Monday, July 30, 2007

just one of the many reasons to visit highgate cemetery

Saturday, July 28, 2007

book of the week: how i live now


I've literally just finished this baffling, infuriating, beautiful, flawed, utterly absorbing, peculiar-beyond-belief, raw, intoxicating novel and feel slightly swamped with a tangle of strange emotions approximating a ball of wool massacred by kittens. So please, somebody I know read it so we can talk about it. I really hope E. Jones doesn't mind that I've used her(?) review from amazon.co.uk as a lazy way of trying to persuade you to read it, but I absolutely love this - it reads like a British incarnation of the book's protagonist, Daisy, had written it, and crackles with the buzz of having read something incredible:

This book made me cry several times. And i laughed many times. I picked it up in Waterstones becuase the book cover caught my eye (i know they say never judge a book by its cover, but i was right this time!!) and i bought it. when i tried to read it the first time, i has just finished reading Angus Thongs and Full Frontal Snogging, and anyone who has read that will know it is written in a completely different way to How I Live Now. so i put How I Live Now away because i didn't like the first page. But then, at my grandma's i had nothing else to read so i started reading it again. and got completely sucked into it! I completely thought that i was Daisy! And Edmond sounded gorgy! Then i kept ready. And i was in tears about the whole massacre thing!
if you want to read a classic, then you have to read this. utterly fabuloso. you will adore it.
it is now on the top shelf of my bookcase because that is where all my fave books are (like Avalon High by Meg Cabot, Let's Get Lost by Sarra Manning etc) because i'm tall and it's more convenient having my faves up the top.
Read it or you're just weird.
Also, if you don't cry or laugh or smile, then you need to buy another heart!!!
READ IT!

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

book of the week: harry potter and the deathly hallows *spoilerama*

Okay, so now I've had a couple of days to cool off and catch my breath, I think it's fair to say this is the best book of the bunch despite having some major flaws. There's not enough Hagrid, too much monging around in the tent and the epilogue makes me want to gag. And deep down, as much as I'm fond of the speccy one, I think it would have worked so much better if Harry had actually died.

However, the battle of Hogwarts is a stupendous piece of action writing; Dobby's death made me weepy; the Dursley's departing is both funny and touching; the dialogue between the big three in Chapter 6 is a near perfect example of characterisation, plotting and grounding using conversation; and the scenes in Godric's Hollow, Bathilda's cottage and the forest (both with the stag and the stone) are by turns creepy and evocative, moving and heart-stopping. And Mrs Weasley calls Bellatrix Lestrange a bitch. Brilliant.

So, because I love a good snigger, here's my favourite extract from the book. It's Harry's 17th birthday, and Ron has bought him a book.

"This isn't your average book," said Ron. "It's pure gold: Twelve Fail-Safe Ways to Charm Witches. Explains everything you need to know about girls. If only I'd had this last year I'd have known exactly how to get rid of Lavender and I would've known how to get going with...well, Fred and George gave me a copy, and I've learned a lot. You'd be surprised, it's not all about wandwork, either."

Wandwork? Now, come clean, Jo - don't tell me that's not deliberate.

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monkey's bad day



By way of tribute to my marvellous little sister for getting backstage tickets to Lovebox this weekend, thereby enabling me to fulfill a longheld ambition to see The B-52, I give you this little gem of an e-mail she sent me at work today. I'm allowed to do this, if I 'quote [her] literary genius and put a nice pic up', so here she is *evil cackle*

Morning stink

I have just had the worst morning - before I even got to work! Yucko.
I had a baaaaaaaaaad tummy this morning. Then left the house, got on tube which decided not to go anywhere for 10 minutes.

Then, I was standing near some seated bits on the tube, coming to a stop, lady gets up - she is soooooooo fat she barges past me so hard that I FALL OVER because of her fat bum!

And everyone looks at me like I'M the one who should have moved because I'm the skinny one! Pfffft.
Get the Hammersmith. After my bad tummy I think I should get something from Tesco in case I feel like eating. Go to get a danish. Pick one up to let 3 others fall on the floor.

