizarrely, very few people noticed, proof that vanity is largely a waste of time, and perhaps one of the reasons why my day-to-day idiocy has gone largely unnoticed by anybody that doesn't live with me. However, my clumbsiness does sometimes come out with me. I tumble down stairs, walk into lamposts, sit on people's laps on the tube and once, fell off four different bar-stools in the same pub, before finally breaking one. I have broken my computer at work six times. Most breakages in the office are put down to 'Darling, wrecking the joint'.
But even I was incredibly impressed by the new low (or perhaps peak) in my abilities to be a, how you say, durr-brain.
Yesterday, an unseasonably hot and humid day, I left the house in my usual slightly frazzled state and began making my merry way down the stairwell before I was gripped by the fear that I can forgotten something very important. Something, was quite definitely amiss - yes, something was missing.
And then I realised what I had forgotten.
Underwear. Both necessary articles.
Obviously, I turned around and went back to my flat and made sure I left fully dressed.
I am also going to book some time off.
john martyn at the barbican
Time Out's pre-emptive review of
John Martyn's appearance on this year's '
Don't Look Back' season, performing the beautiful
Solid Air hopes that the gig will be one of the highlights of the year: '
a unique live incarnation of 1973’s ‘Solid Air’, Martyn’s finest 35 minutes...tonight you won’t get any of that terrible blues-rock stuff that Martyn made in the 1980s; no coked-up disco-rock hybrids made with Phil Collins and Eric Clapton; no interminable dub epics recorded with an Echoplex pedal; no vomitting on stage; no spliff-addled stand-up routines.'If only that were true.
OK, it really wasn't that bad, and I'm incredibly glad I went, just to have seen John Martyn, but it certainly wasn't the most riveting of performances. In the purest sense of the word, it was a bit pathetic. No scorn or malice intended in that review, but I found it genuinely sad. In my silly little head, John Martyn still looked like he did in the '70s, a devilishly good looking young man who would sound just like the remastered version of his album. Therefore, I concede it is partially my stupid fault for being disappointed.
But then, having seen other 'Don't Look Back' gigs, I did expect (perhaps foolishly) him to play Solid Air in its entirety, in the right order, and then mess about with some other choice tracks. Instead, it was rather more haphazard - much slurring and chuckling and rather overblown renditions of songs that sound better when delivered drunk and sparsely, as opposed to wasted and overcooked. Yes, that's the word - wasted.
Still, there was something endearing about John Martyn, whose attempts at speech in between songs veered between the 'vey vey drunk' guy from The Fast Show and the cookie monster. Plus, he was still John Martyn, even if there was a lot more John (give or take a limb) to love. I felt much the same way when I saw Brian Wilson - amazing songs, blissful performance, and yet, looking at Brian Wilson himself was like looking at a simulacrum of Brian Wilson, this weird, empty, not entirely conscious, heavily medicated old guy in a Hawaiian shirt singing about emotions he may not have felt for decades. Alongside all the beauty, it was just deeply sad.
Still, I went - and having grown to love Solid Air, and indeed One World, I would have felt worse about not being there on Monday night, then being there and being slightly disappointed, if not still entertained, only not in the way I had anticipated.
11th September 2006 is not just the 5th anniversary of you-know-what, or indeed the night I saw John Martyn - it was also John's 58th birthday. So happy (belated) birthday Mr Martyn, and thank you for the music.
song of the week: promiscuous
Sometimes I pick the song of the week, and other times, against my better judgment, the song of the week picks me. As I sit down to write this week's post, I steel myself for the inevitable ridicule and prepare for the fact that I might one day regret this. But since Saturday, this song has been trapped in my tiny mind. I can't get enough of it, and it seems dishonest to pretend that I have really been listening to anything vaguely credible or original.
There's no messing about with this radio-friendly baby. The dancehall beat kicks in and almost immediately
Timbaland asks you 'How you doin' young lady?' - and I was hooked.
Nelly Furtado's voice has just the right combination of feminitity, flirtation, toughness, vulnerability, confidence and coyness, (see also
J5's Thin Line - she's much better than she should be] and
Timbaland's rapping style is so intelligent and natural and delivered with just the right level of knowing humour - 'giirrl imma freak you shouldn't say those things' has to be one of the best delivered cheesy R&B lines for years.
In fact, I would argue that both
Timbaland's and
Nelly's rapping, singing and acting performances on this song are flawless - because it's not until you're on the fiftieth listen that you really notice them. The verses of
Promiscuous basically mimic any pick-up in any club, only it becomes a fast paced, impeccably tight, impeccably timed duet between two perfect caricatures of male and female. Set against a funky, fuzzy, stripped, backing track (a little bit
kelis's milkshake, a little bit
WTC 'gravel pit') it is also impossible
not to groove to. And that's before the almighty chorus.
