Wouldn't It Be Nice - Beach Boys
Born to Run - Bruce Springsteen
Yes - McAlmont and Butler
The Card Cheat - The Clash
The Late Greats - Wilco
You are the Generation that Bought More Shoes and You Get What You Deserve - Johnny Boy
Rockferry - Duffy
In a Funny Way - Mercury Rev
The Pledge - Brendan Benson
Daddy's Gone - Glasvegas
Run-away - Super Furry Animals
Mahgeetah - My Morning Jacket
Sorry, am finding it harder to arbitrarily keep the tapes down to 10 songs.
I've just been reading about exactly what the Wall of Sound was and how it was achieved, which is pretty interesting stuff, but I'm not terribly musical, so I don't want to get out of my depth.
It's just a sound, isn't? A sound you hear on a song which makes you know that someone, somewhere, has described it as Spector-esque.
Maybe the two definitive Phil Spector productions are Be My Baby and River Deep, Mountain High, very different songs which do sound very different - without reading too much, the first is all about control, the second is all about excess - i suppose that reflects the drugs Spector had taken throughout the 60s. In any case, they're both magnificent records.
I love the sound, I love it when people have a go at copying it or updating - Bernard Butler is the modern producer who has harnessed it best - he was behind two of these records.
What a lot of these records take from Spector and what a lot of people are thinking of when they invoke Spector is the drum sound - the Benson song and the Mercury Rev song are good examples of this, while the Johnny Boy song is a superb steal from Be My Baby.
Then it comes to Phil Spector the person, and enough has been written about that recently, really. The mugshots and the wigs are what will stick with me. Just so, so weird.
I only saw fit to address Spector in as glib a way as possible, and of course there's nothing I could write which could reasonably comment on the music, so I merely reflected on one of the most surreal aspects of the later days of Spector.
PHIL SPECTOR REGRETS
As i sit, denied an ipod,
in my 10 by 10
thinking 'bout the good sounds,
thinking 'bout the bad,
i recall the wall i built
brick by perfect brick,
i recall the life i took
and how it finally stuck.
There may be deeds i do regret,
jokes i took too far,
studios i terrorised,
dischord in the screams
but if i am a haunted man
tumbling to his grave
angry and dissatisfied
just one cause is there
after all the hurricanes
and tempests i produced,
that of all the ships i steered
Starsailor's was the last.
As i sit, denied the music
that was my only strength
how cruel that my legacy
should be so reduced.
Starsailor, eh? Haha
Wednesday, 26 August 2009
Monday, 17 August 2009
51. 10 Soldier's Songs
Phew, now this takes me past the halfway mark and the whole enterprise is obviously getting tougher. If I believe, though, I can achieve.
Anyway, this topic isn't really intended to be in keeping with the mood of the nation, though everyone is talking about soldiers these days, for better or worse.
A Soldier's Tale - The Good, The Bad and the Queen
Soldier Girl - The Polyphonic Spree
Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag - Country Joe and the Fish
Broken Boy Soldier - The Raconteurs
In the Army Now - Status Quo
Buffalo Soldier - Bob Marley
Like Soldiers Do - Billy Bragg
Brothers In Arms - Dire Straits
Universal Soldier - Buffy Sainte-Marie
Soldier Man - Shack
Rock'n'Roll songs about war don't have the same immediacy and power as great war poetry, obviously, as you don't have time to form a band do a quick recording session in the middle of a war, while the war poets could recount their experiences at the time. And just generally, there hasn't been too much conscription in the rock'n'roll years so not too many rock stars have been in the army. Shaggy ... Elvis ... Jimi Hendrix ... Billy Bragg ... James Blunt, i think he has a song about being a soldier but, you know, i really hate his songs. not in a nasty way, i just hate them. Not that I don't also hate Status Quo, but i guess they're funny, so I'm less churlish about including them.
There have been plenty of protest songs about war but most pretty general and vague along the brilliant "War! What is it good for?" or the terrible "War is stupid" lines. Bob Dylan wrote about war, but he didn't, as far as i can recall, write about soldiers.
One could say that rock'n'roll has mainly failed the test on great, emotive war lyricism. Having written that, I've just remembered a superb song called Round Eye Blues by a band called Marah, a proper piece of heavy war poetry written from the point of view of a soldier in Vietnam. And i'd forgotten Paul Hardcastle. D-d-d-d-damn. And Born in the USA. In fact there's loads coming into my head now which is more suited than the list above ... oh well
I've rather chickened out of trying to write a genuine soldier's tale and I'm going to rather chicken out of saying anything about soldiering and war in general. I just don't know anything about that stuff. To be able to write well about that may be a test of good writing, or film-making, or whatever, but i wouldn't be so bold.
I think what I've written is very schooly - in fact it was written, a few years ago, after a class in how to teach poetry to children, so reminded me of the lessons in writing poetry I had as a kid, and the stuff I liked writing best, as you've no doubt guessed, was in the ballad form, whether comic or otherwise. I notice that as it progresses i take increasing delight in getting medieval on yo ass.
So this is
A SOLDIER'S BALLAD
A soldier with a steady heart
throughout the land went roaming
for one sweet maid with ready wit
to make his sad soul's home in
For a vision to his brash brain'd come
when barely out of boyhood
of the one woman for whose embrace
through all those years he laboured.
He wandered north, he wandered south,
his wealth he used up slowly;
At night, he paused and pondered, "does
the one I seek yet know me?"
He looked within the greatest cities,
he combed each inch of the widest moors,
he made brief friends on the eastern sands,
brave foes on the western shores.
One day, when some years past his prime
(for his cheeks were rough and hollowed
and his temples coarse and grizzled)
a smooth country path he followed;
espied he by this virgin route
a verdant sapling leftways leaning;
and by the tree the maiden sat
of whom he'd long been dreaming.
"Lord knight, although my faith was strong
that someday you would find me,
I do confess years have there been
when i thought my hopes behind me,"
the maiden spoke with gentle smile,
face lined by age and laughter,
"Rest now, I know you've journeyed long,
rest now and ever after."
"Fair lady, fain would I e'er rest,
now my eyes at last behold you.
True, long I've wandered, now I pray,
e'en longer my arms t'enfold you."
Elision, ne'er can you have too much elision, muthafuckas!
Anyway, this topic isn't really intended to be in keeping with the mood of the nation, though everyone is talking about soldiers these days, for better or worse.
A Soldier's Tale - The Good, The Bad and the Queen
Soldier Girl - The Polyphonic Spree
Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag - Country Joe and the Fish
Broken Boy Soldier - The Raconteurs
In the Army Now - Status Quo
Buffalo Soldier - Bob Marley
Like Soldiers Do - Billy Bragg
Brothers In Arms - Dire Straits
Universal Soldier - Buffy Sainte-Marie
Soldier Man - Shack
Rock'n'Roll songs about war don't have the same immediacy and power as great war poetry, obviously, as you don't have time to form a band do a quick recording session in the middle of a war, while the war poets could recount their experiences at the time. And just generally, there hasn't been too much conscription in the rock'n'roll years so not too many rock stars have been in the army. Shaggy ... Elvis ... Jimi Hendrix ... Billy Bragg ... James Blunt, i think he has a song about being a soldier but, you know, i really hate his songs. not in a nasty way, i just hate them. Not that I don't also hate Status Quo, but i guess they're funny, so I'm less churlish about including them.
There have been plenty of protest songs about war but most pretty general and vague along the brilliant "War! What is it good for?" or the terrible "War is stupid" lines. Bob Dylan wrote about war, but he didn't, as far as i can recall, write about soldiers.
One could say that rock'n'roll has mainly failed the test on great, emotive war lyricism. Having written that, I've just remembered a superb song called Round Eye Blues by a band called Marah, a proper piece of heavy war poetry written from the point of view of a soldier in Vietnam. And i'd forgotten Paul Hardcastle. D-d-d-d-damn. And Born in the USA. In fact there's loads coming into my head now which is more suited than the list above ... oh well
I've rather chickened out of trying to write a genuine soldier's tale and I'm going to rather chicken out of saying anything about soldiering and war in general. I just don't know anything about that stuff. To be able to write well about that may be a test of good writing, or film-making, or whatever, but i wouldn't be so bold.
I think what I've written is very schooly - in fact it was written, a few years ago, after a class in how to teach poetry to children, so reminded me of the lessons in writing poetry I had as a kid, and the stuff I liked writing best, as you've no doubt guessed, was in the ballad form, whether comic or otherwise. I notice that as it progresses i take increasing delight in getting medieval on yo ass.
So this is
A SOLDIER'S BALLAD
A soldier with a steady heart
throughout the land went roaming
for one sweet maid with ready wit
to make his sad soul's home in
For a vision to his brash brain'd come
when barely out of boyhood
of the one woman for whose embrace
through all those years he laboured.
He wandered north, he wandered south,
his wealth he used up slowly;
At night, he paused and pondered, "does
the one I seek yet know me?"
He looked within the greatest cities,
he combed each inch of the widest moors,
he made brief friends on the eastern sands,
brave foes on the western shores.
One day, when some years past his prime
(for his cheeks were rough and hollowed
and his temples coarse and grizzled)
a smooth country path he followed;
espied he by this virgin route
a verdant sapling leftways leaning;
and by the tree the maiden sat
of whom he'd long been dreaming.
"Lord knight, although my faith was strong
that someday you would find me,
I do confess years have there been
when i thought my hopes behind me,"
the maiden spoke with gentle smile,
face lined by age and laughter,
"Rest now, I know you've journeyed long,
rest now and ever after."
"Fair lady, fain would I e'er rest,
now my eyes at last behold you.
True, long I've wandered, now I pray,
e'en longer my arms t'enfold you."
Elision, ne'er can you have too much elision, muthafuckas!
Friday, 14 August 2009
50. 10 David Songs
Woohoo, i make the half-century and I'm almost halfway there. In honour of this remarkable happening, I celebrate me! or rather my own name - I'm pretty surprised to have got to 10 songs on this one, but I have had to sink pretty low ...
Remember David - A Flock of Seagulls
Who Killed Davey Moore? - Bob Dylan
David - Nellie McKay
Hallelujah - Jeff Buckley
Once in Royal David's City - Sufjan Stevens
Who's David - Busted
Can't Help Thinking About Me - David Bowie
David Watts - The Jam
Jonathan David - Belle and Sebastian
Argument with David Rawlings about Morrissey - Ryan Adams
A pretty shoddy collection, the last one's not even a song, it is really just an argument, but it does lead into the splendid To be Young is to be sad is to be high, and also Ryan Adams' first name is actually David, so i guess it's ok.
The Bowie song is hilarious, it's from his pre-fame mid-60s, and is on because it contains the line "My girl calls my name 'hi Dave',
drop in, see around, come back
if you're this way again"
which i once heard him saying was the worst lyric he'd ever written. Awesome.
Hallelujah is of course about King David - I once began an actual compilation tape with the start of the song, then cut it at "but you don't really care for music, do you?" ha ha which was pretty clever in the days of stopping and rewinding and cutting and pasting.
In fact, come to think about it, three of the songs refer to King David. I quite like Jonathan David, though it's a bit uneven. When I was a 5/6 year old kid, there were three Davids in my class, and i tried to change my name to John, my middle name, but everyone just called me David John, which wasn't the point at all - rather like when I finally made clear that I was 100% David and not Dave, and various people would call me Dave ... sorry ... id or say things like When did you change your name to David? These were morons.
Anyway, it's a pretty good name, it was everywhere when i was growing up. Cricket was, as already mentioned, my favourite thing, so the fact that the England captain was left-handed and called David meant I had a readymade hero. And what a solid broadcaster he's become ...
Anyway, this is about the prevalence of the name - don't worry too much about it
DAVIDS
This blessed name gave a fine pair of heroes
protecting me in and out the school gate.
In white, on left, England's captain drove me
on and picked me up or sent Willis instead ...
In black dress, with wit and gentle teachings,
Father, friend and noble headmaster, you
told us to be wary of the strange men
in dark cars with no place at the Abbey.
Forty thousand pounds, I hear, was enough
to buy a few years' silence from some frightened
Catholic boy's own greedy shameful family,
Father David, failing to buck bitter
cliches, lazy jokes about everything about you -
you just had to go and make them come true.
Remember David - A Flock of Seagulls
Who Killed Davey Moore? - Bob Dylan
David - Nellie McKay
Hallelujah - Jeff Buckley
Once in Royal David's City - Sufjan Stevens
Who's David - Busted
Can't Help Thinking About Me - David Bowie
David Watts - The Jam
Jonathan David - Belle and Sebastian
Argument with David Rawlings about Morrissey - Ryan Adams
A pretty shoddy collection, the last one's not even a song, it is really just an argument, but it does lead into the splendid To be Young is to be sad is to be high, and also Ryan Adams' first name is actually David, so i guess it's ok.
The Bowie song is hilarious, it's from his pre-fame mid-60s, and is on because it contains the line "My girl calls my name 'hi Dave',
drop in, see around, come back
if you're this way again"
which i once heard him saying was the worst lyric he'd ever written. Awesome.
Hallelujah is of course about King David - I once began an actual compilation tape with the start of the song, then cut it at "but you don't really care for music, do you?" ha ha which was pretty clever in the days of stopping and rewinding and cutting and pasting.
In fact, come to think about it, three of the songs refer to King David. I quite like Jonathan David, though it's a bit uneven. When I was a 5/6 year old kid, there were three Davids in my class, and i tried to change my name to John, my middle name, but everyone just called me David John, which wasn't the point at all - rather like when I finally made clear that I was 100% David and not Dave, and various people would call me Dave ... sorry ... id or say things like When did you change your name to David? These were morons.
Anyway, it's a pretty good name, it was everywhere when i was growing up. Cricket was, as already mentioned, my favourite thing, so the fact that the England captain was left-handed and called David meant I had a readymade hero. And what a solid broadcaster he's become ...
Anyway, this is about the prevalence of the name - don't worry too much about it
DAVIDS
This blessed name gave a fine pair of heroes
protecting me in and out the school gate.
In white, on left, England's captain drove me
on and picked me up or sent Willis instead ...
In black dress, with wit and gentle teachings,
Father, friend and noble headmaster, you
told us to be wary of the strange men
in dark cars with no place at the Abbey.
Forty thousand pounds, I hear, was enough
to buy a few years' silence from some frightened
Catholic boy's own greedy shameful family,
Father David, failing to buck bitter
cliches, lazy jokes about everything about you -
you just had to go and make them come true.
Saturday, 8 August 2009
49. 10 +1 Songs about People
Up With People - Lambchop
People Ain't No Good - Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
People - Barbra Streisand
All You Good Good People - Embrace
People Help the People - Cherry Ghost
Common People - Pulp
Parklife - Blur
Pull Up the People - M.I.A
Everyday People - Sly and the Family Stone
People Get Ready - Curtis Mayfield
People Power (in the Disco Hour) - Cornershop
"It ain't that in their hearts they're bad, they can comfort you, some even try, they'll nurse you when you're ill of health, they'll bury you when you go and die. It ain't that in their hearts they're bad, they'd stick by you if they could. Aah, but that's just bullshit, baby, people just ain't no good."
What else is there to say, really? It's one of the great lyrics. I remember the genuine sense of shock the first time I heard that resigned "aah" and then "baby" and i pretty much decided this was the song for me forever and so it's stayed.
People are ok, really, I have a higher opinion of them than Morrissey does, I really love the stuff they do and have done, and, try as I might to see them as equivalent to other animals, i guess i don't. That would be like thinking other people are as important as me ... ha, an absurd notion.
Most of the songs above have lots of love for people and lots of belief in what they're capable of, and I think the way the preservation instinct extends beyond just trying to preserve yourself, but your family, your country, your species - that's excellent and rather beyond me and other cynics.
I wouldn't normally write something about "people" - it's slightly daft, but that's the game, innit, so got in the zone and gave it a shot. I attempted to write something in a suitable spirit of naivety, i tried to channel the 60s protest and folk singers who didn't have the grit and gravel of Bob Dylan, i think I've ended up with something very gentle, childlike, what I was hoping for (in feel though not execution), really ...
I wanted to study the stars in the sky -
the lines between the angels and heavens,
to feel fresh dimensions and godly dominions
but all I could see were people.
They told me of spirits, satyrs and centaurs,
of winds and fires and mighty floods.
They told me of worlds and worlds within worlds
but all I knew was people.
Some started looking beyond good and evil
and some started tracing unending spirals
and some started digging the deepest wells
but all that I've found are people.
Some wanted to be like a god on a cross
free from all sins and new to the world
blessed to bear all burdens with glory
but all they could be were people.
Some looked for their gods in nearer fields,
begged to portray them in pomp and grandeur
but when my eyes behold these icons of heroes
all I can make out are people.
I want to escape from these idle towns
shut my sore eyes and disappear,
but empty as my head may become,
still it flows over with people.