The bakery man looks at me with such disgust I quickly run away.
Walking to work. Go to cross road and knock a cyclist off his bike in doing so.
All in all...poop. In every sense of the word!

Lots of love

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Friday, July 20, 2007

don't shoot the editor


grrrr. what a pillock


I was so irritated by this smug little story yesterday that I downed several glasses of wine whilst explaining to my beloved why I was so miffed by it.


Thankfully, here's a wonderful reply which says all the things I wanted to say, only without the slurring.


Wednesday, July 18, 2007

book of the week: a swift pure cry *spoilers*


With an eloquence that never undermines or falsely elevates misery, but is ceaseless in its engagement with, and love of, language, A Swift Pure Cry is the book I was lucky enough to read last week. Pushing the gasping, heart-in-mouth plot aside, which, incidentally, delivers complete satisfaction, it is Siobhan Dowd’s artful, yet still intuitive game with words that lifts A Swift Pure Cry above it’s synopsis as just another dreary Irish teenage pregnancy saga. Dowd’s Ireland is, to some extent, the Ireland we’ve seen countless times before, shrouded in a perpetual mist of whisky, confession and drizzle. And yet, snatching from Joyce and Maeve Binchy in equal measures, Dowd presents an Ireland I would never want to visit, but which holds you hostage nonetheless, taking tired stereotypes and turning them into the tangible and utterly unromantic. In the book’s central turning point, in the midst of the sickness, horror and panic, I found myself laughing on a busy train with a kind of desperate hysteria, as the protagonist's younger siblings, Jimmy and Trix, prepared all the things they believed necessary for the deliverance of babies. Twine, scissors, a plastic bin-bag, old doll’s clothes and a cardboard box, “lidless and thickly lined with cotton wool”. Such black, nasty humour, poking delicate fun at Jimmy and Trix’s strange combination of naivety and practicality epitomises what makes this book special. There is no misty-eyed pathos - just simple experience; no overdone sentimentality - but a gentle, not entirely confident whisper of compassion; no easy endings but potentially better beginnings; and bright, sometimes lurid, word pictures, taking a story that has been done countless times before and making it into a fresh vehicle for startling writing. A Swift Pure Cry indeed.

since sliced bread


I think this has to be the greatest hat ever designed in the history of time. My knitting friends - I implore you to prove your oft-professed devotion and make me one. Pattern's right here.

And while we're on the subject, this month's edition of Little White Lies is joyously dedicated to Studio Ghibli's latest output, an adaptation of Ursula K Le Guin's Tales from Earthsea. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Le Guin has famously said she feels betrayed by Ghibli, unlike Diana Wynne-Jones' rather more amicable, if not bemused shrug at Howl's Moving Castle. Like the incredibly smart, incredibly knowledgeable goddess of anime, Helen McCarthy, interviewed here, I'm increasingly concerned by the lack of original plots coming from the studio, and the ever-approaching retirement of Miyazaki (Earthsea is directed by Goro, Hayao's son). But perhaps as one of the most significant careers in cinema history approaches its end, we're about to burst into a brand new dawn of anime...and while we wait, I'll be ready with my popcorn for Earthsea.

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Thursday, July 12, 2007

Animal Collective @ The Coronet 070712


Marnie Stern - when I grow up I wanna be just like her

What happens when you spend your childhood dancing to rave music, your teens discovering grunge and lo-fi, and college smoking to the sounds of Sigur Ros. You join Animal Collective.

But before I tell you about them, a word about the venue, Elephant and Castle’s Coronet. A former art-deco cinema, the Coronet is suffering from a serious case of mutton dressed as lamb. Apparently tarted up with all the red paint leftover from Koko’s facelift with a glass-fronted balcony (which gives a pretty soulless view - like watching a gig on an ice-rink - always get standing tickets) the Coronet is every inch the South London sweatbox. In its favour, it does have the cosy little raised platforms and leaning barriers so treasured at The Forum and staff who pop open the dance floor fire exits so everybody can smoke, joyfully flouting the small print of the smoking laws. And what it lacks in atmosphere it makes up for in plumbing, with possibly the largest number of ladies’ toilets yet found in a gig venue. But I won’t be hurrying back.

