Books

At the start of August 2018 (which happened to coincide with my 40^th birthday) I hadn’t completed a full-length work of adult fiction for well over two years. There was one particularly significant reason/excuse for this who came along in June 2016 (no, not Brexit), but that was, in terms of the absence of free time, not worth two years’ worth of excuses, nor did it explain the number of barely started/unfinished novels in the time before.

I had really lost confidence in myself as a reader – self-pitying as that sounds. We all have the experience of reading a few pages into a book then giving up – no harm in that -, but more damaging were the books I felt I’d got past the first hurdle, but still gave up on – 70 pages into Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie, 30 pages into The Dead Republic by Roddy Doyle, 150 pages into Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace (I mean, I expect there are 1000s who’ve got 150 pages into Infinite Jest, but still) … then, perhaps the most damaging blow was the first novel I tried to read post-parenthood, a Christmas present from my mother, The Forgotten Waltz by Anne Enright. It’s not an especially long book, and I got nearly halfway through it, terribly slowly, before feeling worn out by the slow plot and the narrator’s thought processes. This isn’t the one I’m coming back with, I said to myself.

I managed a few non-fiction works last year – on pop music, sport, my safe ground. And, of course, I had read an awful lot of words which weren’t novels for adults. I’d read children’s books, poems, plus so many Wikipedia articles, long read pieces, witty twitter threads, funny takes on things, background materials for work. I had become consumed by my need to be on top of what was going on, to be informed and with it. A form of madness.

So much of what I took in I then spat out – I don’t think I’ve written so much as in the last couple of years (clearly giving the lie to the notion that I didn’t have time to read novels). All well and good, there are pieces I’m glad to have written, but also several overwrought attempts to process ephemera, which instantly felt like a gigantic waste of time.

Wasting time/using time, that’s really what I want to write about. Perhaps the turning 40 isn’t entirely coincidental. Perhaps I’m thinking more and more pointedly about how to make sure my time isn’t waste. Endlessly checking to see what self-defeating argument various left-wingers I used to respect are making with each other on twitter is not good time …

I didn’t set out to make reading novels a task, a project, an accomplishment, an exercise in time well spent. I knew I was missing reading books, but I was feeling it was out of my reach, it had become something other people did, and I’d lost the knack for. Fortuitously, my mother was telling me about the English author JL Carr, who she’d been reading about, and, in Waterstones to pick up some full-length works of children’s fiction (of which I have, of course, read vast numbers) I spotted Carr’s most acclaimed book, A Month in the Country, on a table of “Short Classics” (or something). Just over 100 pages, I knew I had a way in. If I finished it, I’d be able to speak to my mother about it – it was a task, an achievable task.

It was a struggle to start with, but it was very readable, an English elegy of sorts which somehow felt timely, and, reader, I read it … talking of which, I’d picked up Wide Sargasso Sea in the same deal, and, high on my own success, I moved straight on. Dense and heady as it is, completing it gave me an even greater sense of accomplishment, and suddenly, the project was on.

I have become project-focused in the last decade or so. It was always in me to be so, but in my childhood and early adulthood, I was disorganised, undermotivated and rarely completed anything. I changed significantly between 2007 and 2009. The nature of my work played its part - the need to organise myself to complete tasks day after day and over long period, but more significant, for some reason, was my first DVT. Almost instantly, my need and ability to organise myself increased vastly. Initially, this applied to necessary changes to lifestyle and fitness. It felt like a must, not an option.

Then came the self-perpetuating writing projects. This blog basically. It began as a one-off thing, 101 lists of songs about things with poems – that took 18 months and I finished it. It was something. A couple of years later, I realised there could be more somethings. I’ve spent a great deal of time on further projects – 200 Greatest British Sportspeople, 40 Sporting Moments, 1001 Songs, An Album a Year, 101 Sporting Haikus etc … I completed them all, and it was the completion that was important to me. What have you done, David? Well, I’ve done these things.

And it could be the same with reading books, I realised. Each one could be an achievement and a tick. It could be a number. Now, one might think that would suck the joy out of reading, that everything should be a task – Done, done and I’m on to the next one … but I think reading a novel is such a necessarily engaging and emotive activity that you simply cannot just tick a book off – you can with albums and, to a lesser extent, films (I have – of course! – also taken this completist approach to both) but you cannot simply pass over the pages of a novel, completely giving up on the idea of understanding.

It turns out that this brutal approach to reading novels is suiting me. I quickly set myself the task of 25 novels in 25 weeks – I was extremely careful at first, making sure that everything was in my range, and failure and discouragement was unlikely. I looked through my shelves, in bookshops and online for short novels. I knew I’d have to get to more challenging works, but they could wait till I had a bit more confidence in my own reading.

I had some demons to slay first. After Wide Sargasso Sea, I turned to The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes, which I’d carried with me, forlornly, time after time, as I’d travelled up to London and back over the last year, without getting past the first couple of pages. Pausing only to demolish The Old Man and the Sea (the recollection that some classics of literature can be ingested as swiftly as a Peter Jackson film was a great boon), I then returned to Anne Enright’s The Forgotten Waltz, picking up where I’d left off. This time, the reading was so much easier and more enjoyable. Under less pressure, the book opened up to me, and had such a glorious kick on the last page, it really brought my previous struggles with the narrator’s inner monologue into perspective.

Mainly, as I said, I’ve been reading short books, though my ambitions have increased. Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing was almost 300 pages, and then came Peter Ackroyd’s Hawksmoor, which packs so much into its 220 pages, so much complexity, intrigue, history, good and evil, I felt like reading it was a real accomplishment.

I mean to read some longer books, though, in truth, I haven’t ever read all that many novels over 600 pages. I managed The Corrections (which, though I can barely remember a detail of it, I was sure was the best novel I’d read when I completed it, in around 2003), Alan Hollingsworth’s The Stranger’s Child, and, ludicrously, Lord of the Rings, twice. I’m sure there have been others, but I think a weighty tome has always scared me a little.

Maybe I’ll return to Infinite Jest – I do remember I was quite enjoying it, I just think I probably saw a sports biography I quite fancied reading in media res, and then couldn’t bring myself go back to it. I guess there are folk who’ve read one or all of Ulysses, À la recherche du temps perdu and Infinite Jest, and, having been nearby to friends when they’ve been working their way through the two former and being in no way attracted to that worthy torture, I guess Infinite Jest is my best shot.

But. Is. Life. Too. Short? It’s a (slightly) serious question. Time well spent becomes more of an obsession as I get older, as seems inevitable. One of the pangs during my long exile from literature was a sense of despair and reproach at all the time I wasted when I was young. Why, when there was no twitter feed, no sky sports, no internet, no rocking child to sleep, no this, no that, did I not then read all the books I could? What was I doing that was more worthwhile?

