FIrst of all, I need to confirm that we have fired our numerologist for making a shambles of the count, and damaging the integrity of our SuperBowl based tracking system. Nonetheless, we welcome everyone, please gather round the brazier on the picket line, toast some marshmallows, help yourself to some mulled wine, and please tell us – what have you been reading / watching / listening to / using to avoid the massive shitstorm that is all around us ?
Blogger Takeover XCI
by 103 Comments
READ
I’ve done 6 books this month & it’s been a mixed bag. I really enjoyed Mark Lanegans Sing Back Backwards And Weep which I swiftly followed up with Devil In A Coma about his battle with Covid. I’ve always loved his voice & although the former is a very dark read, it was engaging & one I would recommend.
Paper Cuts by Ted Kessler was another entertaining one & the parts about Bauer trying to ‘fix’ Q as it was dying are mad (David Cameron to interview Morrissey was an idea…!). Another great read was Scoops by Sam McAlister who was the booker for Question Time. It gives a real insight into the role & the chapters about Prince Andrew are staggering!
A bit dull was Match of the Day: Top 10 of everything. It’s a decent idea done to death & dragged a bit.
At the shit end of the scale was A Likely Lad by Peter Doherty. I’ve liked a fair amount of his music but always felt it was just ‘ok’ & undeserving of the adulation it receives. This book just hammered that point & he came across as an absolute helmet to me.
WATCHED
Stefan Golaszewski has been behind the excellent series Mum and Him & Her, both of which I loved. I was excited about his new series Marriage but thought it fell a bit short. He has a great knack at portraying unlikeable characters well & the dialogue is always spot on. Although he does this with Marriage, the story didn’t flow as well for me.
Where The Crawdads Sing was an unexpected win for me. It was a good film & had me engaged from the first second.
LISTENED
It’s been a lot of Mark Lanegan this month. His collaborations with Soulsavers are a delight & well worth investigating.
I’m still stuck on the wonderful SOAK album too. I gets at least one listen a day & is genuinely getting better with every listen. ‘guts’ is currently my favourite
AOB
Feeling quite down about the state of the world at the moment & this leadership race in the UK is not helping with that. Whoever wins is just going to continue the race downwards as far as I can see. To quote Frankie Boyle, “It’s like tunnelling your way out of R Kellys house & finding yourself in Prince Andrews basement”
Apart from stockpiling tinned soup, firewood, razor wire and bullets, I have decided to spend these last days before the fall of civilisation in a state of blissful denial and misplaced optimism. As long-term planning seemed a little fanciful given that we’ll be spending the winter fighting off our starving neighbours from behind the steel doors of our hastily-dug bunkers, I spent August at the Edinburgh Fringe, a fantasy of a world where artists and performers meet to showcase their creativity, choose their sexual partners unwisely, fail to sell any tickets, and leave their shattered dreams alongside the discarded flyers on the floor of empty playhouses when they go home to beg desperately for burger-bar jobs to blow the foam off the top of their lifelong debt.
Seen: This year’s need for thrift means a lot of one-person shows and the need for instant audience appeal means the range of topics is both shallow and narrow. Shows fit into one of three types: Me and My Vulva (Yes! I talk about vaginas, aren’t I edgy?) Me and My Heroic Struggle With [insert mental health / gender / political bugbear here] and Me and My One-person Version of that Film you’ve Heard of (“It’s basically Titanic, except I play all the parts and we couldn’t afford a boat.”) As a participant I had a free pass to sneak into shows that weren’t sold out, and there were certainly a few of those. Some gems; a comedy sketch show duo called Grubby Little Mitts who were both hilarious and disturbing; Paul Currie, wild dadaist nonsense; Prejudice and Pride, a gender-swapped bluegrass Jane Austen; and a surprisingly moving one-woman My-Life-in-Song thing that completely floored us – walking out at lunchtime into a crowed, sunny square, in floods of tears. Wish I could remember the name of it…
Heard: Lots of despondent musicians muttering about losing their livelihood. Venues are going to have to shut, at least temporarily, and festivals next year are going to be reserved for the rich, if they’re not already. Time to dust off that CV.
Read: Reviews for my show! I once swore I’d never do this, but of course I did. All good, fortunately. I have a couple of leads for US and Australian productions, probably just Festival bluster, but that and the great audiences will keep me warm through the winter. And now, back to the day job, and the apocalypse.
Congrats on good reviews, they’re well deserved – such an excellent play.
Why thank you, Sir Garrington.
If it plays as well as it reads, then I concur with Gary. A very decent delve into the depths of Hamlet.
Enjoyed listening to it during lockdown, hope there may be a tour, or even a tourette.
A tourette? Farrrkin’ hell!
I loved it as a listening piece and think it would work extremely well as a radio play. But I’d love to see it performed too. I’m hoping there’ll be a freebie version on YouTube sooner or later for all the cheapskate, stay-at-home misanthropes out there.
Thank you all for your kind comments. Nothing else in the UK this year but I have had an email from New York today… 😲
An odd month, I’d planned to go to Cropredy with a friend unfortunately the week before he contracted covid and still felt awful when we were due to go. I didnt want to camp solo so decided not to go. Managed to get our money back. On the Friday I decided to drive down for the last day, most enjoyable so I’m glad I did it.
Because I’d missed the Slambovian Circus of Dreams I went to see them the following week, interesting and unusual. Then saw Gretchen Peters this Monday, OK.
Read as I’d been down to Muswell Hill I borrowed a Kinks book from the BIL God Save the Kinks, also the Chris Blackwell bio and I’ve started the Nico bio.
Watched The Great (smutty but good fun) and saw the 1999 Woodstock debacle.
AOB visited the Mithraic Temple in the city of London, and a trip to Chester to meet up with the Squeezer of Pencils. We sat, ate, drank and discussed the state of the country. Good to meet up again.
