Trellick Tower - Emmy the Great
This is not only one of my favourite songs of the last decade, but also one I consider a truly great song.
It's on Emmy the Great's second studio album, from 2011, called 'Virtue'. The album generally expanded the sonic palette from her debut album 'First Love' but this song stands out for its spare simplicity.
The melody is simple, lilting and repetitive, shifting subtly every now and then to great effect.
Though biographical knowledge shouldn't really matter and might often be deemed intrusive, in this case it was well known, and is helpful to know, that Emmy the Great wrote the song about a former fiance who had broken off the relationship in order to pursue the work of God (as a missionary, I think, though perhaps that's padding).
The song is an elegy for the relationship. If you didn't know the back story you might reasonably think it is about the death (even religion-inspired suicide) of a loved one. It mourns.
Trellick Tower, in case you don't know, is that beautifully ugly towerblock that dominates the West London skyline, the one with the lift shaft at the end attached only by occasional walkways. It was designed by Erno Goldfinger, and is a thing one is never sure whether to love or hate.
I'd guess 100s of 1000s of people have some kind of sentimental attachment to it, some tale in which its shadow looms. I think of it in terms of Sundays as a child, my father picking us up from Ealing and driving us that short stretch of the A40 into his flat off the Edgware Road. Trellick Tower is visible pretty much the length of the journey. I'd always stare at it as we drove past, measuring the journey by our angle to it. Weird and wonderful.
Trellick rhymes with Relic. That's serendipitous for this song. The song is grounded in an urban reality but also makes skilled and learned use of Christian imagery. Perhaps that's one of the reasons I love it. I sometimes think the reason I had some hope that there was something for me in Coldplay was Chris Martin's lyrics often reminding me of the Book of Common Prayer or Hymns Ancient and Modern, that beige and comforting version of Christianity which provided some succour in my teenage years.
But Emmy the Great does it 50 times better. This is a deeper, more passionate and spiritual understanding of the lure of faith. There is one line in particular which I think is a little masterpiece. Funny, as is sometimes the case, that, here 2 minutes 9 seconds through the 10th track on an album from 2011 few people bought, is a line of an insight and simple beauty I've rarely heard. She sings "I think relics ache for when the saint had breath, they miss the thing that changed them".
Perhaps the line has a particular resonance for me. I always enjoyed learning about relics when I studied Medieval History - these random items supposed imbued with holiness, the way that a place could become a site of pilgrimage, of renown, by claiming to have a spoon which was once bent by St Frodo of Ithicum.
But, also, it's just a great line in a love song.
I remembered, as well, that one of my less appalling poems in my splenetic youth was some concise albeit melodramatic relic of a relic. I was but 20, I don't know how it stands now, but I minded it less than other things for a long time. I've edited just a couple of words nevertheless.
If i took a holy relic
in these clammy palms of mine
maybe i'd use it an ashtray
or maybe i'd drink cheap white wine
out of the sacred chalice,
maybe i would be that careless
with my brittle little soul,
maybe i'd use the ancient bowl
in which Christ washed disciples' feet
to vomit out a night's deceit.
Fun guy, i was ...
Sunday, 20 March 2016
Tuesday, 15 March 2016
March 1
There've been no posts on either blog for ages - I've been busy with work and other things, and to be honest I haven't got much interesting on my mind, nor listened to much new music or watched many new films.
But I like to keep it ticking over. I unwisely said a few months ago that I'd use the blog mainly as as vehicle for improving writing verse. Nonsense, of course. I've done neither for ages. But I have, at least, a couple of things I wrote a few months ago to keep the blog ticking over.
I had a go at writing some pessimistic polemic - there's nothing particularly new here but there is at least some ripe rage and I managed to stick closely to a slightly awkward rhyme scheme, so I'm happy enough with it.
But I like to keep it ticking over. I unwisely said a few months ago that I'd use the blog mainly as as vehicle for improving writing verse. Nonsense, of course. I've done neither for ages. But I have, at least, a couple of things I wrote a few months ago to keep the blog ticking over.
I had a go at writing some pessimistic polemic - there's nothing particularly new here but there is at least some ripe rage and I managed to stick closely to a slightly awkward rhyme scheme, so I'm happy enough with it.
Those goading right wing fight hawks, smuggened up
to rosy relish in
the puking bliss
of victory, doubled over and in bold
blue capital C condescension, kiss
their own worst features patriotically,
impatient for a victim kind enough to lay out cold
with one breathtaking sucker punch, a sleight of hand
which twists
the neck, attacks the brain and breaks the wrists.
The tricks they can resort to with no fear
Of nights disrupted by the pricks of cruel
Self-loathing range in subtlety, but serve
to spark new outrage without fail, and fool
The rump who rally round robotically
To claim the victim, rife with pride and high on nihilist
nerve,
A drain on good resources and a privileged pariah
Who has no business holding his chin higher.
The richest joke, they’ll tell us, while their knives
Carve out our eyes – 'we sold you our old traps
But you’d no clue how best to use them, nor,
Of course, the heart. You misread all our maps
And mimicked the dark trade pathetically.
There is nothing so amusing as a left-wing slack jaw
Trying to sing a hymn he can’t abide, his shoulders taut
At meekly spouting all he so long fought.'
Our tragedy is weakness as a sign
Of moral strength. The winner’s game’s employs
Such shameless disregard for history’s arc
From shadow men who leave it to the boys
To waste time speaking out prophetically
On hope and progress – luxuries for the corduroy
chattering class,
They spit, such elegantly brazen poisonous tirades
With gleeful privilege that never fades.
Saturday, 16 January 2016
101 (or so) Favourite Films
I've never (perhaps surprisingly!) made a list of my favourite films before, nor thought I'd be able to. Not being a film scholar, I don't necessarily rewatch and rewatch films, and I thought that I wouldn't be able to differentiate sufficiently between all the films I'd seen just once and enjoyed.
First of all, when it comes to films, I'm thankfully not encumbered by any notion of being to look at things objectively, as I have the misfortune to think I can with pop music and sport.
This list will simply be my favourite films. There are many of what are considered by various sources the greatest films of all time that I haven't seen, and frankly my personal favourites don't usually conform to those high up in high-end film critics' lists anyway.
But, as I said, I still thought it would be impossible to decide on my favourites. I've watched, I think, by most standards, a lot of films - I used to watch a lot on TV (all those bored university evenings ...) and now I think I go to the cinema more than most folk. And I usually enjoy the films I see, probably because I'm, by now, pretty tuned into what I'm going to like at the cinema, and, when at home, I'm too restless and there's too much good sport on TV to leave myself sitting in front of some average film I'm not really enjoying for very long.
So how to decide between so many films I enjoy but often don't revisit?
Still, I thought, this week, with something of an impasse in musical things to write about (which aren't just "what David Bowie album should I listen to now" ... favourite Bowie in film .. Bandslam or Last Temptation of Christ... though i did watch Absolute Beginners before I really knew who he was), I'd give it a go, and it actually came surprisingly easy. As I parsed the various lists of films one might find online to remind myself of everything I'd seen, my agenda was simply whether the title of the film gave me a certain glow or made me remember the thrill of it, or whether I realised I had little personal attachment.
Sometimes, the instinctive responses were surprising. The Apartment, Some Like It Hot, All About Eve, It's a Wonderful Life, The Godfather - highly acclaimed and beloved films which I definitely appreciated and enjoyed, but I just didn't feel a personal attachment too. Also, I was quite sure I was a big Woody Allen fan, but nothing made it in.
It's not even necessarily about films I've seen more often - I've seen the Godfathers a few times each, I think they're great, but, I don't think I've ever, as such, been moved by them.
Being "moved" can mean various things, of course - shocked, horrified, thrilled amongst them. If a film gave me a strong enough response of some sort, made a lasting impression from one or more viewings, it might make the list.
The list, of course, reflects the films I grew up with and corresponding memories. I'm definitely less of an active historian when it comes to film than some other things, but the other side of that is that I simply prefer modern films to older ones quite often. Powell and Pressburger may be Martin Scorsese's favourites, and I bow to him in every way, but, though I watched several of their most acclaimed films, I'd be lying if I said anything but 'A Matter of Life and Death' came near to being a favourite.
I do just prefer the way films have been made over the last 40-50 years, for the most part. I'm never one to believe in a past "golden age" when it comes to anything, be it music, sport, film, society, it's just the human condition to think there was.
I think the fact that I'm a sucker for slightly (but not too) quirky somewhat indieish films with somewhat indieish soundtracks will become fairly obvious. There are even one or two within that subgenre which are a touch drossy, but hey, I've been more honest than I might have been. I didn't have to include 'Definitely Maybe' starring Ryan Reynolds when I have also seen and enjoyed 'Citizen Kane' and 'Vertigo', but it felt like the right thing to do.
Of course, it's perfectly possible, in fact, it's definite, that I've forgotten loads. I haven't been keeping a record of all the films I've ever seen, you'll be shocked to hear (well, I did start doing that a couple of years ago actually) and through I've scanned as many lists of likely suspects as I could in the time allowed, there's no way I won't have forgotten a few films which I loved at the time and would still love now. So be it.
The numbering is arbitrary to an extent - I know 'The Big Lebowski' is my favourite film, beyond that, things are broadly in chunks.
And at the bottom, the natural cut-off was actually about 120 where I stopped thinking "I love that film and it's mine all mine", so it seemed pointless to cut it off too soon.
There's a good chance I'll look at some parts of this list with some bafflement in a few months' time. Still, a list's a list ...
First of all, when it comes to films, I'm thankfully not encumbered by any notion of being to look at things objectively, as I have the misfortune to think I can with pop music and sport.
This list will simply be my favourite films. There are many of what are considered by various sources the greatest films of all time that I haven't seen, and frankly my personal favourites don't usually conform to those high up in high-end film critics' lists anyway.
But, as I said, I still thought it would be impossible to decide on my favourites. I've watched, I think, by most standards, a lot of films - I used to watch a lot on TV (all those bored university evenings ...) and now I think I go to the cinema more than most folk. And I usually enjoy the films I see, probably because I'm, by now, pretty tuned into what I'm going to like at the cinema, and, when at home, I'm too restless and there's too much good sport on TV to leave myself sitting in front of some average film I'm not really enjoying for very long.
So how to decide between so many films I enjoy but often don't revisit?