There are some decent answers … I was playing football and cricket, I was in pubs, I was cultivating a backstory to rail against, but, you know, I never read enough. And I did have the chance. I’m probably less well-read than I seem. I’ve loved the oblivion of watching sport (and TV in general) too much. It’s always been a bit sporadic – two or three novels on the bounce then a few months off etc … perhaps finally I’ve had the wake-up call about the need … the need to read. The stories to be told.

But, yes, it matters how long some novels are. I’ll read Middlemarch, I think … how long … fuck …

 will reading Infinite Jest really be time better spent than, say, Scoop, Under the Net and Normal People (not chosen at random but staring at me right now …)? Come on, I haven’t got all day.

Will reading a short novel be a better use of time than, say, watching Killing Eve… oh, all those TV series, why did I not watch all the TV series when I had the time?

You can be as philosophical as you like about time until it comes to fitting worthwhile stuff in. I mean, why in the name of shit am I writing this? Time’s a wastin’ …

… I return to this two months later! I literally stopped in the middle of a sentence, thinking why am I complaining about time while writing a fairly meaningless blog?

So, the good news is I’ve carried on reading. I’ve completed 30 novels/novellas in less than 4 months, which is pretty good going. I’ve slowed down a bit though.

I have about 30 more lined up – I think they might take me a bit more than 30 weeks, but I think I’ll keep reading.

I’m not sure it’s done the job of removing me from twitter and facebook as much as I’d like, but so be it.

Here is the list of books I’ve read so far … none of them has been a waste of time, and that’s good enough for me

Reading novels is good time … or at least it’s not really bad time … any well-chosen, well-written book is worth at least something.

05/05/23 - i've been seized by the urge to give each of these books a score. I might delete later. It's an obscene thing to do, but it's kind of a test of how well i remember my experience of them ...