Watched
A crap film with Sandra Bullock and Daniel Radcliffe called The Lost City. Crap it was, but it did have one line that I found very funny:
Loretta (Sandra Bullock): Why are you so handsome?
Jack (Brad Pitt): My father was a weatherman.
Well, it amused me. More than the rest of the film.
I’ve already banged on about The Innocents here, there and elsewhere. Rakel Leonora Flottum as the younger sister is so amazing in it. A subtle, understated and beguiling child performance that is just magic. And unlike the vast majority of horror films (if it is a horror film) it doesn’t have a crap silly ending. On the contrary, the ending is very originally and memorably staged.
Read
Rod Stewart’s autobiography. Not as funny or outrageous as Elton’s, but nonetheless quite a similar vibe. He attributes his success (and every other rock star’s success) to pure luck and he revels gratefully in it.
A.O.B
September = end of beach weather is in sight. Bummer.
Read
Coming to the end of Deep Blues by Robert Palmer (not that one). Excellent and very detailed account of the birth of blues music. Thoroughly enjoying it, although I’m getting a bit lost in all names. I’m guessing others here are familiar with the book.
Watched
Woodstock ‘99 documentary on Netflix. I had to stop it a couple of times and take a break, it’s pretty harrowing, some footage looks like a Hieronymus Bosch painting. What a disaster, what greed, what hubris, the horror, the horror.
Heard
A bunch of delta blues (see above), RL Burnside stands out. A lot of Cure in prep for seeing them in Nov. Rediscovered Peepshow by Siouxsie and the Banshees, surprised at how well it stands up. And smatterings of Aphex Twin as a pallet cleansing sorbet.
Listening –
The Sadies released Colder Streams at the end of July. It’s a fine piece of work, which hopefully won’t be their swansong, and is a contender for my album of the year so far (admittedly a narrow field as I haven’t listened to much new). It contains a kind of summary of everything that the band does so well, with the added bonus of decent tunes.
I also bought Noise & Flowers by Neil Young this month, largely against my better judgement as any new product from old Shakey usually carries an enormous quality control warning. This is a pretty decent live album though, recorded in 2019 with Promise of the Real doing a strong impression of Crazy Horse, and containing a good cross section of Neil crowd-pleasers.
Any love on here for Josh Rouse? M’mmm, thought not, but his new one, Going Places, kills 30 minutes without giving offence. I’ve bought most of his albums in the vain hope that eventually one of them would rekindle the promise of his debut, Dressed Up Like Nebraska. Sadly none of them ever has. They are all competent and inoffensive, but his move to Spain a couple of decades ago seems to have permanently blunted his creative edge.
Reading –
I waded through half of Keith Richards’ biography before I finally gave up and sent it back to the Dodgers. The best bits are when he writes about his early life, and with enthusiasm about music, although some of the guitar technique passages would try the patience of all but the most committed reader. But it’s when he starts rambling about Anita Pallenberg and his jet-set name-dropping drug-fuelled escapades around the world that I lost the will to live. It’s rare for me to give up on a rock bio (not since Clinton Heylin’s turgid Dylan book), but Keef should stick to what he does best, or hire a better ghost writer next time.
At the other end of the scale, one of my retirement aims has been to read Emile Zola’s Rougon-Macquart series of novels in the order recommended by the author. (I should add that my aim to read all of Shakespeare’s plays alphabetically foundered unimpressively after Comedy of Errors). The Fortune of the Rougons is the first of around 20 and I was pleasantly surprised. There’s a lot of descriptive scene setting, but when Zola starts to write, boy can he write, and I’m encouraged to press on with the next one.
Watching –
Guilty pleasures confessional here – I find The Bidding Room on daytime BBC1 quite an addictive watch without quite knowing why. Wall-to-wall antiques programmes have become the Beeb’s de rigeur filler of recent years, usually populated by irritating presenters – honourable mention here to that twat who wears ‘amusing’ glasses and brightly coloured trousers – but this one boasts the always watchable Nigel Havers and a panel of agreeable dealers who invest their own cash in members of the public’s old tat. Okay, you’re right, I should get out more…..
Public service posting.
I agree with you about the Sadies @Boneshaker, it’s a superb album one of their best, whether they continue without the Dallas Good (R.I.P.) who knows.
I also really like Shakey’s latest live opus, Promise Of The Real really rock out for the old coot. He, Shakey has another studio album already recorded with Crazy Horse, a follow up to ‘Barn’ waiting for the LPs to be pressed. I’m looking forward to that.
Books – I’m on volume 3 of the Alastair Campbell diaries. It’s scary, but also a little comforting that the business of government is no less chaotic and haphazard as any other walk of life. It’s currently summer of 2001 and Blair’s government is struggling. We all know what comes soon. It’s fascinating to follow the story in so much detail. I really must take a break and read something completely different next but I’ve become a little obsessed with it.
TV – thanks to whoever on here recommended The Rehearsal. Highly original and manages to maintain itself as a drama without letting the sheer absurdity of it all overtake things. We completed Saul (brilliant) and the latest season of Westworld (the writers are just making it up as they go along you suspect). We’re saving the GOT prequel until they’ve all been shown so we can binge it as the nights close in.
Music – we completed our trio of gigs with our son (10) this year. Elbow in Dublin were great but I was taken ill part way through which spoiled it a little (fine now). Elton John at Vicarage Road was wonderful. What better place to be s a lifelong Watford fan myself. He was on terrific form. Madness (with Squeeze in support) was joyous, life affirming. Hit after hit after hit from both acts. They don’t make them like that any more.
Yes, I, too, picked up on the recommendation of “The Rehearsal” on this board.
Strange show. Weird concept. But good. Very clever.