By eight o’clock the floor was filled with skinny-jeaned boys and girls in tea-dresses, and after scanning the crowd I predict a grunge fashion revival within the next 6 months – I haven’t seen that much plaid since Blossom first aired. In between beers I also realised that I was about ten years older than most people in the room, which has never happened before. Seeing as I’m going to the first wedding of one of my peers this weekend and my baby sister turns 21 next month, I think it’s time I started planning my pension. But then again, I was IDed trying to get into a pub last Saturday, and I was given a flyer for the underage festival yesterday, so perhaps I needn’t invest in sensible shoes just yet.

First band on, Late of the Pier, mumble something about having run out of money and being unable to play and then shamble off. Knowing nothing about them I didn’t take it to heart at the time. I have since heard their music and am pretty miffed. They sound like the babies of Pyschedelic Furs, Duran Duran and every lovely fly-by-night-dead-or-alive ‘80s one hit wonder you’re ever danced to – in a parallel universe I may have emerged a convert.

Marnie Stern, like, totally kicked butt, dude. Watching her, it’s as if somebody gave a Saved By The Bell cheerleader a guitar, got her drunk, made her watch Wayne’s World and then accidentally realised she was actually a genius. She’s the musical equivalent of sugar-coated crystal meth – an ethereal, spiky, sexy, snarly speed metal angel. Part giggly shambles, part twiddly guitar virtuoso, I think I can safely say that there is nobody around right now quite like Marnie Stern, and as one wise commentator writes on ravensingstheblues ‘awesome is too small a word’.

Animal Collective are an enigma. Last FM reviews for the night are rather mixed, with folk disappointed by the setlist and lack of encore. Being a curious listener as opposed to a fan, I went expecting nothing and I found them fascinating. Aside from the night I saw Mogwai, turning halfway through to see blood trickling from my beloved’s ear, I’ve never been to a gig where a band came out, no words, no hello, and made non-stop noise for an hour. Echoing swarming, psychedelic electronic sounds, the band played as if they were in some spooky shamanistic trance. I drifted in between bafflement, boredom and excitement as songs dissolved into each other. There’s not really even such a thing as a setlist with Animal Collective, just drumbeats and samples and warped, strangled vocals oozing into endless repetitions. There’s no such thing as performance, with band members singing with their back to the audience for twenty minutes, crunched and curled over their keyboards, no eye contact and apparently no concern for anybody’s enjoyment except their own. They could have been playing to a stadium of thousands or to a few friends in a bedsit. Musically, they’re the product of trance, post-punk and LSD headtrips – Mercury Rev meets Flaming Lips vocals, Beach Boys walls of sound, trance monotony and navel-gazer self-indulgence. I wouldn’t want them to be the last band on earth, but in an overcrowded and frequently bland place, their mix of audacity and awkwardness is a welcome antidote to Paolo Nutini.

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Monday, July 09, 2007

What's Opera Doc?



Amazingly, Chuck Jones judged this masterpiece his least successful Bugs Bunny cartoon, which turns 50 this week. Needless to say, I disagree.


Garth: Did you ever find Bugs Bunny attractive when he put on a dress and played girl bunny?
Wayne: No. [cracks up laughing] No.
Garth: Neither did I. I was just asking.

Sunday, July 01, 2007

Glastonbury 07: Grand Finale Sunday



Bottle Rocket from The Go! Team. Wow.

The Go! Team blew everybody away. With two drummers, a band who seem able to play any instrument you chuck at them, and irrepressible frontwoman Ninja, The Go! Team wipe all the competition off the festival map, and were probably the best band I saw all weekend. Their explosive show is accompanied by flawless VJ editing presenting the audience with a captivating series of images reflecting youth culture, culminating with modern Britain. The Go! Team have been a slow-burning band with me; I used to think they were little more than good, clean, nostalgic party music, and yet their mixing of samples, live vocals and performance can be so potent that it triggers a rare spine-shiver. Ladyflash’s We came here to rock the microphone’ section, with its combination of 80s electronica, shimmering cymbals and low-down 70s sampler, flourishing into full-blown strings and breakbeats, never fails to make me all tingly and excited. A must-see live act.