1. A Month in the Country – JL Carr 9
2. Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys 7
3. The Noise of Time – Julian Barnes 7
4. The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway 7
5. The Forgotten Waltz – Anne Enright 6
6. Slaughterhouse-Five – Kurt Vonnegut 7
7. Nutshell – Ian McEwan 6
8. From a Calm and Narrow Sea – Donal Ryan 7
9. The Sense of an Ending – Julian Barnes 8
10. Sing, Unburied, Sing – Jesmyn Ward 6
11. Hawksmoor – Peter Ackroyd 8
12. Midwinter Break – Bernard MacLaverty 7
13. The Little Sister – Raymond Chandler 7
14. The Gathering – Anne Enright 8
15. Train to Pakistan – Khushwant Singh 7
16. Under the Net – Iris Murdoch 8
17. A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – Alexander Solzhenitsyn 6
18. Conversations with Friends – Sally Rooney 7
19. Sula – Toni Morrison 8
20. The Quiet American – Graham Greene 7
21. The Body Artist – Don DeLillo 6
22. Amsterdam – Ian McEwan 7
23. The Beginning of Spring – Penelope Fitzgerald 7
24. Normal People – Sally Rooney 9
25. An Artist of the Floating World – Kazuo Ishiguro 8
26. Hot Milk – Deborah Levy 7
27. The End of the Affair - Graham Greene 8
28. Ghost Wall – Sarah Moss 7
29. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck 7
30. Moon Tiger – Penelope Lively 7
31. In a Free State - VS Naipaul 6
32. Heartburn - Nora Ephron 6
33. Autumn - Ali Smith 9
34. Grief is a Thing with Feathers - Max Porter 6
35. Go Tell it on the Mountain - James Baldwin 8
36. The End We Start From - Megan Hunter 7
37. Seize the Day - Saul Bellow 6
38. Quartet in Autumn - Barbara Pym 7
39. 13 Ways of Looking - Colum McCann 7
40. Winter  - Ali Smith 8
41. The Fall - Albert Camus 5
42. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark 9
43. The Vegetarian - Han Kang 7
44. Regeneration - Pat Barker 7
45. The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon 4
46. Hotel du Lac - Anita Brookner 8
47. The Postman Always Rings Twice - James Cain 7
48. Giovanni's Room - James Baldwin 7
49. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath 7
50. Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont - Elizabeth Taylor 8
51. The Ghost Road - Pat Barker 7
52. Spring - Ali Smith 7
53. The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway 7
54. The Good Soldier - Ford Madox Ford 9
55. Tin Man - Sarah Winman 7
56. Scoop - Evelyn Waugh 6
57. Eileen - Ottessa Moshfegh 8
58. Oranges are not the Only Fruit - Jeanette Winterson 6
59. Stay With Me - Ayobami Adebayo 7
60. Swimming Home - Deborah Levy 8
61. The Ghost Writer - Philip Roth 6
62. Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston 7
63. Home Fire - Kamila Shamsie 8
64. Train Dreams - Denis Johnson 8
65. A Severed Head - Iris Murdoch 7
66. In Our Mad and Furious City - Guy Gunaratne 7
67. I Heard the Owl Call My Name - Margaret Craven 8
68. Siddhartha - Herman Hesse 7
69. Home - Toni Morrison 6
70. Exit West - Mohsin Hamid 7
71. Riddley Walker - Russell Hoban 10
72. History of Wolves - Emily Fridlund 7
73. Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov 8
74. Everything Under - Daisy Johnson 7
75. A Room With a View - EM Forster 7
76. The Man Who Saw Everything - Deborah Levy 7
77. Days Without End - Sebastian Barry 9
78. Ethan Frome - Edith Wharton 8
79. The Buddha in the Attic - Julie Otsuka 7
80. Chronicle of a Death Foretold - Gabriel Garcia Marquez 8
81. My Sister, the Serial Killer - Oyinkan Braithwaite 7
82. Heatwave - Penelope Lively 6
83. So Long, See You Tomorrow - William Maxwell 7
84. The Wall - John Lanchester 8
85. How to be Both - Ali Smith 7
86. The Order of the Day - Eric Vuillard 6
87. An American Marriage - Tayari Jones 6
88. Girl - Edna O'Brien 7
89. Rabbit, Run - John Updike 7
90. The Green Road - Anne Enright 10
91. Songdogs - Colum McCann 7
92. The Italian Girl - Iris Murdoch 7
93. I Who Have Never Known Men - Jacqueline Harpman 8
94. Their Brilliant Careers: The Fantastic Lives of Sixteen Extraordinary Australian Writers - Ryan O'Neill 10
95. ness - Robert MacFarlane and Stanley Donwood 4
96. Queenie - Candice Carty-Williams 6
97. Actress - Anne Enright 8
98. The Awakening - Kate Chopin 7
99. Weather - Jenny Offill 6
100. Purple Hibiscus - Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie 8
101. The Nickel Boys - Colson Whitehead 8
102. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley 7
103. A Whole Life - Robert Seethaler 7
104. The Cockroach - Ian McEwan 5
105. Sweet Sorrow - David Nicholls 8
106. Summer - Ali Smith 7
107. Where the Crawdads Sing - Delia Owens 6
108. Offshore - Penelope Fitzgerald 7
109. Americanah - Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie 7
110. On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous - Ocean Vuong 8
111. Flaubert's Parrot - Julian Barnes 7
112. Summerwater - Sarah Moss 6
113. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love - Raymond Carver 8
114. Fighter - Andy Lee 7
115. Small Town Talk - Barney Hoskyns 7
116. Face It - Debbie Harry 7
117. When We Were Orphans - Kazuo Ishiguro 7
118. Salvage the Bones - Jesmyn Ward 8
119. The Country Girls - Edna O'Brien 8
120. Apeirogon - Colum McCann 8
121. The Lonely Londoners - Sam Selvon 8
122. The Vanishing Half - Brit Bennett 7
123. Beautiful World, Where Are You? - Sally Rooney 5
124. Lanny - Max Porter 9
125. Everyman - Philip Roth 7
126. The Lonely Girl - Edna O'Brien 7
127. Hamnet - Maggie O'Farrell 6
128. Open Water - Caleb Azumah Nelson 6
129. Lessons - Ian McEwan 7
130. Snow - John Banville 7
131. Assembly - Natasha Brown 7
132. Faith, Hope and Carnage - Nick Cave and Sean O'Hagan 7
133. The Book of the Gaels - James Yorkston 7
134. The Death of Francis Bacon - Max Porter 5
135. The Winter Garden - Nicola Cornick 5
136. The Heat of the Day - Elizabeth Bowen 8
137. The Ice Palace - Tarjei Vesaas 8
138. Second Place - Rachel Cusk 7
139. Small Things Like These - Claire Keegan 8
140. The Fell - Sarah Moss 8
141. Treacle Walker - Alan Garner 7
142. A Far Cry from Kensington - Muriel Spark 7
143. That Old Country Music - Kevin Barry 8
144. A Different Drummer - William Melvin Kelley 8
145. Burnt Sugar - Avni Doshi 6
146. The Ballad of Peckham Rye - Muriel Spark 10
147. The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison 7
148. Cove - Cynan Jones 7
149. No One is Talking About This - Patricia Lockwood 8
150. The Bottle Factory Outing - Beryl Bainbridge 7
151. The Driver's Seat - Muriel Spark 8
152. Pledging My Time: Conversations with Bob Dylan Band Members - Ray Padgett 9
153. George's Marvellous Medicine - Roald Dahl 6
154. August is a Wicked Month - Edna O'Brien 7
155. Journey into Fear - Eric Ambler 7
156. The Twits - Roald Dahl 5
157. Old God's Time - Sebastian Barry 9
158. The Wren, The Wren - Anne Enright 7
159. Harlem Shuffle - Colson Whitehead 9
160. Western Lane - Chetna Maroo 8
161. Antarctica - Claire Keegan 8
162. Girls in Their Married Bliss - Edna O'Brien 7
163. Gilead - Marilynne Robinson 9
164. World Within a Song - Jeff Tweedy 7
165. James and the Giant Peach - Roald Dahl 6
166. Everything in this Country Must - Colum McCann 7
167. Study for Obedience - Sarah Bernstein 2 (well, in this whole experience, this is the first book I hated)
168. Leave the World Behind - Rumaan Alan 7 (I also somewhat hated this, but it was well done)
169. Danny the Champion of the World - Roald Dahl 9
170. Excellent Women - Barbara Pym 8
171. If Beale Street Could Talk - James Baldwin 8
172. Latecomers - Anita Brookner 6
173. You are Here - David Nicholls 7
174. The Silence of the Girls - Pat Barker 7
175. This Other Eden - Paul Harding 7
176. Memento Mori - Muriel Spark 8
177. Night Boat to Tangier - Kevin Barry 8
178. The Netanyahus - Joshua Cohen 9
179. Orbital - Samantha Harvey 9
180. Held - Anne Michaels 6. (a very frustrating book i kept thinking had something worth getting to grips with, but then, for me, didn't)
181. Our Man in Havana - Graham Greene 7
182. Tokyo Express - Seicho Matsumoto 9
183. The Time of the Angels - Iris Murdoch 7 (a horrible book, though ...)
184. A Pale View of Hills - Kazuo Ishiguro 9
185. The Sellout - Paul Beatty 7
186. Summer - Edith Wharton 6
187. The Double Life of Bob Dylan: Part One - Clinton Heylin 6
188. The Double Life of Bob Dylan: Part Two - Clinton Heylin 6 (no number can do justice to this mad book)
189. Indigenous Soul: Gaza and Me - Nada Shawa 7
190. Intermezzo - Sally Rooney 8
191. The Book of Evidence - John Banville 8
192. Dream Count - Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie 7
193. Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy 8
194. Girl Meets Boy - Ali Smith 7
195. Greek Lessons - Han Kang 8
196. In a Summer Season - Elizabeth Taylor 8
197. heart, be at peace - Donal Ryan 9 
198. As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner 10
199. the spinning heart - Donal Ryan 8
200. We Have Always Lived in the Castle - Shirley Jackson 9
201. Prophet Song - Paul Lynch 9
202. Shy - Max Porter 7
203. Angel - Elizabeth Taylor 6 (deserves a higher number, but it got me at a time when i've been struggling to read, and i really laboured through it)
204. Behind the Scenes of the Museum - Kate Atkinson 8
205. My Brilliant Friend - Elena Ferrante 8
206. Outline - Rachel Cusk 7
207. Milkman - Anna Burns 9 (but, oof, hard work ...)
208. Nocturnes - Kazuo Ishiguro 7
209. Pilgermann - Russell Hoban 6
210. Bless Me Father - Kevin Rowland
211. French Braid - Anne Tyler 7
212. Fathers and Sons - Ivan Turgenev 8
213. The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy 7
214. Seascraper - Benjamin Wood 8
215. Deep Cuts - Holly Brickley 7
216. The Palm House - Gwendoline Riley 8
217. A Quiet Life - Beryl Bainbridge 7
218. Paradise - Abdulrazak Gurnah 9
219. the accidental - Ali Smith

Subversively Sad Songs

In his marvellous lecture 'Secret Life of the Love Song' Nick Cave talks about the quality within certain songs called "saudade" ... a Portuguese word meaning a certain kind of longing, of sadness - you really need to listen to the lecture, but hopefully you get the idea ...

