borborygmus

Places & times I really wished I'd been

2008-10-05T13:18:00.003+01:00

An article in the Sunday Times this morning about Annie Leibovitz contained this picture - wish I'd been on that porch too.

Johnny Cash, June Carter Cash with autoharp, Rosanne Cash with guitar

Barbed Wire Love

2008-04-15T18:25:00.002+01:00

Last year, Stiff Little Fingers celebrated their 30th anniversary. Part of that was touring and playing their first album live, in its entirety - the enduring and influential Inflammable Material. I vividly remember its release in 1979 (I have a white label vinyl copy somewhere) and I was lucky enough to see the tour last year.

One of the songs on that album is the "doo-wop surf pastiche" Barbed Wire Love, which isn't typical of the record (c.f. Alternative Ulster and Suspect Device for that), but which... er... struck a chord, and is still a sing-a-long live.

See check out this a capella version, and note the official thumbs up in the comments section on YouTube!

borborygmus 2007

2008-01-13T15:17:00.000Z

I now present the eerily ever more popular annual borborygmus track list. The rules are that tracks are chosen from releases in 2007, or releases from 2006 which did not hit my radar until 2007. 11 of the 17 tracks are from CDs I bought, eight are from albums I downloaded (legally!).

1. No Cars Go
Arcade Fire from Neon Bible
2. Paper Doll
Rosie Thomas from These Friends of Mine
3. Fluorescent Adolescent
Arctic Monkeys from Favourite Worst Nightmare
4. Trapeze
Patty Griffin from Children Running Through
5. Impossible Germany
Wilco from Sky Blue Sky
6. Tennessee Blues
Steve Earle from Washington Square Serenade
7. Never Any Good
Martin Simpson from Prodigal Son
8. Dress Blues
Jason Isbell from Sirens of the Ditch
9. Girls In Their Summer Clothes
Bruce Springsteen from Magic
10. Start A War
The National from Boxer
11. Please Read The Letter
Robert Plant & Alison Krauss from Raising Sand
12. Wait for the Summer
Yeasayer from All Hour Cymbals
13. Gotta Keep Walking
Willy Mason from If the Ocean Gets Rough
14. House Of Cards
Radiohead from In Rainbows
15. Spirit Road
Neil Young Chrome Dreams II
16. Den sodeste vals
Haugaard & Höirup from Gaestebud/Feast
17. Take Pills
Panda Bear from Person Pitch

Arcade Fire won me over this year; their first album was well feted, although passed me by. But in mud up to my ankles and in a sardine crowd, in a rousing performance at Glastonbury this summer, they completely won me over. Rosie Thomas was a chance discovery on eMusic.com, an extremely well-produced record featuring Sufjan Stevens, amongst others. Sheffield lads Arctic Monkeys spurn the difficult second album syndrome with, by golly, a record almost effortlessly better than their first release.

Patty Griffin continues a stream of excellent singer/songwriter fare; she should be far more popular. After the occasional aural challenge of 2004's A Ghost is Born, Wilco produced a slightly more accessible record, which still holds its own in the quality of their output. Anyone who sees my last.fm profile will know what I think about Steve Earle - this year's release is influenced by a move to New York City.

Martin Simpson was this year's discovery at the Cambridge Folk Festival. A guitar virtuoso (he is impressive just tuning up), he has a deep grasp of folk/Americana, and can write a decent song, as this paean to his father shows. We Drive By Truckers fans were shocked to hear of Jason Isbell's departure from the band, but glad to see his first release on his own. Suffice to say that he is a developing solo artist, but the song included here ranks alongside the greatest anti-war protest songs of the modern era, and which I first saw Jason perform solo at a DBT gig. Bruce Springsteen re-unites with the E Street Band, and there's no better reason than that to give his latest a listen.