Considering I spent most of Year 8 in a Quadrophenia t-shirt, I was expecting to enjoy The Who more than I did. Sadly a combination of ceaseless drizzle and an apathetic crowd, who knew fewer Who songs than they realised, made for a rather muted end to the festival. The sound was absurdly quiet, and the exhausted and soggy audience barely mustered up a yawn for My Generation. No Substitute, no Magic Bus, no 5:15, just extended guitar solos and the typical Who technique of pretending to have finished a song before launching into histrionic drum smashes and bloated guitar thrashing. Still, nothing will eradicate the image of my sister in a fluorescent pink raincoat and Wellingtons, manically playing air guitar to Baba O’Reilly. Priceless.

And that’s about all folks. Packing up the tent at 6am was every bit as fun as you’d imagine it to be. And once again, on the way back to the coach, I fell spectacularly into a giant puddle of mud, leaving the people on the tube in no doubt what I’d been up to that weekend. Still it was, in its own filthy, exhausting way, quite wonderful.



Glastonbury 07: Sunday



WHAT? NO TOWN BAND? Yes, you read right. There was no Glastonbury Town Band this year. Booo.

Perhaps that’s the reason chirpy North London chappies, The Holloways pull a surprisingly hefty crowd on Sunday morning. Now, if this band, by some evil fluke, reached the size of The Kooks, I would think they were the most irritating bunch of snotty-nosed fellas ever. But as it is, they’re currently like a more charming version of The Libertines, bringing their flatmate onstage to play guitar and hamming up their Artful Dodger cockiness, much to the crowd’s delight. After such a smiley start to the day, it would seem churlish to criticise. They were lovely.

Over in the Leftfield tent Ed Byrne’s political comedy is far funnier than anything I’ve seen him do previously. However, it’s hardly difficult to make people laugh at Christian fundamentalists – you need only tell the truth and you’ll have any sane person in stitches. Or tears. A short film with music from Brian Eno on nuclear war followed: if any one else remembers the name of this film, please could you leave it as a comment as I would love to watch it again.

Tony Benn has such dignity and integrity that when he speaks it is impossible not to give him your full attention. Listening to him speak about Trident was a moving and provocative experience, and I hope will nudge me out of my own tendency to become complacent or disheartened. As he reminded us, we are the first generation with both the capacity to destroy the entire human race, and the technology to save ourselves. The right choice is also the obvious choice, but I think we’ve got some way to go before we’re ready to stop relying on nuclear power, both in terms of energy and politics. It’s become increasingly unfashionable to voice your demands for nuclear disarmament, but I think it’s a demand that you cannot voice enough. He’s absolutely right, we need to stop protesting and start demanding. I can’t find any footage of his speech at Glastonbury, but here he is on the February 07 Stop Trident march.

In front of the Jazz World field I enjoy some more cider and gladly give a cigarette to an old man in a dress who confesses he’s meant to have given up smoking, but his wife has taken the kids to the circus, so would I be so kind as to give him a spare fag. Seth Lakeman is his usual virtuoso self as I desperately try to move around in the mud to ensure I don’t sink without a trace.

On the Avalon Stage, minifig, monkey 2, hobbit (monkey 2’s boyfriend) and I are all wowed by Billy Bragg. Explaining that all his electrical kit is stuck in a van deep in the Pilton mud, Billy Bragg presents a stripped-back solo acoustic set, playing a welcome combination of old favourites and new tracks. A busker rendition of Waterloo Sunset rouses the crowd into a giant karaoke sing-along, as does a heartbreaking Sexuality and a rousing Great Leap Forward. England, Half English is superb. By the end of the set, I see several people wiping their eyes…and I doubt it was down to hayfever.

Heading back to the tent, we catch a little of Tinariwen, who although interesting, were a little too dirgey for my liking, but undoubtedly great musicians.

Glastonbury 07: Saturday night



Damn - I cannot believe I missed this. Bah.

