Tuesday, November 21, 2006

an open letter to robert altman

dear mr altman

thank you for introducing me to raymond carver, and for your beautiful bittersweet pictures. I could be sad that there will be no more films, but the ones you made are some of the greatest around.

yours, DV

Thursday, November 09, 2006

no song of the week


Following a blissful week off work spent bumming around London town, binging on films and biscuits and books, I have decided that Darling Vicarage needs a holiday too. I may be back in a couple of weeks, or perhaps in the New Year, but either way for the time being, Darling Vicarage and her song of the week shall be going into hibernation. Wrap up warm... x

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Carson Holler @ Tate Modern


For further proof that kids make good art critics, go play on the Carson Holler slides at Tate Modern (that 'o' should have a thingy on it, only I don't know how - sorry)

As minifig and I stood waiting for the doors to the gallery to open on Tuesday morning, a hoard of squealing, grinning children arrived, pressing noses and fingertips up against the glass like shopaholics at the Next Boxing Day sale. One child even did a spontaneous body-pop on seeing the slides (I wonder if he's cool or if he gets bullied for such things?)

If I could do the robot, I would, to show my approval of these wonderful shiny, glossy slides. Juddering, cold and very fast in practice, I would recommend donning the knee-pads and protective head-gear on offer, but whatever you do, just make sure you go. It's like...going on a massive whirly big and scary slide very very fast and screaming bloody murder in a very public, often rather quiet place. They encourage giggly conversations between strangers (once you've both been on the Level 5, you've bonded), have whipped up some serious excitement about hanging out in a gallery (and not because everyone thinks they are vulgar/crap/waste of money) and above all, have made Tate Modern an altogether noisier place.

I wish modern art galleries would pipe drum and bass, free jazz, punk or whatever they fancied so long as it wasn't 'mood music' into each room. When the V&A gave me a pair of headphones for their Sssh! exhibition I had the greatest time in an exhibition ever - and I made friends with the woman dancing with me in the Greco-Roman room (strictly for the duration of the exhibition tho' - I don't dance with strangers in daylight sober). Art galleries are so much better when people aren't tiptoeing around them all the time - how are you supposed to get excited about something when you're not allowed to sing and dance about it?

My Burghers of Calais


Standing outside The Royal Academy, a woman beside me asked 'What is it?'

Staring up at the small, disfigured and contorted bodies and formidable melting doors in front of me I stammered, 'I think it's The Gates of Hell'. I sort of knew it was, but I couldn't really be sure it was in front of me. I was meant to have an overwhelming reaction to it, but in the bright sunshine of the dazzling courtyard of the Academy, it looked a bit too pure, and not molten enough to be truly terrifying. With people wrapped up in their woollen coats and cashmere scarves hugging and kissing eachother hello before turning back to the cast in serious contemplation it looked rather sanitised.

The Royal Academy's Rodin exhibition is, like The Gates of Hell, rather overwhelming in its scale and ambition. You drift from room to room passing iconic sculpture after iconic sculpture, not really able to comprehend exactly what you are seeing. This is partly because Rodin's impact on sculpture is so far-reaching that his work is so familiar, and partly because there is so much to see that, like in any extensive exhibition, you get a bit bored and tired and desensitized.

Fortunately a school party of, I think, 9-10 year olds, were being guided through the exhibiton, split into small groups of two or three students and taken through all the major works in the Academy by their teachers. They weren't standing earnestly stroking their chins, considering the merits of bronze over marble or terracota, or musing about the successful translation of the aims of Impressionism into three-dimensional forms. They were shrieking and pointing at Balzac's big fat paunch and the profusion of visible genitalia. They were gasping at their guide's sensational account of the discovery of the adulterous Paulo and Francesca and shuddering at tales of their torment in Hell. They weren't pacing around The Kiss in silent reverence, but stewing over the fate awaiting these two people snogging and anxiously asking 'But, Miss, if he didn't carve it, why is it a Rodin?' They dismissed the 'big' marble Kiss as a bit of a cheat, and 'showing off', but stood patiently around the smaller terracota version, nodding excitedly at tall tales of murder and adultery, before asking why such a horrible story would have made such a pretty sculpture.