But anyway, he uses the example of Kylie Minogue's 'Better the Devil You Know' to explain that saudade can lurk in the most unlikely of places - a superficially upbeat banger hiding an inner core of utter desolation.

I've always been fascinated by this. The right combination of singer and song can steal heartbreak and despair into the most unlikely places.

The modern maestro of smuggled saudade is Robyn - whose songs seem to permanently hover between euphoria and unbearable sadness. I wrote years ago about 'With Every Heartbeat' (rather clumsily),  and my feeling for that song has only grown. It is a thing of uncommon, uncomfortable beauty, and perhaps the definition of what I'm looking for.

It's a certain type of song, this. Not just a sad song. There are 1000s of those.

Of course, there are ballads, and big sad pop songs, but that's not quite what I'm talking about. Not something like 'Someone Like You' or 'In the Air Tonight'. The sentiment there, and the desired emotional effect is clear.

It's the ones which are somehow joyful and danceable but then gradually something nags at you that all is not quite right ...

It can only be personal taste. I'm quite sure 'Baby One More Time' would fit the bill for a lot of people, but it's never done it for me ... the lyrics are there, but somehow the vocal and tune aren't. Likewise 'Tainted Love' ... I feel that too much was given over to it being a banger in the Soft Cell version for its dark heart to quite survive, though Marc Almond's voice ought to ideally suit that balance.

Anyway ... here are a few across a few different eras. Can you think of any more?

Umbrella - Rihanna
Into the Groove - Madonna
Chandelier - Sia
Help! - The Beatles
Green Light - Lorde
A Little Respect - Erasure
Dancing On My Own - Robyn
Burn Baby Burn - Ash
Get Happy - Judy Garland
What a Fool Believes - The Doobie Brothers
Born Slippy - Underworld
I Wanna Dance With Somebody - Whitney Houston

A vs B: Part 6 - David Gray vs James Blunt

Aah, the big two. Titans of terrible, behemoths of banal. Or are they?

Oh, yeah, pretty much, maybe, not really.

People ask has there even been anyone like Ed Sheeran before? No, there hasn’t. Not one-man-and-a-guitar with the sheer ubiquity. But these are the antecedents. Both had monster albums which were the bestselling in the UK in a year, both endured the utter loathing of serious music fans/snobs. The loathing was often personal.

They’re also really good examples of where “the line” is. People not tied up with the precise details of being a “serious” music fan might be bemused at what makes e.g. Badly Drawn Boy ok and these two not ok.

I mean, some people just hate this shit. Hate these well-bred sensitive singer-songwriters bearing their soul. But, actually, not me.

This is, or was, my territory. From Dylan on to Jeff Buckley and Nick Drake, I was always searching for the next “mystery white boy” (as Buckley joked about himself). I was a fan of Ryan Adams, Ed Harcourt, Tom McRae, David Kitt, even Damien Rice. I went to see Damien Rice … twice! It was nice. I was primed for Gray and Blunt … (what wonderful names they had ...)

I had significantly strong reactions against both Gray and Blunt at the time, but retrospectively think they’re rather different cases.

Gray was just a pro who did songs – he’d done a few albums, then got massively successful suddenly in Ireland. He remixed a single and did an appearance on ‘Jools Holland’ where he wobbled his head.

People started using the term “coffee table music” or “dinner party music” and I remember I did hear his album White Ladder at a dinner party where I felt out of place, and people were discussing his music in a really dull way and I was young enough to think I was better than all that. And, you know, I was particularly susceptible to the music press then, and they were generally dismissive.

I hadn’t listened to the album all the way through since (though I’ve listened willingly to individual David Gray songs a few times since then). I didn’t think I’d need to listen to them both to write this, but I was a little intrigued. I also listened to a couple of other singer-songwriter albums of the early 2000s which I’m going to thrown into the mix, as I think they’re relevant to my reactions.

‘White Ladder’ is quite a nice album – there are decent songs and it’s got a pleasantly consistent mood. I didn’t cringe, or feel hateful, I realised it’s roughly in my sphere and generally my previous antipathy was a bit of snobbery. Above all, it’s highly competent. Occasionally gently funny and sometimes quite poignant, it has, in retrospect, an undeniable crepuscular charm.

I listened to James Blunt’s ‘Back to Bedlam’, the bestselling UK album of the first decade of the millennium, for the first time all the way through yesterday.

Here are my notes on James Blunt – I happened to see him as a support act at the Borderline in summer 2004 - I didn’t really notice him, I was talking at the back, I remember he had a big backing band for a support act at the Borderline.

The publicity photos for the album showed him on the platform at Clapham Common tube, where I lived at the time. I liked that. He lived on Fulham Palace Road, and in his interviews talked about hanging out in the grotty nightclub by Putney Station. I liked that. People I knew were fans of his. Someone on my PGCE lived near him, saw him around, went to his gigs, said they were great, said he was really nice.

This much seems indisputable. The personal abuse he got seemed a bit rotten. He is now reborn as a self-mocking twitter star with triffic bantz. He’s clearly also someone with a range of talents.

But those songs, that album, that made him a star, they really are as awful as anything you could ever listen to. It’s not snobbery, or assumption, or prejudice. 

Some people berated his background, but I don't mind posh singer-songwriters, far from it. My favourite British singer-songwriter of the era, Ed Harcourt, was as well-to-do as they come.

I remember when he played ‘Goodbye My Lover’ on Jools Holland, my blood froze with embarrassment for him. I felt like an avuncular northern gentleman like Jim Carter ought to have come over to him halfway through and tapped him on the shoulder and said “all right, lad, that’s enough”, “but, sir, let me finish my song” “nay, lad, you did grand, but let’s stop it there, shall we?” …

It didn’t belong there, among “real musicians” with basic standards of how to string words together and not over-emote and not try too hard and not do the most obvious thing imaginable.

I listened to it on the train to London this week and my blood froze again. I really think it’s the worst song ever.

Worse than ‘You’re Beautiful’ and ‘Wise Men’ which are probably on the same terrain of terrible.

How did it happen? How did people fall for it? What is it? Well, I imagine he managed to give good enough banter at gigs that people forgot to listen to the songs … or something … or it sounded just enough like stuff that was good, that made the heartstrings of the cynical melt – it sounded enough like it and took it to another level.

Like I say, my tastes, aren’t/weren’t cool. I’m not above that stuff – that started with Jeff Buckley’s ‘Hallelujah’, the absolute mothership of it all, taking in Gray and Coldplay and Keane, even Radiohead at times, talents like Tom McRae and Ed Harcourt, and Damien Rice, who I’ve realised may be the key to this tale.

