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Ones that got away in 2019? Celluloid treats for the cinephiles of Kärrtorp, please!

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Help! This evening I am meeting my pals from our local film club to decide which seven movies we will be screening this autumn. Are there any movies you have seen in the last 12 months that would bring delight to the southern suburbs of Stockholm?

Almost anything goes, but our mission is to screen stuff that won’t get much of an airing at the local multiplex. I would be particularly keen to hear about some good comedies.

Our cinephiles do tend to like glum films. The five most popular screenings in the last two years were:

I, Daniel Blake, Das schweigende Klassenzimmer, Human Flow, Insyriated and Utøya.

All fine films but not many laughs. That last one, a reconstruction of the Norwegian massacre is a particularly grim evening at the cinema.

Some of my personal favourites from recent years were Happy as Lazzaro, Roma, On Body and Soul, Paterson and Le Sens de la Fete.

All suggestions gratefully received!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-3JNRC2gvo

Sumer is icumen in, loudly sing ………Whoo Hoo!

by 65 Comments

It was the end of the school term in Sweden this week and parents and children were gathered in schoolyards all over the country . Floral garlands, white dresses, Swedish flags were in abundance and a lot of music was performed by the pupils.

One of the highlights will have been Ida’s Summer Song. The lyrics are by Astrid Lindgren and the music by jazz bassist and composer Georg Riedel.

Previously a hymn was sung, but as Sweden became more secular in the 1970s this became the favourite song to say;

Farewell schoolbooks! Hallo summertime!

Parents can get a bit sentimental at this moment. It is a song so redolent with memories of ends-of-term from before. Several of my female pals confessed they had a bit of a blubber. Did I cry into my hanky? I did not! I retained a stiff upper lip throughout.

So do you have any favourite songs or poems that bid summer a warm welcome? Or perhaps express anxiety about the months that lay ahead?

I am going to kick off with Dodgy’s exuberant guitar pop: Staying out for the summer.

Throw your homework onto the fire (or feed it to the dog!) » Continue Reading.

Bluemoose Books from Yorkshire, the man who invented Scotland and the Little Book of Calm.

by 49 Comments

I thoroughly enjoyed our recent excursion into the dusty, mysterious nooks and exotic grannies of the bookshop world in search of long- forgotten authors. So much so, that I would like spend a little more time succumbing to my bibliophiliac urges.

Publish and be damned! One thing that struck me was how pitifully ignorant I am of the world of publishing. What similarities are there between publishing houses and record companies? Are some writers like boy bands: a flash in the literary pan? And do others resemble, for example, Van Morrison, Neil Young or Paul Simon: a long distinguished career with some big hits and a few dodgier efforts.

Is Finnegans Wake the literary equivalent to Troutmask Replica? A work of deranged genius. But please don’t ask me to read it.

Some people know which label their favourite albums are on and who published the books they’ve been reading. Not me! I am currently reading a fine historical The Gallows Pole by Benjamin Myers. I scurried off now to check the publisher. Now on Bloomsbury, it was originally from Bluemoose Books near Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire. A feisty, independent outfit with a rather nice sense of humour. I » Continue Reading.

Dog-eared Brisbane Penguins, underwater engraver Robert Gibbings and the saintly …… Simon Templar!

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Penpontman is mikethep’s nom-de-plum over there on Instagram. If you are on Insta and not following him, you really ought to be. His adventures in the world of secondhand books are a delight, as are his photos of architecture in Brisbane, Folkestone and elsewhere.

This week Mike really captured my imagination with a photo of Blue Angels and Whales by Robert Gibbings. (see below), a book which was the very first piece of writing commissioned by Penguin in 1938. Gibbings (1889 – 1958) was a very talented Irish writer and engraver who was rather well-known in his time. Read his biography on Wiki! He was quite a character.