The Burghers of Calais is my favourite sculpture of all time. Fortunately I can see it any time I like in Victoria Tower Gardens, where it is happily ignored in favour of the Houses of Parliament. I love it because I think it distils all aspects of what makes us human into six truly individualised figures. It takes a story of selfless sacrifice, and instead of glorifying its subjects, and in particular the richest, most prolific person involved, Eustache de Saint Pierre, as requested by the Mayor of Calais, places the six men on an equal level with their viewers and each other. Arriving at the sculpture from any angle you see different aspects and characteristics of each figure, some in apparently stoic mediatation, some in complete anguish. I won't even try to break down what makes The Burghers of Calais so powerful - it would become a rather redundant paragraph harping on about big feet and hands. But what I will say, is that standing by the sculpture, eavesdropping on the school parties, I got excited about it all over again.

The children were fascinated by the fact that on approaching the sculpture, some of the figures were partially obscured by each other, and that to really see the work, you had to quite literally, walk around the entire thing and meet each one on their own terms. All of the children I listened to focused immediately on the two figures on the far right if you approach the sculpture head on. They were mystified by the calm but clearly plaintive expression on the figure in the foreground (Jean d'Aire), a mix of defiant determination and solemn resignation on his face. He was clearly very brave.

They all instinctively ran around him to the man behind him, face shielded, hands pressed against his skull in utter despair (Andrieu d'Andres). He obviously didn't want to be anybody's hero anymore and he didn't want to die. One boy said that he looked like he was asking 'Why?'. His friend piped up; 'Or, why me?'

They all thought Pierre de Wiessant (far left, arm outstretched) looked sad, like he had been crying or maybe praying. One remarked how, if you stand in front of Pierre, he looks rather like Andrieu, only not as desperate, as if he's realised crying won't do him any good because it's too late now.

They appreciated the figure behind him with arms outstretched and mouth open (Jean de Fiennes) and his apparent kind attempts to comfort his friends. He was a nice man. Jacques de Wiessant looked 'scared' and 'not sure' about what was going to happen. As a figure he seemed to naturally fade into the background, and as if he was trying to block out the others around him.

They thought the sculpture's almost central figure, Eustache de Saint-Pierre looked tired and old. One girl said she thought he looked ready to die.

And all they all noticed they were carrying big keys. And that they had big hands and big feet. Most of them agreed with Rodin that it would have been much more boring if all the figures had been placed in a pyramid formation, or, as one girl put it, they might have looked like cheerleaders. Which would not have been very good.

Whenever people ask me, 'what's your favourite book / song / film / painting / building?' etc, I wheel out some treasured old reliable, rarely pausing to question if this is actually true anymore. I finally revised my favourite song ever about a year ago, and my favourite book two years ago. The painting hasn't changed for six years, but then I haven't ever seen it for real. My favourite building changes every time I see Battersea Power Station before settling back into lovely wobbly Casa Battlo. My favourite film really needs some work as I think I have about thirty films that I regularly tell people are in my top 10.

The Burghers of Calais
has been my favourite sculpture for six years now. And perhaps for the first time in a good four years, on Monday I looked at it properly again. It’s still my favourite sculpture – but now I remember why.


Tuesday, November 07, 2006

the poppy


Young Ernest Hemingway

Wearing your poppy has always been a big deal in my family. Each year I dutifully, and sincerely, bought my poppy and wore it with pride, before it collapsed or I lost it and I had to buy another – those pins they give you are pretty ineffectual. I did this broadly and simply as a sign of respect for those affected by war. But I also believe war is fundamentally wrong. I understand that there are situations which cannot be ignored, and also believe that there are things worth fighting for, but those are rarely the reasons for going to war.

However, for the last few years I have felt less certain about wearing my poppy, subconsciously pinning in onto a jacket that I’m probably not going to wear any time soon. This year I won’t be buying one.

I worry that wearing the poppy presents the image of a united front of ‘our boys’ against ‘them’, whoever ‘they’ are. I worry I’m closing my eyes to the blood shed by civilians, to the thousands of subjected to rape, degradation and humiliation by those serving in armed forces, and to the prisoners of war locked up for no other reason than they’re on the wrong side.

I’m concerned that wearing the poppy is a sign of support for the gun-toting muppets in power; a pat on the back, a smile, a shrug, that suggests I buy into all the tasty myths they feed us because they’re so appetising next to the truth, which tends to leave a rather sour aftertaste.