Heard:
Well, Half Man Half Biscuit might as well give up now, because, over on the Chart Music Podcast, Taylor Parks revealed that Berni Flint’s Pallet Palace – a YouTube series where the IDWPNHOYH creates tasteful furniture from discarded pallets – is only a bloody REAL THING!
https://youtu.be/Bzwu0WAwiFA
“LOL” has become ubiquitous shorthand, but, as much as I might titter at all sorts of comedy, nothing makes me actually laugh out loud as much as this podcast.
Blimmin’ Frick, there’s a new Altered Images album (Mascara Streakz – dig that crayzee “z”). Only CP Grogan and Stephen Lironi remain (I can’t see Mr Grogan’s name without – in the manner of Harry Hill demonstrating stalagmites and stalactites by inverting his fingers – going “Marco Pirroni, Stephen Lironi!”).
Ver Images, despite Clare’s poster girl appeal and cutesy pinky blue imagery, had lots of sharp angles and cool pretensions – Shaky and The Banshees, if you will. The new album is a much smoother affair, at times more like Saint Etienne or Dubstar. Bernard Butler’s on it, but, in keeping with the record’s overall sound, he doesn’t go “full Bernard”, adding mostly tasteful guitar trills.
On first listen I had a powerful feeling of, after almost forty years of silence, why bother? but now I find a couple of things creeping up on me.
Reading:
A comment someone made upon the conclusion of Better Call Saul about how we justify our awful behaviour to ourselves made me pick up Crime And Punishment again. Not having read it for a couple of decades, I was surprised by how early in the book the murders occur.
Seen
Better Call Saul coming to an end and Netflix jacking up their prices in the same month seems like an appropriate time to take a break. So I will watch RRR one more time and take my leave.
I spend a lot of time (don’t ask) reading about unhealthy relationships, but the one enduring love in which I’m trapped which blackens my soul and makes me hate myself is that one for football. To be fair, this first month is the best part of the season, between the relief of withdrawal, the shiny new things and the blind optimism about your own team. (Even though my own team have started well, their one tv appearance featured a dismal home defeat to a very ordinary team – plus ça change!).
AOB:
Last night, my sister, during the news, asked me if I think the world is ending. She doesn’t even watch Neighbours.
Oops! I forgot the whole reason I brought up Altered Images. I started a thread a while back about the potential cash-in for certain artists of re-recording their youthful hits with a more mature voice. Clare is exactly the sort of singer I had in mind, but, sad to report, her vocals sound almost exactly as they did before. And, to paraphrase the maestro, I didn’t like them then and I do not like them now.
Full Bernard. That thing he always does with the whammy bar while tossing his hair about. PS it’s still 1993, isn’t it?
Not listened to much.
Been reading Harry Hill’s autobiography “Fight!” while being away. Very witty and with interesting sections on how comedy works. Quite touching in parts as well – he’s lost some friends along the way and speaks very fondly of them. He’s comedy marmite, I know (I’m a big fan) and is known to be quite a private person offstage, but he comes over well. Got the Bob Mortimer one lined up next, which I imagine will be similarly engaging.
On TV – The Great (as mentioned above) which is still great fun, and properly filthy. Reckon Nicholas Hoult would make a great Bond. Also Shetland which is engrossing and beautifully shot, if a bit far fetched at times. Jimmy Perez is starting to look almost as weathered as some of the buildings in Lerwick.
Listened:
I got unhealthily obsessed with Genesis’ The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. Going to give it a break now.
Read:
The Children of Hurin by Tolkien. Gave up on it a few times as I couldn’t get my head around it and it seemed maddeningly random and episodic, but it won me over in the end when you get a sense of the overall tragic arc of the story.
Watched:
– Been watching Curb Your Enthusiasm from the beginning. Hilarious, and a brilliant depiction of a character who walks a very fine line between being relatable and annoying. (If it even is a ‘character’ at all)
– Also watching Breaking Bad for the first time. About halfway through series 2 and it’s annoyingly slow, but I’ll push on.
When I did the “Listening to Genesis thing”, The Lamb didn’t click with me – all very competent, well played and produced. Just didn’t enjoy it as much as what came before or A Trick Of The Tail and Wind & Wuthering after it.
(Shock horror perhaps – I enjoyed And Then There Were Three a bit more too)
Arthur. Re. your new found love of Genesis, here’s some interesting background on Supper’s Ready. Peter Gabriel was inspired to write the lyric after a deeply disturbing occult experience that happened to his wife Jill whilst he was also present. Apparently they knew they were under psychic/magical attack from a female acquaintance. The whole ‘I swear I saw your face change’ etc is about this. Apparently her voice changed also. The ‘six saintly shrouded men’ were ghosts/apparitions that PG saw from the window. The apartment where they were was in a very exclusive part of London and belonged to Jill’s parents. The block and surrounding area was known to be haunted.
Anyway the whole thing freaked PG out and he felt that he quite literally had to exorcise the experience through song, hence the mighty ‘Supper’s Ready’ where he he was almost literally ‘singing for my soul’ (sic). So there you go.
Thanks, I had heard that about the Supper’s Ready lyric, and also heard it attributed to a bad drug trip! Whatever the truth, I’m glad he was able to channel it into such an astonishing lyric and performance.
Peter Gabriel definitely had a way with words in his Genesis years, and the ideal voice to express these. The current lyric I keep having going round in my head is his subdued deep voice crooning ‘you gotta get in to get out…’
PG was never into drugs and rarely drank/drinks. Very clean living. He tried shrooms once in the 80s and spent the afternoon lying in a ditch. The truth is the occult experience.
Interesting. Which reminds me I need to get a biography of the band. I feel I need to know more about their origins.
Phil Collins told the story that when he joined Genesis he was struck by the fact that the Charterhouse lads would refer to themselves by their surnames when chatting to each other: “Rutherford, did you hear what Gabriel just said?”