Some consider the lilies of the field
and some concentrate on the ice of the north
some are conserving the fish in the sea
but all they're concerned with are people.
It's been said many times that we all die alone,
it's been said many times that we're food for the worms,
but I've never believed it for one fleeting second
I've always thought better of people.
Right on, brother
People Ain't No Good - Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
People - Barbra Streisand
All You Good Good People - Embrace
People Help the People - Cherry Ghost
Common People - Pulp
Parklife - Blur
Pull Up the People - M.I.A
Everyday People - Sly and the Family Stone
People Get Ready - Curtis Mayfield
People Power (in the Disco Hour) - Cornershop
"It ain't that in their hearts they're bad, they can comfort you, some even try, they'll nurse you when you're ill of health, they'll bury you when you go and die. It ain't that in their hearts they're bad, they'd stick by you if they could. Aah, but that's just bullshit, baby, people just ain't no good."
What else is there to say, really? It's one of the great lyrics. I remember the genuine sense of shock the first time I heard that resigned "aah" and then "baby" and i pretty much decided this was the song for me forever and so it's stayed.
People are ok, really, I have a higher opinion of them than Morrissey does, I really love the stuff they do and have done, and, try as I might to see them as equivalent to other animals, i guess i don't. That would be like thinking other people are as important as me ... ha, an absurd notion.
Most of the songs above have lots of love for people and lots of belief in what they're capable of, and I think the way the preservation instinct extends beyond just trying to preserve yourself, but your family, your country, your species - that's excellent and rather beyond me and other cynics.
I wouldn't normally write something about "people" - it's slightly daft, but that's the game, innit, so got in the zone and gave it a shot. I attempted to write something in a suitable spirit of naivety, i tried to channel the 60s protest and folk singers who didn't have the grit and gravel of Bob Dylan, i think I've ended up with something very gentle, childlike, what I was hoping for (in feel though not execution), really ...
I wanted to study the stars in the sky -
the lines between the angels and heavens,
to feel fresh dimensions and godly dominions
but all I could see were people.
They told me of spirits, satyrs and centaurs,
of winds and fires and mighty floods.
They told me of worlds and worlds within worlds
but all I knew was people.
Some started looking beyond good and evil
and some started tracing unending spirals
and some started digging the deepest wells
but all that I've found are people.
Some wanted to be like a god on a cross
free from all sins and new to the world
blessed to bear all burdens with glory
but all they could be were people.
Some looked for their gods in nearer fields,
begged to portray them in pomp and grandeur
but when my eyes behold these icons of heroes
all I can make out are people.
I want to escape from these idle towns
shut my sore eyes and disappear,
but empty as my head may become,
still it flows over with people.
Some consider the lilies of the field
and some concentrate on the ice of the north
some are conserving the fish in the sea
but all they're concerned with are people.
It's been said many times that we all die alone,
it's been said many times that we're food for the worms,
but I've never believed it for one fleeting second
I've always thought better of people.
Right on, brother
Tuesday, 4 August 2009
48. 10 Ghost Songs
Is There A Ghost - Band of Horses
The Ghosts Parade - Ed Harcourt
Easter Parade - Emmy the Great
Ghosts - Laura Marling
Walking With a Ghost - Tegan and Sara
Lithuania - Dan Bern
Theologians - Wilco
Ghosts - The Jam
Haunted - Shane McGowan and Sinead O'Connor
Ghostbusters - Ray Parker Jr
This is a slightly odd one, as while Ghosts have produced lots of fine songs, I can't say they mean anything to me.
The Band of Horses song is one of those great spare rock songs where dynamics are all, and you're amazed to see in retrospect how little there is to the song, as there seems to be a lot more, (like a lot of Micah P Hinson songs). The only words the song has are "I could sleep when I lived alone. Is there a ghost in my house?" but they somehow manage to build an epic out of that.
Of course, generally, when songs refer to 'ghosts' they don't mean scary ghouls etc (Ghostbusters an honourable exception) they mean, like, you know, figuratively, and people often refer to their ghosts as being things like their regrets, guilts, past relationships, ancestors etc or someone can be a ghost if they're not the person they were. So, when I say ghosts don't really mean anything to me, I mean in both senses really. I don't believe in ghosts and I don't really have a large collection of ghosts in my head or on my back or wherever they go. I can't say I'm the most haunted of people, a good thing in a way, though equally one can't help wondering if the quantity and quality of the ghosts one acquires give the measure of how fiercely one has lived.
Many people refer to the Holy Ghost as being part of the trinity, but when we were growing up we called it the Holy Spirit, and there is a subtle distinction which meant there was a time I could embrace spirit but dismiss ghost*. Spirit is used as an almost tangible quality, esprit de corps, the human spirit, something always real, always alive, whereas ghost doesn't have that meaning, its meaning is entirely supernatural. Ghosts always seemed silly to me, quite frankly. Maybe that is the job Ghostbusters did on my generation.
*though now my attitude to both concepts is pretty much equal.
When we used to tell ghost stories as kids, mine never really were ghost stories, I was much happier in the realm of the escaped psychopath, and i used to insist that my story really had happened and i wouldn't tell anything that contravened my boundaries of physics. That's just the way some people are.
Consequently, while I very much enjoy the above work with ghosts, I struggle to come up with anything meaningful of my own.
There are a couple of extraordinary songs in the list, which I've never been able to decide if they're the greatest ever or too much. The Dan Bern song is an 11-minute speaky-singy song about Americanness and Jewishness and ancestry and the holocaust and cars and lots of things which emerges in the middle with one of the prettiest refrains I've ever heard - I've always found it very powerful, but if someone told me it was indulgent cack, i wouldn't be surprised.
Likewise, the McGowan/O'Connor song is the definition of a jolie-laid song, their two weird voices going up against each other, telling the ugly story of Sid and Nancy in a rather striking way. Again, it could well be awful, but I've always had a very soft spot for it.
Unable to come up with anything so meaningful, I struggled in my bunker and finally came up with this new form which best exemplified my light attitude to the subject form. So here it is, it's pretty mindblowing - the first two lines rhyme, the third and fourth line rhyme, then the fifth rhymes with the first two. Revolutionary, I know, but it may just catch on. I don't know what I'll call it, the Galway perhaps, the Waterford, hmm ...
I once knew a poor ghost called Fred
who'd no benefits from being undead.
He'd died young and whole,
so scared no living soul -
and a ghost can't cut off his own head.
There was once a bad murderin' hombre
who packed up the corpse in his Kombi.
Though the stench became strong
he left it too long
and his own life was stripped by the zombie.
Awful, i know, but, hey, this is a new form to me, i did my best.
The Ghosts Parade - Ed Harcourt
Easter Parade - Emmy the Great
Ghosts - Laura Marling
Walking With a Ghost - Tegan and Sara
Lithuania - Dan Bern
Theologians - Wilco
Ghosts - The Jam
Haunted - Shane McGowan and Sinead O'Connor
Ghostbusters - Ray Parker Jr
This is a slightly odd one, as while Ghosts have produced lots of fine songs, I can't say they mean anything to me.
The Band of Horses song is one of those great spare rock songs where dynamics are all, and you're amazed to see in retrospect how little there is to the song, as there seems to be a lot more, (like a lot of Micah P Hinson songs). The only words the song has are "I could sleep when I lived alone. Is there a ghost in my house?" but they somehow manage to build an epic out of that.
Of course, generally, when songs refer to 'ghosts' they don't mean scary ghouls etc (Ghostbusters an honourable exception) they mean, like, you know, figuratively, and people often refer to their ghosts as being things like their regrets, guilts, past relationships, ancestors etc or someone can be a ghost if they're not the person they were. So, when I say ghosts don't really mean anything to me, I mean in both senses really. I don't believe in ghosts and I don't really have a large collection of ghosts in my head or on my back or wherever they go. I can't say I'm the most haunted of people, a good thing in a way, though equally one can't help wondering if the quantity and quality of the ghosts one acquires give the measure of how fiercely one has lived.
Many people refer to the Holy Ghost as being part of the trinity, but when we were growing up we called it the Holy Spirit, and there is a subtle distinction which meant there was a time I could embrace spirit but dismiss ghost*. Spirit is used as an almost tangible quality, esprit de corps, the human spirit, something always real, always alive, whereas ghost doesn't have that meaning, its meaning is entirely supernatural. Ghosts always seemed silly to me, quite frankly. Maybe that is the job Ghostbusters did on my generation.
*though now my attitude to both concepts is pretty much equal.
When we used to tell ghost stories as kids, mine never really were ghost stories, I was much happier in the realm of the escaped psychopath, and i used to insist that my story really had happened and i wouldn't tell anything that contravened my boundaries of physics. That's just the way some people are.
Consequently, while I very much enjoy the above work with ghosts, I struggle to come up with anything meaningful of my own.
There are a couple of extraordinary songs in the list, which I've never been able to decide if they're the greatest ever or too much. The Dan Bern song is an 11-minute speaky-singy song about Americanness and Jewishness and ancestry and the holocaust and cars and lots of things which emerges in the middle with one of the prettiest refrains I've ever heard - I've always found it very powerful, but if someone told me it was indulgent cack, i wouldn't be surprised.
Likewise, the McGowan/O'Connor song is the definition of a jolie-laid song, their two weird voices going up against each other, telling the ugly story of Sid and Nancy in a rather striking way. Again, it could well be awful, but I've always had a very soft spot for it.
Unable to come up with anything so meaningful, I struggled in my bunker and finally came up with this new form which best exemplified my light attitude to the subject form. So here it is, it's pretty mindblowing - the first two lines rhyme, the third and fourth line rhyme, then the fifth rhymes with the first two. Revolutionary, I know, but it may just catch on. I don't know what I'll call it, the Galway perhaps, the Waterford, hmm ...
I once knew a poor ghost called Fred
who'd no benefits from being undead.
He'd died young and whole,
so scared no living soul -
and a ghost can't cut off his own head.
There was once a bad murderin' hombre
who packed up the corpse in his Kombi.
Though the stench became strong
he left it too long
and his own life was stripped by the zombie.
Awful, i know, but, hey, this is a new form to me, i did my best.
Monday, 27 July 2009
47. 10 Rock'n'Roll Songs
Rock & Roll -Led Zeppelin
Rock and Roll - Mos Def
Rock'n'Roll - The Velvet Underground
Rock and Roll Heart - Lou Reed
It's Still Rock'n'Roll to me - Billy Joel
More Rock'n'Roll - Ruarri Joseph
Rock'n'Roll - Ryan Adams
The King of Rock'n'Roll - Prefab Street
We Built This City on Rock'n'Roll - Starship
Rock'n'Roll Suicide - David Bowie
The joke being, of course, that none of these songs are rock'n'roll ... or are they? Or, as Stephen Fry used to say ... are they?
Before an Oasis fan complains again, the only reason Rock'n'Roll Star isn't on the list is because it is a a bit too close to actual rock'n'roll. Or is it? Or IS IT?
For what is Rock'n'Roll? Well, for one thing, it was the most overused phrase in my vocabulary for some years. I'm not sure that there was anything that wasn't rock'n'roll. How was your day? Rock'n'roll. I just bought some apples? Rock'n'roll. My uncle just got hit by a bus. Rock'n'Roll.
I think the above songs encompass fairly well the various meanings of rock'n'roll for various people down the years. There's some great songs and some terrible ones in there. Indeed 'We Built This City ...' has been officially voted the worst song of all time, and it's hard to argue. Nothing could be further from true rock'n'roll than this abomination.
My favourite song on the list is probably the Ryan Adams one, a deathly quiet 2 minute ditty on his overly loud but also overly slagged 'Rock'n'Roll' album. "Everybody's cool, playing rock'n'roll, I don't feel cool, feel cool at all" is its refrain.
[By the way, that U2 Blackberry ad is on the TV as I write and my blood is boiling. I don't mind the fact they're advertising BlackBerry, i mind every single other thing about this most awful of bands. If they are rock'n'roll, then rock'n'roll is truly dead. Nice chaps, apparently]
The Mos Def song is brilliant, daring, but questionable. "Elvis Presley ain't got no soul, Little Richard is rock'n'roll, you might dig on the Rolling Stones but they ain't come up with that shit on their own" and various other such juxtapositions, including the deeply unfair to white people "Kenny G ain't got no soul, John Coltrane is rock'n'roll". Well, no one's disputing that, but that's hardly a conclusive argument of anything.
To be honest, the whole "white people stole and commercialised black music to make diluted modern rock'n'roll" argument is an over-simplification. The rock'n'roll music people love, the real starting point of the greatness that stopped it being a fad i.e. The Beatles, The Stones, Bob Dylan owes just as much to country, folk, music hall, tin pan alley etc as the blues.
But what is Rock'n'Roll really, now. To go back to Oasis, they would wholeheartedly describe themselves as a rock'n'roll band, but as Keith Richards said of them "Where's the Roll?"
Is Rock'n'Roll the attitude, the sound, the look, is it the whole thing? Can it be all things to all people. If it's a state of mind, a way of being, I have to admit that the almost 31 me would mainly consider people who act in a "rock'n'roll" way to be, well, boorish, rude, selfish, not my kind of people at all .... must I now accept that I'm the least rock'n'roll person I know? Hell, no. I still wear flairs and drink caffeinated tea.
So maybe rock'n'roll is just a narrow definition of a certain kind of music (any old way you choose it, it's got a back beat, you can't lose it) made by splendid but limited people like Buddy Holly, Little Richard and Chuck Berry and occasionally revived so that music journalists can applaud a song's rock'n'roll feel - but maybe it is the whole thing, the whole thing that has dominated the Western World for 50 years, though most of it's got no roll, a lot of it doesn't rock, from Elvis Presley through The Beatles and James Brown and Martha Reeves and The Byrds and Nick Drake and Carole King and The Clash and the Human League and The Pixies and Public Enemy and Blur and Wilco and Girls Aloud and La Roux. Everything is Rock'n'Roll. Except U2.
ROCK'N'ROLL, SECOND DRAFT
After all the slamming winters
which almost brought you to your knees
you'd made yourself safer than Harlech
overlooking the storm-tossed seas.
Bless those wild lives left behind,
battered by the mocking gales -
easy to gaze from the tallest tower
on all those pretty, fragile sails.
An entreaty, on a call from nowhere -
"Help me sing, sing of the unsung"
- daring and trite enough to lead you
to bite down on your thawing tongue.
The Classics, not the Romantics, sway you
to dip pen into tales of old -
"So, dear friends, here's my next trick ...
to rewrite the history of rock'n'roll."
When Echo finally had stopped calling
and self-portraits'd been calmly defaced,
still, some voice begged of your vanity
not to let it all go to waste.
The memories of grandest failure
now had enough sweet bathos to swallow,
for rock'n'roll to be reimagined
as less Dionysus and more Apollo.
I had intended something bigger, slower, complicateder, but couldn't tie it all together - not sure i've tied this together either - and it was kind of tortuous. This is a second draft, but that's not in the title, so you could call it Rock'n'Roll, Second Draft, Second Draft, if, like me, you're a twat.
Anyway, i guess themes are obvious in a way - there's a book by Ruth Padel, her who was recently embroiled in an Oxford Professor of Poetry rock'n'roll academic scandal, called I'm a Man ,which looks at what Rock'n'Roll owes to Greek mythology. No wait, it really works! If I'd discovered it before I finished my degree, i might have been able to justify what i was studying to myself. Classics are the new Rock'n'Roll.
Rock and Roll - Mos Def
Rock'n'Roll - The Velvet Underground
Rock and Roll Heart - Lou Reed
It's Still Rock'n'Roll to me - Billy Joel
More Rock'n'Roll - Ruarri Joseph
Rock'n'Roll - Ryan Adams
The King of Rock'n'Roll - Prefab Street
We Built This City on Rock'n'Roll - Starship
Rock'n'Roll Suicide - David Bowie
The joke being, of course, that none of these songs are rock'n'roll ... or are they? Or, as Stephen Fry used to say ... are they?
Before an Oasis fan complains again, the only reason Rock'n'Roll Star isn't on the list is because it is a a bit too close to actual rock'n'roll. Or is it? Or IS IT?
For what is Rock'n'Roll? Well, for one thing, it was the most overused phrase in my vocabulary for some years. I'm not sure that there was anything that wasn't rock'n'roll. How was your day? Rock'n'roll. I just bought some apples? Rock'n'roll. My uncle just got hit by a bus. Rock'n'Roll.
I think the above songs encompass fairly well the various meanings of rock'n'roll for various people down the years. There's some great songs and some terrible ones in there. Indeed 'We Built This City ...' has been officially voted the worst song of all time, and it's hard to argue. Nothing could be further from true rock'n'roll than this abomination.
My favourite song on the list is probably the Ryan Adams one, a deathly quiet 2 minute ditty on his overly loud but also overly slagged 'Rock'n'Roll' album. "Everybody's cool, playing rock'n'roll, I don't feel cool, feel cool at all" is its refrain.