Anyway, this got us on to other writers who were once successful household names and now are largely forgotten. What an interesting idea for am AW thread, I thought. Mike was less convinced, Too limited and esoteric! So, please, blow the dust off those neglected paperbacks and help me prove him wrong. He will be delighted.

I would like to hear about those books (and authors) which were once in the bookcase in every home, or in the rucksack of every globetrotter yet are now largely forgotten.

Children’s writers are very welcome. » Continue Reading.

Finished with my teacher cos she couldn’t help me with my mind.Should Sabbath be Curricular or Extra-curricular?

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A couple of pennies that dropped for me this week about the differences between the Swedish and British school systems.

Firstly, while contributing to the AmDram thread I realised that the “School play” is a particularly Anglo-Saxon phenomenon. Locust’s classmates in Vasastaden never got the chance to see her as Lady MacBeth, Edda Gabler or Miss Jean Brodie as there is no teaching of drama in Swedish schools. And no Drama Clubs either. That is taken care of by an outside organisation such as Kulturama, an organisation do a marvellous job teaching music, dance, art.

Next, there are no school sports teams. Once again, this is done by sports clubs, where volunteer coaches do sterling work. So young players are loyal to their club not their school. (On one occasion alone, I played rugby for my school: they must have been really desperate for players. I was Walter the Softy pitched against 15 Dennis the Menaces from Wembley. Never again! I went back to languidly reading Baudelaire.)

Finally, there are no assemblies at any point in the school week. This used to be the starting point of every school day for me. The headmaster would always give a short » Continue Reading.

Am Dram! Thank you Maaaaam!

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Christopher Guest’s Waiting for Guffman did for Am Dram what Spinal Tap did for metal. If you have not seen it you are in for a treat. A group of rather naff parochial thespians from Blaine wait for a Broadway critic to come and watch their show, ( Guest does this kind of thing very well with great affection for his subjects.)

So, this is a thread about amateur drama. Everything from being one of the Three Wise Men in the school nativity play, to playing the vicar in the Padstow Players’ production of Murder at the Vicarage.

I would like to know about your experiences and those of your friends and family in the world of amateur theatricals,

One of my old school friends has been a stalwart of the Pinner Players for many years, revisiting Agatha Christie, Noel Coward etc. Another has become part of the Am Dram scene in Hong Kong. Performing in The Rocky Horror Show for all the ex-pats was a career high spot.

What gets chosen as the School Play in 2019? Is the whole concept a very British or American one? They have nothing of that kind in Sweden.

Have you supported » Continue Reading.

The Great British (and Irish!) Songbook 1066 – 1966

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Now is the Month of Maying! The Kings Singers in Nashville performing a tune from the It was a lover and his lass Hitmaker Thomas Morley. What more topical way to start a further exploration of some of the forgotten musical gems of the British Isles?

Ganglesprocket got us started when he asked for pre-Beatles songs a few weeks ago. That led to the mentioning of several composers that I had never heard of. And the discovery of many tunes that are still being sung or deserve to be.

Hats off to all the artists like Peter Skellern, Bryan Ferry, the Watersons and Richard Thompson who are still performing these songs. Dick T deserves special praise. Not only for his 1000 years of Popular Music project but also for the song, Al Bowlly’s in Heaven, which immortalises one of the great voices of 20th century pop music. The crooner from Mozambique who conquered British hearts.

Here are some of the names that cropped up.

Ewan MacColl – Dirty old town, The first time ever I saw your face

George Leybourne – (The lion of the music hall) – Champagne Charlie, Daring young man on the flying trapeze ( which was » Continue Reading.

Acker is in Devon, Al Bowlly is in heaven, Boorman and Corbijn are filming S Club 7

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This is a kind of “Hollywood goes to Frankie” thread. A few reflections about the peculiar relationship between the glamorous film industry and the magical world of popular music.

It all began at the weekend when @mikethep posted a clip of early 1960s chart topper Helen Shapiro. What an extraordinary voice she had and what a meteoric jump to the top of the charts.