A recent British Legion welfare survey, used in this year’s poppy appeal, reveals the following facts:

  • 4,000,000 ex-Service people have a long-term illness or disability
  • 180,000 ex-Service men and women are never visited by a friend or relative
  • 927,000 ex-Service people live on an annual household income of £5,000 or less
  • More than 12,000 British Service men and women have been killed or injured on active service since 1945 in conflicts up to the present day, including Bosnia, the Falklands, Afghanistan and Iraq.

I believe that when our government persists in pushing ‘our boys and girls’ into wars their voters do not agree with, they should foot the hefty bill when they return bloodied, disillusioned and alienated. Aren’t you, PM, the one making all these big important foreign policy decisions: surely it’s prudent to take all collateral damage into account before you start chucking fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, daughters and sons in as cannon fodder? Oh, and sorry if my language was a bit emotive - I learnt it from you, along with catchy slogans like ‘Be the Best’ (British Army), '99.9% Need Not Apply’ (UK Royal Marines) and ‘Accelerate your Life’ - die faster? (US Navy).

I believe such language, together with wearing the poppy perpetuates the myth that war is romantic, heroic and worthy of our reverence. So wear it when you read The Iliad, but don’t confuse it with 655,000 dead in Iraq.

And finally, I will not be wearing a poppy for the reasons I used to wear one: because I respect all those affected by war, and because I believe war is fundamentally wrong.

Most GCSE students will not leave school without Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae’s poem appearing for their analysis and meditation on the school syllabus or in a school assembly:

In Flander Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Powerful stuff? I might as well say it now and suffer the consequences: I've never got it. I understand that the central line, both structurally and thematically is of course ‘We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow / Loved and were loved and now lie / In Flanders field’. I understand that when McCrae asks ‘If ye break faith with us who die / We shall not sleep’, he is calling on the living to remember the sacrifices of the dead. But I can’t help but also wonder if he isn’t also imploring us to continue to ‘fight the good fight’.

Who is this foe of whom he speaks, and what if I don’t want to take up his quarrel? What if I think his quarrel is stupid? Or founded on self-interest? What if I drop the torch he’s thrown at me and it breaks and makes an awful bloody mess? And what do you mean, hold the torch high? Celebrate your death whilst I prepare for mine and my partner’s, safe in the knowledge that it will all be for glory? Forgive me, but this is a poem, written by a man who watched a friend and colleague die: this is poem not just of poignancy, fragility and grief but of misery, anger and vitriol.

I would like to see GCSE students have Ernest Hemingway’s In Our Time or A Farewell to Arms pushed into their hands more often. The following extract appears as part of A Farewell to Arms and as an isolated vignette in In Our Time:

Nick sat against the wall of the church where they had dragged him to be clear of machine-gun fire in the street. Both legs stuck out awkwardly. He had been hit in the spine. His face was sweaty and dirty. The sun shone on his face. The day was very hot. Rinaldi, big backed, his equipment sprawling, lay face downward against the wall. Nick looked straight ahead brilliantly. The pink wall of the house opposite had fallen from the roof, and an iron bedstead hung twisted toward the street. Two Austrian dead lay in the rubble in the shade of the house. Up the street were other dead. Things were getting forward in the town. It was going well. Stretcher bearers would be along any time now. Nick turned his head carefully and looked at Rinaldi. “Senta Rinaldi. Senta. You and me we’ve made a separate peace.” Rinaldi lay still in the sun breathing with difficulty. “Not patriots.” Nick turned his head carefully away smiling sweatily. Rinaldi was a disappointing audience.

Ernest Hemingway famously said: I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a method of settling international disputes.

I agree with Mr Hemingway. And not just because he’s a better writer.

Sunday, November 05, 2006

antony and the johnsons with charles atlas @ the barbican


(from Saint Ann's Warehouse, NYC, 2004 performance)

Antony and the Johnsons are the musical equivalent of marmite - you either love it or you hate it. I love it, and as anybody who loves Antony et al will testify, it will change your short life. I sobbed my eyes out through The Cripple and the Starfish, and that nagging feeling that all is not right with the world has now magically disappeared.

A group of impossibly intriguing women (mostly women anyway...I think) were individually filmed on a revolving platform and projected onto a back screen (courtesy of technically proficient Charles Atlas) throughout the gig, providing each song with a powerful narrative thread that invited you to interpret each song as an experience (I know, I know, it sounds terrible - it was wonderful, and made me realise how little I see real flesh and blood un-airbrushed women in any other commercial art form).