They are very posh boys, aren’t they? Poshest band ever?
Depends – the Gabriel-era band was only 60% posh, after Collins and Hackett had joined…
Gigs: only one in August but a belter – Della Mae at Settle, Victoria Hall. I love this band, first saw them at Grey Fox festival in upstate New York in 2010 and have seen them on every visit to the UK except for earlier this year when they played the Shetland Folk Festival and a few gigs in Belgium / Holland. I was initially disapointed that their new mandolin player Maddie Witler was not this tour but I have to say that if you didn’t know they were a player short you wouldn’t have noticed. They were on great form and surprised me by playing a load of new material, mostly covers. Towards the end they did Ohio by CSNY, written in 1970 when none of Della Mae were born. They went down to Shrewsbury Folk Festival the following day, played 2 sets and went down a storm both times. I hope that might be their breakthrough moment in this country.
Listened: Likewise only one, and a good one. Gretchen Peters “The Show: Live from the UK” is a nicely recorded double CD, all with her band and the first half including a string quartet. She has announced her retirement from touring and I’m sorry I didn’t get to see her this time round
Watched: The Aretha Prom. Did anyone else see this? I’d have skipped it, assuming it would be rentacrowd young pop singers all having a go. But I watched it after seeing Richard Williams giving it a glowing review and I’m glad I did. It was bloody wonderful. They had just one singer, a middle aged US singer & pianist named Shelea who did proper justice to the songs backed by a big Jules Buckley Orchestra and 12 backing singers recruited and led by Vula from Basement Jaxx. Check it out on iplayer, it’s terrific!
She makes her final UK tour in May next year, @vince-black
Thanks Retro. I’ll try and see her then.
Read:
finally finished Mick Wall’s Led Zep book – a bit of a slog, but got there in the end (he seems to spend as much time examining Jimmy Page’s Aleister Crowley obsession as he does the band).
This month’s Mojo coincided with my building of the Kate Bush discography (I now realise I needed more than Hounds Of Love, The Whole Story and Aerial) – maybe some Aleister Crowley magick at play here, or maybe just a coincidence
Listened:
Because of that book, Jeff Beck’s Truth and the new Yardbirds compilation arrived on my door mat.
And flipping good they are too.
New stuff? nothing, but the Suede album is arriving soon
Watched:
Van Der Valk on ITV – never seen the original so can’t compare, but enjoyed it
Marriage was a bit slow going but pretty much spot on when it comes to portraying the normality of a long term relationship (or that’s what I took away from it)
Just started on Series 1 of The Capture (cos I missed it first time round and a new series has just started)
The ‘Kate Bush’ cd with Mojo was excellent too.
They’ve managed a few decent CDs recently
What we did on our holidays.
Posted little last month as I was in the middle of a 24 day folk odyssey – Warwick, Sidmouth, Dartmoor, Cropredy. Just in case I wasn’t busy enough, July started with Folk at the Hall; August closed with Shrewsbury. The second weekend in July I managed for the first time to get out to see the Tour actually in France, seeing a stage finish in the Alps. Just for good measure, in the one spare July weekend, I got sent to A&E straight from an MRI scan and had four of the worst days of my life (x-ref Advice! Answers! thread).
A blow-by-blow account of every act I’ve seen would not be appreciated, not even a list. I will report that Spiers and Boden were on top form at Warwick; punchy, engaging, humorous and wry, while Sam Sweeney and his friends were enjoyed at Shrewsbury, graceful English fiddle tunes in the open air, perfect for a languorous bank holiday weekend. Both seriously whetted my appetite for Bellowhead in November. But the most memorable gig was Nancy Kerr & James Fagan, again at Warwick – a consummate display of musicianship, pace and narrative, expertly curated setlist and audience connection. Giving the impression that you are close confidantes of a thousand or more does not come without gift, hard graft and sincerity.
The participant in me has relished rumbling bass harmonies round countless village pubs and festival bars. My back was a limiter for dancing at Sidmouth, which weighed heavy on my mind, but somehow a miracle recovery at Shrewsbury allowed me to dance a full night to a bal from The Rheingans Sisters. Happiness is swinging your partner to a top band.
But rewind to the 1st July. If you asked me who my favourite musician is, I would give a certain answer – Andy Cutting. Soloist, collaborator and band member of the mighty Blowzabella, composer of so many fabulous dance tunes and box player to the stars (he introduced his encore by announcing that the last time he played this, it was with The Who – you don’t hear that often at folk clubs). I got to be his support act. I threw everything at it; seven songs, wisely chosen, delivered with all the heart I could muster. Brimming with pride, I then enjoyed the musicianship of the great man from just a few feet away, knowing that my work on this planet is now complete.
READ : You think I’ve had time to read anything other than festival programmes?
Have you caught him with Topette, yet, @thecheshirecat ? I haven’t but want to, their latest platter insisting I bought the earlier two too. Top stuff!
Haha. Just been playing Bourdon this morning. I find it less energetic than the earlier two, which I kind of need in a dance band. But, Yes, I saw Topette! at Sidmouth, even as they were forming. You kind of knew that, didn’t you?
Good man, Chesh – keep on (folk-)rocking!
Given I SEEN @ Wickham Festival about 4 weeks ago, the beginning of this august month, it seems ages ago. And good it was, even if I apply self reverential shorthand by linking https://www.google.com/amp/s/atthebarrier.com/2022/08/16/wickham-festival-2022-live-review/amp/, but needs must. I should add I met up with Mr @davebigpicture , which was good, ahead his beloved TMTCH. An excellent fellow, we enjoyed the set of the festival alongside. I also met up with Mrs Steve Knightley, a fellow medic, her husband taking little umbrage he was not the focus of attention. Which endeared him to me. I should add my comments around the Waterboys were heavily censored, as I actually felt they were a little shite, with all attention being now towards an US audience. My line about Bro Paul being a creepy mix of Uncle Fester and Tiny Tim also got cut…
Since then a visit to Victoria Patk: Nick Cave, Spiritualised, Michael Kiwanuka and Tinariwen: terrific day out.