That led me to the discovery that Richard Lester had made a film in 1962 It’s Trad, Dad starring Helen and Stranger on the Shore Hitmaker, Acker Bilk. (The first Brit to top the US singles chart.) Lester received a thousand quid for a movie with a flimsy plot but a wide variety of performances. It turned out however to be a real snapshot of its time. And it landed him the gig, directing the two Beatles movies.

Anyway, that is how I would like this thread to be. Unbelievable plot. Wooden acting. But several rather enjoyable musical interludes.

What do One Direction, Status Quo, The Pet Shop Boys, Madness, The Beatles, All Saints, Herman’s Hermits, S Club Seven, Cliff and the Shadows and the Dave Clark Five have in common?

They » Continue Reading.

I’ve been from Tucson to Tucumcari, Tehachapi to Tonapah

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You’ve heard the song, now read the novel!

I am currently reading Willy Vlautin’s excellent novel: Don’t skip out on me. It starts in the small town of Tonapah in Nevada where a young ranch hand, Hector, is planning a future life as a boxer. 100 Pages in and I realise that it is a continuation of the ideas that Willy had when he wrote a song of the same name for his band Richmond Fontaine.

I knew that he had a dual career as both a songwriter and a novelist What interests me is that he does not keep his two careers neatly separated. He started by writing a song but realised that there was a far longer tale to be told here and let one genre spill over into the other.

Vlautin is one of those talented people, like Sweden’s Love Antell (thanks Locust!), who can balance two careers. He is successful as both a songwriter and a novelist

Any other examples of works of art that started in one medium and ended up in another?

» Continue Reading.

Not so many Valkyrie down at the chip shop

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A shiny necklace of perfect pop pearls is adorning the Afterword on a current thread. Said thread asks us about how important pop music and that wisest of scribes, The Venerable Tiggs, points out that it is at times of uncertainty and bewilderment like these, that we really need pop music.

I have nothing against Mozart, Brahms, Liszt or Wagner. But did Tristan and Isolde ever have to sign on? Do the Valkyrie fly down to their local chip pie for a fish supper?

Chuck Berry, Ray Davies, Jarvis Cocker, Half ManHalf Bisuit, and other great songwriters of rock and pop push the envelope about what you can sing about in a pop song.

This is a thread to honor them.

Your examples please of songs by these pioneers of the popular song.

Too graphic marinaters need not apply!

Last Picture Show’s down the drive-in..

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I was doing the ironing at 6.00 am first morning, prior to the school run. when, for no particular reason, i started to sing Virginia Plain. Roxy Music’s first single is a perennial favourite, so why not?

Bryan was certainly firing on all cylinders with his cinematic references in the lyrics. Flying down to Rio, Whatever happened to Baby Jane and Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show from 1971. Who remembers that fine film today? (It featured a young Cybill Shepherd and Jeff Bridges and was rather good).

Anyway, I would like to hear about any other songs which refer to movies. Interpret that as broadly as you like. It might be name dropping of a film title or could be something more obscure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tFF2oB4n6M

Do a Barack! Tell us about your favourite films of the year!

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What do ex-President Obama and my pal DuCool have in common?

Well, along with being dapper style icons, they both enjoy producing a list of their favourites of the year. Barack has just published his on Facebook.

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As 2018 draws to a close, I’m continuing a favorite tradition of mine and sharing my year-end lists. It gives me a…

Posted by Barack Obama on Friday, 28 December 2018

Here are his favourite films of the past year:

Annihilation, Black Panther, BlacKkKlansman, Blindspotting, Burning, The Death of Stalin, Eighth Grade, If Beale Street Could Talk, Leave No Trace, Minding the Gap, The Rider, Roma, Shoplifters, Support the Girls, Won’t You Be My Neighbor

I was very pleased to see he enjoyed Debra Graniks Leave no trace, which was one of my faves.

So what about you…

I have no doubt that the Trumpster is sitting in the White House at this very moment, listing the films he enjoyed most.