And Antony. Antony Antony Antony. Such a domineering physical presence, oozing vulnerability and awkwardness matched with an admirable degree of self-containment, and, of course, that ethereal voice, walking the tightrope between agony and ecstasy. And The Johnsons - lush, divine, passionate performances from an intuitively beautiful mini-orchestra that fell somewhere between meditiation and madness.

There's something very potent about being sandwiched between one of your most beloved friends having a spiritual experience in the presence of Antony and the Johnsons, and a complete stranger weeping uncontrollably next to you, perhaps for very different reasons, as you wipe the mascara-clogged teardrops from your eyes. That, and Paul Gambuccini was sitting behind us.

What else can I say - it was an Antony and the Johnsons gig: draw your own conclusions. I feel positively beatific.

the dresden dolls @ the roundhouse (3rd Nov)

I adore The Dresden Dolls. Finding The Dresden Dolls was like finding my green winter coat or my pinstripe trainers – they were made specifically for me.

Now I would never attempt to argue that they are the greatest band in the world, but The Dresden Dolls would be the band I would pick to play at my fantasy birthday party (after party provided by The Beastie Boys). They are THE MAIN EVENT. Seeing The Dresden Dolls is not just going to a gig – it is an occasion, a performance, an event. I’m just relieved they weren’t around when I was 15, as I might have stopped with music then and there because they would have given me everything I had ever wanted from a band at that age. Now they just please me immensely, after dragging me through the musical mill for a few hours. Glorious.

Friday was the second time I had seen The Dresden Dolls this year and once again, they were perfect. Their gigs are designed for me: you need never feel bored with stereo-system indie music with The Dresden Dolls. Warm-up acts included mock-vaudeville gothic cabaret, a thrash metal puppeteer with accompanying puppet band, nude painting (provided by brave members of the audience) accompanied by Australian emo, political dance (Zen Zen Zo are fantabulously amazing), crazy New York comedy-rock and a 'transsexual' burlesque striptease from Margaret Cho, all brilliantly scattered throughout the (obviously) circular auditorium of The Roundhouse. During the show we were treated to trapeze artists, cabaret and backing singers dragged from the crowd. Amongst the audience were people on stilts with gas-masks, a spooky Japanese cosplay-style geisha delivering chupa-chups, a jester or two, day-glo jugglers with scary plastic masks and the usual hard-core crowd of (usually exceptionally attractive) girls in Amanda-style black and white striped suspenders and breast-squishing corsets. Despite the frock-coat, I still felt pretty underdressed – but hey, I wore the frock coat to work – visible underwear doesn’t really work in my office.

So, onto The Dresden Dolls. It’s probably best to get this puerile comment out of the way early but…phwoar. Either or both, I'm not fussed - Brian and Amanda are two of the most charismatic, finger-licking good musicians I have ever feasted my eyes on. She in her Who t-shirt, black frilly pants and the aforementioned suspenders, red bob in dishevelled forties-style clips, he in his black trousers and bowler hat, thrashing at those drums like Animal off The Muppet Show – I do love drummers – all that hair flicking and bare-chested flailing of arms, plus Brian can SING: let's not forget, Amanda's amazing, but the rest is alllll Brian. But either way, The Dresden Dolls are mesmerising before they even make a sound.

And then the music.

I could indulge and give you a blow-by-blow account of their entire back catalogue, but I’ll try to stick to Friday’s set. This list may be a bit wrong as it’s pilfered from here, which is actually Saturday’s show (but if I had someone to go with last night I would have done it all again in a heartbeat.)

Sex Changes
Nasty nasty nasty gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

Missed Me
Smoky Weimar-cabaret with a hint of Hammer Horror, creepy, hissing, purring vocals, the sound of a prison door squeaking shut, culminating in a furious roar….serves you right for kissing little girls.

Gravity
Trapeze artist in tow and charleston girls – a clattering beauty.

Modern Moonlight
(I am sure this came later in Friday’s set, but ho-hum)

A fabulous rallying cry to unplug yourself and join the heart-to-heart communication revolution, kicking all those icky corporations in the arse on your way down. Urgent, baroque and brutal, soaring to an anthemic climax with a fabulous closing couplet 'when the war is over / you can read the papers'.

Mrs O
One of the smartest, most pessimistic songs from The Dresden Dolls, which has the guts to rhyme Holocaust with Santa Claus. Lots of people have read this tragic comedy as a plea to preserve the innocent, but I’ve always heard it as an uncompromising order to open your eyes to the fact that, yes, it really is this bad.