Disappointed with Mark Ronson, we squelched through the soupy mud over to the John Peel stage to watch Patrick Wolf. I have been reliably informed by a good friend that the man is a prize git and so I have been dutifully trying not to like him. Unfortunately his sprightly fiddle-playing, brassy vocals and impish dancing whips up a frenzy of happiness in the crowd and before I was able to stop myself, Patrick Wolf had put me in the magic position. I hung my head in shame.

Minifig and I didn’t really mean to catch John Fogerty, formerly of Creedence Clearwater Revival, but while waiting for Rodrigo y Gabriela we inadvertently ended up dancing together, clutching our pear cider and giggling. John Fogerty was a treat, playing beefy guitar rock that drew an enormous cheer from the elderly crowd as Bad Moon Rising began to play. And I didn’t feel the least bit guilty clapping along to Rockin’ All Over the World. So there.

Sadly, despite having only two guitars, Rodrigo y Gabriela suffer a technical malfunction, meaning my plan to catch the beginning of their set and the end of Iggy and the Stooges is well and truly scuppered. Above the rain this is my disappointment of the festival. I miss the whole stage invasion at Iggy and the Stooges, Iggy falling over on stage and the opportunity to bounce around and shout. Boo. I also fall over in the mud near Jazz World and am rudely interrupted on the loo. Not the finst 90 minutes of my life. A potent reminder that you should always ditch your friends at festivals and go and see your favourite artists….except, then I would have missed John Fogerty. Hmmn. Such a quandry.

As the clock edged closer to midnight, minifig gallantly abandoned his plans to see Rodrigo y Gabriela so I could see Iggy. And okay, so I only saw one song, but it’s my favourite song, I Wanna Be Your Dog. It took all night for the face-breaking smile to leave my face. We also managed to see the end of Rodrigo y Gabriela. I can’t argue with their technical excellence, but I think an indoor Barbican-style gig would suit them much better as watching two tiny people play fiddly guitar from miles away is a bit dull actually.

Buoyed up by Iggy, minifig and I trundled up to Strummerville, Joe Strummer’s Glastonbury campfire, to raise a drink to Joe and other old friends and loved ones. Halfway through a bottle of wine we realised that actually, between us, we know a lot of dead people and perhaps it was best to call it a night. I fell asleep, dreaming of Iggy’s torso.

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Glastonbury 07: Saturday dancing


Phew chaps, I was so pleased we went for that little sit down, cos DJ Yoda was exhausting. (Every time the sun came out I swear we were watching someone in a tent.)

Mixing David Dickinson, Star Wars, Grandmaster Flash, Eurythmics and Paul Simon, it was big goofy, gurning smiles all round over in the Dance East tent as DJ Yoda dazzled us with his DJ and VJ pyrotechnics. Being 5’ 5”, I couldn’t see much of the video stuff, and as DJ Yoda is less about dancing and more about DJing, I have to admit, I got a little bit bored. Fortunately, he appeared to have a vast back catalogue of 80s cheese to keep the crowd sweet, and there was something so all-round good-natured about this set that it was hard not to pull a few cheesey grins.

Shame the same can’t be said about Mark Ronson. Someone should tell that man that simply sticking your CD on doesn’t really qualify as a proper DJ set.




Glastonbury 07: Saturday afternoon



Saturday lunchtime and we were sitting in front of the Pyramid Stage, in the sunshine, drinking ciders and singing along to The Pipettes. The three ladies and their backing band delivered a proficiently poppy set with many hand-clapping and finger-wagging opportunities. It was the only chance we got all weekend to sit down on the grass and therefore it’s a rosy cider-tinted memory, but I hope that’s allowed.

Everybody got soaked watching The Guillemots. I saw them entirely from the little eye-gap in my ginormous poncho, and from what I could make out through the lashing rain, they were noisy. Fyfe Dangerfield did his usual flailing and fitting on the floor while sultry Aristazabal looked on dispassionately, shimmying all over her double bass. Sao Paulo was ear-splittingly rousing, and as I trudged over to The Other Stage I heard many wet folk enthusing about how excellent they were. A job well done for one of Britain’s most underrated, and loud, bands.