» Continue Reading.

Great Uncle Bulgaria meets Beelezebub. The hills are alive with….Satanic Haystacks playing xylophones.

by 5 Comments

As a youngling. I cowered behind the sofa when the daleks first appeared.

If I was four years old today, I would be having some very scary dreams if I saw this video of the remarkable Seidä Pass. They look like rogue Wombles who are tired with clearing up litter in Wimbledon and have embraced the Dark Arts,

Badly overweight, Satanist sheep-like beings from the Tyrol get disturbingly overexcited on their xylophones! It is sinister, spooky and altogether rather wonderful.

If the Sheep of Satan are not in the Dr Who 2018 Xmas Special, they damn well ought to be.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmfQqyXHAeI

Arthouse with a capital F!

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Hivemind, oh Hivemind! Please, help save my cinematic bacon! I would like to know about the best indie/arthouse films you have seen in recent months.

Next week the committee for our local film club meets to decide on next term’s films. And I would like to come up with a few decent suggestions. So, I would appreciate the opportunity to pick your magnificent brains. What are the most memorable, emjoyable films you have seen during the past 12 months?

The last time I asked this question, “Call me by your name” was mentioned. I made sure we selected it and it went down a treat when we showed it as the first film this term.

I dislike the term arthouse cinema. It sounds so bloody pretentious. And I don’t like “quality film” either.

Bio Reflexen, the local cinema, where we have our screenings and where I am a volunteer, tries to show something for everybody. And we manage very well. Here are a few of our recent screenings that got a big thumbs up from me.

Leave no trace – Debra Granik, USA From the director of Winter’s Bone. A beautifully restrained, subtle, understated portrait of a father » Continue Reading.

“A big blue wobbly thing that mermaids live in”.

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In reply to “Desperate of Tigtown”, who is searching for a good Xmas present for his better half, I suggested that a DVD of a good comedy film or TV series is never wrong. And then I remembered how fiendishly difficult it is to find something that you can be 100% sure another person will find amusing.

Take Mrs KFD and me. When she is crying her eyes out I am sitting there baffled and unamused. Or vice versa. Part of this may be a language or a cultural thing in our case. But then again we both think that Robert Gustavsson, officially “Sweden’s funniest man”, is just not very amusing.

So when we do find something that we both enjoy it is a minor miracle. As to finding something that will also make our surly 15 year old son laugh, that just is not going to happen.

And then we discovered Friday Night Dinner.

And laughed and laughed and laughed.

An extremely ridiculous, extremely Jewish, family sitcom set in North London would not have been an obvious choice for a programme that would unite us in laughter. However the script and the comic timing of the cast are » Continue Reading.

Copulating skeletons or chaps with taches?

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That wag, Sir Thomas Beecham, once described the harpsichord as sounding like “two skeletons copulating on a tin roof in a thunderstorm. ”

When I mentioned this, our resident wag, Moose the Mooche commented: “For most of the good burghers of the AW, the harpsichord can only signify the gothic chamber pop of the late 1960s, usually played by chaps sporting multicoloured shirts and bloody great ‘taches.”

A new genre for me! I know nothing about either gothic chamber pop. Or, for that fact, the love live of skeletons.

If anyone would care to enlighten men on either topic, I would be most grateful. Here are Rasputina whose chamber pop is decidedly gothic.

Sir Thomas was famed for his words of wisdom.

“Try everything once, except folk dancing and incest.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVsF2whuzIM

Old man you too gurdy gurdy. You jus a flash it round the worldie

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Knowing that I was binge listening to hurdy gurdy music (as one does), a friend sent me a copy of a fine painting by French Baroque painter, Georges de la Tour(1593 – 1652): The Blind Hurdy Gurdy Player. Georges was fascinated by these travelling musicians and painted several hurdy players. In his time they would often perform with a dancing dog! You don’t see that on the X Factor.