Rice, with his coffee-table breakout crossover slowburn hit album ‘O’, Rice who’s been bracketed with Gray and Blunt and Jamie Cullum and whoever else.

I saw Rice twice – I thought ‘O’ was really a great album. The second time I went was pretty sour – he was sour, the crowd booed the opera singer (one of the oddest moments I’ve ever known at a gig, which I’ll get to), I went off Rice and have hardly listened to him for more than a decade. But I listened to ‘O’ again this week for research and, you know, it is fantastic.

It’s a tense, fearsome, deeply and realistically romantic and dramatic piece of work, with a narrative and a sense of mystery. The singing by Rice and his co-star Lisa Hannigan is so good – they really are the best pair of co-vocalists since Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris. He has range, but above all, he uses the dynamics of his voice brilliantly, as does she.

Of course, it appears that the tale soured with the real-life relationship of the two, resulting in him sacking her in 2007. People booed the opera singer at that second gig because, essentially, they loved Lisa Hannigan so much and didn’t want to hear another singer – I know, fucking mental!. One can only guess there was all kind of professional insecurity and jealousy going on … who knows …

But, anyway, I’d gone off Rice when Blunt came along, but I still had the memory of how good Rice was, and that Blunt, this ersatz version, was an insult to the singer-songwriter genre. I think I’ve only just unpicked that properly now.

I also wonder if Blunt rather killed the genre … the way his shtick was polished, the songs were written by committee, he was marketed in quite a pop way, it showed the moneymen what could be done, and from that point we had a series of reasonably talented but clearly controlled crossover stars like James Morrison, Nutini, George Ezra and of course the infernal Sheeran. I don’t know, this really make sense, it’s just a feeling. Blunt killed a genre I loved for me, anyway.

So there’s your answer. Who’s better? Damien Rice and Ed Harcourt, I guess.

Full English

Right, I've got an aphorism. Here's my aphorism. I've had a little search and haven't found it elsewhere, so I'm claiming it.

"If it's not about racism, what about the racism?"

They'll tell you it's not about racism, and maybe it's not. Maybe the day-to-day regular implicit and explicit racism on the streets of England is totally independent of the Brexit thing, eh?

They rely on the liberal metropolitan elite bubble being a real thing, compromised of people who don't leave that bubble, and wonder to themselves if maybe they're getting it wrong, being unfair to the middle Englander.

I don't live in the liberal metropolitan elite bubble. I don't live in it, I don't look like it. I'm just a scrappy frowning overweight guy with a shaved head in the solid satellite towns.

And I hear people being racist all the time. All the time. And I'm an unfriendly person without conversational tricks who mainly exists in the bubble of his own house. I don't go looking for it.

But I overhear it on the streets, I hear it from people I engage in brief conversations with, working people, taxi drivers, casual acquaintances. If eg London is mentioned, people can't wait to say something about all the ghastly people that now live there. They imply it or say it openly. They probably don't think they're racist. They're good respectable people.

Racism gets treated in the media like it's an outrage, a shocking break from the norm which the committer will never be able to live down. It's not. It's every day, all sorts of people. The strongest targets vary, but it's always there.

Anyway. I wrote a poem when the Windrush scandal was going on, inspired, if that's the right word, by a black guy I saw, probably in his 50s, in my local supermarket, wearing a Jam t-shirt inscribed with the words from 'Down in the Tube Station at Midnight" - "They smelt of pubs and Wormwood Scrubs, and too many right-wing meetings".

It was, on various levels, one of the greatest things I've ever seen. That's my country, please.

FULL ENGLISH

I’ve been with you

in your England

since its birth, in desperation,

From the ashes of an Empire

gorged on cruelty and loathing.

Born here as it dragged itself

through shame-faced reconstruction,

I’ll die here as it suffocates,

entranced by its own embers.

A traveller’s child is not himself

a slave to expedition.

I know my roots

but made my bed

in brittle little England.

I know each tiny detail

of my difference

and your myth-wish

For England, some new England,

which, in truth, never existed.

I’ve never not been English,

I am older than your memory

Of battles on a pink map

won by white men

with a black book.

My tanks are not on your lawn,

your gates are not beleaguered,

We’re English,

just as English

as your forlorn deathwish protest.

We’re British

as the Celts

who grasped the bitter joke you bleated -

“We’re all in this together”,

in the same breath as you told us

That a jolly hostile send-off was

the very least you owed us

Yet I know more of England

than these puffing thin-eyed wreckers,

Who only know

their corner

and believe it replicated

In every neuk and hood

where their imagination fails them,

Yet I know every England

like a stranger feels a welcome.

I’m the only black man standing

at the Hammersmith Palais,

Bellowing indie anthems

like a reveller at a wake,

I fought like a true Englishman

in Dublin and on Green Street,

Sometimes, only sometimes,

these boys barely even see it.

In some pub off Charing Cross

that night the Germans mugged us off

I’m just another snarling English voice

rich in expletives.

I’ve lived a modern English life,

I’ve bought myself the t-shirt

“They smelt of pubs and Wormwood Scrubs … too many right-wing meetings”

An in-joke and outsider howl

in every brazen detail,

I wear it as I’m marching

through my mid-life small-town exile.

I’m English all the way through,

I am London and the counties,

I’ve heard every expression

which excuses me my colour,

“present company”,

“not like them” …

as if I should be flattered

By ghoulish poisoned savages

who’ve never known a black man.

They’ve seen me on their TV

In the joyous throes of Blackwash

Greeting Richards, Holding, Marshall

Off HMT Empire Windrush

And they’ve damned me for my graceless

Jumped-up unenlightened blackness.

They’d damn me with the Tebbit test,

The lauded racist’s Sunday best

(I’d pass it, but I gave myself

That glorious day of rest)

They call it like they see it

And they see it as they’re taught it.

They wouldn’t know I’m English

From my birth-cries

To their doorstep.

I fought like a true Englishman

At Goose Green and in Belfast

And, then and there, those boys

I swear

they couldn’t tell us apart.

I’ve seen an Eltham Six

in waiting

Each corner I turned

Looking to release themselves

By some unfettered act.

But English is my language

And my manner and my way.

I’ve hardly missed a step, lads,

And never shown a crack.

My grandkids will be English.

Or at least that’s what I’d hoped.

I’m home. My home is England.

There’s my passport. Here’s my word.

A vs B Part 5: Be My Baby Vs River Deep - Mountain High

Two great songs. I’ve heard both described several times as The Greatest Pop Song Ever.

Both were written by the same three people, Ellie Greenwich, Jeff Barry and Phil Spector. Both were produced by Spector and arranged by Jack Nitzsche. One is by The Ronettes (lead vocal Ronnie Spector), the other Ike and Tina Turner (lead vocal Tina Turner, forget Ike).