Still, I thought, this week, with something of an impasse in musical things to write about (which aren't just "what David Bowie album should I listen to now" ... favourite Bowie in film .. Bandslam or Last Temptation of Christ... though i did watch Absolute Beginners before I really knew who he was), I'd give it a go, and it actually came surprisingly easy. As I parsed the various lists of films one might find online to remind myself of everything I'd seen, my agenda was simply whether the title of the film gave me a certain glow or made me remember the thrill of it, or whether I realised I had little personal attachment.
Sometimes, the instinctive responses were surprising. The Apartment, Some Like It Hot, All About Eve, It's a Wonderful Life, The Godfather - highly acclaimed and beloved films which I definitely appreciated and enjoyed, but I just didn't feel a personal attachment too. Also, I was quite sure I was a big Woody Allen fan, but nothing made it in.
It's not even necessarily about films I've seen more often - I've seen the Godfathers a few times each, I think they're great, but, I don't think I've ever, as such, been moved by them.
Being "moved" can mean various things, of course - shocked, horrified, thrilled amongst them. If a film gave me a strong enough response of some sort, made a lasting impression from one or more viewings, it might make the list.
The list, of course, reflects the films I grew up with and corresponding memories. I'm definitely less of an active historian when it comes to film than some other things, but the other side of that is that I simply prefer modern films to older ones quite often. Powell and Pressburger may be Martin Scorsese's favourites, and I bow to him in every way, but, though I watched several of their most acclaimed films, I'd be lying if I said anything but 'A Matter of Life and Death' came near to being a favourite.
I do just prefer the way films have been made over the last 40-50 years, for the most part. I'm never one to believe in a past "golden age" when it comes to anything, be it music, sport, film, society, it's just the human condition to think there was.
I think the fact that I'm a sucker for slightly (but not too) quirky somewhat indieish films with somewhat indieish soundtracks will become fairly obvious. There are even one or two within that subgenre which are a touch drossy, but hey, I've been more honest than I might have been. I didn't have to include 'Definitely Maybe' starring Ryan Reynolds when I have also seen and enjoyed 'Citizen Kane' and 'Vertigo', but it felt like the right thing to do.
Of course, it's perfectly possible, in fact, it's definite, that I've forgotten loads. I haven't been keeping a record of all the films I've ever seen, you'll be shocked to hear (well, I did start doing that a couple of years ago actually) and through I've scanned as many lists of likely suspects as I could in the time allowed, there's no way I won't have forgotten a few films which I loved at the time and would still love now. So be it.
The numbering is arbitrary to an extent - I know 'The Big Lebowski' is my favourite film, beyond that, things are broadly in chunks.
And at the bottom, the natural cut-off was actually about 120 where I stopped thinking "I love that film and it's mine all mine", so it seemed pointless to cut it off too soon.
There's a good chance I'll look at some parts of this list with some bafflement in a few months' time. Still, a list's a list ...
1 The
Big Lebowski
2 Mean
Streets
3 Die
Hard
4 Short
Cuts
5 Adventureland
6 Star
Wars
7 Saturday
Night Fever
8 Klute
9 The
Deer Hunter
10 The
Commitments
11 Don't
Look Back (doc)
12 Mary
Poppins
13 The
Maltese Falcon
14 Before
Sunrise/Sunset/Midnight (I'm taking it as one film if that's ok)
15 Grosse
Point Blank
16 The
Graduate
17 Local
Hero
18 Jaws
19 The
Wizard of Oz
20 United
93
21 Memento
22 The
Usual Suspects
23 Rear
Window
24 Role
Models
25 Donnie
Darko
26 Sideways
27 Trading
Places
28 The
Outlaw Josey Wales
29 Bringing
Up Baby
30 Cool
Hand Luke
31 Doctor
Zhivago
32 An
Officer and a Gentleman
33 On
the Waterfront
34 if
...
35 Taxi
Driver
36 The
Grand Budapest Hotel
37 LA
Confidential
38 Dazed
and Confused
39 Dirty
Dancing
40 Trainspotting
41 The Fellowship
of the Ring
42 Rust
and Bone
43 The
Royal Tenenbaums
44 The
Last Waltz
45 Kes
46 Pulp
Fiction
47 The
Social Network
48 Four
Weddings and a Funeral
49 The
Jungle Book
50 The
Wicker Man
51 High
Fidelity
52 Empire
of the Sun
53 Brick
54 Inside
Llewyn Davis
55 Oliver!
56 Dead
Poet's Society
57 Chariots
of Fire
58 Gone
Baby Gone
59 The
Theory of Everything
60 The
Lavender Hill Mob
61 Top
Secret
62 Con
Air
63 One
Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
64 Shadow
of a Doubt
65 Big
66 Leaving
Las Vegas
67 Austin
Powers: International Man of Mystery
68 Scott
Pilgrim vs the World
69 The White
Ribbon
70 Boyhood
71 The
Sting
72 Badlands
73 The
Terminator
74 Back
to the Future
75 The
Hustler
76 Rio
Bravo
77 Pride
78 Brokeback
Mountain
79 The
Secret in their Eyes
80 Oldboy
81 Definitely,
Maybe
82 Y
Tu Mama Tambien
83 The
Birds
84 The
Railway Children
85 Gattaca
86 Cyrano
de Bergerac
87 Cloverfield
88 Say
Anything
89 Parenthood
90 I've
Loved You So Long
91 The
Truman Show
92 Burn
After Reading
93 Hidden
94 Philomena
95 Two
Days and One Night
96 Midnight
Run
97 Adaptation
98 Jackie
Brown
99 Pan's
Labyrinth
100 Almost
Famous
101 Me
and You and Everyone We Know
102 School
of Rock
103 Raging
Bull
104 The
Remains of the Day
105 No
Way Out
106 Casablanca
107 The
Verdict
108 The
Squid and the Whale
109 Unforgiven
110 The
Prophet
111 Bull
Durham
112 The
Boxer
113 Foxcatcher
114 Boyz
n the Hood
115 The
Ice Storm
116 High
Plains Drifter
117 The
Long Good Friday
118 The
101 Dalmatians
119 Singin'
in the Rain
120 Rebecca
121 Rocky IV
122 A Life Less Ordinary
123 Ghostbusters
oh, yes, and I also loved The Force Awakens, it's the most I've enjoyed the cinema for ages, so let's have that too.
121 Rocky IV
122 A Life Less Ordinary
123 Ghostbusters
oh, yes, and I also loved The Force Awakens, it's the most I've enjoyed the cinema for ages, so let's have that too.
Monday, 11 January 2016
The gift of sound and vision
My feelings are, of course, of sadness and awe at this genius to the end, but also of a personal, selfish relief. I feel like an errant relative fully reconciled to a loved one before they passed.
After loving 'Where Are We Now' when it first popped out almost exactly 3 years ago, I wasn't quite so enamoured of the album 'The Next Day', and wasn't sure I liked the sound of 'Blackstar' from initial descriptions. I'm so glad, therefore, that I didn't leave it a few days to give it a spin, but that I was listening to, and loving, the music of David Bowie in the days before he died, just as he planned.
'Blackstar' is a beautiful and dark album - 'Lazarus' and the last two song 'Dollar Days' and 'I Can't Give Everything Away' are powerfully emotive in the way that sometimes people said Bowie couldn't be.
Of course people were wrong about that. He wrote honestly about himself, about his displacement and alienation, it was just filtered through ideas and characters.
Yes, he was a soul singer, amongst the thousand other things he was.
I've listened to other people more than Bowie in the last 10 years or so, but he's always cropped up on my playlists or in my mind, thankfully.
Just a couple of weeks ago, a little drunk on the train home to Kent, I suddenly thought "I haven't listened to Young Americans properly for years". What a song! One of my early favourites, its relentless stream is even more up-my-street now than then.
What's my favourite Bowie? Freaky Bowie? Space Bowie? Electro Bowie? Berlin Bowie? Funky Bowie? No, I must admit, I'm a sucker for ballad Bowie. Absolute Beginners has never been cool but it's always been a beautiful song, like Heroes, Under Pressure and Lady Grinning Soul and Thursday's Child and Strangers When We Meet. And, of course, Life on Mars?
I still hold a certain moment of my life in the highest regard, a moment on a coach aged 17 descending from Delphi in Greece, listening to Life on Mars? on my walkman, a transcendent multimedia flood of beauty I'd never known before. That's what that song means to me.
I used to sing along in my room as a teenager to the Greatest Hits collection, Ziggy Stardust and Drive-in Saturday and Changes (though I avoided the octave leap in Starman). Such great tunes and glorious words.
I read two biographies - mesmerised by his intelligence. I think I've written before that it's him and Dylan who are the great minds - could have been or done anything with those minds, anything.
I'm wondering today if I bet on the wrong horse for posterity. Will Dylan's death mean so much to so many? Will his life cross into so many strata? Were his songs actually better? Bowie was clearly more than I understood him to be, more to more people, to more worlds. So many colours.
He did countless hilarious things - Peter and the Wolf, The Snowman, Little Drummer Boy, Twin Peaks, gave a song to this or that, a word to this or that. He was everywhere.
You know, we laugh sometimes at the cesspit of modern emotional splurge, but I truly believe all the tributes that came his way today, that's the most amazing thing. Madonna, Kanye West, McCartney, even David Cameron, You can't begrudge or disbelieve anyone's right to have been touched by him.
Anyway, one song, one picture at the bottom. Tricky choices ...
And, I think ...
Five Years
After loving 'Where Are We Now' when it first popped out almost exactly 3 years ago, I wasn't quite so enamoured of the album 'The Next Day', and wasn't sure I liked the sound of 'Blackstar' from initial descriptions. I'm so glad, therefore, that I didn't leave it a few days to give it a spin, but that I was listening to, and loving, the music of David Bowie in the days before he died, just as he planned.
'Blackstar' is a beautiful and dark album - 'Lazarus' and the last two song 'Dollar Days' and 'I Can't Give Everything Away' are powerfully emotive in the way that sometimes people said Bowie couldn't be.
Of course people were wrong about that. He wrote honestly about himself, about his displacement and alienation, it was just filtered through ideas and characters.
Yes, he was a soul singer, amongst the thousand other things he was.
I've listened to other people more than Bowie in the last 10 years or so, but he's always cropped up on my playlists or in my mind, thankfully.
Just a couple of weeks ago, a little drunk on the train home to Kent, I suddenly thought "I haven't listened to Young Americans properly for years". What a song! One of my early favourites, its relentless stream is even more up-my-street now than then.