[By the way, that U2 Blackberry ad is on the TV as I write and my blood is boiling. I don't mind the fact they're advertising BlackBerry, i mind every single other thing about this most awful of bands. If they are rock'n'roll, then rock'n'roll is truly dead. Nice chaps, apparently]
The Mos Def song is brilliant, daring, but questionable. "Elvis Presley ain't got no soul, Little Richard is rock'n'roll, you might dig on the Rolling Stones but they ain't come up with that shit on their own" and various other such juxtapositions, including the deeply unfair to white people "Kenny G ain't got no soul, John Coltrane is rock'n'roll". Well, no one's disputing that, but that's hardly a conclusive argument of anything.
To be honest, the whole "white people stole and commercialised black music to make diluted modern rock'n'roll" argument is an over-simplification. The rock'n'roll music people love, the real starting point of the greatness that stopped it being a fad i.e. The Beatles, The Stones, Bob Dylan owes just as much to country, folk, music hall, tin pan alley etc as the blues.
But what is Rock'n'Roll really, now. To go back to Oasis, they would wholeheartedly describe themselves as a rock'n'roll band, but as Keith Richards said of them "Where's the Roll?"
Is Rock'n'Roll the attitude, the sound, the look, is it the whole thing? Can it be all things to all people. If it's a state of mind, a way of being, I have to admit that the almost 31 me would mainly consider people who act in a "rock'n'roll" way to be, well, boorish, rude, selfish, not my kind of people at all .... must I now accept that I'm the least rock'n'roll person I know? Hell, no. I still wear flairs and drink caffeinated tea.
So maybe rock'n'roll is just a narrow definition of a certain kind of music (any old way you choose it, it's got a back beat, you can't lose it) made by splendid but limited people like Buddy Holly, Little Richard and Chuck Berry and occasionally revived so that music journalists can applaud a song's rock'n'roll feel - but maybe it is the whole thing, the whole thing that has dominated the Western World for 50 years, though most of it's got no roll, a lot of it doesn't rock, from Elvis Presley through The Beatles and James Brown and Martha Reeves and The Byrds and Nick Drake and Carole King and The Clash and the Human League and The Pixies and Public Enemy and Blur and Wilco and Girls Aloud and La Roux. Everything is Rock'n'Roll. Except U2.
ROCK'N'ROLL, SECOND DRAFT
After all the slamming winters
which almost brought you to your knees
you'd made yourself safer than Harlech
overlooking the storm-tossed seas.
Bless those wild lives left behind,
battered by the mocking gales -
easy to gaze from the tallest tower
on all those pretty, fragile sails.
An entreaty, on a call from nowhere -
"Help me sing, sing of the unsung"
- daring and trite enough to lead you
to bite down on your thawing tongue.
The Classics, not the Romantics, sway you
to dip pen into tales of old -
"So, dear friends, here's my next trick ...
to rewrite the history of rock'n'roll."
When Echo finally had stopped calling
and self-portraits'd been calmly defaced,
still, some voice begged of your vanity
not to let it all go to waste.
The memories of grandest failure
now had enough sweet bathos to swallow,
for rock'n'roll to be reimagined
as less Dionysus and more Apollo.
I had intended something bigger, slower, complicateder, but couldn't tie it all together - not sure i've tied this together either - and it was kind of tortuous. This is a second draft, but that's not in the title, so you could call it Rock'n'Roll, Second Draft, Second Draft, if, like me, you're a twat.
Anyway, i guess themes are obvious in a way - there's a book by Ruth Padel, her who was recently embroiled in an Oxford Professor of Poetry rock'n'roll academic scandal, called I'm a Man ,which looks at what Rock'n'Roll owes to Greek mythology. No wait, it really works! If I'd discovered it before I finished my degree, i might have been able to justify what i was studying to myself. Classics are the new Rock'n'Roll.
Tuesday, 21 July 2009
46. 10 Songs of Embarrassment, Shame, Regret and Remorse
Embarrassment - Madness
Je Ne Regrette Rien - Edith Piaf
Not One Bit Ashamed - King Creosote
Losing My Religion - REM
Chagrin - Geraint Watkins
So Sorry - Feist
Tortoise Regrets Hare - James Yorkston
Jealous Guy - John Lennon
No Regrets - The Walker Brothers
Shouldn't be Ashamed - Wilco
This is rather in response to Alex Frith wondering if I could put together a tape about Embarrassment - the answer is no, but this is the best I could do, and it comes together fairly nicely.
It's remarkable how few songs there are about embarrassment, considering I am surely not alone in finding its avoidance the single most important driving force behind my words and deeds.
I've got a rather red face - hey, it's no secret, it's no crime - but it's remarkable how often it chooses to get even redder. It was once said to me that in summer you couldn't ever quite tell why it was always so red - it could be sunburn, drunkenness or embarrassment. It was a fair combination of all three most likely.
There's a condition called Idiopathic craniofacial erythema, which is basically extreme blushing, and I do sometimes wonder about it, so often do i change colour if i so much as speak to someone in a shop, or think about something odd on the tube. I don't necessarily see it as tied up with actual social unease, it's more like embarrassment for embarrassment's sake, but it's such an unpleasant, mortifying sensation that practically everything I do considers the possibility of its occurrence. Though I'm pretty practised at avoiding it now, to those who don't get embarrassed easily, I say Fuck you, you fucks, and leave it at that.
Equally, I can't say I live a life of great regret, I'm pretty at ease with the choices I've made and the forces beyond my control - you can either regret everything or regret nothing, in a way, so in that sense I think I'm rather lucky. To be tortured by regret, to believe that one missed huge chances that could definitely have made life better, that's not a good state.
The four states above are an odd mixture of the controllable and the uncontrollable, that relating only to yourself and that which relates to those around you - shame, remorse, regret are driving forces behind many of the world's great tragedies, basic embarrassment less so - in fact, it's the force behind many great modern comedies, so perhaps I'm lucky that's it embarrassment that's a constant red dog on my shoulder and not one of the other darker forms.
[NB I note, a couple of years after writing this post, that it's the one that people most often enter this blog with. If this is is your first look here, feel free to look at other stuff in the blog, general musings at popular music, and often more entertaining and self-involved! Thanks]
Well, I don't know if this contradicts what I've said above, it's just some words
My Oxygen
This could be worse than I thought;
the dams that have burst won't be easy to mend.
We could be treading on eggshells
until we relax and relearn to pretend.
See us now, skirting the truth and
stumbling reluctantly into maturity.
See me now, caught in a compromise
still banging on about ethics and purity.
This could be half of a blessing -
the end of an era we'd rather forget.
We could say we've all learnt our lessons and
we've all done some things that we'd like to regret.
But I know remorse is as pointless as
throwing your hopes behind progress and science
and I know the mistakes that I've made
mean a million times less than the casual triumphs.
Funnily enough, this has been sitting around for ages and the word in the last line has been 'more' not 'less', but i changed it and I guess changed the whole point. I'm not sure which one's right
Je Ne Regrette Rien - Edith Piaf
Not One Bit Ashamed - King Creosote
Losing My Religion - REM
Chagrin - Geraint Watkins
So Sorry - Feist
Tortoise Regrets Hare - James Yorkston
Jealous Guy - John Lennon
No Regrets - The Walker Brothers
Shouldn't be Ashamed - Wilco
This is rather in response to Alex Frith wondering if I could put together a tape about Embarrassment - the answer is no, but this is the best I could do, and it comes together fairly nicely.
It's remarkable how few songs there are about embarrassment, considering I am surely not alone in finding its avoidance the single most important driving force behind my words and deeds.
I've got a rather red face - hey, it's no secret, it's no crime - but it's remarkable how often it chooses to get even redder. It was once said to me that in summer you couldn't ever quite tell why it was always so red - it could be sunburn, drunkenness or embarrassment. It was a fair combination of all three most likely.
There's a condition called Idiopathic craniofacial erythema, which is basically extreme blushing, and I do sometimes wonder about it, so often do i change colour if i so much as speak to someone in a shop, or think about something odd on the tube. I don't necessarily see it as tied up with actual social unease, it's more like embarrassment for embarrassment's sake, but it's such an unpleasant, mortifying sensation that practically everything I do considers the possibility of its occurrence. Though I'm pretty practised at avoiding it now, to those who don't get embarrassed easily, I say Fuck you, you fucks, and leave it at that.
Equally, I can't say I live a life of great regret, I'm pretty at ease with the choices I've made and the forces beyond my control - you can either regret everything or regret nothing, in a way, so in that sense I think I'm rather lucky. To be tortured by regret, to believe that one missed huge chances that could definitely have made life better, that's not a good state.
The four states above are an odd mixture of the controllable and the uncontrollable, that relating only to yourself and that which relates to those around you - shame, remorse, regret are driving forces behind many of the world's great tragedies, basic embarrassment less so - in fact, it's the force behind many great modern comedies, so perhaps I'm lucky that's it embarrassment that's a constant red dog on my shoulder and not one of the other darker forms.
[NB I note, a couple of years after writing this post, that it's the one that people most often enter this blog with. If this is is your first look here, feel free to look at other stuff in the blog, general musings at popular music, and often more entertaining and self-involved! Thanks]
Well, I don't know if this contradicts what I've said above, it's just some words
My Oxygen
This could be worse than I thought;
the dams that have burst won't be easy to mend.
We could be treading on eggshells
until we relax and relearn to pretend.
See us now, skirting the truth and
stumbling reluctantly into maturity.
See me now, caught in a compromise
still banging on about ethics and purity.
This could be half of a blessing -
the end of an era we'd rather forget.
We could say we've all learnt our lessons and
we've all done some things that we'd like to regret.
But I know remorse is as pointless as
throwing your hopes behind progress and science
and I know the mistakes that I've made
mean a million times less than the casual triumphs.
Funnily enough, this has been sitting around for ages and the word in the last line has been 'more' not 'less', but i changed it and I guess changed the whole point. I'm not sure which one's right
Thursday, 16 July 2009
45. 10 Songs about Boxing
Mama Said Knock You Out - LL Cool J
The Boxer - Simon and Garfunkel
Sonny Could Lick All Them Cats - Chuck E Weiss
Who Killed Davey Moore or Hurricane - Bob Dylan
Rumble in the Jungle - The Fugees
Ali in the Jungle - The Hours
Y'all must have Forgot - Roy Jones Jr
Walk Like a Champion - Kaliphz ft Prince Naseem
Da Mystery of Chessboxin' - Wu-Tang Clan
So You Wanna be a Boxer - Bugsy Malone soundtrack
Didn't even have to include Eye of the Tiger, which seems a shame really. Or the original theme from Rocky, which I do actually love.
First, a bone to pick - the song Ali in the Jungle by The Hours is a decent epic indie stormer, but it's lyrics are silly posturing bollocks. It goes
Everybody gets knocked down
How quick are you going to get up?
Like Ali in the Jungle ...
well, that's defeating the point of the song for starters, for as any fule know, Muhammad Ali was at no point sent to the canvas in his 1974 fight with George Foreman. Furthermore, while, admittedly it was a comeback of sorts and he was probably behind on points at the time of his superb stoppage of Foreman, the mythologised version of the fight that he was battered for 8 rounds, employing the rope-a-dope before suddenly turning it around out of nowhere, doesn't tell the whole story. If you watch the whole thing through, not only do you see that the first few rounds are pretty even and that even after that that Ali was regularly breaking his shackles and worrying Foreman, you also see that the ringside commentators had cottoned on to Ali's plan and it was no big shock to them when it came off. Sport and Myth - it's a bugbear of mine. Sport is Sport -it's real, it doesn't need phony storytellers getting hold of it.
Another egregious example in the above song is the continuation of the chorus
Like Ali in the Jungle
Like Nelson in jail
Like Simpson on the mountain
Hold on a second! You're equating, as a triumph against adversity, a man who came out of jail to lead his country and have a long, prosperous old age to Tommy Simpson, a British cyclist who, on said mountain, died with his body pumped with drugs. Where's the triumph? Where's the vindication? Just bad facts, bad songwriting.
Not a bad song apart from that though.
Another load of bullshit? Hurricane. The film. Made-up, manipulative shite, as, quite possibly, is the whole story. It's a brilliantly written Dylan song, of course, which does more in 8 minutes than the film did in 2 hours, but it plays pretty fast and loose with the truth itself, to the extent he was almost sued by several parties. A cursory investigation of the real story makes the whole thing seem pretty unpalatable.
Anyone still reading after that rant?
I love boxing, unhealthily, I watch it as much as I can, on TV, on youtube, the new, the old, British, American, I've seen plenty of boring fights and a few stunners. It's clearly a grim business with a farcical Championship system, a flawed judging system, lots of hanger-ons and nefarious types, but in the ring, it really does have a purity and fairness rarely matched in other sports
I thought I'd best get this in before Amir Khan's WBA title fight on Saturday. Although Khan is a crossover star, he appears to be highly disliked among British "real fight fans" , which i think is jealous nasty bullshit, but there's a lot of folk gagging for him to be taken dowm a peg or two. I think he's an exciting, potentially brilliant fighter, so i really hope Saturday comes good for him. I've watched nearly all his fights, but the one that really got me back into boxing was Joe Calzaghe, a man who seemed in control practically every second he fought, who could take it easy against bad opponents but then really showed his heart and brain against top quality opponents. Also, I love Calzaghe cos he was impressively unripped - though probably the best athlete in boxing, his biceps, pecs etc were pretty standard, pretty unbulging, yet he would batter these sculpted adonises. His success was built on speed, stamina, brain and bravery.
Ali is the go-to icon for casual fans of boxing, of course, which is fair enough in a way, but other greats whose often sad stories have interested me more are Jack Johnson, Joe Louis, Sonny Liston, Tommy Hearns, Gerald McClellan, Jake La Motta (his autobiography, the base for the movie, is a stunning piece of work) James Toney, Sugar Ray Leonard, Eubank, Cotto, Roy Jones himself, who is dazzling, dazzling on youtube.
Along with songs, here's a list of fine boxing books
War, Baby - Kevin Mitchell
Dark Trade - Donald McRae
Night Train - Nick Tosches
King of the World - David Remnick
In Black and White - Donald McRae
Raging Bull - Jake LaMotta
Unforgivable Blackness -Geoffrey C Ward
I'm sure there are plenty more. Thing is, I haven't read as much about boxing as cricket, not yet.
Here's a couple of things, not very good, I'm afraid; one tries to just capture the visceral thrill of watching boxing, one is about the sad trajectory of a usual boxing career. It tends to go up, then down, and usually that's it. It's rarely given the chance to go up then down then up again. Brutal game.
UGLY BUSINESSES
Here is my heart - it beats for you
like a fucking train, fast as your flashing fists
pummelling and crushing a skull hardened
by an ugly life on the edge,
joining
me to the hating, leering faces
baying for gypsy blood
and old knees to give way.
Here is my corrupt heart
finding its level in the cold certainly
of the KO
I wrote it over the course of one round, as you can probably tell
This one is
24-6-1, FORMER COMMONWEALTH TITLE CHALLENGER
It took half an hour to tape up my hands
and they don't snap back the bag like before
when I was the one they were buzzing about,
telling me Don King had sent his best man.
No one gives a fuck about Don King these days
and my dressing room is half a squash court.
This kid's twelve and one, he lost last but one
and I'm a step back the road to a title.
"i'll be the one to get back on the ladder"
I lie to the one paper which cares to ask.
Nothing special, he'll deal with me tonight
and they'll tell him Oscar's been on the phone.
The Boxer - Simon and Garfunkel
Sonny Could Lick All Them Cats - Chuck E Weiss
Who Killed Davey Moore or Hurricane - Bob Dylan
Rumble in the Jungle - The Fugees
Ali in the Jungle - The Hours
Y'all must have Forgot - Roy Jones Jr
Walk Like a Champion - Kaliphz ft Prince Naseem
Da Mystery of Chessboxin' - Wu-Tang Clan
So You Wanna be a Boxer - Bugsy Malone soundtrack
Didn't even have to include Eye of the Tiger, which seems a shame really. Or the original theme from Rocky, which I do actually love.
First, a bone to pick - the song Ali in the Jungle by The Hours is a decent epic indie stormer, but it's lyrics are silly posturing bollocks. It goes
Everybody gets knocked down
How quick are you going to get up?
Like Ali in the Jungle ...
well, that's defeating the point of the song for starters, for as any fule know, Muhammad Ali was at no point sent to the canvas in his 1974 fight with George Foreman. Furthermore, while, admittedly it was a comeback of sorts and he was probably behind on points at the time of his superb stoppage of Foreman, the mythologised version of the fight that he was battered for 8 rounds, employing the rope-a-dope before suddenly turning it around out of nowhere, doesn't tell the whole story. If you watch the whole thing through, not only do you see that the first few rounds are pretty even and that even after that that Ali was regularly breaking his shackles and worrying Foreman, you also see that the ringside commentators had cottoned on to Ali's plan and it was no big shock to them when it came off. Sport and Myth - it's a bugbear of mine. Sport is Sport -it's real, it doesn't need phony storytellers getting hold of it.