They are probably the most renowned, definitive Spector productions, the greatest testaments to his talent. They are only three years apart, but feel like more, as so many “early 60s/late 60s” things do.

Ronnie Spector and Tina Turner are both phenomenal singers, unique in their abilities, amongst the most iconic in the history of rock’n’roll. Both had their careers wrecked by abusive, controlling husbands (Turner less than Spector, who was literally not allowed to sing or perform for many years). How many more great Roni Spector vocals there could have been!

I prefer ‘Be My Baby’ now, though I have veered both ways down the years.  It is just … more perfect.

When I listen to ‘River Deep’, I can’t help thinking it is both a bit messier and not quite as overpowering as Spector would have hoped. I think you can hear that he’d lost a bit of control. Sometimes it seems a little bitty and disconnected. I kind of feel it’s almost one of the greatest songs ever but doesn’t quite get there.

Perhaps working with an absolute powerhouse like Tina Turner didn’t work for Spector. Perhaps he felt he had to outmatch her with the music – there is sometimes too much going on with ‘River Deep’ … or maybe it was the other way round … stories abound about the producer making the singer do take after take … maybe he asked for too big a performance from her …

Ronnie Spector was a different kind of vocalist … more girl-like but also streetwise – Phil Spector worked with a lot of somewhat similar vocalists (eg on the Christmas album) – clear, poppy vocalists rather than guttural rock/soul singers like Tina Turner.

‘Be My Baby’ was a song I grew up with – in the opening sequence of two films I’ve watched a lot (in, let’s say, different stages of my growth) – ‘Dirty Dancing’ and ‘Mean Streets’ – that it fits so perfectly in two such different films is testament to its power. Of course, the opening drum sound (played by Hal Blaine) is just about the most iconic thing in the history of popular music, constantly borrowed, and if you’d left the song there, that would be enough.

Lyrically, it is slight, of course, but tries to do no more than encapsulate the rapture of a night’s romance. Ronnie Spector’s voice is incredible – particularly for how modern it sounds. In fact, the whole record sounds modern, it fills the ears, while ‘River Deep’ can sound a bit dated.

I guess it’s obvious which one I’m going for. 63 vs 66, I’m going for 63, though I think ‘River Deep’ had the potential to be the greater. I just think the producer had had too much cocaine by that point or something.

There is more to be said. More about precision and innocence, about the Beach Boys and Vietnam and Motown and mistreatment of women. I can’t get there, can’t get anywhere near it, but that’s probably for the best.

A vs B Part 4: Madonna (my long-standing perception of her) vs Madonna (actually)

I was going to write about Madonna anyway, funnily enough, though now everyone’s writing about her because it’s her 60^th birthday.

I’ve gradually, over the last few years, stopped being a dick about Madonna. Though, annoyingly now, as I did with Joni Mitchell, I’m going to use Bob Dylan as a reference point in explaining why I’m now a Madonna fan.

I think I always start with this quote from Canadian intellectual Michael Ignatieff when I think about Madonna;

“I don’t mind that I see her face on every magazine cover. I don’t mind that she is obscene. I don’t even mind that she can’t sing, can’t dance, can’t act and is none the less the most famous person on the planet. What I can’t stand is that she thinks she’s an artist.”

So persuasively dismissive, I think I allowed myself to think for years that Madonna was always reaching above her station.

But really, if you changed it ever so slightly, it’s exactly what some reactionary snobby prick would have said about Dylan in the 60s (and even now). And it’s no more true for either of them.

I remember Clive James did a show in the early 90s about “Fame” and he really focused on Dylan in the 60s and Madonna in the 80s. I was too young to understand much about what he was getting at, and I don’t remember all that much of what he said.

But there are more than superficial similarities between the two – college dropouts from the north country who came to New York at the start of a decade, had it tough for a few years while they found their voice, pissed off the purists, created a new form, influenced everything that came after them (and acted quite badly and had far too many extra-curricular activities for most people’s liking).

What else links them? Weight of songs … simple. The essence of why I still think of Dylan is streets ahead of all his contemporaries is just the number of great songs over the span of time. And the same is true, in a pop sense, of Madonna. Now, I don’t know if there are great Madonna deep cuts, but there hardly need to be. Over 60 Top 40 singles (nearly all Top 10), and sure, there are some rubbish ones (I think part of the reason I solidified my anti-Madonna sentiment was how dreadful I found her turn-of-the-century run) but there really are so many good ones.

So many songs that, when they came on the radio, I couldn’t resist – I’d find myself asking “do I really think Madonna’s rubbish, I mean, I like ‘Like a Prayer’ … and Live to Tell, and Hung Up, and Borderline, and Crazy for You, and Cherish, and Dear Jessie, and Take a Bow, and Rain, and Into the Groove, and La Isla Bonita, and Ray of Light, I guess … oh and Papa Don’t Preach, oh and This Used to be My Playground …” etc etc

And, you know, she’s a great and varied writer. Many of her songs, as well as the hooks and the ability to draw on the sounds of the day, are interesting, mysterious, have a sense of sadness, a sense of a story not wholly told. I think the idea of Madonna as great singer-songwriter is the one I most egregiously underestimated.

I think there’s a reason I underestimated her. I’ve been more susceptible and easily-influenced than I’d admit, and there’s always been a lot of that Ignatieff-type stuff about her, a serious male contempt for her as famehound which failed to see that, dodgy films, publicity stunts, aside, she really could dance, sing and write. The notion that Madonna is not a great pop singer is pretty ludicrous. It’s an opinion really only reserved for people who don’t think any pop singer is a good singer. People who don’t understand what being a pop singer is.

I also suspect there was a bit of identity at stake – I grew up with sisters, and there were friends of sisters around, and there was a lot of Madonna around, and it was for them, not me. And I suspect her persona was pretty confronting for a fairly prudish teenage boy in the early 90s.

Madonna, as many people say, invented the modern solo pop star (alongside Michael Jackson, though I think even more so), in the sense that it’s barely connected to what came before and so much that came after her is in her image. Michael Jackson, I’d say, is more connected to soul and disco, and Thriller was a continuation of that , while Debbie Harry (who I’d often compare Madonna unfavourably to) was a singer in a punk band who didn’t quite make it a solo star.

So, yeah, this is a bit of a mea culpa, an acknowledgement of a certain dull misogynist prudery that undoubtedly lies behind a lot of the sniffiness at Madonna. At the end of the day, take it all away, and the songs remain.

Broadstairs and Chapel Down: July 2018

This is called 'Broadstairs and Chapel Down: July 2018'. It's quite long.