What's my favourite Bowie? Freaky Bowie? Space Bowie? Electro Bowie? Berlin Bowie? Funky Bowie? No, I must admit, I'm a sucker for ballad Bowie. Absolute Beginners has never been cool but it's always been a beautiful song, like Heroes, Under Pressure and Lady Grinning Soul and Thursday's Child and Strangers When We Meet. And, of course, Life on Mars?
I still hold a certain moment of my life in the highest regard, a moment on a coach aged 17 descending from Delphi in Greece, listening to Life on Mars? on my walkman, a transcendent multimedia flood of beauty I'd never known before. That's what that song means to me.
I used to sing along in my room as a teenager to the Greatest Hits collection, Ziggy Stardust and Drive-in Saturday and Changes (though I avoided the octave leap in Starman). Such great tunes and glorious words.
I read two biographies - mesmerised by his intelligence. I think I've written before that it's him and Dylan who are the great minds - could have been or done anything with those minds, anything.
I'm wondering today if I bet on the wrong horse for posterity. Will Dylan's death mean so much to so many? Will his life cross into so many strata? Were his songs actually better? Bowie was clearly more than I understood him to be, more to more people, to more worlds. So many colours.
He did countless hilarious things - Peter and the Wolf, The Snowman, Little Drummer Boy, Twin Peaks, gave a song to this or that, a word to this or that. He was everywhere.
You know, we laugh sometimes at the cesspit of modern emotional splurge, but I truly believe all the tributes that came his way today, that's the most amazing thing. Madonna, Kanye West, McCartney, even David Cameron, You can't begrudge or disbelieve anyone's right to have been touched by him.
Anyway, one song, one picture at the bottom. Tricky choices ...
And, I think ...
Five Years
Saturday, 2 January 2016
The Name Game
For at least four decades, human beings have been giving themselves names. It's been incredible.
In some cultures, males and females have had different names.
But which are better? Let's find out.
MEN
Alexander - Charlotte Hatherley
Ben - Michael Jackson
Carey - Joni Mitchell
Daniel - Elton John
Ebenezer Goode - The Shamen
Frankie - Sister Sledge
Gabriel - Lamb
Henry Lee - Nick Cave and PJ Harvey
Ike's Mood - Isaac Hayes
Jimmy Mack - Martha and the Vandellas
Kevin Carter - Manic Street Preachers
Lenny - Supergrass
Maxwell's Silver Hammer - The Beatles
Making Plans for Nigel - XTC
Oliver's Army - Elvis Costello
Peter - Jamie T
The Mighty Quinn - Manfred Mann
Ricki Don't Lose That Number - Steely Dan
Saint Simon - The Shins
Clever Trevor - Ian Dury and the Blockheads
Ulysses - Franz Ferdinand
Vincent - Don McLean
William, It Was Really Nothing - The Smiths
X Gon Give It To Ya - DMX
Yves - Mr Oizo
Zebulon - Rufus Wainwright
WOMEN
Angela Surf City - The Walkmen
Barbara Ann - The Beach Boys
Oh Carol - Paul Anka
Oh Dana - Big Star
Emily - Joanna Newsom
Felicia - Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass
Gloria - Them
Hannah Hunt - Vampire Weekend
Iris - The Goo Goo Dolls
Jolene - Dolly Parton
Karen - The National
Layla - Derek and the Dominoes
Michelle - The Beatles
Natalie's Party - Shack
Ophelia - The Band
Priscilla - Bat for Lashes
50 ft Queenie = PJ Harvey
Ruby - Kaiser Chiefs
Sarah - Thin Lizzy
My Name is Tallulah - Jodie Foster
Uma Thurman - Fall Out Boy
Victoria - The Kinks
Wendy - Jesse Malin
X - Let's Not Get Silly Now
Yvette - Jason Isbell
Zelda - The Antlers
I'm not going to lie to you, that was harder and less fun than I thought it was going to be.
In some cultures, males and females have had different names.
But which are better? Let's find out.
MEN
Alexander - Charlotte Hatherley
Ben - Michael Jackson
Carey - Joni Mitchell
Daniel - Elton John
Ebenezer Goode - The Shamen
Frankie - Sister Sledge
Gabriel - Lamb
Henry Lee - Nick Cave and PJ Harvey
Ike's Mood - Isaac Hayes
Jimmy Mack - Martha and the Vandellas
Kevin Carter - Manic Street Preachers
Lenny - Supergrass
Maxwell's Silver Hammer - The Beatles
Making Plans for Nigel - XTC
Oliver's Army - Elvis Costello
Peter - Jamie T
The Mighty Quinn - Manfred Mann
Ricki Don't Lose That Number - Steely Dan
Saint Simon - The Shins
Clever Trevor - Ian Dury and the Blockheads
Ulysses - Franz Ferdinand
Vincent - Don McLean
William, It Was Really Nothing - The Smiths
X Gon Give It To Ya - DMX
Yves - Mr Oizo
Zebulon - Rufus Wainwright
WOMEN
Angela Surf City - The Walkmen
Barbara Ann - The Beach Boys
Oh Carol - Paul Anka
Oh Dana - Big Star
Emily - Joanna Newsom
Felicia - Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass
Gloria - Them
Hannah Hunt - Vampire Weekend
Iris - The Goo Goo Dolls
Jolene - Dolly Parton
Karen - The National
Layla - Derek and the Dominoes
Michelle - The Beatles
Natalie's Party - Shack
Ophelia - The Band
Priscilla - Bat for Lashes
50 ft Queenie = PJ Harvey
Ruby - Kaiser Chiefs
Sarah - Thin Lizzy
My Name is Tallulah - Jodie Foster
Uma Thurman - Fall Out Boy
Victoria - The Kinks
Wendy - Jesse Malin
X - Let's Not Get Silly Now
Yvette - Jason Isbell
Zelda - The Antlers
I'm not going to lie to you, that was harder and less fun than I thought it was going to be.
Friday, 18 December 2015
2015 Music
Well, this, by and large ...
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/arts-entertainment/best-albums-of-2015-lists-inexplicably-different-20151210104637
Having said that and noted the truth in it, I did consider opting out of my usual rundown on the year's music, not because of the sheer banality of the enterprise, but more because I was slightly disappointed at how closely my own favourites do conform to the usual suspects you'll see in various critic's polls.
So easily is it possible to track critical consensus on various ratings sites that I sometimes wonder, especially through the prism of 20 years of taking on music journalists' scores and opinions, whether I even have a personal, pure response to music any more.
And, this year, as it happens, there was pretty significant consensus from music critics as to the Number 1 album of the year: To Pimp a Butterfly - Kendrick Lamar. And, unusually, this album received not only vast critical acclaim but also achieved considerable sales, being one of the 10 best selling albums of the year in the USA and a Number 1 here.
But not the best selling album of the year. No, we know what that is. Perhaps any attempt to provide a brief survey of popular music in 2015 without talking about Adele's 25 is absurd, but that's pretty much how it has to be with me. I haven't listened to the Adele album, nor am I likely to. I note the stats, this remarkable and rare dwarfing of a culture by an individual entity, like Harry Potter and the publishing industry. McDonalds and fast food, Hoover and hoovers. The first week her album was Number 1 it sold more than the next, what was it, 86 put together? Coldplay, supposedly the biggest band in the world, can't top her this week, can't even get close despite it being her third week in the charts.
Oh yes, people like Adele. Adele will have sold multiple times more than all the people I'm going to talk about put together many times over. But not for me. I remember hearing her first single Hometown Glory before it came out, highly recommended, and I just instinctively, immediately, didn't like her tone or diction and have never been able to get past that, and still can't.
Daftly, then, one of my favourite albums of the year is 'Divers' by Joanna Newsom. I appreciate I am in a minority to find Adele's tone and diction more of a hindrance to musical enjoyment than Joanna Newsom.
Adele's '25' may be a masterpiece. I'll never know as I'll never be able to give it fair listen. 'Divers' may be a masterpiece. I can't quite decide. It suffers only by comparison in my mind to its predecessor, 'Have One On Me', which I consider pretty much the greatest collection in modern song. 'Divers' has affected me somewhat less than 'Have One On Me', but I'd still say it's the album I've listened to and re-listened to and enjoyed the most this year.
Newsom is at the forefront of modern singer-songwriters, almost all female, shaping songs into new forms with literacy, imagination and virtuosity which adds to, but does not overshadow, the simpler pleasures in the songs, all the time ducking reductive descriptions like "ethereal", "elfin", "delicate" etc.
Sleater-Kinney might not be described as ethereal, elfin or delicate. Their comeback record 'No Cities to Love' was probably the rock album I enjoyed most this year - short, sharp, serious and anthemic. It came out early but nothing really topped it.
Likewise, Natalie Prass' debut self-titled album. One of those records where the first review of an artist unknown to me got me thinking "Hmm, I like the sound of that" - 8 out of 10 times the album in question is a little disappointing after that, but in this case the very first song 'My Baby Don't Understand Me', alerted me to the possibility this might be a classic. Sad and soulful, incredible brass, string and woodwind arrangement, understated but memorably tuneful, it turned out to be the best song on the album, though the rest was not far behind.
In fact, if I were to pick one, 'My Baby Don't Understand Me' would be my favourite song of the year, just ahead of Sleater-Kinney's 'Hey Darling'.
The good thing about this newfangled streaming business is, of course, that you get to listen to everything, to give things a spin you wouldn't necessary spend a tenner on because it's not particularly your preferred genre, just to see whether the reviews and the hype are true. But equally it means they can be quickly disregarded in the way that a significant investment wouldn't allow. So, I think "what I ended up listening to most" is the fairest test of what my favourite albums were.
[I don't know if other people find this with streaming but, for me, it's meant I've almost always been listening to albums all the way through, as opposed to a lot of buying individual songs or creating playlists very quickly from my favourite songs on albums which is what tended to happen in my 8 years on iTunes].
I listened to 'To Pimp a Butterfly' just to see what the hype was about, really. I wasn't a big fan of the Kendrick Lamar tunes I'd heard from his last album. I knew it was going to be far too long (almost 80 minutes), far too jazz, far too smug. Yet I have listened to it more than anything else apart from Joanna Newsom this year. It has gradually but entirely won me over with each listen.