Another egregious example in the above song is the continuation of the chorus
Like Ali in the Jungle
Like Nelson in jail
Like Simpson on the mountain
Hold on a second! You're equating, as a triumph against adversity, a man who came out of jail to lead his country and have a long, prosperous old age to Tommy Simpson, a British cyclist who, on said mountain, died with his body pumped with drugs. Where's the triumph? Where's the vindication? Just bad facts, bad songwriting.
Not a bad song apart from that though.
Another load of bullshit? Hurricane. The film. Made-up, manipulative shite, as, quite possibly, is the whole story. It's a brilliantly written Dylan song, of course, which does more in 8 minutes than the film did in 2 hours, but it plays pretty fast and loose with the truth itself, to the extent he was almost sued by several parties. A cursory investigation of the real story makes the whole thing seem pretty unpalatable.
Anyone still reading after that rant?
I love boxing, unhealthily, I watch it as much as I can, on TV, on youtube, the new, the old, British, American, I've seen plenty of boring fights and a few stunners. It's clearly a grim business with a farcical Championship system, a flawed judging system, lots of hanger-ons and nefarious types, but in the ring, it really does have a purity and fairness rarely matched in other sports
I thought I'd best get this in before Amir Khan's WBA title fight on Saturday. Although Khan is a crossover star, he appears to be highly disliked among British "real fight fans" , which i think is jealous nasty bullshit, but there's a lot of folk gagging for him to be taken dowm a peg or two. I think he's an exciting, potentially brilliant fighter, so i really hope Saturday comes good for him. I've watched nearly all his fights, but the one that really got me back into boxing was Joe Calzaghe, a man who seemed in control practically every second he fought, who could take it easy against bad opponents but then really showed his heart and brain against top quality opponents. Also, I love Calzaghe cos he was impressively unripped - though probably the best athlete in boxing, his biceps, pecs etc were pretty standard, pretty unbulging, yet he would batter these sculpted adonises. His success was built on speed, stamina, brain and bravery.
Ali is the go-to icon for casual fans of boxing, of course, which is fair enough in a way, but other greats whose often sad stories have interested me more are Jack Johnson, Joe Louis, Sonny Liston, Tommy Hearns, Gerald McClellan, Jake La Motta (his autobiography, the base for the movie, is a stunning piece of work) James Toney, Sugar Ray Leonard, Eubank, Cotto, Roy Jones himself, who is dazzling, dazzling on youtube.
Along with songs, here's a list of fine boxing books
War, Baby - Kevin Mitchell
Dark Trade - Donald McRae
Night Train - Nick Tosches
King of the World - David Remnick
In Black and White - Donald McRae
Raging Bull - Jake LaMotta
Unforgivable Blackness -Geoffrey C Ward
I'm sure there are plenty more. Thing is, I haven't read as much about boxing as cricket, not yet.
Here's a couple of things, not very good, I'm afraid; one tries to just capture the visceral thrill of watching boxing, one is about the sad trajectory of a usual boxing career. It tends to go up, then down, and usually that's it. It's rarely given the chance to go up then down then up again. Brutal game.
UGLY BUSINESSES
Here is my heart - it beats for you
like a fucking train, fast as your flashing fists
pummelling and crushing a skull hardened
by an ugly life on the edge,
joining
me to the hating, leering faces
baying for gypsy blood
and old knees to give way.
Here is my corrupt heart
finding its level in the cold certainly
of the KO
I wrote it over the course of one round, as you can probably tell
This one is
24-6-1, FORMER COMMONWEALTH TITLE CHALLENGER
It took half an hour to tape up my hands
and they don't snap back the bag like before
when I was the one they were buzzing about,
telling me Don King had sent his best man.
No one gives a fuck about Don King these days
and my dressing room is half a squash court.
This kid's twelve and one, he lost last but one
and I'm a step back the road to a title.
"i'll be the one to get back on the ladder"
I lie to the one paper which cares to ask.
Nothing special, he'll deal with me tonight
and they'll tell him Oscar's been on the phone.
Monday, 13 July 2009
44. 10 Wedding Songs
Let's Get Married - The Proclaimers
Marry Me, John - St Vincent
White Wedding - Billy Idol
Cigarettes, Wedding Bands OR Marry Song - Band of Horses
To You - I am Kloot
I Was Married - Tegan and Sara
Ballad of John and Yoko - The Beatles
Be My Wife - David Bowie
Kiss the Bride - Elton John
$1000 Wedding - Gram Parsons
It's wedding season, so I thought I'd better get in the spirit. Of course, I've omitted the greatest wedding song of all, 'Suddenly' by Angry Anderson. If you were there on that fateful day in November 1988, you'll know exactly what I mean.
Anyway, five weddings for me this year, pretty good going. Various corners of the globe, as well. They're primarily exercises in speech timing and middle distance drinking. And can we not just get rid of the handshake parade? Everyone hates it, everyone dreads it. You really do end up saying "you must be very proud" and then you have to wash your mouth out with anti-cliche soap.
I'm still waiting to go to one where anything dramatic (in a bad way) happens - o, now i recall at my sister's my brother-in-law, the groom, spent the night in hospital after twisting his ankle - I guess that's pretty dramatic, but I haven't seen a soap wedding "you can't marry'er - you're still married to me! ..." DUM DUM DUM
Here's hoping.
Of the songs above, I can't recommend the Gram Parsons song highly enough -it's the perfect duet for Parsons and Emmylou Harris, sad and brilliant.
Rather in the spirit of that, of things going wrong and such japes, I wrote this. I had two thoughts on my mind - one was a country song, Hank Williams, George Jones or something, melodramatic and tearjerking (so if you can put the words in a country twang and add in your own slide guitar, that wil help, I'm sure), the other was Glasvegas funnily enough, though that's only really there in the title, for I have called it - quite the best title I've ever come up
WHO, THEN, WILL RESCUE MY BITTER, LONELY HEART?
Trees of green and skies of blue
are well and good - and good for you
The teenage goth has cleaned her face,
the long lost soul has found its place
The stars are out and you may gaze
with wonder now, with fresh delight,
The night is long, you're not afraid,
The night is long, long live the night.
The morning sun sneaks through the blinds,
great thoughts creep slowly on great minds
and who will save my lonely heart?
more lonely now than e'er before
now you're not lonely more
Communion wine it tastes so sweet
and heady in the summer's heat
Your sins and guilt are washed away
with all the words you needn't say.
The cross reflects the morning sun
upon the crowns of lovers kneeling -
for love, it's freed to everyone
who dares give up to hope and healing.
The morning sun shines through stained glass,
a gift of faith for those that ask
and who will save my bitter heart,
more hopeless now than e'er before
now you're not hopeless anymore.
Straight outta Nashville!
Marry Me, John - St Vincent
White Wedding - Billy Idol
Cigarettes, Wedding Bands OR Marry Song - Band of Horses
To You - I am Kloot
I Was Married - Tegan and Sara
Ballad of John and Yoko - The Beatles
Be My Wife - David Bowie
Kiss the Bride - Elton John
$1000 Wedding - Gram Parsons
It's wedding season, so I thought I'd better get in the spirit. Of course, I've omitted the greatest wedding song of all, 'Suddenly' by Angry Anderson. If you were there on that fateful day in November 1988, you'll know exactly what I mean.
Anyway, five weddings for me this year, pretty good going. Various corners of the globe, as well. They're primarily exercises in speech timing and middle distance drinking. And can we not just get rid of the handshake parade? Everyone hates it, everyone dreads it. You really do end up saying "you must be very proud" and then you have to wash your mouth out with anti-cliche soap.
I'm still waiting to go to one where anything dramatic (in a bad way) happens - o, now i recall at my sister's my brother-in-law, the groom, spent the night in hospital after twisting his ankle - I guess that's pretty dramatic, but I haven't seen a soap wedding "you can't marry'er - you're still married to me! ..." DUM DUM DUM
Here's hoping.
Of the songs above, I can't recommend the Gram Parsons song highly enough -it's the perfect duet for Parsons and Emmylou Harris, sad and brilliant.
Rather in the spirit of that, of things going wrong and such japes, I wrote this. I had two thoughts on my mind - one was a country song, Hank Williams, George Jones or something, melodramatic and tearjerking (so if you can put the words in a country twang and add in your own slide guitar, that wil help, I'm sure), the other was Glasvegas funnily enough, though that's only really there in the title, for I have called it - quite the best title I've ever come up
WHO, THEN, WILL RESCUE MY BITTER, LONELY HEART?
Trees of green and skies of blue
are well and good - and good for you
The teenage goth has cleaned her face,
the long lost soul has found its place
The stars are out and you may gaze
with wonder now, with fresh delight,
The night is long, you're not afraid,
The night is long, long live the night.
The morning sun sneaks through the blinds,
great thoughts creep slowly on great minds
and who will save my lonely heart?
more lonely now than e'er before
now you're not lonely more
Communion wine it tastes so sweet
and heady in the summer's heat
Your sins and guilt are washed away
with all the words you needn't say.
The cross reflects the morning sun
upon the crowns of lovers kneeling -
for love, it's freed to everyone
who dares give up to hope and healing.
The morning sun shines through stained glass,
a gift of faith for those that ask
and who will save my bitter heart,
more hopeless now than e'er before
now you're not hopeless anymore.
Straight outta Nashville!
Friday, 10 July 2009
43. 10 Songs about the New England
New England - Billy Bragg
Moonlight in Vermont - Sam Cooke
Roadrunner - Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers
O New England - The Decemberists
Massachusetts - The Bee Gees
Please Come to Boston - Joan Baez
Massachusetts - The Scud Mountain Boys
Albion - Babyshambles
Somerville - The Pernice Brothers
Boston - Piney Gir
Aargh ... clearly, I'm clumsily bringing together two separates notions here, the idealised New England Billy Bragg isn't looking for and the real New England the Democrats always dominate in - did you know both George Bushes were born in New England though. I love the Bragg song and I think Peter Doherty's idea of a mythological "Albion" was the best thing he ever came up with, in particular on the song The Good Old Days, but in fact it's the six states of New England I'm more interested in.
Probably more specifically Massachusetts ... where I've never been, but i know plenty of people who have.
Even more specifically, it's Joe Pernice's Massachusetts. Joe Pernice feels like my privileged piece of information, hardly known at all, but, though, say, Jeff Tweedy of Wilco may create more exciting, rousing, stunning, gut-churning songs, I think there's no more erudite, precise, skilful songwriter than Joe Pernice around.
If you go to the very start of this blog, you'll see that Bryte Side by the Pernice Brothers is one of my two favourite songs of all time, and it is the fifth song on what really is my favourite album, The World Won't End, which captured my heart in the weird, heavy summer of 2001. Like many great songwriters, Pernice captures a milieu, makes you feel like you know it and you're in it - for him it's long hot New England summers. If there's any kind of link to Billy Bragg's New England, it's that Pernice is very much an anglophile, his love for the Smiths, the Clash etc always evident. Indeed, when he was asked to write an appreciation for the Smiths' Meat is Murder for the 33 1/3 series, he produced a beautiful novella ... set of course in a hot new England summer.
I haven't much else to say - these things will be evident in my following words, but all i can suggest is buying The World Won't End and listening to it over and over again
Working Girls (Sunlight Shines)
7.30
Our Time Has Passed
She Heightened Everything
Bryte Side
Let that Show
Shaken Baby
Flaming Wreck
The Ballad of Bjorn Borg
Endless Supply
Cronulla Breakdown
That's a little poem all of its own
Oh, I've thought of something else - Gilmore Girls, the surprisingly excellent TV show set in New England, has an episode where Joe Pernice, Jonathan Richman, Yo la Tengo, Sparks and Sonic Youth all make guest appearances
Anyway, this is an homage
High and sun-blinded
a car crashed on a
Massachusetts
road
that road rewinded
back through that summer's
useless beauty
to
the end of school -
t-shirts with Strummer,
Richman, Cusack
through
the century's highpoint,
a hundred degrees,
fruitless duties
all
carried out, while
trying to come up
with the right music
to
fit with the words
you've been receiving
almost weekly
from
the boy who says
his dreams are all
of a New England
He fell in love
with sounds stolen
from his homeland
You fell in love
and you dreamed of
Salford Lad's Club
And he's come looking
for the bryte side
of New England
The brightest flash
on the drive to
Logan Airport
Moonlight in Vermont - Sam Cooke
Roadrunner - Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers
O New England - The Decemberists
Massachusetts - The Bee Gees
Please Come to Boston - Joan Baez
Massachusetts - The Scud Mountain Boys
Albion - Babyshambles
Somerville - The Pernice Brothers
Boston - Piney Gir
Aargh ... clearly, I'm clumsily bringing together two separates notions here, the idealised New England Billy Bragg isn't looking for and the real New England the Democrats always dominate in - did you know both George Bushes were born in New England though. I love the Bragg song and I think Peter Doherty's idea of a mythological "Albion" was the best thing he ever came up with, in particular on the song The Good Old Days, but in fact it's the six states of New England I'm more interested in.
Probably more specifically Massachusetts ... where I've never been, but i know plenty of people who have.
Even more specifically, it's Joe Pernice's Massachusetts. Joe Pernice feels like my privileged piece of information, hardly known at all, but, though, say, Jeff Tweedy of Wilco may create more exciting, rousing, stunning, gut-churning songs, I think there's no more erudite, precise, skilful songwriter than Joe Pernice around.
If you go to the very start of this blog, you'll see that Bryte Side by the Pernice Brothers is one of my two favourite songs of all time, and it is the fifth song on what really is my favourite album, The World Won't End, which captured my heart in the weird, heavy summer of 2001. Like many great songwriters, Pernice captures a milieu, makes you feel like you know it and you're in it - for him it's long hot New England summers. If there's any kind of link to Billy Bragg's New England, it's that Pernice is very much an anglophile, his love for the Smiths, the Clash etc always evident. Indeed, when he was asked to write an appreciation for the Smiths' Meat is Murder for the 33 1/3 series, he produced a beautiful novella ... set of course in a hot new England summer.
I haven't much else to say - these things will be evident in my following words, but all i can suggest is buying The World Won't End and listening to it over and over again
Working Girls (Sunlight Shines)
7.30
Our Time Has Passed
She Heightened Everything
Bryte Side
Let that Show
Shaken Baby
Flaming Wreck
The Ballad of Bjorn Borg
Endless Supply
Cronulla Breakdown
That's a little poem all of its own
Oh, I've thought of something else - Gilmore Girls, the surprisingly excellent TV show set in New England, has an episode where Joe Pernice, Jonathan Richman, Yo la Tengo, Sparks and Sonic Youth all make guest appearances
Anyway, this is an homage
High and sun-blinded
a car crashed on a
Massachusetts
road
that road rewinded
back through that summer's
useless beauty
to
the end of school -
t-shirts with Strummer,
Richman, Cusack
through
the century's highpoint,
a hundred degrees,
fruitless duties
all
carried out, while
trying to come up
with the right music
to
fit with the words
you've been receiving
almost weekly
from
the boy who says
his dreams are all
of a New England
He fell in love
with sounds stolen
from his homeland
You fell in love
and you dreamed of
Salford Lad's Club
And he's come looking
for the bryte side
of New England
The brightest flash
on the drive to
Logan Airport
Thursday, 9 July 2009
42. 10 Songs which look North
Welcome to the North - The Music
Northern Lites - Super Furry Animals
North Country Boy - The Charlatans
Girl from the North Country - Bob Dylan
Girl from the Northern States - The Young Republic
It's Grim Up North - The Justified Ancients of MuMu
Northern Whale - The Good, The Bad and the Queen
Quiet Crown - Idlewild
A Big Day in the North - Black Grape
Northern Sky - Nick Drake
It strikes me that England's North has its equivalent in America's South, the "real" country for ordinary decent folk, which sets itself in opposition to the gloss and urbanity of New York/London. Obviously this isn't a revolutionary theory. The Belle and Sebastian-esque song here by American band The Young Republic gets to grip with the idea, with the Girl from the Northern States being too arty-farty and prim to understand the true worth of the beautiful American South. Of course, Bob Dylan's "North Country" is a whole different matter, talking about the bleak, cold world he grew up more usually called The Midwest. Perhaps these areas - Minnesota, Wisconsin etc have their vague equivalent in England's West Country or maybe Midlands, but really i'm into the area of talking bollocks now.
Anyway, the thing that always got me about The North is that it's got a whole 300 miles more northern than it (Teenage Fanclub have an album called 'Songs from Northern Britain' and, you know, they're not from Manchester). Leicester say, or Nottingham, would describe itself as being in the North and yet it's barely a quarter of the way up Britain.