The Prado’s programme notes are excellent. They tell a lot about the skills of the artists and the society in which he lived.

Anyway it got me thinking that it would be enjoyable to hear about your favourite depictions of musicians on paper, in stone, on canvas, papyrus etc.

No time restrictions: feel free to go all the way back to Ancient Egypt or tell us about a piece of graffiti painted today.

And the broader the different media we harvest, the better.

Images from comics, for example would be very welcome. Can any of the Marvel superheroes play a musical instrument or sing? Not that I know of. But I am sure the Bash St Kids had music lessons. And if Dennis the Menace could not play anything, I » Continue Reading.

A large helping of elegant, flamboyant, Italian welly

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A year ago, DuCool persuaded me to join him for a trip to Uppsala to see Italian Baroque ensemble, Il Giardino Armonico. A new name for me and they were a revelation. Fizzing with joie de vivre and virtuosity. Most striking was their tall, gangly, charismatic leader, Giovanni Antonini, who strutted the stage with all the swagger of a major league rock star and dazzled the audience with his technical skill. Talk about giving it some welly!

Here comes the surprising bit. What instrument did he play? A recorder, in fact a range of different recorders. There I was thinking that this was an instrument that you only learnt at primary school. Perfect for those first faltering steps in music making and then to be left behind you. Not so for Giovanni, nor recent discovery Danish recorder player, Clara Guldberg Ravn.

I was reminded of him last week when Cheshire Cat encouraged us to visit the village of Audlem, to listen to bagpipes and hurdy gurdy and hit the dancefloor for some schottischer. I started to google and found a whole herd of hurdy gurdyists. So many excellent musicians who have carved out a career on this esoteric instrument. » Continue Reading.

The West Coast Jazz Sounds of Jan Johansson (1931 – 1968)

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A sad anniversary.

It was 50 years ago today that the great Swedish jazz pianist, composer and arranger, Jan Johansson, died in a car crash on his way to a gig in Jönköping.

His magnificent Jazz på Svenska, (just him and bassist Georg Riedel reworking Swedish folk songs), is the best-selling Swedish jazz record of all time. And quite rightly so.

I just discovered that he is buried in Skogskyrkogården which is 10 minutes walk away for me. Maybe I will go down and pay him and Greta Garbo my respects later today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLl2ajfN03Q&t=1099sVideo can’t be loaded: Jan Johanson – Västkustjazz 1961 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLl2ajfN03Q&t=1099s)

For the bon viveurs among you…

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Knowing that the contributors to this site have a burning culinary interest, I felt it only right to share this ad for Ching’s Szechuan Chutney.

It reminds me of DuCool’s tales of eating in the curry houses of Rusholme.

Vindaloo, Tindaloo, Xindaloo… and after that came the dishes which would only be served to those with a doctor’s certificate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEBLMJeVNVU

Are Scottish trainspotters always “getting off at Haymarket”?

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In front of Stockholm’s rather grand Konserthus is Haymarket Square. During the sunnier months it is the location for a colourful fruit, veg and flowers market. The season is coming to an end , but on Saturday there were impressive displays of pumpkins and chanterelle mushrooms.

I mentioned this to a friend who lives in Edinburgh, and she commented that the Scottish capital also has a Haymarket. (Back in the days of horse travel, I suppose many cities did.)

Anyway, there is station there which gave rise to a popular slang expression. It’s the final one before Waverley, so if you get off there, you don’t go the whole way. “Getting off at Haymarket” therefore means to practice coitus interruptus.

A wonderful turn of phrase which I will endeavour to use.

Liverpudlians have their own version:”getting off at Edge Hill.”

Anybody else been delighted recently by discovering a new piece of colourful slang?

Slang expressions involving place names or geographical locations would be interesting to hear.

View post on imgur.com

Gimme gimme gimme a plan after midnight

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I had difficulty believing my eyes when I walked in on the SVT evening news yesterday evening and saw Prime Minister May doing a little dance to one of ABBA’s greatest hits. To say I cringed, does not do justice to my enormous embarrassment.