Until a couple of months ago, I was thinking, it's great, but it could lose 15 minutes, but now I've given up even that line of resistance. It seems very much like the greatest hip-hop album I've heard, like the hip-hop album to convert non-fans, like a genuinely major work for good in the music world, like Bob Dylan, The Clash, Public Enemy. He's ahead of you at every step, answering your objections, questioning his own motives, funny, then angry, then showing off, then stealthily virtuoso. It's bristling with great tunes and great arrangements, with surprises and slogans, it'll be hard for him or anyone else to top.
If there was another masterpiece this year, I think it was 'Carrie and Lowell' by Sufjan Stevens - it couldn't be much more different than 'To Pimp a Butterfly'. Singularly focused rather than expansive, about half the length, as free of showing off as you can possibly imagine. Just a collection of songs about something very sad, short on the flair that Sufjan (no relation to Cat) is often associated with.
It contains many devastatingly sad songs. Almost two decades ago, prompted by the a section in the book 'High Fidelity' which talks about pop/rock music's dearth of songs dealing with death, I got it into my head to search out the saddest songs in the canon. I made tapes and tapes of sad songs. Aah, happy days!
Well, sad songs have a new reigning and undisputed champion. 'Fourth of July' by Sufjan Stevens is the Gennady Golovkin of sad songs - polite, composed, understated, deceptively cheery, unostentatious, it slowly corners you, traps you and decimates you, leaves you collapsed and destroyed. Well, maybe. It's pretty sad, anyway.
What else? Lots of bands and people I've always liked released records, some to more notice and acclaim than others. Blur's 'The Magic Whip' was fairly delightful, albeit hard to make a conclusive decision on. It kind of tricked the listener by being so back-loaded. The first few times I listened all the way through I left with the feeling it was a classic, so strong was the impression the second half made. But the first half is, truthfully, a bit average. I don't know how many Blur fans will have listened to the first half thinking "well, ok, it's nice to have them back and it is at least Blurry" only to be so pleasantly surprised by the run of top-class Blur songs in the second half - My Terracotta Heart, Pyongyang and Ong Ong ticked all the Blur boxes and no mistake. Overall, I'd definitely put it among the top half of Blur albums and that's good enough for me.
You might have heard that one, but probably not 'Kablammo!' by Ash, which passed without trace .. - but if we're talking mid-90s bands still doing what they're good at really well, I say 'Kablammo!' was 'The Magic Whip''s equal. If you remember Ash fondly, I don't think you'll be disappointed.
Idlewild, Josh Rouse, Josh Ritter, The Decemberists, Stornoway, Squeeze, Bob Dylan, Paul Weller - people I like who did stuff this year which was fine and good without changing the world.
Roots Manuva, Wilco, My Morning Jacket ... people I like who did very very enjoyable albums.
Belle and Sebastian - a band I like who, for me, came out with their first genuine stinker this year. They're just trying to make a type of music they're not that good at making, and they've been doing that for too long. Lost a bit of hope in them.
Bjork's 'Vulnicura' is a fabulous album. I'm quite a late convert to Bjork, but this album, like most of the best of this year (apart from Kendrick Lamar, whose album rambled all over the place) had a discipline, a focus, a concentrated emotional centre. Wonderful music, not for the faint-hearted.
I'd also say, if you like the kind of thing (which I don't particularly) Public Service Broadcasting's The Race for Space is a really fun record - kind of prog storytelling about the space race which is a little bit like being in a cool teacher's primary science class.
Well, I had some big theory that I was going to try to formulate, about how popular song has now become a primarily feminine form, and I was going to posit several specious reasons for this. Thank goodness for everyone, I won't be doing that. Maybe the next years most of the best albums will be by chaps, anyway. Can't wait for the new Howard Jones album to blow the opposition away.
My favourite 10 songs, I think ...
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/arts-entertainment/best-albums-of-2015-lists-inexplicably-different-20151210104637
Having said that and noted the truth in it, I did consider opting out of my usual rundown on the year's music, not because of the sheer banality of the enterprise, but more because I was slightly disappointed at how closely my own favourites do conform to the usual suspects you'll see in various critic's polls.
So easily is it possible to track critical consensus on various ratings sites that I sometimes wonder, especially through the prism of 20 years of taking on music journalists' scores and opinions, whether I even have a personal, pure response to music any more.
And, this year, as it happens, there was pretty significant consensus from music critics as to the Number 1 album of the year: To Pimp a Butterfly - Kendrick Lamar. And, unusually, this album received not only vast critical acclaim but also achieved considerable sales, being one of the 10 best selling albums of the year in the USA and a Number 1 here.
But not the best selling album of the year. No, we know what that is. Perhaps any attempt to provide a brief survey of popular music in 2015 without talking about Adele's 25 is absurd, but that's pretty much how it has to be with me. I haven't listened to the Adele album, nor am I likely to. I note the stats, this remarkable and rare dwarfing of a culture by an individual entity, like Harry Potter and the publishing industry. McDonalds and fast food, Hoover and hoovers. The first week her album was Number 1 it sold more than the next, what was it, 86 put together? Coldplay, supposedly the biggest band in the world, can't top her this week, can't even get close despite it being her third week in the charts.
Oh yes, people like Adele. Adele will have sold multiple times more than all the people I'm going to talk about put together many times over. But not for me. I remember hearing her first single Hometown Glory before it came out, highly recommended, and I just instinctively, immediately, didn't like her tone or diction and have never been able to get past that, and still can't.
Daftly, then, one of my favourite albums of the year is 'Divers' by Joanna Newsom. I appreciate I am in a minority to find Adele's tone and diction more of a hindrance to musical enjoyment than Joanna Newsom.
Adele's '25' may be a masterpiece. I'll never know as I'll never be able to give it fair listen. 'Divers' may be a masterpiece. I can't quite decide. It suffers only by comparison in my mind to its predecessor, 'Have One On Me', which I consider pretty much the greatest collection in modern song. 'Divers' has affected me somewhat less than 'Have One On Me', but I'd still say it's the album I've listened to and re-listened to and enjoyed the most this year.
Newsom is at the forefront of modern singer-songwriters, almost all female, shaping songs into new forms with literacy, imagination and virtuosity which adds to, but does not overshadow, the simpler pleasures in the songs, all the time ducking reductive descriptions like "ethereal", "elfin", "delicate" etc.
Sleater-Kinney might not be described as ethereal, elfin or delicate. Their comeback record 'No Cities to Love' was probably the rock album I enjoyed most this year - short, sharp, serious and anthemic. It came out early but nothing really topped it.
Likewise, Natalie Prass' debut self-titled album. One of those records where the first review of an artist unknown to me got me thinking "Hmm, I like the sound of that" - 8 out of 10 times the album in question is a little disappointing after that, but in this case the very first song 'My Baby Don't Understand Me', alerted me to the possibility this might be a classic. Sad and soulful, incredible brass, string and woodwind arrangement, understated but memorably tuneful, it turned out to be the best song on the album, though the rest was not far behind.
In fact, if I were to pick one, 'My Baby Don't Understand Me' would be my favourite song of the year, just ahead of Sleater-Kinney's 'Hey Darling'.
The good thing about this newfangled streaming business is, of course, that you get to listen to everything, to give things a spin you wouldn't necessary spend a tenner on because it's not particularly your preferred genre, just to see whether the reviews and the hype are true. But equally it means they can be quickly disregarded in the way that a significant investment wouldn't allow. So, I think "what I ended up listening to most" is the fairest test of what my favourite albums were.
[I don't know if other people find this with streaming but, for me, it's meant I've almost always been listening to albums all the way through, as opposed to a lot of buying individual songs or creating playlists very quickly from my favourite songs on albums which is what tended to happen in my 8 years on iTunes].
I listened to 'To Pimp a Butterfly' just to see what the hype was about, really. I wasn't a big fan of the Kendrick Lamar tunes I'd heard from his last album. I knew it was going to be far too long (almost 80 minutes), far too jazz, far too smug. Yet I have listened to it more than anything else apart from Joanna Newsom this year. It has gradually but entirely won me over with each listen.
Until a couple of months ago, I was thinking, it's great, but it could lose 15 minutes, but now I've given up even that line of resistance. It seems very much like the greatest hip-hop album I've heard, like the hip-hop album to convert non-fans, like a genuinely major work for good in the music world, like Bob Dylan, The Clash, Public Enemy. He's ahead of you at every step, answering your objections, questioning his own motives, funny, then angry, then showing off, then stealthily virtuoso. It's bristling with great tunes and great arrangements, with surprises and slogans, it'll be hard for him or anyone else to top.
If there was another masterpiece this year, I think it was 'Carrie and Lowell' by Sufjan Stevens - it couldn't be much more different than 'To Pimp a Butterfly'. Singularly focused rather than expansive, about half the length, as free of showing off as you can possibly imagine. Just a collection of songs about something very sad, short on the flair that Sufjan (no relation to Cat) is often associated with.
It contains many devastatingly sad songs. Almost two decades ago, prompted by the a section in the book 'High Fidelity' which talks about pop/rock music's dearth of songs dealing with death, I got it into my head to search out the saddest songs in the canon. I made tapes and tapes of sad songs. Aah, happy days!
Well, sad songs have a new reigning and undisputed champion. 'Fourth of July' by Sufjan Stevens is the Gennady Golovkin of sad songs - polite, composed, understated, deceptively cheery, unostentatious, it slowly corners you, traps you and decimates you, leaves you collapsed and destroyed. Well, maybe. It's pretty sad, anyway.
What else? Lots of bands and people I've always liked released records, some to more notice and acclaim than others. Blur's 'The Magic Whip' was fairly delightful, albeit hard to make a conclusive decision on. It kind of tricked the listener by being so back-loaded. The first few times I listened all the way through I left with the feeling it was a classic, so strong was the impression the second half made. But the first half is, truthfully, a bit average. I don't know how many Blur fans will have listened to the first half thinking "well, ok, it's nice to have them back and it is at least Blurry" only to be so pleasantly surprised by the run of top-class Blur songs in the second half - My Terracotta Heart, Pyongyang and Ong Ong ticked all the Blur boxes and no mistake. Overall, I'd definitely put it among the top half of Blur albums and that's good enough for me.
You might have heard that one, but probably not 'Kablammo!' by Ash, which passed without trace .. - but if we're talking mid-90s bands still doing what they're good at really well, I say 'Kablammo!' was 'The Magic Whip''s equal. If you remember Ash fondly, I don't think you'll be disappointed.