Backstabber
So melodic even my mum likes this, despite the fact it’s got rude words in it. Also features killerlyric #156: ‘Don’t tell me not to reference my songs within my songs’.

Coin-Operated Boy
Music-box innocence meets luscious perversion. Brian’s comic timing on the drumming, the broken-record mock repetition with DIY sound effects, a lush rippling middle eight and a tantrum-fuelled lead into the chorus. I’ll take one, maybe two, deluxe Brian models please.

Two-Headed Boy (Neutral Milk Hotel cover)
Before the gig, minifig and I were enjoying a smoke on the Roundhouse terrace when he mentioned this great little band he’d been listening to called Neutral Milk Hotel. Great. I rolled my eyes: more white-boy emo to contend with. And then The Dresden Dolls covered them that night and now I have the album. What a tart.

Mandy Goes to Med School (this was later too)
A shoobedoop cabaret song about back-alley abortions. Brave and bitter, the song was accompanied by two gothic girls in brown smocks with round bellies throwing dismembered baby parts from their stomachs throughout the finale – and in the context of the scarily ever-growing support for so-called ‘pro-life’ campaigns, only too relevant. Shocking for all the right reasons and arguably the archetypal Dresden Dolls song.

Slide
I find it incredibly difficult to listen to this song on the album, because it genuinely scares me. I think it’s about the corruption of age, but the metaphor chosen by Amanda poses far more questions than it answers.

The Jeep Song
Yes, it’s true. They played The Jeep Song with folks grabbed from the audience to fill in the ‘Ba-ba-ba’ backing bits. The histrionic showtime opener, transforming into a retro-shoo-bop pop song beautifully pastiches early girl-group heartbreak tales, whilst also maintaining its credibility as a genuinely sad song about the spectre of ‘the ex’. I danced my heart out.
On any other album, this would be the stand-out track. On The Dresden Dolls's eponymous album, it’s a jokey aside.

Dirty Business
(again, this definitely came before TJS when we saw them)
I’m so tempted to stipulate that this is played at my funeral, but I’m disappointedly un-fucked up these days and nowhere near as cool as the song’s narrator – although I do kind of have a tattooed back. An absolutely virtuoso piano performance drives this song and it’s probably my favourite boogy-tune on Yes Virginia.

Delilah
I spilt my eyes when they played this. The song treads a finely tuned line between lullaby and sermon, and the carefully concealed anger and frustration in the stripped back first verse is devastating. I have my own Delilah, and never has anybody so perfectly condensed what I want to say to her than when Amanda screams lovingly – You're an unrescuable schizo, Or else you're on the rag, 'Cause if you take him back, I'm gonna lose my nerve......I never met a more impossible girl.

My Alcoholic Friends
Upbeat piano conga meets the-morning-after-guilt. If somebody could tune into the sound the universe makes when you tumble off a bar-stool, it would sound like this.

Bad Habit
Last night, a friend’s boyfriend asked me if I’d been to any gigs lately. The mention of The Dresden Dolls widened his eyes. ‘Aren’t they, like, really sick? My friend played me this one song by them and it was all about self-harm and blood and stuff. They’re really messed up’. I laughed and shook my head ‘Nah, they’re really sweet. I adore them’. He looked at me like I’d just told him I’d murdered his girlfriend.

Sing
Superficially this is a pretty standard emo ballad, and if Death Cab by Cutie had written the lyrics and it was whined over by Bright Eyes it would be so far, so good, so dull. But instead, Sing is a poignant, defiant anthem for sentimental misfits everywhere, and includes one of the most affecting, moving and delicate deliveries of the word ‘fuck’ in musical history.

Mein Herr
Dressed in expensive cantilevered lingerie, Amanda takes Brian in hand to salute Joe Masteroff and Bob Fosse. Rip-roaringly good, their performance made me yearn for simple black chairs, bowler hats, suspenders and Christine Keeler-style straddling.

Mad World
Australian support from The Red Paintings joined Amanda and Brian onstage for a cover of Gary Jules’ s cover of Tears for Fears’s Mad World. I hated this song when it became Christmas-number-one popular but this performance has almost redeemed it. And it’s hardly shocking that when you mention Donnie Darko to a room of Dresden Dolls fans everybody does their best goth-whoop, whatever that might be.