READ: like when?
TELLY: Loads but the Capture is what leaps out. Seen Been was great in Marriage, too. V
Does the Knightlymeister still have that mullet and designer stubble, though?
He certainly did in the bar at Shrewsbury last Sunday. He was hoofing with the best of us at the ceilidh beforehand too.
He always struck me as someone who really wanted to be Broooce but ended up in a folk club.
Yes, but he looks better at 67 than most of us.
Should we have a whip round and buy him a razor? His face must surely be itchy after 30-odd years of that stubble.
Itchy face?
@Colin-H I’m sure he never had any ambition to host the generation game or strictly.
Very good!
A pleasure to meet you @retropath2
I hope Mrs Knightly is well on the road to recovery from her recent ill health?
She said so and looked stunning. (Which was awkward, given she was in a gossamer thin gown, sans foundation garments, and what we were talking about, without the ability to take confirmatory glances.
Listened: Nothing new, just goiung back over old favorites for comfort listening. Hoping my hopes don’t get dashed by the new Afghan Whigs this month.
Read: Nothing complicated. Revisited Matt Fraction’s Hawkeye run, and loving it.
Watched: Hawkeye, which I loved (see Read). They got the details necessary for the tv, as well as staying true to the source material. She-Hulk, AAL, which is a ton of fun and not at all to be taken seriously. A lot of NRL, which I love watching. Making inroads into my subscription TV series, so what I think are probably “older” shows – River, with Stellen Skarsgard, and Redemption with Paula Malcol;smon, who older readers might remember as Trixie in Deadwood.
AOB: So my post concussive syndrome (I think I mentioned getting slotted at a rugby match in March?) is not improving, so I have to see a NeuroPsych in November. There are a few symptoms, but the most annoying are the fact that I get upset at the drop of a hat, I can’t have two noise sources near me at the same time (SHaorn ground coffee when I have the tV on, and I had to walk away) and the fact that my brain just doesn;t work in some areas. Not “works slower”, it’s like it returns “Syntax Error” and just…stops. Which is no good when your wife wants input on something. So, all in all, if I’m honest, I’ve had better years. The only real plus from August was my trip to the UK with my son, who turned 18 and got a drink at Sandie Bell’s in Edinburgh. He just started University, so life moves on, I guess)
READ: most of the month was taken up with ploughing through Austerity Britain 1945-51 by David Kynaston, which I’d always intended to read because I was born during those years. My mother always told me I was born while the Prime Minister was addressing the nation, and it turns out to be true. Yes, Mr Attlee was boring the country silly at the moment of my birth. (Insert mirthful piss-take here.) The book’s a long haul, but it’s full of fascinating detail, quite a lot of which is now resonating all over again. My parents must have had a grim time of it.
I’ve admired Patrick Hamilton from afar without ever reading anything by him, so I gave Slaves of Solitude a go. Wonderful stuff, wry, witty, cynical and really quite subversive: the story of the epic battle of wills over a man between two spinsters of a certain age, in the middle of a war that everybody’s bored silly with. Mr Thwaites is one of the great monsters of fiction.
A couple of curiosities: A Certain Hunger by Chelsea G Summers, about a highly sexed food critic who gets into the habit of killing her lovers and eating choice bits of them. Disgustingly bonkers but fun. Death of a Bookseller by Bernard J Farmer, a 1950s murder mystery in the British Library series, about the surprisingly violent goings-on in the rough, tough world of rare bookselling.
SEEN: still bingeing on Brooklyn 99, thanks to @black-celebration. Finally saw the gut-wrenching Rabbit-Proof Fence a mere 20 years after it came out. Maison de Retraite, one of those clash-of-generations movies the French do so well, about a young reprobate requires him to work in a retirement home. Funny and touching, with excellent turns from Gerard Depardieu and former sex-kitten Mylene Demongeot, mischievous as ever.
Against all the odds Opera Australia showed up in Murwillumbah to give us an absolutely stonking production of The Barber of Seville, one of the best nights out I’ve had for ages. Mrs thep, whose demeanour on the way there was as of one who was off to have root canal treatment, loved it too.
HEARD: the usual mishmash and hotchpotch. One voice of astonishing power has stood out, though, that of Grace Cummings from Melbourne. She seems too slight for the huge sound that comes out of her. Hypnotic to watch, too.
Re: Patrick Hamilton. I’ve had “The Slaves of Solitude” on my ‘to read’ shelf for about 7 years now. I feel I should definitely read it now!
The two Hamilton books I have read are “Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky” and “Hangover Square”. They’re both excellent. Highly recommended.
And I can recommend The Gorse Trilogy as well. Top stuff.
And ‘ Craven House’.
Not read ‘Twopence Coloured’ or ‘Monday Morning’ yet. These are his slightly less regarded early novels but I think worth a shot.
He also wrote the plays ‘Gaslight’ (from which is derived ‘gaslighting’ though I think that’s common knowledge) and ‘Rope’. The latter filmed by Hitchcock in ten long takes and made to look as though it was all done in one go.
I really like the Kynaston books, though he’s taking ages to finish Opportunity Britain, the next volume.
I like the description of Britain at the start of Opportunity Britain. No tea bags, a handful of Indian restaurants. A different place.
1. “Shots in the Dark”, David Kynaston’s football book about spending a season watching Aldershot, is also well worth while.