Idlewild, Josh Rouse, Josh Ritter, The Decemberists, Stornoway, Squeeze, Bob Dylan, Paul Weller - people I like who did stuff this year which was fine and good without changing the world.
Roots Manuva, Wilco, My Morning Jacket ... people I like who did very very enjoyable albums.
Belle and Sebastian - a band I like who, for me, came out with their first genuine stinker this year. They're just trying to make a type of music they're not that good at making, and they've been doing that for too long. Lost a bit of hope in them.
Bjork's 'Vulnicura' is a fabulous album. I'm quite a late convert to Bjork, but this album, like most of the best of this year (apart from Kendrick Lamar, whose album rambled all over the place) had a discipline, a focus, a concentrated emotional centre. Wonderful music, not for the faint-hearted.
I'd also say, if you like the kind of thing (which I don't particularly) Public Service Broadcasting's The Race for Space is a really fun record - kind of prog storytelling about the space race which is a little bit like being in a cool teacher's primary science class.
Well, I had some big theory that I was going to try to formulate, about how popular song has now become a primarily feminine form, and I was going to posit several specious reasons for this. Thank goodness for everyone, I won't be doing that. Maybe the next years most of the best albums will be by chaps, anyway. Can't wait for the new Howard Jones album to blow the opposition away.
My favourite 10 songs, I think ...
- My Baby Don't Understand Me - Natalie Prass
- Hey Darling - Sleater-Kinney
- Fourth of July - Sufjan Stevens
- King Kunta - Kendrick Lamar
- Time, as a Symptom - Joanna Newsom
- What Went Down - Foals
- Ong Ong - Blur
- London - Benjamin Clementine
- All Your Favourite Bands - Dawes
- Damn It All - The Staves
My favourite albums
- Divers - Joanna Newsom
- To Pimp a Butterfly - Kendrick Lamar
- Natalie Prass - Natalie Prass
- Carrie and Lowell - Sufjan Stevens
- No Cities to Love - Sleater-Kinney
- Vulnicura - Bjork
- The Magic Whip - Blur
- If I Was - The Staves
- Sometimes I Sit and Think, Sometimes I Just Sit - Courtney Barnett
- Bleeds - Roots Manuva
But these were also divertingly pleasant and interesting to listen to
On Your Own Love Again - Jessica Pratt
Kablammo! - Ash
Have You In My Wilderness - Julia Holter
The Waterfall - My Morning Jacket
Short Movie - Laura Marling
Art Angels - Grimes
Bonxie - Stornoway
Every Open Eye - Chvrches
What Went Down - Foals
Star Wars - Wilco
Eska - Eska
At Least for Now - Benjamin Clementine
Blood - Lianne La Havas
Love Songs for Robots - Patrick Watson
In Colour - Jamie XX
Eska - Eska
At Least for Now - Benjamin Clementine
Blood - Lianne La Havas
Love Songs for Robots - Patrick Watson
In Colour - Jamie XX
and, actually, quite a few others.
Generally, nearly all those who've been my favourite people in all music - eg Super Furry Animals, Bob Dylan, Wilco, Blur, Joanna Newsom ... did something or other this year. Watching the Furries was my favourite musical experience of the year, and hopefully they'll record something and that'll be the best album of next year.
I've listened to less chart pop music this year than usual (I usually try to stay on top of it for work as much as anything else) which I think is probably a good sign. Obviously Uptown Funk was, before Adele, the overwhelming hit of the year, and now it seems like there are lots of other things trying to copy that formula - well, there are worse things chart pop can sound like.
But, above all, I have this vague sense that songs and albums are just getting better, for some reason, whatever that means. That this is some kind of golden age for the artistry of the whole thing, across different genres. It's easy not to think that, especially if your favourite thing has generally been guitar bands, which mine has, because it's not guitar bands making the best songs and albums right now. But that might change next year.
I've listened to less chart pop music this year than usual (I usually try to stay on top of it for work as much as anything else) which I think is probably a good sign. Obviously Uptown Funk was, before Adele, the overwhelming hit of the year, and now it seems like there are lots of other things trying to copy that formula - well, there are worse things chart pop can sound like.
But, above all, I have this vague sense that songs and albums are just getting better, for some reason, whatever that means. That this is some kind of golden age for the artistry of the whole thing, across different genres. It's easy not to think that, especially if your favourite thing has generally been guitar bands, which mine has, because it's not guitar bands making the best songs and albums right now. But that might change next year.
Sunday, 29 November 2015
We Hate Hank?
... no we don't.
We rather like him, anagram fans.
Ethan Hawke is one of those actors, like Richard Gere, say, or even Hugh Grant (though on a totally different level), who has thinkpieces written about him, because he's not just an actor, he's a representative of something, he's a story within a story.
You're never totally totally sure that he's excellent (although, with Hawke, you're pretty certain) but that doesn't really matter.
Looking at his filmography, I've seen 12 Hawke films. I like nearly all of them. I love a lot of them.
Some might say he's lucky that, by his association with Richard Linklater, he's part of some truly great, transcendent cinema. But Linklater's just as lucky. It's the Scorsese/De Niro of our age.
Hawke seems nearly always to be playing some version of himself - that's rather the point. A young man growing up on film, from Dead Poets' Society to Before Midnight and Boyhood. He's nearly always some kind of "good", some kind of "hero", albeit he's annoying and insecure, selfish and error-prone. A sweaty, geeky, neurotic normality combined with sharp intelligence.
He plays an author, an absentee father, a guy who's marriage to a beautiful wife breaks down, he plays imperfect and pretentious.
He's not completely unrecognised (I'd thought he was) he has writing Oscar nominations for work on the 'Before' trilogy, a couple of Best Supporting Nominations for Training Day and Boyhood.
I caught a scene from Boyhood on TV yesterday - it kind of summed so much of Hawke up - it's early in the film, it's when he takes his kids bowling and he's telling Mason he doesn't need the sidebars - life doesn't give you sidebars. He's telling the kids their mother is "a piece of work" in the most affectionate way imaginable, he's explaining his absence, swearing and donating to the swear jar. It's one of many wonderful scenes in the film. You don't know at this stage if he's going to be a shitty dad or a great one, but you hope it's the latter, and so it turns out to be.
Because of his authorship and his role in the writing of the 'Before' films, but also just because of how he is, I watch so much of his scenes thinking he's truly giving the audience something of himself.
With the wrong actor, that might be awful, but it's what makes him great.
I know a couple of film fans who initially weren't charmed by Before Sunrise because, basically, Hawke's character was too annoying, but as the three films progress, they were won over, as they realised that was almost the whole point.
The character of Jesse and Celine are just about the truest you'll ever come across in film - it can make other so-called realistic scenes quite hard to watch afterwards.
What are my favourite five Hawke movies, counting 'Before' as one, which is a bit of a cheat.
Dead Poet's Society
Boyhood
Gattaca
Before Sunrise/Sunset/Midnight
.... Hmm, then it's a bit of a toss-up, but I think I'll go for Reality Bites, for old times' sake.
We rather like him, anagram fans.
Ethan Hawke is one of those actors, like Richard Gere, say, or even Hugh Grant (though on a totally different level), who has thinkpieces written about him, because he's not just an actor, he's a representative of something, he's a story within a story.
You're never totally totally sure that he's excellent (although, with Hawke, you're pretty certain) but that doesn't really matter.
Looking at his filmography, I've seen 12 Hawke films. I like nearly all of them. I love a lot of them.
Some might say he's lucky that, by his association with Richard Linklater, he's part of some truly great, transcendent cinema. But Linklater's just as lucky. It's the Scorsese/De Niro of our age.
Hawke seems nearly always to be playing some version of himself - that's rather the point. A young man growing up on film, from Dead Poets' Society to Before Midnight and Boyhood. He's nearly always some kind of "good", some kind of "hero", albeit he's annoying and insecure, selfish and error-prone. A sweaty, geeky, neurotic normality combined with sharp intelligence.
He plays an author, an absentee father, a guy who's marriage to a beautiful wife breaks down, he plays imperfect and pretentious.
He's not completely unrecognised (I'd thought he was) he has writing Oscar nominations for work on the 'Before' trilogy, a couple of Best Supporting Nominations for Training Day and Boyhood.
I caught a scene from Boyhood on TV yesterday - it kind of summed so much of Hawke up - it's early in the film, it's when he takes his kids bowling and he's telling Mason he doesn't need the sidebars - life doesn't give you sidebars. He's telling the kids their mother is "a piece of work" in the most affectionate way imaginable, he's explaining his absence, swearing and donating to the swear jar. It's one of many wonderful scenes in the film. You don't know at this stage if he's going to be a shitty dad or a great one, but you hope it's the latter, and so it turns out to be.
Because of his authorship and his role in the writing of the 'Before' films, but also just because of how he is, I watch so much of his scenes thinking he's truly giving the audience something of himself.
With the wrong actor, that might be awful, but it's what makes him great.
I know a couple of film fans who initially weren't charmed by Before Sunrise because, basically, Hawke's character was too annoying, but as the three films progress, they were won over, as they realised that was almost the whole point.
The character of Jesse and Celine are just about the truest you'll ever come across in film - it can make other so-called realistic scenes quite hard to watch afterwards.
What are my favourite five Hawke movies, counting 'Before' as one, which is a bit of a cheat.
Dead Poet's Society
Boyhood
Gattaca
Before Sunrise/Sunset/Midnight
.... Hmm, then it's a bit of a toss-up, but I think I'll go for Reality Bites, for old times' sake.
Sunday, 22 November 2015
My Favourite 101 Songs
I do all these lists, don't I, but it's been over five years since I actually told you what my favourite songs are. No arsing about with pretence to objectivity or strictures or structures.
Here they are. There is some small structure. I thought "Since I last made a list of My Favourite 100 Songs five years ago, what have been my favourite songs within that time?" So not just this second and not throughout my whole life either. I looked at what I'd listened to most, thought about what had consistently thrilled me in the various contexts I listen to music, and then knocked this together in no time at all.
If you follow the blog, there are few surprises. There's plenty that was here last time. It's depressingly lacking the kind of eclecticism I'd be compelled into if I was doing anything but expressing a preference for the very cream on the top of the 100s of 1000s of songs that have passed through my ears.
Here they are. There is some small structure. I thought "Since I last made a list of My Favourite 100 Songs five years ago, what have been my favourite songs within that time?" So not just this second and not throughout my whole life either. I looked at what I'd listened to most, thought about what had consistently thrilled me in the various contexts I listen to music, and then knocked this together in no time at all.