Half Jack
Devastating. minifig thinks this is about hating your father…but there’s obviously a heavy dose of transgender confusion here. Whatever it’s about, neither of those things really affects me, and yet Amanda’s voice draws out every little thing I hate about myself like a cat unravelling yarn and leaves me feeling deliciously broken.

Girl Anachronism
Makes being sectioned sound loads more fun than it really is. Demonic piano that sounds like it's been thrown down a flight of stairs in an old New York brownstone, nasty staccato vocals and crashing drums build to a maniacal climax with a show-stopping series of drum-rolls and aggressive piano chords.

FIN

Damn I can’t wait to see them again. Just writing about them I get this little dull ache in the pit of my stomach and a tightening in the back of my throat: I’m going to miss them terribly until the next time.


Maybe I’ll make myself a t-shirt for all subsequent gigs to read ‘I’d rather be watching The Dresden Dolls’ – in most cases, even at exceptional gigs, it would probably be true.

Go here for proof of their genius or read musings from Amanda here - your musical fulfillment depends on it.

Thursday, November 02, 2006

song of the week: werewolves of london ii



Lon Chaney, the Wolf Man himself, but alas, not with the Queen

Lycanthropy is up there as my second favourite human/animal metamorphosis (mermaids win, sorry), and I’m a sucker for Hallowe’en (I was born during a viewing of a pirated copy of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, don’t you know), so the opportunity to dine in an apparently world-famous Chinese restaurant (or mildly famous, judging by the faded, laminated Warren Zevon poster in the window) on the basis that it’s in a song (that I’ve never heard before) about werewolves was rather appealing. (so many brackets, such poor writing)

It was all HL’s idea – he’s much snazzier than me or minifig, and as I said, they serve a mean eel. Sadly the staff were not very mean, and seeing as HL had promised me abuse and contempt I was sorely disappointed not to have left with a full belly and a fat lip. Still, as wise men say, you can’t always get what you want.

So waking up on a beautifully crisp Sunday morning last weekend, sans hangover thanks to consumption of Lee Ho Fook's delicacies, I obviously set about snaring this song to enjoy at leisure. My god it’s good.

When BBC Radio 2 searched for the Greatest Opening Song Line in rock and roll history, they bypassed revered wordsmiths Paul Simon, Elvis Costello, Morrissey and Bill Haley’s immortal ‘One, two, three o'clock, four o'clock, rock,’ for, Mr Warren Zevon and this little beauty:

Saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand
Walking through the streets of
Soho in the rain
He was looking for a place called Lee Ho Fook's

Going to get a big dish of Beef Chow Mein

Yep, it’s bite-your-neck brilliant, and although I doubt I’ve given it as much thought as the good old boys at Radio 2, as an opener it takes some beating.

It’s such a bizarre hybrid song. Musically it sounds like a pastiche / homage to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Sweet Home Alabama. It’s cheerfully jaunty in a really jaded, gum-chewin’, wise-crackin’ way and Zevon’s vocal performance is so, sort of, dirty – not in a raspy, nasty, spitting way but in a real slurry, puke-on-the-night-bus way. No surprise then that he’s no stranger to the liquor and was ‘tired and emotional’ for much of the production of Excitable Boy, the album from which this gem is taken. (True to form, I know no other songs from it, but a trip to Fopp is long overdue this weekend)

Like a previous song of the week, The Velvet Underground’s The Gift, Werewolves of London is short-story meets song-writing at its best. As far as I can tell, it’s the tall tale of a bunch of bloodthirsty werewolf yuppies with perfect hair and a taste for old ladies and Pina Coladas at Trader Vic’s. The song joyfully marries bar-room brawl music with the macabre resulting in a murderously smart-arsed little ditty, with a verse that arguably beats the strangely evocative power of its opening line:

He's the hairy-handed gent who ran amuck in Kent
Lately he's been overheard in
Mayfair
Better stay away from him
He'll rip your lungs out, Jim…
I'd like to meet his tailor

Speaking about the song, Paul Morley (who I don’t always agree with, but I’d stand him a beer) brilliantly surmises what makes this song so exceptional:

Warren Zevon represents that world created by Bob Dylan, creating great opening images that set up a whole world in which we have no idea what is going to happen but it's all going to be inside four minutes.

That, and the Ah-ooooooooooh! bits, of course.

p.s. To the drunk zombies who stumbled into my tube carriage at Leicester Square on Saturday night...you made my Hallowe'en - the lovely Simon Pegg would be proud.