Keeping the drum track, the vocal takes a little breather against a chorus made up of glossy, sparkly '80s synths with a distinctly early '90s swing rhythm. The chorus manages to be both a very smooth breakdown of the verses - absolutely essential when dancing - with this hungry edge that fits brilliantly with the song's set-up as a kind of protracted, public mating dance. The first time I heard it, I stopped what I was doing and marvelled at its absolute genius.
Promiscuous should be little more than a shabby handful of R&B (in the Puff Daddy sense of the term, not true R&B) cliches but it far surpasses this. It's full of carefully considered touches - occassional halts to the drum track, excitable echoes rounding off the edges of
Timbaland's gruff vocals - no factory R&B money spinner this.
In fact, it's a real killer of a song, right down to its closing, growling refrain, winding the song down ready for me to hit repeat, again and again and again.
For your listening health I urge you not to seek it out, for you may never listen to anything else.
monkeytwo
The beady-eyed amongst you may have noticed a rather nefarious comment from the mysterious monkeytwo, having a strop about the fact that 'a very close friend' has not been mentioned on my blog.
monkeytwo is, in fact my pest of a little sister, and just for the record, I am the original monkey. monkey is minifig's endearment for me, because I remind him of one, being that I chatter a lot, steal food and pick up stuff with my feet. I personally see the latter as a talent, but apparently it is positively simian. Anyway, monkeytwo (called so because her boyfriend also finds her to be a touch on the primitive side) is narked because she is yet to receive an extensive eulogy on her magnificence.
This post is therefore revenge, because while I think I look quite cute in this picture, my sister looks like a cross between an old man and a hamster.
However, it would be nothing short of criminal if I did not inform you all of her loveliness:
She is kind, considerate, thoughtful and above all, loyal and has seen Ronan Keating over 20 times since she first set eyes on him at a Boyzone concert in 1994 (aged 8). As you can tell from this, she is a strong supporter of charity.
She is supremely intelligent and has just finished her first year at university with flying colours, and no surprise if one considers her recent assessment on post-colonial literature 'all the same and all about poo and flowers' [she is actually a genius]
She always keeps in touch - especially on Sundays when she can bum a free Sunday lunch
[she did bring us a luscious dessert today from Spitalfields market though]
She's exceptionally beautiful and extremely stylish. I think this picture demonstrates this excellently: such poise, such grace. And check the hat.
She's a very insightful, entertaining conversationalist and letter-writer, once e-mailing me while I was travelling to update me on the fact that she had finally farted in front of her boyfriend. That was all the e-mail said. Nothing more was necessary. I didn't hear from her for another week.
But most importantly, she is monkeytwo, which means she is akin to monkeyone, which makes her my best friend and confidante, as well as the only person who can properly understand our parents, and therefore properly terrorise them on weekends home.
happy now, monkeytwo?
x you should be
song of the week: tiny dancer
I never cease to be amazed by how truly lovely my friends are. For reasons too dull to go into, last Friday, I ended up getting a lift with a friend and her very patient boyfriend, back out into the country to see my family, when all trains out of the big smoke were cancelled. Half way along the A12, it became clear that I was taking them on a massive detour - and we were going to need to buy a map. We got lost several times down ill-lit country paths, and an obscene number of U-turns were involved. This was partially due to the fact that my friends are too kind for their own good, and also partially due to the fact that we were continually distracted by the stereo. Some five hours after I left the pub to catch my train, my friends dropped me off on a dirt track where my Dad amiably collected me, explaining that the rail disruption had been all over the local news and replacement bus services had turned into a monstrous free-for-all. No trains were expected to be running until Saturday afternoon. As we neared the end of our formidable odyssey, my friend turned up this classic to send me away into the night, and, as always happens when I hear this song, I got a little lump in my throat.
Elton John may be a weird little fellow, but he's a damn good song writer, and
Tiny Dancer has to be one of his greatest songs, with
Rocket Man perhaps taking first place. I have cried, very publicly, on the tube because a pesky busker was warbling
Rocket Man badly, and I wasn't even feeling glum - the song just makes me cry. I mean, come on....it's about an astronaut missing his famil. It's sad.
Tiny Dancer should be happier, but its sonostalgic and bittersweet, that I think you must have a heart of steel not to be touched by it. And the girl he describes...she's nearly as cool as Cynthia Rose. (The real tiny dancer was, in fact, a dancer on tour by the name of Maxine Feibelmann who married Bernie Taupin, Elton John's lyricist)
Tiny Dancer begins like a lullaby, with the self-assured simplicity of just a piano and solo vocal, a light guitar giving the opening a gentle country twang by the close of the first verse.