If you follow the blog, there are few surprises. There's plenty that was here last time. It's depressingly lacking the kind of eclecticism I'd be compelled into if I was doing anything but expressing a preference for the very cream on the top of the 100s of 1000s of songs that have passed through my ears.
- In California - Joanna Newsom
- The Rat - The Walkmen
- All My Friends - LCD Soundsystem
- Going Underground - The Jam
- Ice Hockey Hair - Super Furry Animals
- Hey Lover - Dawes
- Isis (Live) - Bob Dylan
- Losing You - Randy Newman
- I See a Darkness - Bonnie Prince Billy
- My Girls - Animal Collective
- La Tristesse Durere - Manic Street Preacher
- Thunder Road - Bruce Springsteen
- The First Day of My Life - Bright Eyes
- Emily - Joanna Newsom
- Bryte Side - The Pernice Brothers
- The Only Living Boy in New York - Simon and Garfunkel
- St Patrick - James Yorkston
- The Good Intentions Paving Company - Joanna Newsom
- Lean On Me - Bill Withers
- So Long Marianne - Leonard Cohen
- From the Morning - Nick Drake
- Slaveship - Josh Rouse
- My Wandering Days Are Over - Belle and Sebastian
- The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll - Bob Dylan
- Doo Wop (That Thing) - Lauryn Hill
- Love Anyway - The Waterboys
- Between the Wars - Billy Bragg
- Your Love Keeps Lifting Me Higher and Higher - Jackie Wilson
- Hey Darling - Sleater Kinney
- Grace - Jeff Buckley
- Dry the Rain - Beta Band
- Angela Surf City - The Walkmen
- Northern Sky - Nick Drake
- People Ain't No Good - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
- Be My Baby - The Ronettes
- We Can Work It Out - The Beatles
- Steady Pace - Matthew E White
- There She Goes, My Beautiful World - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
- Heaven - The Walkmen
- Snow is Gone - Josh Ritter
- Rise - Josh Rouse
- The Trapeze Swinger - Iron and Wine
- Trellick Tower - Emmy the Great
- A Case of You - Joni Mitchell
- Mr November - The National
- Let's Make This Precious - Dexys Midnight Runners
- Mississippi - Bob Dylan
- Sons and Daughters - The Decemberists
- Make Your Own Kind of Music - Mama Cass
- The Mercy Seat - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
- Idiot Wind - Bob Dylan
- Holes - Mercury Rev
- Fire in My Heart - Super Furry Animals
- Fight the Power - Public Enemy
- Olympian - Gene
- Floating in the Forth - Frightened Rabbit
- America - Simon and Garfunkel
- A Rainy Night in Soho - The Pogues
- 14th Street - Rufus Wainwright
- She's Your Lover Now - Bob Dylan
- Sweet Jane - The Velvet Underground
- Chicago - Sufjan Stevens
- Massive Night - The Hold Steady
- This is a Low - Blur
- Funeral - Band of Horses
- The Weight - The Band
- When the Haar Rolls In - James Yorkston
- Don't You - Micah P Hinson
- American Trilogy - The Delgados
- Redemption Song - Bob Marley
- Family Affair - Mary J Blige
- Like a Rolling Stone - Bob Dylan
- Jesus Etc - Wilco
- Chin High - Roots Manuva
- Wake Up - Arcade Fire
- $1000 Wedding - Gram Parsons
- Carey - Joni Mitchell
- Sunshine on Leith - The Proclaimers
- Billie Jean - Michael Jackson
- Moon River - Audrey Hepburn
- Faster - Manic Street Preachers
- Severed Crossed Fingers - St Vincent
- Sweeping the Nation - Spearmint
- Round Eye Blues - Marah
- Sweet Thing - Van Morrison
- Jackie - Scott Walker
- My Baby Don't Understand Me - Natalie Prass
- I'm Gonna Make You Love Me - The Supremes and the Temptations
- Misunderstood - Wilco
- Out on the Floor - Dobie Gray
- Dreamy Days - Roots Manuva
- Little Baby Nothing - Manic Street Preachers
- Dancing On My Own - Robyn
- Scottish Pop - Spearmint
- How - Regina Spektor
- Rise to Me - The Decemberists
- Galveston - Glen Campbell
- Oxygen - Willy Mason
- Be Not So Fearful - Bill Fay
- Instant Karma - John Lennon
- Gimme Some Lovin' - The Spencer Davis Group
Tuesday, 17 November 2015
Those same streets
I write about music and sport here. I love these things and I've bored many a person trying to say that they're not just parts of life, they're the most important things in the world. I really think that. Now more than ever.
It's understandable for people to think otherwise. It's understandable because often our joys and pleasures seem separated from the business of life and death. People who don't love sport think people go to football matches to care far too deeply about something for a couple of hours as an escape from their real lives. It's a view. It's not how I see it, but it's a valid view.
Likewise, the songs and the gigs and the festivals we love can seem like a hermetically sealed place of magic and wonder. While we're there, we're free. But, some might say, its not real, it's not the hard stuff.
And we get so cross about our rivals, our Arsenal FC and Australian cricket team, and we love the bands we love, and look down on the others - we go, pah, the Killers, pah One Direction, I wouldn't waste money going to see them.
I'm sure you know where I'm going. My blog can be hermetically sealed, I try to avoid any public reaction, whether here or on facebook, to anything of the wider world. It's not more important, I say to myself, it's just more boring, and also I've fewer fun and interesting thing to say about it.
So. I've seen everyone reacting in their different ways on social media to what happened in Paris on Friday, and I didn't think I'd join. People were very quickly finding ways to disagree with how each other were responding, what was appropriate, what wasn't. It's what we do, these days. It can be exhausting, annoying, occasionally amusing.
A lot of people cried "hypocrisy" and mentioned the 100s who die elsewhere every week. But it's never a numbers game. If it were, if people cared equally about each untimely death, we would not get through a minute without crying.
Modern history contains a few events which have been unusually unsettling for me. I speak for me. But the list is probably shared with most other people of my age who grew up in a city. I may have spent my whole life being treated like, and also cultivating the image of being, a bit of an oddball, someone who thinks slightly different things, but I'm really not so different.
I love going to restaurants, pubs and bars, I love football and other sports, I love live music, I love the hum of a great city on a good night out. Those things, they're just the best, aren't they?
And we have taken them for granted. We have. Those have been our safety net. And now, maybe just for a while, maybe for longer, they won't feel so safe.
That's what they want, obviously. I don't know much about them, but the news and the thinkpieces tell us they're an anti-culture millenarian death cult, a joyless version of what we decadent city folk would think a living hell. They're destroying sites of ancient culture in the Middle East, they'd try to destroy modern culture.
We're going to have to take a few deep breaths in order to get on with it. I've not been in Paris for a while, not been to the Bataclan, am not a fan of Eagles of Death Metal, not been to the Stade de France or (I don't think) the bars and restaurants which were attacked. But I've been to other great cities, other great gig venues, seen other great bands, been to other great stadiums and been to other great bars and restaurants. Most of us have.
Are we hypocrites because we feel strongly that it's our life which is under attack? No, not hypocrites. Can this lead to a siege mentality, and a retreat to our larger tribe? Well, it can, it can, but these great cities, they don't let that happen for long, not if you've got your head screwed on.
I don't want to romanticize and mythologize the lifestyle of the Londoner, the Parisian, the New Yorker. We know those cities have their problems. But what is true that you see people who are totally different from you every minute of every day there. Different but not that different. And that's what makes it great.
I've taken to writing poems again lately. I hope this isn't crass.
It's understandable for people to think otherwise. It's understandable because often our joys and pleasures seem separated from the business of life and death. People who don't love sport think people go to football matches to care far too deeply about something for a couple of hours as an escape from their real lives. It's a view. It's not how I see it, but it's a valid view.
Likewise, the songs and the gigs and the festivals we love can seem like a hermetically sealed place of magic and wonder. While we're there, we're free. But, some might say, its not real, it's not the hard stuff.
And we get so cross about our rivals, our Arsenal FC and Australian cricket team, and we love the bands we love, and look down on the others - we go, pah, the Killers, pah One Direction, I wouldn't waste money going to see them.
I'm sure you know where I'm going. My blog can be hermetically sealed, I try to avoid any public reaction, whether here or on facebook, to anything of the wider world. It's not more important, I say to myself, it's just more boring, and also I've fewer fun and interesting thing to say about it.
So. I've seen everyone reacting in their different ways on social media to what happened in Paris on Friday, and I didn't think I'd join. People were very quickly finding ways to disagree with how each other were responding, what was appropriate, what wasn't. It's what we do, these days. It can be exhausting, annoying, occasionally amusing.
A lot of people cried "hypocrisy" and mentioned the 100s who die elsewhere every week. But it's never a numbers game. If it were, if people cared equally about each untimely death, we would not get through a minute without crying.
Modern history contains a few events which have been unusually unsettling for me. I speak for me. But the list is probably shared with most other people of my age who grew up in a city. I may have spent my whole life being treated like, and also cultivating the image of being, a bit of an oddball, someone who thinks slightly different things, but I'm really not so different.
I love going to restaurants, pubs and bars, I love football and other sports, I love live music, I love the hum of a great city on a good night out. Those things, they're just the best, aren't they?
And we have taken them for granted. We have. Those have been our safety net. And now, maybe just for a while, maybe for longer, they won't feel so safe.
That's what they want, obviously. I don't know much about them, but the news and the thinkpieces tell us they're an anti-culture millenarian death cult, a joyless version of what we decadent city folk would think a living hell. They're destroying sites of ancient culture in the Middle East, they'd try to destroy modern culture.
We're going to have to take a few deep breaths in order to get on with it. I've not been in Paris for a while, not been to the Bataclan, am not a fan of Eagles of Death Metal, not been to the Stade de France or (I don't think) the bars and restaurants which were attacked. But I've been to other great cities, other great gig venues, seen other great bands, been to other great stadiums and been to other great bars and restaurants. Most of us have.
Are we hypocrites because we feel strongly that it's our life which is under attack? No, not hypocrites. Can this lead to a siege mentality, and a retreat to our larger tribe? Well, it can, it can, but these great cities, they don't let that happen for long, not if you've got your head screwed on.