Anyway, the North is heavily and cleverly romanticised in song and literature and film, a hell of a lot more than places like Bognor Regis, Newbury and Margate anyway, and rightly so, I suppose. Even the gritty realism of much of that is a romanticisation of sorts, i think.
My romanticisation of the North is in terms of moors and cliffs and holy islands and castles and seabirds etc, which is actually just as tied in with Scotland as Northern England, but I'll separate them for now and probably get to Scotland later.
I was thinking in terms of a folk song here , but didn't want to get too carried away with a language I didn't have a proper grasp on. i was also just focusing on the words Northern Soul. Northern Soul is a funny one - it's a term all over music magazines, and yet is really, in musical terms, a pretty nebulous concept. I've had more than one person ask me, slightly shamefaced, what really is this northern soul? and tho I know a little about the Northern Soul clubs and the all-nighters, I couldn't necessarily identify what was Northern Soul on listening. Southern Soul, on the other hand ...
And how she'd cast his dearest wishes
to the welcoming arms of the Northern sky
and wonder felt a sure minute distant
as he stole glances at her face shining
so full of joy, it could make him cry
And how those birdsongs swooped and soared
and recast the sound of the Northern soul
and the chill wind, a kiss, a sweet sting
pushed them together in a time of no asking
and no giving of anything but the whole
And how those folk songs swept right through him
and made their home right at his core,
and they pretended they were material
for deep and bearded men of the soil
to imprint into rhyme and lore
And how the coastal road unfolded
to each fishing village and sharpened strand
shadowed by some dormant castle
still, after all, master of every cliff
exposed, each naked grain of sand
And how the Northern nights compressed
and stripped sleep from the tireless minds
they carried to their only good goal,
and the summer tides stripped their memory
of all that's easily left behind
Northern Lites - Super Furry Animals
North Country Boy - The Charlatans
Girl from the North Country - Bob Dylan
Girl from the Northern States - The Young Republic
It's Grim Up North - The Justified Ancients of MuMu
Northern Whale - The Good, The Bad and the Queen
Quiet Crown - Idlewild
A Big Day in the North - Black Grape
Northern Sky - Nick Drake
It strikes me that England's North has its equivalent in America's South, the "real" country for ordinary decent folk, which sets itself in opposition to the gloss and urbanity of New York/London. Obviously this isn't a revolutionary theory. The Belle and Sebastian-esque song here by American band The Young Republic gets to grip with the idea, with the Girl from the Northern States being too arty-farty and prim to understand the true worth of the beautiful American South. Of course, Bob Dylan's "North Country" is a whole different matter, talking about the bleak, cold world he grew up more usually called The Midwest. Perhaps these areas - Minnesota, Wisconsin etc have their vague equivalent in England's West Country or maybe Midlands, but really i'm into the area of talking bollocks now.
Anyway, the thing that always got me about The North is that it's got a whole 300 miles more northern than it (Teenage Fanclub have an album called 'Songs from Northern Britain' and, you know, they're not from Manchester). Leicester say, or Nottingham, would describe itself as being in the North and yet it's barely a quarter of the way up Britain.
Anyway, the North is heavily and cleverly romanticised in song and literature and film, a hell of a lot more than places like Bognor Regis, Newbury and Margate anyway, and rightly so, I suppose. Even the gritty realism of much of that is a romanticisation of sorts, i think.
My romanticisation of the North is in terms of moors and cliffs and holy islands and castles and seabirds etc, which is actually just as tied in with Scotland as Northern England, but I'll separate them for now and probably get to Scotland later.
I was thinking in terms of a folk song here , but didn't want to get too carried away with a language I didn't have a proper grasp on. i was also just focusing on the words Northern Soul. Northern Soul is a funny one - it's a term all over music magazines, and yet is really, in musical terms, a pretty nebulous concept. I've had more than one person ask me, slightly shamefaced, what really is this northern soul? and tho I know a little about the Northern Soul clubs and the all-nighters, I couldn't necessarily identify what was Northern Soul on listening. Southern Soul, on the other hand ...
And how she'd cast his dearest wishes
to the welcoming arms of the Northern sky
and wonder felt a sure minute distant
as he stole glances at her face shining
so full of joy, it could make him cry
And how those birdsongs swooped and soared
and recast the sound of the Northern soul
and the chill wind, a kiss, a sweet sting
pushed them together in a time of no asking
and no giving of anything but the whole
And how those folk songs swept right through him
and made their home right at his core,
and they pretended they were material
for deep and bearded men of the soil
to imprint into rhyme and lore
And how the coastal road unfolded
to each fishing village and sharpened strand
shadowed by some dormant castle
still, after all, master of every cliff
exposed, each naked grain of sand
And how the Northern nights compressed
and stripped sleep from the tireless minds
they carried to their only good goal,
and the summer tides stripped their memory
of all that's easily left behind
Wednesday, 1 July 2009
41. 10 Songs about Bombs
Spanish Bombs - The Clash
Pipe Pomb - Joe Pernice
The Bomb - New Young Pony Club
B.O.B - OutKast
You Got Yr Cherry Bomb - Spoon
Zombie - The Cranberries
A-Bomb on Wardour Street - The Jam
Enola Gay - OMD
Don't Bomb When you are the Bomb or Chinese Bomb -Blur
Theme from Dambusters
The theme from Dambusters is one of the great themes, tops everything else on the list. Spanish Bombs is just about my favourite Clash song though, and the Spoon song is a favourite to run to.
The NYPC song is super too, though not about bombs really.
At school, we read Camus' 'Les Justes' which contained lines like "La bombe seule est juste", but that's the least true thing ever, there's nothing juste about la bombe. A lot of people have lived in fear of a bomb or the bomb for a long long time, some learnt to stop worrying and love it, in London town the fear is occasional, but tends to pass. West London in the early 80s and 90s was more susceptible to bombs than most places in the UK, but avoided the gravest catastrophe.
The whole city's fear of the bomb was reignited 4 or so summers ago, and I'm afraid these words, crasser than cranberries, came in the wake of that, or rather in the wake of the wake of that.
The first verse drops a lyrical bomb, which i can't bring myself to take out, but if you can look past that, well ok
In a sequence of reactions
All wrapped up again in the language of death
trying to pick between defiance and resilience,
I've slipped to the heart of my city of chaos
where the cunts have got the cops killing brazilians.
My city on standby merits solemn laments
not rolling hysteria and fatuous weblogs.
My lines are down, though, my rhymes so crass -
stung by the simply dismantled deadlock.
What knows he of London, whom London knows
to be taped up and tucked in and listlessly trapped? -
my city of safe self -mythologising
still seeking an epithet ample and apt.
Wrapped up in my own lazy language of death -
romantic for Klute and Zhivago and Vegas.
My white life, my light life - my fight might return
in a bang and flash if I'd duelled with these dangers.
But Stockwell's not 15 minutes down the road,
it's a Hollywood film set, a shallow black comedy
and I'M NOT AFRAID of a thing but myself
and the myriad ways I find to dishonour me.
If it's any help in understanding, you may remember the popular web response was people putting a picture of themselves next to the words 'I'm not afraid' and also, that was a summer i was sitting around doing nothing but watching old movies and Sky News, thinking i ought to get off my arse. That's the background to the sentiments!
Fortunately, the Ashes came along and rescued us all. Stronger than bombs!
Pipe Pomb - Joe Pernice
The Bomb - New Young Pony Club
B.O.B - OutKast
You Got Yr Cherry Bomb - Spoon
Zombie - The Cranberries
A-Bomb on Wardour Street - The Jam
Enola Gay - OMD
Don't Bomb When you are the Bomb or Chinese Bomb -Blur
Theme from Dambusters
The theme from Dambusters is one of the great themes, tops everything else on the list. Spanish Bombs is just about my favourite Clash song though, and the Spoon song is a favourite to run to.
The NYPC song is super too, though not about bombs really.
At school, we read Camus' 'Les Justes' which contained lines like "La bombe seule est juste", but that's the least true thing ever, there's nothing juste about la bombe. A lot of people have lived in fear of a bomb or the bomb for a long long time, some learnt to stop worrying and love it, in London town the fear is occasional, but tends to pass. West London in the early 80s and 90s was more susceptible to bombs than most places in the UK, but avoided the gravest catastrophe.
The whole city's fear of the bomb was reignited 4 or so summers ago, and I'm afraid these words, crasser than cranberries, came in the wake of that, or rather in the wake of the wake of that.
The first verse drops a lyrical bomb, which i can't bring myself to take out, but if you can look past that, well ok
In a sequence of reactions
All wrapped up again in the language of death
trying to pick between defiance and resilience,
I've slipped to the heart of my city of chaos
where the cunts have got the cops killing brazilians.
My city on standby merits solemn laments
not rolling hysteria and fatuous weblogs.
My lines are down, though, my rhymes so crass -
stung by the simply dismantled deadlock.
What knows he of London, whom London knows
to be taped up and tucked in and listlessly trapped? -
my city of safe self -mythologising
still seeking an epithet ample and apt.
Wrapped up in my own lazy language of death -
romantic for Klute and Zhivago and Vegas.
My white life, my light life - my fight might return
in a bang and flash if I'd duelled with these dangers.
But Stockwell's not 15 minutes down the road,
it's a Hollywood film set, a shallow black comedy
and I'M NOT AFRAID of a thing but myself
and the myriad ways I find to dishonour me.
If it's any help in understanding, you may remember the popular web response was people putting a picture of themselves next to the words 'I'm not afraid' and also, that was a summer i was sitting around doing nothing but watching old movies and Sky News, thinking i ought to get off my arse. That's the background to the sentiments!
Fortunately, the Ashes came along and rescued us all. Stronger than bombs!
Saturday, 27 June 2009
40. 10 Smoking Songs
Cigarettes and Coffee - Otis Redding
Smoke Detector - Rilo Kiley
Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk - Rufus Wainwright
Cigarettes, Wedding Bands - Band of Horses
Cigarette Sandwich - Scud Mountain Boys
Smokin' - Super Furry Animals
A Life Less Ordinary - Ash
Been Smokin' Too Long - Nick Drake
Last Cigarette - Ed Harcourt
Hymn to the Cigarettes - Hefner
I stopped smoking a few months ago [woo!]. For about the 90th time, but I think that should be the last time. I've stopped for long periods before, twice for almost two year, another time for one year. In fact, I smoked for less of my 20s than I didn't, I'd think, but it still casts a large cloud. How stupid does one have to be in this day of age to smoke more than the occasional cigarette beyond the age of around 22?
Well, not that stupid, it is a very smart, subtle beast, as many of us know. The trick is, if you think you've nailed it, there may yet be some occasion where you think one cigarette might slightly enhance the pleasure you have on one particular evening, and until you're over that thought, there's a good chance you still will.
And also, it's the iconography. The fact censors are much sharper on not letting people smoke on screen these days really does make a big difference, becasue I promise you, if you've just given up smoking and you're trying not to, the image of seeing Paul Newman or Marlon Brando timelessly enjoying a smoke is pretty hard to resist (the knowledge that Paul Newman died of lung cancer should counteract that somewhat of course).
Anyway, that's a good collection of songs up there, I particularly like the Hefner one - it's about all I know by them, but let's hope there are no more hymns to the cigarettes, apart from this one...
EXAM REVISION
Each cigarette was
every fifty six minutes
a four minute prayer
Smoke Detector - Rilo Kiley
Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk - Rufus Wainwright
Cigarettes, Wedding Bands - Band of Horses
Cigarette Sandwich - Scud Mountain Boys
Smokin' - Super Furry Animals
A Life Less Ordinary - Ash
Been Smokin' Too Long - Nick Drake
Last Cigarette - Ed Harcourt
Hymn to the Cigarettes - Hefner
I stopped smoking a few months ago [woo!]. For about the 90th time, but I think that should be the last time. I've stopped for long periods before, twice for almost two year, another time for one year. In fact, I smoked for less of my 20s than I didn't, I'd think, but it still casts a large cloud. How stupid does one have to be in this day of age to smoke more than the occasional cigarette beyond the age of around 22?
Well, not that stupid, it is a very smart, subtle beast, as many of us know. The trick is, if you think you've nailed it, there may yet be some occasion where you think one cigarette might slightly enhance the pleasure you have on one particular evening, and until you're over that thought, there's a good chance you still will.
And also, it's the iconography. The fact censors are much sharper on not letting people smoke on screen these days really does make a big difference, becasue I promise you, if you've just given up smoking and you're trying not to, the image of seeing Paul Newman or Marlon Brando timelessly enjoying a smoke is pretty hard to resist (the knowledge that Paul Newman died of lung cancer should counteract that somewhat of course).
Anyway, that's a good collection of songs up there, I particularly like the Hefner one - it's about all I know by them, but let's hope there are no more hymns to the cigarettes, apart from this one...
EXAM REVISION
Each cigarette was
every fifty six minutes
a four minute prayer
Wednesday, 24 June 2009
39. 11 Cricket Songs
This isn't one I'd recommend downloading many of the songs from ...
When an Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease - Roy Harper
Dreadlock Holiday - 10 CC
N-N-Nineteen Not Out - The Commentators
Howzat - Sherbet
Jiggery Pokery - The Duckworth Lewis Method
Soul Limbo - Booker T and the MGs
Cricket, Lovely Cricket - Lord Beginner
You're Never Gone - Mark Butcher
You're the One for Me - Brett Lee and Asha Bhosle
Mr Carbohydrate - Manic Street Preachers
All Over the World - Dave Stewart
Marvellous - The Twelfth Man
Soon, there will be no need for a compilation like this, as The Duckworth Lewis Method are this month releasing their very own concept album all about cricket. Sounds awful, doesn't it, except it's Neil Hannon, so could well be somewhat awesome.
As for the rest, there is awfulness and funny stories mainly, though the Roy Harper song is pretty good, and Soul Limbo is just the old BBC theme to the cricket. The Mark Butcher song is a tribute to his former team-mate Ben Hollioake, who died in 2002 (and I can't fail to mention I once got out ... after he'd hit me for two sixes), Cricket, Lovely Cricket is a pretty famous song in the West Indies, written as a victory calypso after they came to England and won for the first time with the great spinners Ramadhin and Valentine. The Brett Lee song was a big hit in India and South Africa and Asha Bhosle is Asha of A Brimful of Asha. The Manics song makes reference to a Glamorgan player called Matthew Maynard, The Twelfth Man is an Australian comedy tape we used to think was hilarious when we were younger, but the funniest one is the Dave Stewart song, which was the theme to the 1999 cricket World Cup, was released the day England were knocked out of the tournament and apparently sold less than 100 copies. I haven't heard it. Might be good. Might not.
I love cricket. This is well known. I've always loved cricket. I could go on about it forever. I could sit here and write about cricket till this computer's run out of memory. I won't. In brief -I own every Wisden Cricketer's Almanack since 1984 and every Wisden Cricket Monthly since August 1984 (apart from September 1984 - the obsession must have been slow to germinate in this six-year old). 1984 is significant. It's the first year I was aware of a year having a name, the first year of putting time in context, and the reason I knew it was 1984 was because it was the West Indies' 1984 Tour of England, and they were playing left-handed captain David Gower's England, and they had Viv Richards, who my brother told me was the best batsman in the world and Malcolm Marshall, who my brother told me was the best bowler in the world.
He was right about both. That West Indies team - Greenidge, Haynes, Gomes, Richards, Lloyd, Dujon, Harper, Baptiste, Marshall, Holding, Garner, with Milton Small and Winston Davis playing one test each (I didn't have to look that up) crushed England 5-0 and is a fair contender for the greatest cricket team ever.
Their violent glory (several England players were struck severe blows to the head by their famous quartet of quicks), their maroon headwear, the BBC Graphics - all imprinted on my mind.
They called it the summer of Blackwash. I didn't get the pun at the time. As a consequence of all this, I've always had a particular feeling for West Indies cricket. The greatest cricket book of all time is 'Beyond a Boundary' by Trinidadian academic CLR James, about the rise of West Indian cricket and it's role in West Indian self-determination. It's most famous quote is "What knows he of cricket who only cricket knows" - for sure, and vice versa.
So, about cricket, I have two little verses. The first is about my own little memories of the nepotistic world of the Middlesex Colts Cricket Leagues, when we played our own after-school Twenty20 (though it wasn't called Twenty20 then, just plain cricket) starting at 6 without the aid of floodlights, and my dad wasn't there coaching or umpiring and making sure i opened the batting and bowling and wasn't out unless all three stumps were knocked out - I seemed almost unique in that regard
HIT OUT OR GET OUT
Under daylight reluctantly fading
Small boundaries seemed so easy to cross,
time to grab a chance rarely offered
by coaches and umpires and fathers and fans.
I still remember "the word is, young man,
hit out or get out" -the opening shuts.
The purest manifestation of evil
I heard in those days of bullies and cheats.