En route to The Other Stage I stopped over at Emma Levine’s stand. Every year I buy one of her brilliantly designed t-shirts and now it’s a bit of a tradition that I stop by and say hello to her motley crew of friends.

CSS were utterly manic. Lovefoxxx performed her, by now, requisite strip-show, revealing increasingly garish full-body leotards to starjump across the stage in. Approximately a third of the audience fell instantly in love with her. Bubble-blowing kits were thrown into the crowd, Lovefoxxx bravely crowd-surfed muddying her sparkly cat-suit, and finished the set by taking a great gulp of helium and introducing Let’s Make Love like a chipmunk. Minifig, predictably, hates CSS. I just wish they’d ask me to join the band. As one commentator on YouTube says, I love the funnesss.

I don’t really understand the hype around The Klaxons Golden Skans is a perfectly passable song and works reasonably well on adverts – nuff said. However, unlike other ridiculously highly-billed acts (yes, Artic Monkeys, The Killers, The (wtf) Kooks, I’m looking at you), The Klaxons turn up hysterical and blushing at filling the modest 5.00pm Saturday slot on The Other Stage. I’m still not convinced, but Atlantis To Intercourse is a giant, shrieking, dirty great track – like Atari Teenage Riot meets 2 Unlimited, which, please trust me, works well. However, they weren't good enough to overcome my extreme exhaustion, and defeated we all head back to the tent for a cup of tea. Rock ‘n’ bloody roll – what a bunch of middle-class, middle-aged, middle England lightweights. Any one for a slice of Battenburg?

Glastonbury 07: Friday evening




Bjork's Hyperballad. I personally think the album version is one of the most romantic songs ever written, while I don't think you could really say the same for this...although in hindsight, perhaps that's not such a bad thing.

On the way back to the tent I caught five minutes of Bright Eyes' set. Five minutes was definitely enough. B-o-r-i-n-g.

A drizzly Friday afternoon magically transformed itself into a pretty blissful evening, watching Martha Wainwright play to a sleepy crowd of probably only a few hundred people on the Park stage. When it comes to the younger Wainwrights I’m not a big fan of their songwriting, but when it comes to their voices, and them, I think they’re flipping great. Her dusky voice and endearing habit of making fidgety flamingo movements as she plays mark this, my first Martha Wainwright performance, as a highlight.

Rufus Wainwright is similarly charming, and his duet with Martha of Hallelujah is sublime. It’s slightly marred by my needing the loo every twenty minutes after one pint of lager, my only drink of the day, so I think that’s quite unfair, but I enjoyed the set. What the BBC hasn’t shown on its highlights section was the fact the sound people cut Rufus’s drag version of Get Happy when he ran out of time. Unanimous booing meant we had to watch the whole thing from the start again, and so the joke of watching his band prance around performing mock-Broadway dance routines wasn’t quite as funny the second time around. Still, he’s a charming man with a lovable warble.

By all accounts Arcade Fire were stunning, but standing further back from the soundstage minifig and I could barely hear anything at all. The Other Stage is a patchy place to watch any music. It gets the worst of the mud, has no natural incline and occasionally the music from The Queens Head pub threatens to swamp the sound. The crowd further back was composed entirely of people who knew none of the songs and were chatting; one of the perennial problems of festivals being that frequently, die-hard fans are competing for spaces with people waiting for the next act or suffering from too much inertia to move. It doesn’t make for a particularly electric atmosphere. After grumbling that we should have moved closer to the front, minifig and I eventually found a spot with enough room to fling our arms around each other and howl along to Arcade Fire like banshees. By the end of the show we are drunk and very happy. So, although I can’t say Arcade Fire were amazing, seeing Arcade Fire with minifig was.

Bjork was very late and we were both very tired. Minifig is disappointed by her minimalist rendition of Venus as a Boy (I loved it), and I am startled by her throbbing rave version of Hyperballad (minifig, along with basically everybody else, thought it was brilliant.) However, we both appreciated Bjork’ s confidence in screwing around with her best-loved songs and delivering a sparkling, colourful show that is nothing like sticking the CD on at home. And her voice is mind-blowing – it still scares me, but also delights me, that a human being can actually make sounds like that.

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