I don't want to romanticize and mythologize the lifestyle of the Londoner, the Parisian, the New Yorker. We know those cities have their problems. But what is true that you see people who are totally different from you every minute of every day there. Different but not that different. And that's what makes it great.
I've taken to writing poems again lately. I hope this isn't crass.
I
count the difference with precision,
Find
new foe in every phrase
And stripe,
each eyebrow raised
Lends
me a new subdivision
To lean
myself limply against.
We
walked the same, or similar, streets,
With
different step and colour scarf
Wincing
at each misjudged laugh
making
sure we didn’t meet
with
no harm done or meant.
I
offer now my quiet and gentle scorn
For your
beautiful lives lost,
Affront
held without cost
and
just as casually forsworn –
this
gift we shared, our very best.
Saturday, 14 November 2015
Fame is for the few
Righto, so here's another thing. You could say it's from the perspective of being someone who loves cool stuff and is a bit obsessive about the details of it, and spends their working days and nights finding out exactly the living, breathing, working world knows about stuff, cool and otherwise, and generally getting ground down by how depressing that is.
This is the kind of line I deliver ...
"Yes, we all know that as an Adele song, but that's the original ... no it's not Louis Armstrong ... no, not Michael Bolton ... it's Bob Dylan (small cheer). Very well done to the three teams that got that..."
I'm perhaps a little disappointed by this. I had a killer first line, I think (though I've gilded the lily there a little) but then I think it's often just couplets, just punchlines. Anyway, maybe you disagree.
The flow does work, I promise, though you may have to be a bit flexible ...
Right, it needs a name ... remember the name ...
FAME
This is the kind of line I deliver ...
"Yes, we all know that as an Adele song, but that's the original ... no it's not Louis Armstrong ... no, not Michael Bolton ... it's Bob Dylan (small cheer). Very well done to the three teams that got that..."
I'm perhaps a little disappointed by this. I had a killer first line, I think (though I've gilded the lily there a little) but then I think it's often just couplets, just punchlines. Anyway, maybe you disagree.
The flow does work, I promise, though you may have to be a bit flexible ...
Right, it needs a name ... remember the name ...
FAME
Fatal
fame is for the few, whatever Andy Warhol said
To
Valerie Solanas as his holy torso bled.
Now
even Lili Taylor’s just a footnote to a star –
A
face, but not a name, of rarely rewatched cinema.
The
fruit tree’s sprouting wildly, constantly, inedibly
And
not one bright but tasteless plum will leave a legacy
Like
Achilles, Moses, Iron Man or any other figure
Lucky
to be connected with a name that’s even bigger.
When
Lou Reed died, the radio did play Who Loves the Sun –
so
the sixty-seven folk who formed a band could bask as one
in
their hard-won separation from the standard frame of reference
and
the 7 and growing billion who could not tell the difference.
The
purpose of the practice of the pedant – to correct -
Is
futile, if its underlying goal is not respect
For
the labours of the undersung, deserving, at the last,
to
break free from blithe errata of the clinically unarsed.
Bob
Dylan makes a quiz question by virtue of Adele
Deigning
to judge which lumpen ballad’s dull enough to sell.
A
roar, a point for glory, is this a new fanbase cracked?
Our
survey says the surface is the only point of contact.
Festivals
raise cult heroes back to that one big stage
Where
bearded bubbled revellers can mourn a bygone age
When
talent and adventure earned reward, renown, repeat -
All
tomorrow’s parties lit by yesterday’s conceit.
Even
if you bleed charisma, tingle with clear-eyed ambition
Death
is not a guarantee of fitting recognition.
On
the day Joe Strummer died, the DJ followed Train in Vain
By
asking if we’d hear such a distinctive voice again.
Death
invades relentlessly this rock and rolling news age
And instantly
the tributes pour from every user’s web page.
They
tweet a name they half-know but they do not mourn the man,
Knowledge
at our fingertips is shared history down the pan.Tuesday, 27 October 2015
A post about lists about songwriters
OK, so I'm almost sucked back into the habit of reducing everything to some ludicrous competition based on my own underqualified views ... but not quite.
I saw Rolling Stone magazine's list of the Greatest 100 Songwriters of All Time and immediately thought I'd be able to do a better one. But, thankfully, in this case "doing a better one" means not doing one, just talking about how unutterably rubbish their one is. Got it?
So this was the point along the path of the illusion of objectivity and judgement I could not kid myself into crossing.
At least with "Songs", "Albums", "Footballers" etc, one has an actual complete product to judge if you're so inclined. You see the thing and you say whether it is good. Whereas you do not see or possibly understand the process of songwriting, you just get the product.
There are so many parts of judging a "songwriter" which are unknowable. Who did what? What role did the producer play? What effect has the singing and playing had on our assessment of what was "written"?
And, of course, the term Songwriting is biased against people making certain kinds of music. Who is a songwriter? Fatboy Slim? Is Dr Dre a songwriter? Is Brian Wilson only half a songwriter?
You get my laboured points ... I'm taking the high ground now but of course, despite all these points, I nearly did have a go at making this list, it just got too silly.
It didn't take me long to be bothered by the Rolling Stone list. I looked for one name - Damon Albarn. Nowhere to be seen in the Top 100. That was sufficient for me.
Of course, one can just point out that Rolling Stone is catering to its demographic, and why would it do anything else? But it's just a bit depressing. I hope, if you ever read my lists, it comes across that the "truth" of it all is a wonderful and hopeful thing I haven't progressed to a state of grasping yet but I'm trying my best to get there in a fair-minded way which takes into personal bias and the things I don't understand. Well, it probably doesn't come across, but I promise, it is a bit like that.
What I mean is, if you crunch the numbers on the Rolling Stone list, you find (taking into account partnerships),
There are
90 Men 16 Women
71 White Songwriters 29 Black
81 North American 3 European 15 British and Irish 1 Other
and, if you ask me, worst of all
84 whose main work was pre-90, 16 post-90 (and I was generous about this, eg Madonna was called post-90).
How ghastly that something to do with rock'n'roll is so conservative and deathly. British music of the last 25 years was represented solely by the nebulous "Radiohead" (who, exactly, in Radiohead?).
OK, after all that, and promising i'm not actually going to do a list, what would one try to take into account if such a list needed to be made?
-Is one classic worth 10 quite good songs?
-Are their fine songwriters hidden inside dodgy bands/dodgy voices?
-Are we to judge it as they used to judge ice dancing, on artistic impression combined with technical merit?
-How does Joni Mitchell stack up against Pete Waterman?
-What's the most important bit of the song?
-How far back would we go?
-How would we define and limit what a song is?
etc etc
Of course, there are probably many many masterful songwriters who've never been heard of, who've quietly worked as ghosts behind the scenes for many years, just as their probably a few stars acclaimed as songwriters whose role in the creation of songs is actually rather limited.
You should check out the Rolling Stone list, it's really depressing
I saw Rolling Stone magazine's list of the Greatest 100 Songwriters of All Time and immediately thought I'd be able to do a better one. But, thankfully, in this case "doing a better one" means not doing one, just talking about how unutterably rubbish their one is. Got it?
So this was the point along the path of the illusion of objectivity and judgement I could not kid myself into crossing.
At least with "Songs", "Albums", "Footballers" etc, one has an actual complete product to judge if you're so inclined. You see the thing and you say whether it is good. Whereas you do not see or possibly understand the process of songwriting, you just get the product.
There are so many parts of judging a "songwriter" which are unknowable. Who did what? What role did the producer play? What effect has the singing and playing had on our assessment of what was "written"?
And, of course, the term Songwriting is biased against people making certain kinds of music. Who is a songwriter? Fatboy Slim? Is Dr Dre a songwriter? Is Brian Wilson only half a songwriter?
You get my laboured points ... I'm taking the high ground now but of course, despite all these points, I nearly did have a go at making this list, it just got too silly.
It didn't take me long to be bothered by the Rolling Stone list. I looked for one name - Damon Albarn. Nowhere to be seen in the Top 100. That was sufficient for me.
Of course, one can just point out that Rolling Stone is catering to its demographic, and why would it do anything else? But it's just a bit depressing. I hope, if you ever read my lists, it comes across that the "truth" of it all is a wonderful and hopeful thing I haven't progressed to a state of grasping yet but I'm trying my best to get there in a fair-minded way which takes into personal bias and the things I don't understand. Well, it probably doesn't come across, but I promise, it is a bit like that.
What I mean is, if you crunch the numbers on the Rolling Stone list, you find (taking into account partnerships),
There are
90 Men 16 Women
71 White Songwriters 29 Black
81 North American 3 European 15 British and Irish 1 Other
and, if you ask me, worst of all
84 whose main work was pre-90, 16 post-90 (and I was generous about this, eg Madonna was called post-90).
How ghastly that something to do with rock'n'roll is so conservative and deathly. British music of the last 25 years was represented solely by the nebulous "Radiohead" (who, exactly, in Radiohead?).
OK, after all that, and promising i'm not actually going to do a list, what would one try to take into account if such a list needed to be made?
-Is one classic worth 10 quite good songs?
-Are their fine songwriters hidden inside dodgy bands/dodgy voices?
-Are we to judge it as they used to judge ice dancing, on artistic impression combined with technical merit?
-How does Joni Mitchell stack up against Pete Waterman?
-What's the most important bit of the song?
-How far back would we go?
-How would we define and limit what a song is?
etc etc
Of course, there are probably many many masterful songwriters who've never been heard of, who've quietly worked as ghosts behind the scenes for many years, just as their probably a few stars acclaimed as songwriters whose role in the creation of songs is actually rather limited.
You should check out the Rolling Stone list, it's really depressing
Thursday, 22 October 2015
Sonny Could Lick All Them Cats
I've become determined, all of a sudden, to become more accomplished at writing verse, so I'm going to use this blog to that end for a while.
I decided to write six poems about Sonny Liston. I thought they might end up being about an imaginary Sonny Liston, but they're mainly on the real Sonny Liston or tangents from that.
You need a soundtrack to read these poems and I'll supply one.