It's about how the high quality of English wine is a portent of the apocalypse.

(there are certain bits I need to work on. I meant to put it up for my 40th birthday but pretty close ... ps the 4th line is meant to be longer ...)

BROADSTAIRS and CHAPEL DOWN: July 2018

A beach on an isle off an island soon-beached;

Bleak House proud to left, Dunkirk dead ahead.

We, holding out hands for a deal not yet reached

Both switching in a moment between delight and dread,

Pick shells, poke at crabs - she reckless then tearful,

Me patient then tense -, stare out at the sea,

both Britain’s guardian and ever its curse.

She walks, now prescient, sensible, fearful

Looks at the lapping waves then up at me,

Scenting the peril I know’s ten times worse.

“It’s moving” – she suddenly, leg clamp and clam,

Attached by alarm, grasps quickly that tide

Is far more formidable than I ever am.

I said, “Nothing can harm you if you’re with me.”. I lied.

“It’s moving daddy”. She won’t dip her feet

In the gentle siren threat of sea off Kent

Though we do both know we’re safer together,

Half-baking in the broken July heat –

And, lonely voices of confused dissent

Reserve our joy at this un-British weather.

We revel, a little, of course, bewitched

By glistening yachts beyond the crowded sand,

Admire our land which now seems so enriched -

This grand illusion, golden dawn, unearned, unplanned,

Half-drunk among full-drunks, dogs and outliers

Untouched as yet by the baptist suicide,

A statement that, freed from a withering planet,

we’ll starve alone after each deadline expires –

And I, so glumly overwhelmed with pride,

Pick all the scars off this jewel of Thanet.

The first point of fear, invasion, defence,

mission, belief, communion, immersion,

defiantly English in every sense

long past undergoing any further conversion,

its status, its glory perennially won.

We build her first castle – the centre just holds.

The yelp of triumph echoes round the bay,

it firms, served by the same prodigious sun

as roses blooming, wine divine! I fold …

to the wonder of this one summer’s day.

That thirty-odd miles so close and so far,

I make out the ghosts of the rescue flotilla

And swell with the spirit which now serves as our

Priapic, myopic, patriot pilot-slash-killer.

Boats crewed by good-time old boys born again

As military heroes that perilous May day

Set out under siege from Stella Maris

Return with their prize, bullish supermen

Only half-joking as they proudly say they

Should straightway be sent to liberate Paris.

And while the flags of St George still held proud,

Any identity mine for taking,

I’d have sung that dreary anthem wild and loud

If it kept that rarefied summer spell from breaking.

That England - I loved, that wise man’s mixture,

A cute culmination of all they did wrong

When voting for some England they think they knew

Washing the rest of us out of their picture.

And now, in loss, they can take their dull song

Back to the parched land that history outgrew.

And if we sing the Marsellaise, at least

Our child will know she’s European – not

Held down, but scion of the west and the east,

Of unity her birth month so brutally forgot.

She’s joined to two cities, two counties, three

countries, French, Irish, British as she feels.

We’ll sing “Allez les bleus” if the mood takes,

I’ll sell Celtic soul just as surely as she

Will beat the savage hand this era deals

Will storm the Bastille before the storm breaks.

Celebratory spitfires scatter our sky -

She shouts with glee “see you later, airplane,

Love you!”. Our peacetime idyll serves to defy

Despair, all logic and all data scanned in vain

When faced with her joy in our summer garden.

But history recalls, amidst all the spoilers

The sparkling dawn b’fore the darkest hour.

once more, my mind and my heart’s hopes harden

Recalling we’re subject to wasteful, joyless

Demagogue traders’ unquenched lust for power.

Sunburnt, exhausted, defiant, yet still

Clear enough-headed to want to be lost

In the splendour of Kent’s blooming hills

We break from the dismal rigour of counting cost

As the heat dial hits thirty-three, we spy,

In Tenterden, en route to the winery

A gathering of mayors of various places

Gloriously flaunting their small piece of pie

Roasting their lunch off in sweet sozzled finery,

Their bumbling airs enhanced by Three Graces.

The sun’s full force slams the Weald’s rowed slopes,

Once barren, now primed with vines of the south –

The yield and range beyond all wildest hopes,

A weight on the pocket and a gift to the mouth.

I’m sold – the history, the science, the taste.

This is our time, we people of the Downs,

We blessed Cantiaci, we converts-by-line

These grapes have produced, these bottles have graced

The tables and tastebuds of sceptical towns

Who’d have sworn by the Mediterranean wine.

A county reborn as holiday hotspot

Claims champagne chalk from the first (free) degree,

Barely looks back at the home grape’s gut rot

Proclaims itself centralised, unleashed, wholly free.

A country consumed by former glories

Plans the big projects, blocks out the midwives,

Lets in the suckers, the slavers and frackers,

Telling themselves unearthed empire stories

Dizzied, determined on living their best lives

Lost to all gods barring Eris and Bacchus.

The waves are rising to the darkening cliffs.

The shore is moving, we’re a smaller land

Shrinking with each feckless tectonic shift

As the wrecker extends his tiny, oily hand

And we watch in horror as it’s accepted.

I look across one more time to Dunkirk

Where the French army was left to fight and die -

No wonder our grudging requests are rejected

Now, still expecting the old tropes to work

On a union sneered at and slowly bled dry.

This sweet spot, right now, ripe, tanned and ready

For harvest, strawberry red to be picked

Suffering a summer goldrush so heady

That most have forgotten (or stopped caring) they’re tricked

By the knot at the bottom of the flourishing vine

Into thinking we’ve seen the last of the weevil

Who’ll reduce all this beauty to a savage grey season.

Then, if we’ve time, we’ll record the decline

As “The Age Anthropocene Ultaeval” –

That’ll give the last lie to the Age of Reason.

A foolish country now can’t be protected

By any sharp wits or carping voices,

It hardly yet matters which path’s selected –

choices were made long before, we live by those choices.

You’re wise to be wary, my little beauty -

This sea, here, divides and rules as it wills –

There’s so much, I worry, I can’t hold at bay,

Such weight in this one defining duty.

The tide comes in and our feeble moat fills,

But we’re long gone this time, this one summer’s day.

A Vs B: Part 3 - Kanye West vs Jay-Z

These comparisons won’t always involve great expertise or indeed superfandom. Neither is hip-hop my natural milieu nor am I completely familiar with all of Kanye or Jay-Z’s back catalogue.