2. I’ve been pronouncing his surname wrongly for decades. I thought it was KYE-naston, but in fact it’s KINN-aston.
Thanks for the Grace Cummings clip, @mikethep – really good. I’ve never heard of her – I need to seek out more…
I’m currently knocked out by a virus (no, not that one) so won’t give you the usual tl;dr scroll.
Also, August was vacation month for me, and on vacation I read less, barely listen to music, watch nothing…
Read:
Finished The House On The Strand by Daphne du Maurier and ended up really enjoying it, despite some small misgivings in the beginning. It’s not only fascinating as a read, dealing with time travel, psychedelic drug use, relationships and the 12th century narrative set in Cornwall, but also because she wrote it in 1969, much later than I thought she kept going – and obviously inspired by the times!
Then I went into vacation mode, meaning very light reading, in my case picking up the crime novels of Swedish “Queen of Crime” Maria Lang, which I collect. She wrote between the late 1940s and early 90s (when her death finally halted her annual production), and is viewed with mostly scorn these days, unfairly IMO. Yes, the police work isn’t realistic at all. Yes, she has a few style mannerisms that will make you roll your eyes and laugh – but I do prefer them to current realistic crime writing (quite frankly not at all realistic really, just packaged in a way that makes it seem true, but just as fanciful and much more cynical, sadistic and pessimistic).
Anyway, I picked up a few at the “book tables” during the Culture Festival, and after reading them I decided to turn it into a project. I was blue from Carolinas/Lindas death, I wasn’t in the mood for anything heavy (paused The Books of Jacob, although I absolutely loved it, it just wasn’t what I wanted to read at this time). So why not re-read all of the Lang crime novels, buy the handful of her later ones that I don’t already own, and rank them when I’m done? I do enjoy a project…so this is what I’m doing for now. So far I’ve re-/visited eleven of the fortyone she wrote…but they are quick reads so I expect to be done well before Christmas.
Reading them as a part of a project also makes me note certain things about them, and how the style changes over the years, which is very interesting. So far I’ve been reading them in random order, but I’m thinking about reading them in chronological order from now on, to see how that changes the experience. But perhaps then I won’t notice the progression as clearly as I have done now? Also, the tail-end of the project might get fairly underwhelming if I do…she did finally lose her touch a bit.
AOB:
I’m in the middle of a renovation or refresh of my kitchen, which I was going to do on my vacation…but kept postponing it because it was too hot, until I only had one week left. Then it was hotter than ever, but I started anyway, but didn’t get very far. Back to work since late August, but not much time off until this weekend, when I planned to get most of the building stuff done so I can get the paiting done next weekend – but of course that’s when the virus hit me! So my kitchen is still a complete mess and although I’m having to stay home for a few more days at least, I’m not in any shape to do that kind of work (but my book project is coming along fine).
Seen
Been hooked on “WWII In Colour” (Netflix). Amazing footage though you do see the same bloke running about on multiple fronts (I suppose he may have been). “Totem” was good (Amazon). Didn’t get on with “Marriage” despite the stellar cast. Great conclusion to “Better Call Saul” as expected. Drifted into watching “About Time” which is Richard Curtis emotional exploitation writ large, wept freely by the end and loved it for all its calculation. It’s about boys and their dads. Say no more.
Read
“The Force” – Don Winslow. Epic, brilliant, very long. Immediately read “Savages” which is also excellent but far less dense. Mrs. T loved Force but couldn’t get on with Savages so I’ve got her on “The winter of Frankie Machine” which seems to be going well. Read two old Freddie Forsyths – “Fist of God” and “The Afghan” which feature the same characters. Both good easy page turners. Finally, on hols, read “Who dares wins” by Dominic Sandbrook, a meticulously researched history of the UK in 1979 – 1982, only a few years, but boy a lot happened. Gripping for those who were there, which is most of us. Again, long and dense but recommended.
Seen
My new favourite band is Halestorm. Enthusiastically crafted heavy rock with a pop sensibility fronted by Lzzy Hale who has the most sensational voice. The new album “Back from the dead”, documents her struggles with mental health during lock down and is primal scream metal. Brilliant. The back catalogue is quite varied and all excellent. Just discovered Lari Basilio – a Brazilian female guitarist who plays light, melodic, funky fusion instrumental guitar music, strong on melody and variety with enough flash to keep this jaundiced picker interested.
Here’s Lzzy expressing her feelings about lockdown…to wake you up…
Hmm, you’ve got me interested in the D, Sandbrook book @Twang and I’ll probably get it. I see he wrote a shed full of books on the recent history of the U.K. This could lead to a long and deep rabbit hole……..
They are all really excellent. Can’t recommend them highly enough. The 60s one is particularly good but all are superb.
He co chairs a great podcast called “The rest is history” which is both fun and intelligent.
Go for it, Baron they’re very good, and as Twang mentions, White Heat, which covers the mid to late 60s is very good and has a lot of Afterword-friendly Beatles and Stones stuff.
Never Had it So Good is the first one, starts at Suez.
Never Had It So Good is a bit of a tough one – good, but I found it hard going (maybe because I wasn’t there?).
The rest – similar size books, but I knocked them out in half the time
I preferred Never Had it So Good to the 60s one. It felt like history within reach and yet it was, to me, much less familiar – less well-trampled territory, names and events I was only vaguely aware of etc. So I learned much more from it and didn’t always know the denouements before they happened in the text.
Agreed. It partially inspired my “Decades” project when I discovered I was in utero at the time the speech. So I thought it would be interesting to reflect on how we have done since then. Spoiler: not great.
The album was much better than the actuality.
🙂
I love his central premise that flower power etc was the preoccupation of a few hundred people in London and for most people it was largely irrelevant.
I like that apart from the political stuff and big stories he really gets into what life was actually like for real people.