SONGS WHICH RELATE TO SONNY LISTON
Night Train - James Brown
Sonny Could Lick All Them Cats - Chuck E Weiss
Sunny - Morrissey
Love Love Love - The Mountain Goats
Song for Sonny Liston - Mark Knopfler
Glenn Tipton - Sun Kil Moon
We Didn't Start the Fire - Billy Joel
Rumble in the Jungle - The Fugees
Babe I'm On Fire - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Don't Feel Right - The Roots
SONNY LISTON KNOCKING OUT FLOYD PATTERSON in THEIR FIRST FIGHT
THE ANCHOR PUNCH - ALI/LISTON 2
And a brief bibliography
Night Train (aka The Devil and Sonny Liston) - Nick Tosches
Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times - Thomas Hauser
King of the World - David Remnick
So, here are the poems
- The Ballad of Sonny Liston
- The Long Arms of Tommy Hearns
- If God Judges, He Surely Judges Like This
- The Sonny Liston Appreciation Association
- The Night Train
- I’ll Write a Book About Sonny Liston
THE BALLAD OF SONNY LISTON
A man was born they know not when
Of stone and hate and power
The same man died they know not how
They know not at what hour.
The man was Charles L. Liston
Or Sonny as he’s known,
Though he grew up as no one’s child
And died disgraced alone.
The yellow-shirted bandit,
nicknamed by the police,
He roamed through old St Louis,
disturber of the peace.
Sonny robbed, he mugged and burgled
Although the sirens
wailed.
That juvenile delinquent boy
became a grown man jailed.
A priest said that kid Liston
He looks like he could swing.
He may not read, he may not write
But he’ll fit in the ring.
Well, Sonny was a natural,
He crushed each man he hit
They put him straight in with a pro –
Two rounds and the pro quit.
Sonny left the jail house fit and
Ready for the game.
Golden Gloves brought triumph
And growing local fame.
His exploits got him noticed
By every suited hood.
It took him up the ladder,
But not for lasting good.
Cops kept their eyes on Sonny,
Then put him back inside,
He got out and left for Philly
And would not be denied.
He beat every contender,
Too strong, too mean, too hot.
They tried to stall him in court but
At last he got his shot.
Even President JFK
Begged the Champ to win,
"This Liston’s bad for business,
Discredits his black skin."
But Patterson had no answer
To Sonny’s fierce left hook.
In Fight 1 and in the rematch
One round was all it took.
He went back to Philadelphia
Pleased and proud as hell,
Stepped off the plane to blank silence -
Sonny’s face just fell.
He dreamed once he became the champ
He’d earn a bit of praise,
But they could not forgive Sonny
His sullen, doleful ways.
This big mouth from Kentucky
Came for Liston’s crown
So brash, at last Sonny was not
The most loathed man in town,
But Cassius owned the talent
And the tide of history.
Not to say Sonny’s collapse
Does not remain a mystery.
Cassius became Muhammad Ali,
Liston was forgotten -
A chapter to be written off,
Regrettable and rotten.
Sonny’s life was swallowed up
Into crime and drugs.
The champ became just one more of
the underworld’s paid thugs.
So ignored was Sonny Liston
In Vegas living Hell
No one noticed for a week
He’d heard his final bell.
At the grim delayed discovery
Gleeful rumours spread -
Mishap, suicide or the mob
Needed their stooge dead?
That was the end of Sonny Liston,
Who never stood a chance,
A victim of his own great strength
And tragic circumstance.
He never had the love, the glory,
Never got the money
But those who know, they know full well
No one hit like Sonny.
THE LONG ARMS OF TOMMY HEARNS
I fixed a fight in sixty-eight for Joe Gallo,
So I was told. I made
the calls, I picked the round,
I ruined a young man’s life for fifteen thousand flat.
I managed Sonny for a year, made no attempt
To halt his fall. I bought him blow, I kept him low,
I told him Clay wouldn’t take the calls I never made.
I never killed a man
myself, but never saved
A life where lives, by straight words whispered, could be
saved.
I live less than one thousand miles from Vegas now,
Could drive there in one day if needed, but going back
To Vegas is the last thing I would ever do.
The last big fight they gave me, I already half knew
My half-remembered face would not be seen again
In Caesar’s or the Grand. I bet on Hands of Stone
To flatten Tommy Hearns, cut off his skinny legs.
Duran was punctured, flopped head first to ground in two,
It felt like Hearns was drilling me through - you’re next,
punk,
This ain’t your night, this ain’t your life, you’d better
run,
But know these arms will catch you up by round fifteen
And know my sting’s like nothing else you’ve felt before.
I watched Hearns-Hagler pay-per-view, a hotel room
In dark New York; a few blocks over from the court.
As Tommy flailed
half-drunk and bust, all bets were off,
I wished I could go back. You pull out now, dumb fuck,
They’d say, those lucky clowns who trapped their willing
rat,
You’ll wind up in a shallow grave, whichever way.
This farmhouse in Montana is no place for me
To watch what little boxing is on free-to-air
These days, to watch my back, to turn each corner, look
With bloodshot haunted eyes for Tommy Hearns’s jab.
IF GOD JUDGES, HE SURELY JUDGES LIKE THIS
A cricket player, seventeen, obsessed
With justice from on high, a foolish soul,
A decent bat, vice-captain of his school,
this dusty 90s summer afternoon,
A motley travelling team of men descend
Called Incogniti, inexplicably.
The boy recalls five years before, the same
Assorted bunch of bulky bearded blades
And bowlers brought their bonhomie to Barnes –
While he, yet then, obsessive cricket fan
Spent happy hours outside the fence, or, bliss!
within the scorebox, watching, keeping note,
Recalls a little ball of spinning wiles,
All jokes and tricks behind his lefty wrist,
His name was Liston, written in the book,
His chirping team mates called him Sonny Boy.
Those five years later, “Sonny” Liston, much
The same in look and wits, returned with his
Anon’mous band of braggarts, there to teach
These boys a lesson – cricket for grown men.
What’s in this name, the boy he feared the worst,
The day was long, his play was off, his own
Left arm refused to yield to his command.
His mind laid traps but only for himself,
The men set in and dug themselves a score
To strike concern within these youthful hearts.
As wickets fell, the boy had feet of clay –
His usual role as rock beyond today’s
Loose, fretful mindset. Duty called with dread
Death rattle, nonetheless. A day to save!
But Sonny Liston had a different plan –
Deceptive loop and, to left-handed bat,
That dangerous spin away which needs sharp mind.
No ball came near the middle of his blade –
An ugly sequence of embarrassed prods.
At last, the misery appeared to end –
A nick, thank god, looped to the hands of slip.
But no, to ground. This toil must carry on.
Come on, then, boy, let’s fill them with regret.
Bed down, stick in, your form will sure return.
But no! Another edge looped up to hand!
Good god! What chance! Another gift disdained.
And then, the boy, had he been of sound mind
Would sure have counted up his lucky breaks,
As he had managed countless times before,
Re-energised and saved the blessed day.
This time, a different monologue prevailed.
You don’t deserve to be here anymore –
It’s time to place your fate before your God –
When next this Sonny Liston throws it up,
Then charge and swing, and if you should connect,
The day is yours, the Lord lends his support.
It seemed like such a good plan at the time.
A looped leg-break, the feet move down the track,
A lofted drive, a sightscreen to be cleared …
Was the idea … the truth was more prosaic …
Head in the air, feet stranded out of crease.
The end of that. The Lord has picked his side.
Suffice to say, his team was unimpressed –
Repeatedly “responsibility”
Was uttered coldly. But the boy, by now
Perversely proud, would not apologise
that sporting justice meted from on high,
in Sonny Liston’s portly guileful form,
was best accepted, even best embraced …
this stance, no doubt, you’ll be surprised to hear,
met even more lukewarm of a response.
THE SONNY LISTON APPRECIATION ASSOCIATION
Che Guevara, Brian Lara,
Desmond Tutu, Adrian Mutu,
Iron Maiden – should have stayed in
No one thinks the same as me.
Cotton Traders, Oakland Raiders,
Guns ‘n’ Roses, Edwin Moses
Pulp, Oasis – smug, dull faces
No one wears the same as me.
England rugby, Scotland rugby,
I can’t mingle, so much Pringle,
Endless gilets, boredom relays
Am I the only member-to-be
Of the Sonny Liston Appreciation
& Admiration Association
Sonny is the Man for me,
But I’m his only fan, sadly …
THE NIGHT TRAIN
I boarded the night train in dark grey Perth
Weary and wired to find that my berth
Was not in a bed nor cabin my own
But a seat in a carriage with persons unknown.
“Facilities” intoned the guard with louche spite
“extend to a bar and your own reading light”
Small blessings determined I should make the best –
“this night may not offer me glorious rest
But there’s smooth ale for drinking and tough words to
ponder,
A life to uncover then a mind to let wander.
I’ve a bio to read about old Sonny Liston
Destroying whomever he laid his right fist on”.
Sonny would train to the sound of James Brown
Singing out loud the name of each town –
“Carlisle! Penrith! Preston! Runcorn!”
Sonny’s huge shadow getting its funk on …
Three hours in after three cans of Deuchars
I’m dreaming of Gretna and thinking ‘bout Leuchars,
frontier town shoot-outs and old sons of slaves
never receiving the ovations they crave,
never beloved and never set free
to stay on their feet against Clay nor Ali,
never the liberal’s civil rights dream,
Too rough, too exploited to fit with the theme
Of King and Baez, of Johnson and Dylan -
Whoever the foe, this Liston’s the villain.
Five hours have past, my drunk eyes are stinging
I hear the night train but James Brown’s not singing,
It’s the low southern blues haunting my ears,
Sonny’s cornering me – “time for the final arrears”
The baleful visage of a man born for pain,
Beating against the sides of my brain.
“I’m parched, Sonny Liston, get me a drink
And I promise I’ll change the way people think
about bad Sonny Liston, unsolved mystery,
ghost of the night train, pariah of history”.
I’LL WRITE A BOOK ABOUT SONNY LISTON
Sonny Liston found a way to turn hate into love;
Death did not defeat him like Muhammad’s phantom punch.
He might well not believe it if you told him of the songs
And books written to save his soul long after he is gone.
I’ll write six poems about him just to tell him someone
cares
About the misbegotten, vilified and easily led.
There’s no worthwhile 20th century if Sonny is
erased,
The light will shine upon him, though too little and too
late.
I’ll write six poems for Sonny Liston, making one for every round
He lasted with Ali on the grim night his life fell down.
History needs it villains, but those villains need a break -
Sonny Liston’s afterlife need not be marked with shame.
Line the streets of Philadelphia ‘cause it’s Sonny Liston
Day.
History’s been rewritten and his reputation saved.
All around St Louis I hear crowds of people shout
God save Sonny Liston, you can’t keep a champion down.
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