Then, with the second verse comes one of my favourite lyrics; 'Jesus freaks out in the streets, handing tickets out for God', mellow drums, classic '70s pedal steel guitar sounds and then that great big cosy hug of an 'Aaah' from the backing singers. And then, just when you think the chorus is coming, Elton pulls back to the solo piano riff (dirty tease) before assertively, and very self-consciously building up to the big moment, with the knowing lyric, 'when I say softly, slowly.....'
and yes - it only takes him 2 minutes and 32 seconds - nearly the length of your average pop song - before the grand finale, arms in the air, lighters aloft ' Hold me closer tiny dancer'. From here on in, it's all about those shivery strings that gradually grow more confident when the chorus is repeated, and a good bit of piano bashing, before Elton returns calmly to the verse, only this time keeping those lush strings and cute countrified guitar. How can you not sing along to that?
Perhaps it's for this very reason that this great big hug of a song was used for the big mushy sing-along in
Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous, a film which contains no fewer than 52 songs on its soundtrack. I think Crowe's
Singles is the ultimate twenty-something pre-'Friends' film, (Bridget Fonda's 'I'm 23' speech is solid movie gold) and uses
Jimi Hendrix's May This Be Love to fine effect. And although I hate the film
Jerry Maguire, its soundtrack features three of my favourite songs (A
imee Mann's Wise Up, Pete Townsend's Let My Love Open the Door and
Bob Dylan's Shelter from the Storm). But it's
Almost Famous and its use of
Tiny Dancer on a 70's tour bus, the male teenage lead crushing on America's most beloved groupie, that
Crowe truly excels himself. It's just beautiful.
Tiny Dancer also reminds of one of the few jokes in
Friends to make me laugh out loud, where Phoebe, unable to recall the title of TD, calls it 'that song about the guy in '
Who's the Boss?', before launching into a rendition that goes along the lines of 'Hold me close young Tony Danza'. (For English kids with poor knowledge of American sitcoms,
'Who's the Boss?' a brilliantly dreadful show about an affluent working single mother who hires a male nanny/housekeeper, and, surprise surprise, falls in love with him, was transferred to UK screens as '
The Upper Hand' - also fantastically terrible)
Whenever I hear the full, glorious 4 minutes and 41 seconds of this song, these little things always go through my head and make me smile, as the song gradually soars to its final jubilant sing-along, before gently setting you back down to earth.
Tiny Dancer is not only a perfect pop song, but, is so under my skin and so part of my life, that I cannot help but love it. Since last Friday, its now also the song my friends sang to me when they left me safe and sound with my father after a murderous drive through the country. This story joins the many others fondly associated with this song, including a karaoke bar in Kuala Lumpur, a drunken stumble through Soho at Christmas and a bashful, tearful goodbye to a friend in a bar, where this song brought on the tears an hour earlier than was necessary.
Coming home from an eventful, emotional weekend with my family and delays on both the overground and underground trains, I eventual made it home and upstairs, to find Minifig, blogging away, listening to
Tiny Dancer. Sometimes I wonder if we're not actually the same person.
dj shadow at koko
Following last Tuesday, I feel it is my civic duty to urge anybody not already in possession of tickets for DJ Shadow's shows at Brixton Academy later this year to hurry up while the month is young and buy two for you and two for your friends. Minifig and I went to see the sickening genius play at Koko last week and he was nothing short of brilliant.
I know that people often drag out the old cliche of hairs standing on the back of your neck, but honestly, until I saw DJ Shadow, I never realised quite how hairy the back of my neck truly was. When DJ Shadow played it felt like my entire body was alert and on call. He really is one of the greatest artists alive now, and if you miss the opportunity to see him, I promise you, it would be akin to missing Mozart or Duke Ellington, Jacqueline Du Pre or Jimi Hendrix if they were playing in the pub round the corner.
I can't really explain why DJ Shadow is so special, except that there are truly few greater pleasures than watching somebody do something as well as it possibly can be done. Even if you know nothing about him, hate dance music and despise traipsing out in the middle of the winter to stand in a drafty gig venue, I beg you to see DJ Shadow this November. It was one of the greatest gigs I have ever been too, nicely topped off by the fact the man himself said we were truly 'dope' and he had enjoyed himself immensely.
Sure, there were plenty of daft DJ cliches - Lateef the Truth Speaker came out and did a little MC skit - cue much 'Are yooooouuuuuu reeeaaaaddddy Laaaahhhhddoooonnn, make some noooooiiiisssseeee!", alongside many distorted and slightly psychedelic projected video images - but when DJ Shadow is onstage, you have no choice but to keep one eye on the dancefloor and the other eye on his hands.
As if the evening couldn't be more perfect, I cannot leave this ridiculously enthusiastic review, without mentioning the crowd. DJ Shadow fans are some of the sweetest, most considerate and polite gig goers around, with no pushing, shoving and general idiocy, but a general feeling of cosy camaderie and excitement. I have rarely felt as comfortable at a gig, and perhaps more to the point, more concerned that those around me were equally comfortable. And no, there were no chemicals involved, unless you count a couple of cigarettes, two cans of Kronenberg and a Diet Coke - in which case, I highly recommend it.
Last one to Brixton Academy is a loser.