Yeah me too. I read Never Had It So Good and White Heat and found them both utterly gripping. A different side to the sixties that I usually get engrossed (rock and pop, obvs). A couple of bits that stuck out were how international football wasn’t really a big deal for Britain until the 1966 world Cup.
I also think it was Dominic Sandbrook who described us as a nation of hobbyists. For all the talk of the swinging sixties, far more people at the time were into gardening than into the Beatles.
I’m a Sandbrook admirer too, and I’d add to the recommendations above The Great British Dream Factory, which is a kind of cultural history of twentieth century Britain. Each chapter explores a different aspect of popular culture, so it’s an easy book to dip in and out of.
Ta for reminding me. I’ve been meaning to read that. Ordered.
I don’t think any of my mates, me included were into gardening in the 60’s. Opera and ballet practice left little time for anything else.
That “it only concerned 200 people” line – much championed by Robert Elms, another dodger – is, to coin a phrase, “complete and utter bollocks.”
The only people who say it are trying to convince themselves that the 60s, which they missed, didn’t happen. Well, it did.
I’m currently wading (yet again) through the old local newspapers for various sports’ projects, and the little market town near me in Cornwall (population approx. 20,000) was absolutely buzzing in the 60s. There were hundreds of beat groups in Cornwall – see Kernow Beat website – top groups and folk singers visited the area, often supported by these local acts – and boutiques, music venues, coffee shops, record shops, shops which supplied technical gear to the groups, photographic studios, youth clubs etc. were springing up on a weekly basis in the mid-to-late 60s.
200 people, my arse – there must have been ten times that in this little town alone.
I wrote a small book on pop culture in North Down (NI) 20 years back, using the local paper as the key source – similarly, here in a distant outpost, there was lots of youth-led swinging 60s activity, beat group competitions, etc. Bangor British Legion Hall was known, on a weekly basis, as ‘The Electric Honeypot’…
I’m not so sure there were thousands of hippies across the country. Wannabe pop stars maybe.
Yes. I think the truth is that there were 200-odd (well-off) people in London really living the dream while all over the UK others were aping it as best they could.
I remember getting really annoyed with one of my lecturers at uni. He just didn’t get the sixties and thought they were an overinflated myth. He saw the real cultural and artistic upheaval of the twentieth century being a few decades earlier, particularly in the literary field (Joyce, Woolf, Lawrence, Eliot, etc).
Me, I am fully on board with the idea of the sixties being a massively important time for culture and music (in particular music). If anything, I probably prefer seventies music, but the groundwork and the breakthrough was the sixties.
Still, I do believe Dominic Sandbrook that more people at the time were into football, gardening and the pub, and I think it helps to ground things a bit to remember that.
Have you read and do you like Ian Macdonald’s essay “Fabled Foursome, Disappearing Decade”, the introduction to his Revolution in the Head book? One of my favourite essays, that.
I think the whole “it was 100 people in central London” is probably largely true at any point in time, if you only consider the Primary Movers And Shakers of the era. There’s a much larger number making up the B-list, and even more around the country.
50s: Cliff & the Shads, Marty Wilde, etc.
60s: Fabs, Stones, Dave Clark 5, DONOVAN.
Jump forward to
90s: Blur, Oasis, Suede: yes. Sleeperblokes, Eighteen Wheeler: not so much.
I recall when Doctor Who was first being rebooted, the writer (I forget his name) was asked about all the naysayers – ‘Look, it’s only 200 people on Planet Gallifrey!’ he said, with some exasperation. That stuck in the mind as rather amusing. No, he hadn’t got so far into his fictional world that he was losing his grip – he was talking about some nerdy fan site. The ‘Whovian’ equivalent of Swing London 🙂
‘…flower power was the preoccupation of a few hundred people in London…’ Yes, mostly journalists. Elsewhere, thousands of wrinklies suggesting the youngsters wash for once, get their hair cut and get a job instead of poncing about with all those flowers.
Typical right wing views from Sandbrook. May have a grain of truth though. Woodstock may indicate that this movement eventually reached hundreds of thousands of people though
Those with a particular interest in this period of British history should read Days in the Life by Jonathan Green. I read it in the late eighties when it was published so my memory of it is somewhat sketchy but I seem to recall that many of the people he interviewed for his book took the position that the number of people at the center of “alternative society” during those years was vanishingly small.
I tried reading that, but had to give up. This was because it’s written in the form of interviews and I found that the people telling the stories had their heads so far up their arses that the text started to have a funny colour. Burnt Sienna, I think.
Aberdeen back in them days – everybody and I mean everybody including John Whittaker destined to become Judge Whittaker, between the ages of 16 and 21 sincerely and utterly believed we were entering a New Age. We bought our Afghans, we smoked banana skins and we desperately looked for Free Love (not many of us found Free Love). Proper Hippies in London were most probably sitting down with Lennon & Donovan but like every other young person in the UK at that time we thought “Hand out the guns and ammo”
Having been around at the time, working in South Ken, the theory of a few hundred hippies in the better off part of London was broadly correct if you mean people living the full-on hippie lifestyle, but it ignores what might be called the trickle down effect. For a lot of other younger people, certainly in London, this meant growing your hair as long as you could get away with in normal employment, buying the music and indulging in a few beads, granny glasses etc at the weekend. This is not that surprising. I can’t think of any cultural movement that everyone suddenly began following, all at the same time.
Huh, you should have been in our Sixth Form at peak NWOBHM
Did anyone else go watch Nope in the cinema this month just gone? Really interesting, well executed horror movie.
I had low expectations as I was underwhelmed by the last two Jordan Peele flicks, but I thought this was really really good – thought provoking, visually inventive, some super memorable scenes and great performances.
It ended and I would happily have sat and watched it again; it rolled round my head for days afterwards. Great soundtrack too.
Oh.