And this is my shockingly gauche attempt to get to grips with some of the issues detailed above
BLACKWASH
Blackwash came from before I knew what
Black was, that was before I knew what Empire
was, though I read 'Our Empire Story'
written by some tory, before i knew what
a tory was, before he knew what it was
to be a tory in our empire story; no, I
didn't know the entire storywhen I blanched
at Blackwash;
Viv chomped on his cigar, before I knew about
tobacco, before I loved Curtley and Maco,
didn't know much about Walter Raleigh,
hadn't heard the one about the batsman Willey,
the bowler Holding, didn't know just what was
unfolding
Obscured by the Blackwash.
Lara kissed the ground before Garry, and I
should have grasped the weight of the pull,
the scale of the drive, the backlift
from heaven, the three the seven,
the five ... the five
In Antigua, St Kitts, Guyana, Grenada,
Barbados, Tobago, Trinidad, Jamaica,
isn't it great to be alive?
on second thoughts, i quite like that, the words tumble out excitedly. I wrote it before I went to play cricket in Barbados, when I bowled at Desmond Haynes, he was dropped twice off me, then drove me to hospital when I got a cricket ball smack in the eye. Aah, the circle of life ...
NB I almost forgot this - this is the reason I did this post. I remember it from Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing which I saw recently, and thought it was rather tremendous
HENRY: Shut up and listen. This thing here, which looks like a wooden club, is actually several pieces of particular wood cunningly put together in a certain way so that the whole thing is sprung, like a dancefloor. It's for hitting cricket balls with. If you get it right, the cricket ball will travel two hundred yards in four seconds, and all you've done is give it a knock like you're knocking the top off a bottle of stout, and it makes a noise like a trout taking a fly [CLUCK].
What we're trying to do is write cricket bats, so that when we throw up an idea and give it a little knock, it might ... travel [CLUCK, picks up script].
Now what we've got here is a lump of wood of roughly the same shape trying to be a cricket bat, and if you hit a ball with it, the ball will travel about 10 feet and you'll drop the bat and dance about shouting "OUCH!" with your hands stuck into your armpits.
This isn't better because there's a conspiracy by the MCC to keep cudgels out of the Lord's. It's better because it's better. You don't believe me, so i suggest you go out to bat with this and see how you get on.
"You're a strange boy, Billy, how old are you?"
"20, but i've lived more than you'll ever live."
Ooh, ouch!
One of the best arguments for good stuff being better than bad stuff you'll ever hear. Also quite shaming. Best i've ever managed is one of those Gunn and Moore Scoremasters which cost £15 and hid at the bottom of the school kitbag for kids who didn't like cricket enough to own their own bat. Every time you hit a ball hard with it you thought it might break ...
When an Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease - Roy Harper
Dreadlock Holiday - 10 CC
N-N-Nineteen Not Out - The Commentators
Howzat - Sherbet
Jiggery Pokery - The Duckworth Lewis Method
Soul Limbo - Booker T and the MGs
Cricket, Lovely Cricket - Lord Beginner
You're Never Gone - Mark Butcher
You're the One for Me - Brett Lee and Asha Bhosle
Mr Carbohydrate - Manic Street Preachers
All Over the World - Dave Stewart
Marvellous - The Twelfth Man
Soon, there will be no need for a compilation like this, as The Duckworth Lewis Method are this month releasing their very own concept album all about cricket. Sounds awful, doesn't it, except it's Neil Hannon, so could well be somewhat awesome.
As for the rest, there is awfulness and funny stories mainly, though the Roy Harper song is pretty good, and Soul Limbo is just the old BBC theme to the cricket. The Mark Butcher song is a tribute to his former team-mate Ben Hollioake, who died in 2002 (and I can't fail to mention I once got out ... after he'd hit me for two sixes), Cricket, Lovely Cricket is a pretty famous song in the West Indies, written as a victory calypso after they came to England and won for the first time with the great spinners Ramadhin and Valentine. The Brett Lee song was a big hit in India and South Africa and Asha Bhosle is Asha of A Brimful of Asha. The Manics song makes reference to a Glamorgan player called Matthew Maynard, The Twelfth Man is an Australian comedy tape we used to think was hilarious when we were younger, but the funniest one is the Dave Stewart song, which was the theme to the 1999 cricket World Cup, was released the day England were knocked out of the tournament and apparently sold less than 100 copies. I haven't heard it. Might be good. Might not.
I love cricket. This is well known. I've always loved cricket. I could go on about it forever. I could sit here and write about cricket till this computer's run out of memory. I won't. In brief -I own every Wisden Cricketer's Almanack since 1984 and every Wisden Cricket Monthly since August 1984 (apart from September 1984 - the obsession must have been slow to germinate in this six-year old). 1984 is significant. It's the first year I was aware of a year having a name, the first year of putting time in context, and the reason I knew it was 1984 was because it was the West Indies' 1984 Tour of England, and they were playing left-handed captain David Gower's England, and they had Viv Richards, who my brother told me was the best batsman in the world and Malcolm Marshall, who my brother told me was the best bowler in the world.
He was right about both. That West Indies team - Greenidge, Haynes, Gomes, Richards, Lloyd, Dujon, Harper, Baptiste, Marshall, Holding, Garner, with Milton Small and Winston Davis playing one test each (I didn't have to look that up) crushed England 5-0 and is a fair contender for the greatest cricket team ever.
Their violent glory (several England players were struck severe blows to the head by their famous quartet of quicks), their maroon headwear, the BBC Graphics - all imprinted on my mind.
They called it the summer of Blackwash. I didn't get the pun at the time. As a consequence of all this, I've always had a particular feeling for West Indies cricket. The greatest cricket book of all time is 'Beyond a Boundary' by Trinidadian academic CLR James, about the rise of West Indian cricket and it's role in West Indian self-determination. It's most famous quote is "What knows he of cricket who only cricket knows" - for sure, and vice versa.
So, about cricket, I have two little verses. The first is about my own little memories of the nepotistic world of the Middlesex Colts Cricket Leagues, when we played our own after-school Twenty20 (though it wasn't called Twenty20 then, just plain cricket) starting at 6 without the aid of floodlights, and my dad wasn't there coaching or umpiring and making sure i opened the batting and bowling and wasn't out unless all three stumps were knocked out - I seemed almost unique in that regard
HIT OUT OR GET OUT
Under daylight reluctantly fading
Small boundaries seemed so easy to cross,
time to grab a chance rarely offered
by coaches and umpires and fathers and fans.
I still remember "the word is, young man,
hit out or get out" -the opening shuts.
The purest manifestation of evil
I heard in those days of bullies and cheats.
And this is my shockingly gauche attempt to get to grips with some of the issues detailed above
BLACKWASH
Blackwash came from before I knew what
Black was, that was before I knew what Empire
was, though I read 'Our Empire Story'
written by some tory, before i knew what
a tory was, before he knew what it was
to be a tory in our empire story; no, I
didn't know the entire storywhen I blanched
at Blackwash;
Viv chomped on his cigar, before I knew about
tobacco, before I loved Curtley and Maco,
didn't know much about Walter Raleigh,
hadn't heard the one about the batsman Willey,
the bowler Holding, didn't know just what was
unfolding
Obscured by the Blackwash.
Lara kissed the ground before Garry, and I
should have grasped the weight of the pull,
the scale of the drive, the backlift
from heaven, the three the seven,
the five ... the five
In Antigua, St Kitts, Guyana, Grenada,
Barbados, Tobago, Trinidad, Jamaica,
isn't it great to be alive?
on second thoughts, i quite like that, the words tumble out excitedly. I wrote it before I went to play cricket in Barbados, when I bowled at Desmond Haynes, he was dropped twice off me, then drove me to hospital when I got a cricket ball smack in the eye. Aah, the circle of life ...
NB I almost forgot this - this is the reason I did this post. I remember it from Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing which I saw recently, and thought it was rather tremendous
HENRY: Shut up and listen. This thing here, which looks like a wooden club, is actually several pieces of particular wood cunningly put together in a certain way so that the whole thing is sprung, like a dancefloor. It's for hitting cricket balls with. If you get it right, the cricket ball will travel two hundred yards in four seconds, and all you've done is give it a knock like you're knocking the top off a bottle of stout, and it makes a noise like a trout taking a fly [CLUCK].
What we're trying to do is write cricket bats, so that when we throw up an idea and give it a little knock, it might ... travel [CLUCK, picks up script].
Now what we've got here is a lump of wood of roughly the same shape trying to be a cricket bat, and if you hit a ball with it, the ball will travel about 10 feet and you'll drop the bat and dance about shouting "OUCH!" with your hands stuck into your armpits.
This isn't better because there's a conspiracy by the MCC to keep cudgels out of the Lord's. It's better because it's better. You don't believe me, so i suggest you go out to bat with this and see how you get on.
"You're a strange boy, Billy, how old are you?"
"20, but i've lived more than you'll ever live."
Ooh, ouch!
One of the best arguments for good stuff being better than bad stuff you'll ever hear. Also quite shaming. Best i've ever managed is one of those Gunn and Moore Scoremasters which cost £15 and hid at the bottom of the school kitbag for kids who didn't like cricket enough to own their own bat. Every time you hit a ball hard with it you thought it might break ...
Sunday, 21 June 2009
38. 10 Songs about Saints
It's Hard to Be a Saint in the City - Bruce Springsteen
Saint Simon - The Shins
Santa Maria de la Feira - Devendra Banhart
Saints and Sinners - Paddy Casey
Hang on St Christopher - Tom Waits
St Andrew (the battle is in the air) - White Stripes
The Spirit of Giving - The New Pornographers
I Dreamed I Saw St Augustine - Bob Dylan
Girl in the War - Josh Ritter
St Patrick - James Yorkston
I don't have too much to say about saints that is new and interesting. There are some great and gory tales of saints and martyrs which fill up the middle ages, a pretty large number of saints who really had nothing saintly about them at all. I know that to some people their Saint's Day is as important as their birthday. I was educated at three saintly institutions, so i suppose Benedict, Paul and Andrew are of particular interest to me. Benedict was a real and interesting character, other good ones are Dunstan, Augustine, Columba. Last night, I was told by an RE teacher that St John Bosco is a really good one from fairly recent times.
These days, as in the movie 'A Guide to Recognising Your Saints', we more think of saints in a secular sense as guardian angels, and of course we think of patient people being saints, which is a bit nonsensical really.
There are couple of my favourite songs in the list, particularly St Patrick and St Simon. St Patrick is, to me, a magical song from start to finish.
Sorry, I'm being very incoherent. I've got a cold and I'm so hungover I can barely think...
the starting point for the words below was Nick Cave actually, an appropriately biblical kind of singer, and it was written while watching a Leonard Cohen concert on TV - his work is similarly rich in religiosity. But it was helpful to hear how daft a lot of Leonard Cohen's rhymes were, so that's kind of what I went for ...
You're telling me about your latest greatest
who's passed and passed the repeat play test
the one you'll be dancing your wedding dance to,
my bare raised eyebrow marks the changes
in the chapter headings of your back pages
you'd be wise again to turn a fleeting glance to
Though I've nothing but admiration for
the heats of your grand fixations or
your constant wish to spit in the face of cliche
you must accept these praising cycles
this carousel of passing icons
often end up in prolonged auctions on ebay
This age gives breadth to every church -
each porcelain god left in the lurch
must cope with being the saviour that he ain't
If pride allows, it pays to be willing,
at best, to humbly share the billing -
we all need far more than just one patron saint
With eyebrows and lips arched and pursed
and due respect to March the First
I ask my lowly offerings to be shared
by all who've ever felt my awe,
these prophets I have knelt before,
all saints ever subjected to my prayers
So, friend, don't consign with such haste
each fallen god to wanton waste,
don't knock them down like suspects in Guess Who?
for flavour fades but may return,
a beloved saint you casually spurn
may yet be needed, one day, to bless you.
Saint Simon - The Shins
Santa Maria de la Feira - Devendra Banhart
Saints and Sinners - Paddy Casey
Hang on St Christopher - Tom Waits
St Andrew (the battle is in the air) - White Stripes
The Spirit of Giving - The New Pornographers
I Dreamed I Saw St Augustine - Bob Dylan
Girl in the War - Josh Ritter
St Patrick - James Yorkston
I don't have too much to say about saints that is new and interesting. There are some great and gory tales of saints and martyrs which fill up the middle ages, a pretty large number of saints who really had nothing saintly about them at all. I know that to some people their Saint's Day is as important as their birthday. I was educated at three saintly institutions, so i suppose Benedict, Paul and Andrew are of particular interest to me. Benedict was a real and interesting character, other good ones are Dunstan, Augustine, Columba. Last night, I was told by an RE teacher that St John Bosco is a really good one from fairly recent times.
These days, as in the movie 'A Guide to Recognising Your Saints', we more think of saints in a secular sense as guardian angels, and of course we think of patient people being saints, which is a bit nonsensical really.
There are couple of my favourite songs in the list, particularly St Patrick and St Simon. St Patrick is, to me, a magical song from start to finish.
Sorry, I'm being very incoherent. I've got a cold and I'm so hungover I can barely think...
the starting point for the words below was Nick Cave actually, an appropriately biblical kind of singer, and it was written while watching a Leonard Cohen concert on TV - his work is similarly rich in religiosity. But it was helpful to hear how daft a lot of Leonard Cohen's rhymes were, so that's kind of what I went for ...
You're telling me about your latest greatest
who's passed and passed the repeat play test
the one you'll be dancing your wedding dance to,
my bare raised eyebrow marks the changes
in the chapter headings of your back pages
you'd be wise again to turn a fleeting glance to
Though I've nothing but admiration for
the heats of your grand fixations or
your constant wish to spit in the face of cliche
you must accept these praising cycles
this carousel of passing icons
often end up in prolonged auctions on ebay
This age gives breadth to every church -
each porcelain god left in the lurch
must cope with being the saviour that he ain't
If pride allows, it pays to be willing,
at best, to humbly share the billing -
we all need far more than just one patron saint
With eyebrows and lips arched and pursed
and due respect to March the First
I ask my lowly offerings to be shared
by all who've ever felt my awe,
these prophets I have knelt before,
all saints ever subjected to my prayers
So, friend, don't consign with such haste
each fallen god to wanton waste,
don't knock them down like suspects in Guess Who?
for flavour fades but may return,
a beloved saint you casually spurn
may yet be needed, one day, to bless you.
Friday, 12 June 2009
37. 10 Songs for the Coming and Going of a Golden Age
Things Can Only Get Better - D:Ream
As Good As it Gets - Gene
Waving Flags - British Sea Power
Time for Heroes - The Libertines
I Get Along - Pet Shop Boys
Harrowdown Hill - Thom Yorke or Death of a Scientist - Mull Historical Society
Shoot the Dog - George Michael
Kingdom of Doom - The Good, the Bad and the Queen
Snowball - Elbow
Cunts are Still Running the World - Jarvis Cocker
You Are the Generation that Bought More Shoes and you get what you Deserve - Johnny Boy
Ooh, a bit political ... but not really. It's more an attempt to present songs of the Blair Years as a kind of storyboard.
It's quite a narrow framework; in other tapes, there'll be a broader take on protest songs, and obviously there's a lot more anti (and pro, don't doubt it) Bush stuff than Tony Blair stuff. Furthermore, British "political" or protest music of the last years has been pretty grim - the George Michael song being a case in point. But I don't think this is a terrible collection, there are various aspects covered from anti-globalisation riots (Libertines) to immigration (British Sea Power) to David Kelly (Thom Yorke) to Peter Mandelson (Pet Shop Boys) and the tremendously prescient song by Johnny Boy.
So, I'll try to avoid speaking politically now, that would be terribly gauche - all i'll say is how I seem to be perenially and increasingly out of step with the general view, I wonder if I'm a contrarian above all, though I hope not, I just think most people get most things wrong, so I coincidentally find myself disagreeing ...
Furthermore, I've used "apologist" quite often as a term of accusation recently - while I rather think that's what I've become for certain things as well. It's very hard, if you've got an intrinsic leaning, to unpick all the goods and bads of it, to not subconsciously toe a party line, whatever the party is, or even if you don't think there is a party.
I claim some small degree of prescience myself with this, as it was written more than two years ago, when subprime was a word all but the most devoted readers of the FT (hello, Mr Key) were yet to hear, when everything did still, basically, appear to be fine and dandy ...
You see, it was the strangest year,
my boy, to be alive, since
Summer'd played its card by May
and winter scarce evinced
those memories (to tell to doubting
offspring, perhaps, decades hence) -
hunched shoulders and shrivelled brains -
the chill, the freeze, passed, tense.
You see, it was a glorious chance,
my boy, to be set loose, where
London's louche lads turning blue
had ill-earned lucre, spare
for idling dressed as teambuilding;
happy -just - to veil contempt,
preying on the dumbed down rich
was manna heaven sent.
They say he was a wasted chance,
my boy, for what, they can't say
beyond headlines absorbed on
rolling reams of tart cliche.
They talk of damaged legacy,
politics and values tainted,
of million empty words he spun
and empty pictures painted.