And to make matters worse, she took the wrong tune. With all the double-dealing, disloyalty and deviousness going on in the back alleys and dark bars of Birmingham, she would have been far better served by Magazine’s Shot by both sides or, perhaps even better, this magnificent floorfiller from the O Jays.

Unless of course, you have any other better ideas…..

The last thing we want to see is bopping politicians, but if Putin, Corbyn, Merkel, Boris etc are to hit the dancefloor, which particular bangers would serve them best?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6h1BV7FZqs

Le Tig! Cest chic!

by 129 Comments

I’ve just read Tiggerlion’s joyously uplifting review of Nile Rodgers’s gig at Castlefield Bowl, Manchester. Sounds like it was a corker. And by a wonderfully serendipitous bit of timing, it occurred on the Tigster’s 60th birthday

Are we on the AW going to let that major event pass unnoticed? No, we are not!

I have never met Tigger and probably never will. Unless of course the Fasching Jazz Club in Stockholm puts on something a little exclusive. It may yet happen!

And Ducool and I will offer you a very warm welcome, if you decide to come over, Tigger.

But if I do get to meet him, I will be bloody surprised if we don’t get on very well. Few contributors on this site have been so wonderfully eclectic, supportive to new contributors and enthusiastic about the music they feel strongly about.

Tigger! I love you and want to have your kittens!

A big Tiggerlion birthday is worthy of a celebration. So please post something that he will enjoy or something that he introduced us/you to.

A tribe that does not celebrate its members who are Justified and Ancient, is not worth belonging to!

I will kick off » Continue Reading.

Musical moonlighting! Should composers diversify or are they simply Baching up the wrong tree?

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Composer, Kerry Andrew, is a lass with many different musical hats. At the weekend, Tiggerlion introduced us to her by posting a review of Keld, her fine new album as You are Wolf. This is Kerry as an avant-folk singer, with a repertoire comprising old songs and her own compositions. Tuneful, mysterious, evocative. Very moreish it is too.

I was fascinated to learn more about her.

Singer, radio DJ, journalist. novelist, composer: I was particularly interested to hear some of the stuff she had written for choirs. She works a lot with schoolkids, with some thrilling results.Those works must be great fun to sing. Just listen to her “Who we are” performed at the Royal Albert Hall. Invigorating!

A slight detour, but I can’t help but be reminded of David Bedford back in the early 70s. Primarily an avant-garde composer, he got called in to arrange some strings for Kevin Ayers and ended up playing in the band, The Whole World, alongside Lol Coxhill and Mike Oldfield. He went on to work more with both of them. Oldfield must have been a useful contact and Lol was a wonderful bloke. Bedford also did a lot of music for kids and » Continue Reading.

“Bedrocks” 2: Labelled with Love

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I really enjoyed that recent genre bedrock thread. So, here’s a sequel.

I’d like some suggestions for tracks that encapsulate the essence of your favourite record labels. All sizes, all musical genres welcome! Everything from vast multinationals to some geezer in Baton Rouge doing eccentric stuff in his bedroom.

Back in the day I was delighted when I discovered a label whose artists hit the spot for me: Island, Tamla Motown, Factory, Ze, Stiff, Stax, Blue Note, Two Tone, Chrysalis ….. And I continue to find new favourites today: Soul Jazz, Crammed Discs, ECM, Honest Jon’s, Luaka Bop, Asphalt Tango, Drag City, Rough Trade…….

For some of you, making a note of the label a new discovery is on is second nature. I usually don’t often notice, unless it’s drawn to my attention.

Do younger listeners, who may never even see the physical product, know or even care about which record label has released a track? The clever labels make very good use of You Tube and social media.

Talking of which, I just got a mail from Real World informing me that the excellent Spiro have a new album out. Excellent! Let’s kick off with them. A » Continue Reading.