But I’ve listened to both quite a lot, and I like both quite a lot, and I think their friendship/rivalry is pretty interesting. I was also amused to discover that both share birthdays with close relatives of mine, so I looked up to see if I also shared a birthday with a titan of rap. I found Coolio. Oh well …

They are the only two rappers to have headlined Glastonbury, Jay-Z in 2008 and West in 2015. How the two sets went down is instructive. Probably there was more pressure on Jay-Z, being the first and with more consistent luddite outcry, but his set was a triumph. He got the crowd onboard with his covers (inc Wonderwall and Rehab) and converted many new fans. At that point (pre ‘Empire State of Mind’) he didn’t actually have that many massive UK hits (not including Crazy in Love and Umbrella, on which he was very much in a supporting role. )

Whereas people somewhat assumed Kanye West would be a triumph. 2015 was pretty much peak “Kanye is a genius” … not only was he an acclaimed artist, he also had an awful lot of well-known bangers he could call on. Yet his set was odd, and in the end, a disappointment. He read the crowd wrong, basically. It’s not that the songs weren’t good, he just didn’t really provide a great show, chose the wrong guest (Bon Iver, big in indie but not Glastonbury-headline exciting) and the wrong cover (Bohemian Rhapsody, dreadful). His judgement was poor. It was weird. He didn’t control the narrative.

A pretty simplistic comparison is that Jay-Z is like the hip-hop Rolling Stones and Kanye West thinks he’s the hip-hop Beatles, but he’s more like …hmm … I don’t think ELO is quite right, maybe … Queen – maybe he thinks that himself actually, maybe that’s what Bohemian Rhapsody was all about (though of course Queen famously seized their big gig). He is capable of brilliance, but there is so much excess, all his albums have induced boredom and the skip button in me at some point.

Whereas I’d say Jay-Z is generally compelling, concise, funny, clear-headed. When I listen to Kanye West there are a lot of attention-seeking phrases which turn out to be not much more than self-serving wordplay gibberish. I think the thread, the point of Jay-Z songs is nearly always clear.

You know, these kind of things by and large come down to “whose voice do you prefer”, “whose rhymes do you prefer”, “who’s done more great songs” but I do think, with major hip-hop artists more than in other genres, staying congruent and steering clear of being ludicrous is pretty important. Kanye West has seriously damaged the acclaim in which he might be held, and I think that infects his music.

What else? Kanye West’s music is exhausting. Even his best albums are exhausting. At his best, there’s a punkish, claustrophobic questioning brilliance to what he does with both music and words, but you can never just settle into it. And too often, when it challenges you, you don’t end up going “god, that’s something I hadn’t considered before” but “you know, that’s just silly”.

At his worst, Jay Z is still pretty decent, whereas Kanye West, at his worst, is dreadful. Honestly, I think I started out thinking it was quite close between them, but the more I listen to them, it’s really not close.

A vs B: Part 2 - Blue vs Court and Spark

And for my next trick …

Sometimes, I’ll pit two entities against each other which both have strong arguments and weigh those up, but here, you know, this isn’t terribly close, and isn’t generally thought to be.

There’s nothing controversial or interesting about saying I like Joni Mitchell’s ‘Blue’ better than her ‘Court and Spark’. ‘Blue’ is pretty universally agreed to be Mitchell’s masterpiece. It’s either, at any given time, my favourite, second favourite or third album in the world.

Firstly, I should say I have a pretty weird internal thing going on where comparing Joni Mitchell to Bob Dylan has been, over the last few years, my personal testing ground for whether I’m utterly in thrall to the patriarchal received truth of things.

Quite a lot of intelligent voices (not just David Crosby) have said in recent times that Mitchell should not just be seen as the great female songwriter but the great songwriter full stop, whose musicality and originality place her above Dylan. A little challenged by this, I have tried to give the same amount of time and effort to listening to and reading about Joni as I used to with Bob.

Well, I think, after all that, I’m still in thrall to the patriarchy, sadly, but I do think I should stop comparing Mitchell to Dylan and instead compare her to herself.

So … Bob Dylan was inspired by ‘Blue’ to write ‘Tangled Up in Blue’ whereas he fell asleep in a playback of ‘Court and Spark’ …. ha, no that’s all …

Firstly, it’s not entirely “apples and pears” to compare them. ‘Court and Spark’ was Mitchell’s most commercially successful album at the time and is still highly acclaimed, usually, I’d say the second of her albums in all-time lists.

‘Blue’ and ‘Court and Spark’ are 2 ½ years apart, but it sounds longer. ‘Court and Spark’ marks a “progression” – vocally, in arrangements, in maturity of the subject matter. But … it’s all a bit boring.

Compared to ‘Blue’, there’s so little jeopardy. Maybe it’s about the men (jeezus, no …). But the subjects of the ‘Blue’ heartache were songwriters like James Taylor, Graham Nash and Leonard Cohen. ‘Court and Spark’ is about Hollywood lotharios like Warren Beatty. Much duller.

And she is involved but also amused and distant. ‘Help Me’’s first lines are “Help me, I think I’m falling in love again”. Imagine those lines on ‘Blue’ the potential power and desperation they might possess.

Whereas here, they’re just a gentle sigh. Silly me, she says. She doesn’t actually need any help.

Don’t get me wrong, ‘Help Me’ is a great song, one of the best on the album. It’s her most successful pop song, and it’s a great tune.

In fact, the album starts brilliantly. I love the title track – it hints and intrigues, it takes its time and solves the mystery of the album’s slightly odd title.

After those two, it’s ‘Free Man in Paris’ – again, considered something of a classic – and sure, it’s a good song, but, you know, I always feel the chorus doesn’t scan that well, does it … “I felt unfettered and alive … “ “stoking the starmaker machinery behind the popular song …”. It’s all a bit Manics-y, no? And, you know, who cares that much how tough things are for billionaire music executives?

Still, strong start … but then … honestly, the album gradually loses me every time. It’s like ‘Swingers’ or something, just an indistinct blur of barely intriguing playboys and parties, of the geography of LA and somewhat involved observations.

‘Blue’ cuts with every word, every chord, yet is still fun, funny, cool. And of course, she shouldn’t have to play the victim every time, and being the amused observer-participant is great, but I think she’d go on to do it in a much more interesting, bold way elsewhere – on ‘The Hissing of Summer Lawns’ and particularly ‘Hejira’ which I think is streets ahead of ‘Court and Spark’.

An … ‘Raised on Robbery’ is pretty dreadful, and ‘Twisted’ is even worse.

Quite a common take is that Mitchell’s golden period from ‘Blue’ through to ‘Hejira’ is one of the greatest runs in the history of pop music, and I actually agree, but I think it’s first and last are its greatest, and its middle its weakest.

I would score them

Blue 10

For the Roses 8 ½

Court and Spark 7

The Hissing of Summer Lawns 8 ½

Hejira 9

So there …. This is fun.