You see, we've all our own take,
my boy, of that curious time
where we lived like bitter kings
complaining through our prime.
The dogs the country thinks its gone to,
circling, while the phoney war
plays out its final sunstarved stage,
will mock all dogfights gone before.
As Good As it Gets - Gene
Waving Flags - British Sea Power
Time for Heroes - The Libertines
I Get Along - Pet Shop Boys
Harrowdown Hill - Thom Yorke or Death of a Scientist - Mull Historical Society
Shoot the Dog - George Michael
Kingdom of Doom - The Good, the Bad and the Queen
Snowball - Elbow
Cunts are Still Running the World - Jarvis Cocker
You Are the Generation that Bought More Shoes and you get what you Deserve - Johnny Boy
Ooh, a bit political ... but not really. It's more an attempt to present songs of the Blair Years as a kind of storyboard.
It's quite a narrow framework; in other tapes, there'll be a broader take on protest songs, and obviously there's a lot more anti (and pro, don't doubt it) Bush stuff than Tony Blair stuff. Furthermore, British "political" or protest music of the last years has been pretty grim - the George Michael song being a case in point. But I don't think this is a terrible collection, there are various aspects covered from anti-globalisation riots (Libertines) to immigration (British Sea Power) to David Kelly (Thom Yorke) to Peter Mandelson (Pet Shop Boys) and the tremendously prescient song by Johnny Boy.
So, I'll try to avoid speaking politically now, that would be terribly gauche - all i'll say is how I seem to be perenially and increasingly out of step with the general view, I wonder if I'm a contrarian above all, though I hope not, I just think most people get most things wrong, so I coincidentally find myself disagreeing ...
Furthermore, I've used "apologist" quite often as a term of accusation recently - while I rather think that's what I've become for certain things as well. It's very hard, if you've got an intrinsic leaning, to unpick all the goods and bads of it, to not subconsciously toe a party line, whatever the party is, or even if you don't think there is a party.
I claim some small degree of prescience myself with this, as it was written more than two years ago, when subprime was a word all but the most devoted readers of the FT (hello, Mr Key) were yet to hear, when everything did still, basically, appear to be fine and dandy ...
You see, it was the strangest year,
my boy, to be alive, since
Summer'd played its card by May
and winter scarce evinced
those memories (to tell to doubting
offspring, perhaps, decades hence) -
hunched shoulders and shrivelled brains -
the chill, the freeze, passed, tense.
You see, it was a glorious chance,
my boy, to be set loose, where
London's louche lads turning blue
had ill-earned lucre, spare
for idling dressed as teambuilding;
happy -just - to veil contempt,
preying on the dumbed down rich
was manna heaven sent.
They say he was a wasted chance,
my boy, for what, they can't say
beyond headlines absorbed on
rolling reams of tart cliche.
They talk of damaged legacy,
politics and values tainted,
of million empty words he spun
and empty pictures painted.
You see, we've all our own take,
my boy, of that curious time
where we lived like bitter kings
complaining through our prime.
The dogs the country thinks its gone to,
circling, while the phoney war
plays out its final sunstarved stage,
will mock all dogfights gone before.
Tuesday, 9 June 2009
36. 10 Sweet Songs
Sweet Song - Blur
Candy - Ash
Cigarettes & Chocolate Milk - Rufus Wainwright
Candy Says - Velvet Underground
Chocolate - Snow Patrol
Some Candy Talking - Jesus and Mary Chain
Sugar, Sugar - Archies
Candy's Room - Bruce Springsteen
Sweets for my Sweet - CJ Lewis
Candyfloss - Wilco
Initially, this was going to be all songs about Candy, as there are certainly enough famous songs to have put that together, some of them excellent - of these ones, I love the Wilco song, which is a hidden track on 1998's rich masterpiece Summerteeth, and I think Candy's Room may be my favourite Springsteen song, so fast, exciting and unlike anything else in his considerable canon. More than just a word, Candy seems to be shorthand for a certain kind of mythical smalltown American girl, the lost innocence it implies making it perfect for James Lawrence Slattery aka Candy Darling, the Warhol starlet who is the subject of Candy Says and the cover star of Anthony & the Johnson's I am a Bird Now.
However, Candy, though clearly a very evocative word, doesn't really feature in my own vocabulary, so I wouldn't have really known where to go with it. We don't really use the word "candy" in the UK apart from as part of Candyfloss, which they call Cotton Candy in the US, and rather tremendously, Fairy floss in Australia. Fairy floss ... not something that men eat.
On which point, I often think that I'd be significantly more manly if my main indulgences, even now, were in cigarettes and alcohol rather than the ridiculous amounts of chocolate I can still get through. O sure, I've dabbled, the occasional glass of shandy, the occasional addiction to nicotine, but while one can be taken seriously in conversation talking about the trials of oversmoking and overdrinking, overdosing on Dairy Milk implies both immaturity and effeminacy in one fell swoop.
Images of Dawn French and bulging, guilty cheeks spring to mind, which I don't think is my chocolate-eating style; having said that, I remember when I was in Kenya, and my housemate received a package of treasured European goods in the post, he forestalled his natural generosity when it came to the Lindt bars, so offended did he think he'd be at the sight of my applying my boorish technique to such fine chocolate. But I've grown up since then.
Anyway, this is called
ON HOW THE CHOCOLATE THING IS IN THESE GENES
Tramp was the stooge, Tramp was the patsy,
sorry victim of her reputation.
We believed what we were told, we
joined in the bitch's vilification
Each Christmas, after all, we saw her
snaffling the edible tree decorations -
(maybe the sight was sewn all along,
as alternative to this aberration)
The trap was laid, the game afoot
when Easter morning brought its reward.
"Go out with your aunt this afternoon"
that plotting villain reassured
us full of trust (what can a child e'er
do but trust in maternal concern),
on a day ripe with anticipation
for the oval treats of our return.
But hark! the tale, such a tale, unfolds
"This wretched mutt, rapacious hound,
dear boy, has guzzled what was yours"
O Weasel Words! Black lies abound!
And so it was, and so it remained
until years, nay, even decades later
the meagrest creeping tardy guilt
finally fell on the perpetrator
when Tramp, poor Tramp, the slandered pet
no longer had bark nor larcenous bite,
that wicked woman, so-called parent
deigned then to put the story aright.
And so, poor Tramp, impulsive mongrel,
a thousand pardons from you I beg
that I ever doubted it was my mother
who stole and ate my Easter egg.
Candy - Ash
Cigarettes & Chocolate Milk - Rufus Wainwright
Candy Says - Velvet Underground
Chocolate - Snow Patrol
Some Candy Talking - Jesus and Mary Chain
Sugar, Sugar - Archies
Candy's Room - Bruce Springsteen
Sweets for my Sweet - CJ Lewis
Candyfloss - Wilco
Initially, this was going to be all songs about Candy, as there are certainly enough famous songs to have put that together, some of them excellent - of these ones, I love the Wilco song, which is a hidden track on 1998's rich masterpiece Summerteeth, and I think Candy's Room may be my favourite Springsteen song, so fast, exciting and unlike anything else in his considerable canon. More than just a word, Candy seems to be shorthand for a certain kind of mythical smalltown American girl, the lost innocence it implies making it perfect for James Lawrence Slattery aka Candy Darling, the Warhol starlet who is the subject of Candy Says and the cover star of Anthony & the Johnson's I am a Bird Now.
However, Candy, though clearly a very evocative word, doesn't really feature in my own vocabulary, so I wouldn't have really known where to go with it. We don't really use the word "candy" in the UK apart from as part of Candyfloss, which they call Cotton Candy in the US, and rather tremendously, Fairy floss in Australia. Fairy floss ... not something that men eat.
On which point, I often think that I'd be significantly more manly if my main indulgences, even now, were in cigarettes and alcohol rather than the ridiculous amounts of chocolate I can still get through. O sure, I've dabbled, the occasional glass of shandy, the occasional addiction to nicotine, but while one can be taken seriously in conversation talking about the trials of oversmoking and overdrinking, overdosing on Dairy Milk implies both immaturity and effeminacy in one fell swoop.
Images of Dawn French and bulging, guilty cheeks spring to mind, which I don't think is my chocolate-eating style; having said that, I remember when I was in Kenya, and my housemate received a package of treasured European goods in the post, he forestalled his natural generosity when it came to the Lindt bars, so offended did he think he'd be at the sight of my applying my boorish technique to such fine chocolate. But I've grown up since then.
Anyway, this is called
ON HOW THE CHOCOLATE THING IS IN THESE GENES
Tramp was the stooge, Tramp was the patsy,
sorry victim of her reputation.
We believed what we were told, we
joined in the bitch's vilification
Each Christmas, after all, we saw her
snaffling the edible tree decorations -
(maybe the sight was sewn all along,
as alternative to this aberration)
The trap was laid, the game afoot
when Easter morning brought its reward.
"Go out with your aunt this afternoon"
that plotting villain reassured
us full of trust (what can a child e'er
do but trust in maternal concern),
on a day ripe with anticipation
for the oval treats of our return.
But hark! the tale, such a tale, unfolds
"This wretched mutt, rapacious hound,
dear boy, has guzzled what was yours"
O Weasel Words! Black lies abound!
And so it was, and so it remained
until years, nay, even decades later
the meagrest creeping tardy guilt
finally fell on the perpetrator
when Tramp, poor Tramp, the slandered pet
no longer had bark nor larcenous bite,
that wicked woman, so-called parent
deigned then to put the story aright.
And so, poor Tramp, impulsive mongrel,
a thousand pardons from you I beg
that I ever doubted it was my mother
who stole and ate my Easter egg.
Sunday, 7 June 2009
35. 12 Songs for the Passing of the Year
This is a good one. John actually sent me such a compilation though it was specifically for the winter months in Scotland, but this is along those lines ...
January - Pilot
Blue Valentines - Tom Waits
Easter Parade - Emmy the Great
April Fools - Rufus Wainwright
May Day - Elvis Perkins
June Evenings - Air France
4th July, Asbury Park - Bruce Springsteen
August - Rilo Kiley
September Gurls - Big Star
Halloweenhead - Ryan Adams
Mr November - The National
Everyday is Christmas - The Webb Brothers
While writing the list, of course, fresh ideas kept on presenting themselves, so here, you lucky people, is a bonus tape, since it's been long since I last posted something
New Year's Day - U2
Ash Wednesday - Elvis Perkins
Good Friday - Elvis Perkins
April Skies - Jesus & Mary Chain
Bank Holiday - Blur
June Gloom - The Like
July, July - The Decemberists
A Summer Wasting - Belle and Sebastian
September - Ryan Adams & the Cardinals
Moondance - Van Morrison
Gone 'til November - Wyclef Jean
The Last Good Day of the Year - Cousteau
Really, I only included a second one because I couldn't face leaving off either Mr November or Gone 'til November (which manages to include the names of most of the other months in its lyric).
Mr November is a tremendous song, one of my favourites. Mr November is a term used in America to describe someone who really comes good when the heat is on, as the World Series would traditionally take place in November. It has even been co-opted in politics, with the presidential election taking place in November, and, in fact, The National offered this song to Obama to be used, and, I think, had their own t-shirts made up with Obama's face on them - something like that, anyway ...
Found it slightly tricky to come up with anything about the passing of the months of the year without resorting to cliche, I think it would be easier to focus on a specific month. When I used to write lists on my facebook page, I used to revel in their banality (eg 10 Favourite London Tube Lines) so perhaps I can be gleefully inane now and put the months of the year in order of preference. (from worst to best)
February
October
January
November
March
September
August
December
April
July
May
June
My experience of facebook statuses is that, while Wildean wit and noteworthy recollection goes unremarked upon, the above is the kind of level of expression which will get a stream of comments, so I will, to save you the trouble, provide my own facebook-esque response to this:
Bobby McGee: HaHa
Jimbob McGinty: I hate February
Taggart: Spot on, mate. Love June!!!?!!
Errol Waldhammer: You're a dick
Ernest Santangelo: I agree with you about April, but not about December
Bobby McGee: How about a list of favourite weeks of the year? That would be AWESOME!!
Vance Johnson III: Who do you think you are? Only God can judge the months of the year...
That kind of thing ...
So, anyway, in terms of the year and it's start and placing our own narrative structure upon it, I thought this
On a tube train, faking a hangover,
head in clean hands ducking fierce friendliness
we start the year as we mean to go on -
the memory of other people's mixtapes
fading not quite quickly enough to stop
ourselves (dosed up on irony or not)
from breaking it down, glibly listing it up:
How did that month go? What will this year have,
season for fresh season, that may just save
next New Year's Day from quiet desperation?
January - Pilot
Blue Valentines - Tom Waits
Easter Parade - Emmy the Great
April Fools - Rufus Wainwright
May Day - Elvis Perkins
June Evenings - Air France
4th July, Asbury Park - Bruce Springsteen
August - Rilo Kiley
September Gurls - Big Star
Halloweenhead - Ryan Adams
Mr November - The National
Everyday is Christmas - The Webb Brothers
While writing the list, of course, fresh ideas kept on presenting themselves, so here, you lucky people, is a bonus tape, since it's been long since I last posted something
New Year's Day - U2
Ash Wednesday - Elvis Perkins
Good Friday - Elvis Perkins
April Skies - Jesus & Mary Chain
Bank Holiday - Blur
June Gloom - The Like
July, July - The Decemberists
A Summer Wasting - Belle and Sebastian
September - Ryan Adams & the Cardinals
Moondance - Van Morrison
Gone 'til November - Wyclef Jean
The Last Good Day of the Year - Cousteau
Really, I only included a second one because I couldn't face leaving off either Mr November or Gone 'til November (which manages to include the names of most of the other months in its lyric).
Mr November is a tremendous song, one of my favourites. Mr November is a term used in America to describe someone who really comes good when the heat is on, as the World Series would traditionally take place in November. It has even been co-opted in politics, with the presidential election taking place in November, and, in fact, The National offered this song to Obama to be used, and, I think, had their own t-shirts made up with Obama's face on them - something like that, anyway ...
Found it slightly tricky to come up with anything about the passing of the months of the year without resorting to cliche, I think it would be easier to focus on a specific month. When I used to write lists on my facebook page, I used to revel in their banality (eg 10 Favourite London Tube Lines) so perhaps I can be gleefully inane now and put the months of the year in order of preference. (from worst to best)
February
October
January
November
March
September
August
December
April
July
May
June
My experience of facebook statuses is that, while Wildean wit and noteworthy recollection goes unremarked upon, the above is the kind of level of expression which will get a stream of comments, so I will, to save you the trouble, provide my own facebook-esque response to this:
Bobby McGee: HaHa
Jimbob McGinty: I hate February
Taggart: Spot on, mate. Love June!!!?!!
Errol Waldhammer: You're a dick
Ernest Santangelo: I agree with you about April, but not about December
Bobby McGee: How about a list of favourite weeks of the year? That would be AWESOME!!
Vance Johnson III: Who do you think you are? Only God can judge the months of the year...
That kind of thing ...
So, anyway, in terms of the year and it's start and placing our own narrative structure upon it, I thought this
On a tube train, faking a hangover,
head in clean hands ducking fierce friendliness
we start the year as we mean to go on -
the memory of other people's mixtapes
fading not quite quickly enough to stop
ourselves (dosed up on irony or not)
from breaking it down, glibly listing it up:
How did that month go? What will this year have,
season for fresh season, that may just save
next New Year's Day from quiet desperation?
Saturday, 23 May 2009
34. 10 Songs by the Super Furry Animals ...
... which I have, at some point, considered the greatest, most uplifting song in the world
Northern Lites
She's Got Spies
Calimero
Ice Hockey Hair
Juxtaposed with U
The Man Don't Give a Fuck
Fire in My Heart
Turning Tide
Helium Hearts
Juxtaposed with U
These wouldn't necessarily be my favourite Furries songs at this point - there are so many contenders - but these are the ones which have, at some point, been out and ahead, with the biggest chorus, the best tune, the most thrill.
My current favourite is Ice Hockey Hair - I've had a long journey with Ice Hockey Hair. It's about 10 years since it came out, and I always liked it, but it's taken me till the last couple of years to appreciate its full grandeur. I daren't even describe the whys and hows of my love for it, but those that are unfamiliar with the point 4 minutes and 10 seconds in where they first sing "Now that you're here, tell me you're a non-believer" are, for me, lucky that they still have one of life's greatest moments still ahead of them.
I read a very good review of the Furries' latest album recently, in The Word I think, where the writer really got to grips with the Furries and why they weren't the biggest band in Britain and why, though he loved so many of their songs, they weren't his favourite band. A point he concluded with was that, unlike the truly great bands, none of these songs really "meant" anything. This is where the two of us deviated. It's the same kind of point I've heard when someone says the Coen Brothers' films don't "mean" anything. To me, these works mean as much as anything can possibly mean, and if you're looking for greater meaning and think you've found it elsewhere, you've found something untrue, a feeling, a "depth" that will pass, a remedy that will be exposed as placebo (cue joke about Placebo). The Furries and the Coens, they work on the surface, they disavow earnestness, they make jokes, allusions to others and themselves, they dazzle, they can be accused of putting virtuosity for its own sake to the forefront, but for me, listening and watching, if the question is asked "Is this all there is?" the answer is Yes - humour, warmth, brilliance, hard work, humanity, eclecticism, self-awareness. This is all there is.