I thought the first two films were the b****cks and have heard a lot of spoiler-free grumbling about the new one but on the other hand I venerate you, Sir Bingo, as a God who walks among us – so now I don’t know what to think..
He’s not actually a God Sewer, he just has the Power Cosmic. It’s an easy mistake to make.
So long as the veneration continues in earnest and you do not neglect the tradition of harvest tribute I hereby proclaim you free to think whatever you choose, Sewer Dude.
I was quite conflicted about Nope. There were some great ideas and imagery in there, but I’m less convinced they added up to much. All those callbacks and internal references were very smart, but did they mean anything, or were they just there so I could pat myself on the back for spotting them? It’s a film that’s jammed full of subtext that it never quite ties up, and it jumps around between allusions and metaphors that it doesn’t fully explore. It’s either nowhere near as clever as it thinks it is, or so clever it went straight over my head, but it’s definitely a little bit too in love with itself.
I like the core story, and the last act is terrific, but it’s one of those frustrating movies that could have been brilliant but ends up as a six out of ten.
God, I wish we had spoiler tags here.
It’s impossible to discuss in any detail without massive spoilers, but the metaphors and allusions stacked up for me. I thought it had interesting things to say about the relationship between man and nature, the spectacle of violence vs the spectator, our obsession with cameras and screens, etc, all while channelling Tremors and giving us a very fine Akira slide.
It’s an awful lot less on the nose than the last two, and gives the audience far more work to do, but I really liked that about it. There’s some ambiguity in there, which is so much more interesting.
while Tremors is indeed a marvellous, marvellous, film I reckon another monster movie had a much bigger influence – if you squint at Nope a bit funny, it’s basically a remake of Jaws*. And if that sounds good to you then I recommend you read The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall, because it also ticks that box and is tremendous fun.
*which leads us down the history of cinema rabbit hole that is also a key element in the film, in addition to all those other bits you mentioned…this is why I say it felt overstuffed. It’ll be an interesting one to rewatch.
Yeah, I could have lived without the history of cinema stuff.
I just loved the way you can take a number of the film’s themes/motifs and view them from different angles. Does the camera incite brutality/can it be used to quell brutality? Is the audience gaze inherently violent? Is Jean Jacket a spectator or the spectated? The film plays with all these ideas, and invites the audience to reach its own conclusions.
It’s also the first Peele which doesn’t feel like it could be reduced to a thirty second sketch. I think it shows real growth.
Heard: As with others, I’ve been on a Genesis mid-period phase, so enjoyed And Then There Were Three… and realised I should give Gabriel’s Car a go. A curate’s egg if ever there was one, three amazing songs and some real dross. A mate has a studio only band called Genius Steals and the songwriting is quality – rich and varied. The usual charity shop finds (3CD of Benjamin Britten’s complete quartet works for £2) and my own work, which was being mastered – hard not to be sick of music on the hundredth listen. Only gig in the last few weeks has been my friends Stage Door Guy in a Sydenham var.
Read: In a fit of self-improvement, I signed up for an allyship programme at work, which meant reading some books about the Black British experience. Reni Eddo-Lodge’s Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race makes some good points but is big on sweeping assumptions, David Baddeil’s Jews Don’t Count was similar (but more readable) but Akala’s Natives: Race And Class in the Ruins of Empire is great – informative, shocking in places but never preachy. For light relief it’s been Squeeze: Song by Song and Private Eye on the toilet.
Watched: The US late night comics have been good ways to keep up with their politics while I do 15 mins exercise of a morning, so have been very irritated that they all went on holiday at the same time, with the exception of John Oliver. Stuff for my allyship programme (see above), the best of which was Lenny Henry’s Caribbean Adventure. The Capture, The Suspect and Van Der Valk have been ok but not talk-down-the-pub good. And have introduced the GLW to the delights of Ever Decreasing Circles – Esmonde and Larbey’s darker, crueller follow-up to the Good Life. Can’t get over how abruptly the episodes end.
A delayed August rewind, it seeming to have passed in a blur of activity. I may have mentioned my gallbag lat time around, it having decided to shout at me loudly ( and painfully) for the hitherto silent cultivation of stones. My diet is pristine and my body fast becoming a temple, if a severe Calvinist one, with aspects that are near Jain in avoidance. This meant festivals might be challenging. Wickham was first, three days rather than four, and having to eschew all the many and varied offerings at the food concessions, buying up, instead, lashings of bland fare at the Spar in the village. Boiled eggs and sushi, basically. Which at least counterbound the effects of the ale, able to be quaffed freely. A highlight was, as mentioned somewhere, meeting up with @davebigpicture. The end of the month caught me at the Sunday of All Points East, another scorcher of a day, and not half bad, musically either. I am too lazy to write up days/nights out twice these days, so, if you need to know more:
https://atthebarrier.com/2022/08/16/wickham-festival-2022-live-review/amp/
and
https://atthebarrier.com/2022/09/08/all-points-east-victoria-park-live-review/amp/
Barely time to catch much up with reading and new music has centred around various Scottish musics. I seem to have become the Hibernian correspondent for the site that sends me most material.
My main rationale of writing is to update you, I know you are interested, in my adventures into wild swimming, that has so captivated since the turn of the year. With the summer climes, much the pleasure has been reduced by civilians deciding to cool off in waters, um, wet, crowding the secret inlets and waterways with their loud conversing and music. Plus the water is just too damn warm. Hurry up, autumn.
“Hurry up, autumn” has been my catchphrase for the past months, too. I’m UV hypersenstive (due to immunosuppressant meds) so have been unable to be outdoors for most of the blazing-hot summer, unless covered head-to-toe in SPF50. I’ve finally been able to resume the “evening commute” stroll around the abandoned hospital grounds.
Sham 69 will be issuing an updated version:
“Come on, come on
‘Urry up Autumn
Come on.
Steve wants to go outside”
etc