They are, I think, the best British band ever. I'd be hard-pressed to explain why they're better than the Beatles, I admit, and it would be even more pseudish than I'm already being to try.
Here we go for further grand statements and wanton connections. The great cultural triumvirate of modern Britain are three Welshmen of the left. Hoho, not Neil Kinnock, Nye Bevin, Rhodri Morgan. Hoho.
Gruff Rhys, Ryan Giggs, Joe Calzaghe (I think if you did a study of this blog you would find the most used word would be Giggs - how could it be any other way, really?).
These have obviously all been favourites of mine for a long time, but the similarites and links really are striking. All, like I say, left-sided (Gruff plays guitar left-handed, Giggs obviously, and Calzaghe's a southpaw), all between 35 and 40, all started their careers in the early/mid 90s and have produced consistent, undefeated quality since, with very little of the tales of darkness and trauma which usually go hand in hand with legendary status in their respective fields.
Consequently, it has become customary to write them all off as in some way lightweight, possessed of excellence but not the nebulous quality that is "greatness". Nebulous as Greatness is, in my head I have repositioned it (or given it its rightful position) exactly in accordance with this three's achievements. For me, Giggs IS the greatest footballer of the last 20 years, Calzaghe IS the greatest P4P fighter of his age, and as I said earlier, the Furries are the greatest British band of all, in as much as more obvious contenders for each post, say Zidane/Matthaus, Mayweather/Jones Jr, Beatles/Stones let themselves down by not being more like Giggs, Calzaghe, Rhys. Well, having said that, I guess even by the standards of Giggs, maybe Paolo Maldini outGiggses Giggs. Maybe ...
They have all been accused of having slumps, going out of form, not living up to early form, though what they were producing would stil have been deemed high class if produced by others. Calzaghe never lost as a pro, began as a thrilling youngster, became a World Champion with a superb win over Chris Eubank, then continued to win, year after year. However, some of these wins were underwhelming, not against the highest level of opposition, and, like Giggs, he was castigated for not seeking out fresh challenges overseas, for not performing at the highest level. (by the way, I'll mainly talk about Giggs and Calzaghe now, just cos it's easier to draw direct comparisons across sports, but similar lines can be drawn in how the Furries have performed/been viewed) Both, in these down times, were hampered by persistent injuries to their greatest asset which no one gave much sympathy or consideration for, Calzaghe repeatedly breaking bones in his left hand, Giggs suffering persistent hamstrings strains which mean he thinks he has not run absolutely flat-out since his early 20s. But they were still producing the goods, Calzaghe churning out the wins, often with excellent underrated performances (Richie Woodhall, Omar Sheika, Byron Mitchell), Giggsy still helping Man U to title after title.
Then, for both, late on in their career, vindication and the kind of universal acclaim they had deserved all along, Calzaghe with his wins over Lacy, Kessler, Hopkins, Jones, Giggs with his breaking of Charlton's record, goal on the last day of the 2008 season, and PFA Player of the Year award for 2009.
When Giggs collected that award, who was there to present it to him but a happily drunken Calzaghe - a great moment. They went for the cliche of soundtracking it with a Welsh Male Voice Choir singing Land of my Fathers. How tremendous it would have been if they'd got in the Furries to play, I don't know, The Undefeated, or Rings Around the World (changing it to Running rings around the world - see what I've done there).
So, Giggs and Calzaghe have had their Rocky moment, their grand vindication, and you mark my word it will happen for the Furries too, whether it be the Mercury Prize, a crossover Number 1 single, whatever. As I once wrote and will happily have as my epitaph as it says everything I want to justify my existence on this planet
I was right about Ryan Giggs
it's no surprise to me.
Northern Lites
She's Got Spies
Calimero
Ice Hockey Hair
Juxtaposed with U
The Man Don't Give a Fuck
Fire in My Heart
Turning Tide
Helium Hearts
Juxtaposed with U
These wouldn't necessarily be my favourite Furries songs at this point - there are so many contenders - but these are the ones which have, at some point, been out and ahead, with the biggest chorus, the best tune, the most thrill.
My current favourite is Ice Hockey Hair - I've had a long journey with Ice Hockey Hair. It's about 10 years since it came out, and I always liked it, but it's taken me till the last couple of years to appreciate its full grandeur. I daren't even describe the whys and hows of my love for it, but those that are unfamiliar with the point 4 minutes and 10 seconds in where they first sing "Now that you're here, tell me you're a non-believer" are, for me, lucky that they still have one of life's greatest moments still ahead of them.
I read a very good review of the Furries' latest album recently, in The Word I think, where the writer really got to grips with the Furries and why they weren't the biggest band in Britain and why, though he loved so many of their songs, they weren't his favourite band. A point he concluded with was that, unlike the truly great bands, none of these songs really "meant" anything. This is where the two of us deviated. It's the same kind of point I've heard when someone says the Coen Brothers' films don't "mean" anything. To me, these works mean as much as anything can possibly mean, and if you're looking for greater meaning and think you've found it elsewhere, you've found something untrue, a feeling, a "depth" that will pass, a remedy that will be exposed as placebo (cue joke about Placebo). The Furries and the Coens, they work on the surface, they disavow earnestness, they make jokes, allusions to others and themselves, they dazzle, they can be accused of putting virtuosity for its own sake to the forefront, but for me, listening and watching, if the question is asked "Is this all there is?" the answer is Yes - humour, warmth, brilliance, hard work, humanity, eclecticism, self-awareness. This is all there is.
They are, I think, the best British band ever. I'd be hard-pressed to explain why they're better than the Beatles, I admit, and it would be even more pseudish than I'm already being to try.
Here we go for further grand statements and wanton connections. The great cultural triumvirate of modern Britain are three Welshmen of the left. Hoho, not Neil Kinnock, Nye Bevin, Rhodri Morgan. Hoho.
Gruff Rhys, Ryan Giggs, Joe Calzaghe (I think if you did a study of this blog you would find the most used word would be Giggs - how could it be any other way, really?).
These have obviously all been favourites of mine for a long time, but the similarites and links really are striking. All, like I say, left-sided (Gruff plays guitar left-handed, Giggs obviously, and Calzaghe's a southpaw), all between 35 and 40, all started their careers in the early/mid 90s and have produced consistent, undefeated quality since, with very little of the tales of darkness and trauma which usually go hand in hand with legendary status in their respective fields.
Consequently, it has become customary to write them all off as in some way lightweight, possessed of excellence but not the nebulous quality that is "greatness". Nebulous as Greatness is, in my head I have repositioned it (or given it its rightful position) exactly in accordance with this three's achievements. For me, Giggs IS the greatest footballer of the last 20 years, Calzaghe IS the greatest P4P fighter of his age, and as I said earlier, the Furries are the greatest British band of all, in as much as more obvious contenders for each post, say Zidane/Matthaus, Mayweather/Jones Jr, Beatles/Stones let themselves down by not being more like Giggs, Calzaghe, Rhys. Well, having said that, I guess even by the standards of Giggs, maybe Paolo Maldini outGiggses Giggs. Maybe ...
They have all been accused of having slumps, going out of form, not living up to early form, though what they were producing would stil have been deemed high class if produced by others. Calzaghe never lost as a pro, began as a thrilling youngster, became a World Champion with a superb win over Chris Eubank, then continued to win, year after year. However, some of these wins were underwhelming, not against the highest level of opposition, and, like Giggs, he was castigated for not seeking out fresh challenges overseas, for not performing at the highest level. (by the way, I'll mainly talk about Giggs and Calzaghe now, just cos it's easier to draw direct comparisons across sports, but similar lines can be drawn in how the Furries have performed/been viewed) Both, in these down times, were hampered by persistent injuries to their greatest asset which no one gave much sympathy or consideration for, Calzaghe repeatedly breaking bones in his left hand, Giggs suffering persistent hamstrings strains which mean he thinks he has not run absolutely flat-out since his early 20s. But they were still producing the goods, Calzaghe churning out the wins, often with excellent underrated performances (Richie Woodhall, Omar Sheika, Byron Mitchell), Giggsy still helping Man U to title after title.
Then, for both, late on in their career, vindication and the kind of universal acclaim they had deserved all along, Calzaghe with his wins over Lacy, Kessler, Hopkins, Jones, Giggs with his breaking of Charlton's record, goal on the last day of the 2008 season, and PFA Player of the Year award for 2009.
When Giggs collected that award, who was there to present it to him but a happily drunken Calzaghe - a great moment. They went for the cliche of soundtracking it with a Welsh Male Voice Choir singing Land of my Fathers. How tremendous it would have been if they'd got in the Furries to play, I don't know, The Undefeated, or Rings Around the World (changing it to Running rings around the world - see what I've done there).
So, Giggs and Calzaghe have had their Rocky moment, their grand vindication, and you mark my word it will happen for the Furries too, whether it be the Mercury Prize, a crossover Number 1 single, whatever. As I once wrote and will happily have as my epitaph as it says everything I want to justify my existence on this planet
I was right about Ryan Giggs
it's no surprise to me.
Friday, 22 May 2009
33. 10 Songs about Festivals/Camping/Outdoor Gigs
Woodstock - Joni Mitchell
Chillout Tent - The Hold Steady
It Ended on an Oily Stage - British Sea Power
Coma Girl - Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros
Sorted for Es and Whizz - Pulp
Camping Next to Water - Badly Drawn Boy
All Tomorrow's Parties - The Velvet Underground
Glastonbury Song - The Waterboys
Festival - Sigur Ros
Memories of a Free Festival - David Bowie
Well, I must say, it has taken an extraordinary effort to muster these ten, and I should be heavily commended for it. It would not have been acceptable to just go for "festival favourites" or songs associated with festival performances, like, say, Jimi Hendrix doing The Star-Spangled Banner. Obviously the Badly Drawn Boy is just about camping, so that's not the best, and the Velvet Underground one inspired a future festival, but I allowed myself that. There was also a song I found on iTunes called Glastonbury by Scouting for Girls. It won't surprise those familiar with that band's work that, from the 30 second listen I gave it, it was simply the worst song ever. Quite impressively, Scouting for Girls have released 6 of the worst 10 songs ever. They are the worst band ever. Ever.
I've had the most tremendous fun at festivals. I don't think there's anything terribly insightful I have to say about them beyond that. The worst thing that happened to me at a festival was when I was very drunk at Benicassim watching Oasis, getting to the end of my 5th litre of Heineken - yes, I know, everything about this screams class, Brit abroad watching Oasis drinking Heineken by the litre -and my chums had decided to go watch something cooler - even Oasis John - but I was sticking it out because, you know, it's Oasis, they're going to play Live Forever and things, but this 5th litre container was just all unpleasantness by the end, so I thought I'd pour out the dregs at the bottom. So i bent down and as gently as i could poured them on the ground. Benicassim isn't, like most festivals, on soft receptive grass, but on hard Spanish tarmac, so bouncing and splashing there was. "Eurgh, what's that? Are you taking a piss?" said the angry English woman beside me. "This guy's pissing on the ground" "Are you pissing on the ground, mate? That's disgusting" "I suppose these are the kinds of animals you get watching Oasis" etc I was the Benicassim One, accused of a crime i didn't commit. I didn't at the time have the oratorial skills to depend myself beyond "I didn't. No, I really didn't" so it is sad for these people that they will go to their grave with one memory and one memory alone of me. I bet you're wondering now if I'm protesting too much and I actually did what I was accused of, and no I didn't. I'm no Gregor Wallace.
Anyhoo, magnificent memories outnumber this 100 to 1, come rain, come extreme heat, obscene hangover, kids keeping you up all night playing their own songs, booming Spanish techno till 10 in the morning, Geoff Hoon - you've got to love all that stuff.
I guess this covers the aftermath of festivals in various ways
Thanks given all round for being so candid
Tents were zipped up and the fire snuffed out
leaving the throng safe with just enough doubt
that they were wise to've been so open-handed
The sun's coming on from the hilltop beyond
and we will learn to believe again.
Hip dim wits hypnotised by fake Irish folk
songs delivered with the bare cheek of a charmer
slipping his slick darts through cheap, weak armour
of campfire counsellors in on all but the joke
but the sun's coming over the hilltop beyond
and you will learn to think again.
If I could even come near to a natural high
I wouldn't look so down on your docile wanders
into sweet hereafters and mild blue yonders
that constant conscious has forced me pass by
But the sun's coming over the hilltop beyond
and you will learn to breathe again.
Ropes tripped kick in fresh paranoid tricks
of numbers and figures not for the fitting,
of truths about freedom too bleak for admitting
broken hopes, shattered schemes little can fix
but the sun's coming over the hilltop beyond
and I will learn to compute again.
Shit, it always seem so gloomy when you read it back, don't it? Not intended that way. It's really all about having a hangover. Perhaps I'll call it 'The Hangover'
Chillout Tent - The Hold Steady
It Ended on an Oily Stage - British Sea Power
Coma Girl - Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros
Sorted for Es and Whizz - Pulp
Camping Next to Water - Badly Drawn Boy
All Tomorrow's Parties - The Velvet Underground
Glastonbury Song - The Waterboys
Festival - Sigur Ros
Memories of a Free Festival - David Bowie
Well, I must say, it has taken an extraordinary effort to muster these ten, and I should be heavily commended for it. It would not have been acceptable to just go for "festival favourites" or songs associated with festival performances, like, say, Jimi Hendrix doing The Star-Spangled Banner. Obviously the Badly Drawn Boy is just about camping, so that's not the best, and the Velvet Underground one inspired a future festival, but I allowed myself that. There was also a song I found on iTunes called Glastonbury by Scouting for Girls. It won't surprise those familiar with that band's work that, from the 30 second listen I gave it, it was simply the worst song ever. Quite impressively, Scouting for Girls have released 6 of the worst 10 songs ever. They are the worst band ever. Ever.
I've had the most tremendous fun at festivals. I don't think there's anything terribly insightful I have to say about them beyond that. The worst thing that happened to me at a festival was when I was very drunk at Benicassim watching Oasis, getting to the end of my 5th litre of Heineken - yes, I know, everything about this screams class, Brit abroad watching Oasis drinking Heineken by the litre -and my chums had decided to go watch something cooler - even Oasis John - but I was sticking it out because, you know, it's Oasis, they're going to play Live Forever and things, but this 5th litre container was just all unpleasantness by the end, so I thought I'd pour out the dregs at the bottom. So i bent down and as gently as i could poured them on the ground. Benicassim isn't, like most festivals, on soft receptive grass, but on hard Spanish tarmac, so bouncing and splashing there was. "Eurgh, what's that? Are you taking a piss?" said the angry English woman beside me. "This guy's pissing on the ground" "Are you pissing on the ground, mate? That's disgusting" "I suppose these are the kinds of animals you get watching Oasis" etc I was the Benicassim One, accused of a crime i didn't commit. I didn't at the time have the oratorial skills to depend myself beyond "I didn't. No, I really didn't" so it is sad for these people that they will go to their grave with one memory and one memory alone of me. I bet you're wondering now if I'm protesting too much and I actually did what I was accused of, and no I didn't. I'm no Gregor Wallace.
Anyhoo, magnificent memories outnumber this 100 to 1, come rain, come extreme heat, obscene hangover, kids keeping you up all night playing their own songs, booming Spanish techno till 10 in the morning, Geoff Hoon - you've got to love all that stuff.
I guess this covers the aftermath of festivals in various ways
Thanks given all round for being so candid
Tents were zipped up and the fire snuffed out
leaving the throng safe with just enough doubt
that they were wise to've been so open-handed
The sun's coming on from the hilltop beyond
and we will learn to believe again.
Hip dim wits hypnotised by fake Irish folk
songs delivered with the bare cheek of a charmer
slipping his slick darts through cheap, weak armour
of campfire counsellors in on all but the joke
but the sun's coming over the hilltop beyond
and you will learn to think again.
If I could even come near to a natural high
I wouldn't look so down on your docile wanders
into sweet hereafters and mild blue yonders
that constant conscious has forced me pass by
But the sun's coming over the hilltop beyond
and you will learn to breathe again.
Ropes tripped kick in fresh paranoid tricks
of numbers and figures not for the fitting,
of truths about freedom too bleak for admitting
broken hopes, shattered schemes little can fix
but the sun's coming over the hilltop beyond
and I will learn to compute again.
Shit, it always seem so gloomy when you read it back, don't it? Not intended that way. It's really all about having a hangover. Perhaps I'll call it 'The Hangover'
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)