The National have a subtle style which just creeps up on you. You would have given short shrift to the idea of a Led Zeppelin/bluegrass hybrid, but Robert Plant & Alison Krauss have made one the best-reviewed albums of the year, and this track is my favourite of 2007. "The music of Brooklyn's Yeasayer is a genre-bending journey into pop, druggy rock, Middle Eastern and African musics, folk, and dub." And this new band also have excellent harmonies.

At the very beginning of the year, I earmarked the opening track of Willy Mason's LP for this list, and 12 months later, it's still here. Radiohead hit the headlines with their online release, asking the punters to pay what they wanted to for the download. The brouhaha should not take away from what I feel is their best record since OK Computer. Gnarly Neil Young gets back to his greatest ragged rock style, with a superb record, best played loud and featuring an 18 minute track of grungy guitar and horns.

Haugaard & Höirup are a Danish fiddle and guitar folk duo - one of my most serene moments of 2007 was noon on a Sunday, sitting on a blanket, drinking Guinness and listening to them. Finally, Panda Bear - Beach Boys harmonies will a modern, indie-rock sensibility.

Interesting to see that, even though I bought more records by download than physical CDs this year, the list has a majority of actual plastic. Also for the first time this year, I am distributing mp3 versions of my borborygmus 2007 cd, knowing that a lot of people just immediately rip it to a computer anyway.

Bubbling under: 2007 releases from Peter Case, Josh Rouse, Kate Rusby, Chuck Prophet, KT Tunstall, Ryan Adams, Okkervil River, Rufus Wainwright, Richmond Fontaine, Bright Eyes

Disappointing: Eagles, Klaxons

It tells a story

2007-12-23T16:26:00.000Z

Is she really going out with him?
- Leader of the Pack, The Shangri-Las, 1964

Without getting all smoking-jacket literati about it, I’ve been thinking about the spoken word on records.

The excuse of a new, bigger iPod leads me to ripping some older CDs, and so I’ve been listening to Stevie Wonder, amongst others. In the middle of Living For The City, off of the Innervisions record, comes this spoken play-let – the young innocent from the sticks arrives in New York city, only to fall prey to naivety and racism. As he gets tossed into a jail cell, the cop calls him “nigger”; it’s pretty strong stuff in 2007, and very edgy in 1973, when it was edited out in radio airplay.

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.
- Ernest Hemmingway

A full narrative - could you get much shorter? Hemmingway possibly wrote this short, short story for a wager, but also purports it to be his best work. Willy Vlautin, singer/songwriter of much-loved alt.country band Richmond Fontaine, peppers their brilliant Post to Wire record with a series of small, tight spoken-word vignettes called Postcards – messages from Walter to Pete, which in three pedal-steel backed tracks of less than a minute tell a detailed fall from grace story. Vlautin’s writing (he is also a novelist) has been compared to Raymond Carver, another author who is known for his sparse prose.

Which brings me to Charles Bukowski, not just because he is another exponent, but because he is the subject of a recent record by Tom Russell. Russell is a great songwriter (Johnny Cash, Nanci Griffith, Suzy Bogguss), albeit a mediocre singer himself. He is also exceptionally well connected, and can include Bukowski amongst his correspondents. Hotwalker: Charles Bukowski & A Ballad for Gone America is more of a radio show than a music record; with songs and spoken word it combines reportage and collage to describe the USA of Kerouac & Guthrie, poets & piss artists, circuses and shenanigans in a deservedly reverential way.

My son Tom has made friends with young Sheffield band, Weekend at Bukowski’s, of whom much are expected. Whilst preferring the name they first thought of (Breakfast at Bukowski’s – so much more irony), I hope they tell great stories.

The Devil's Right Hand

2007-10-26T18:32:00.000+01:00

I almost met Steve Earle, once.

It was in the Acoustic Tent at Glastonbury in 2005 - he had wowed us Friday evening, headlining that same tent in solo mode, and earlier that day we had caught Allison Moorer's set. When she came on to duet with him, we learned that they were engaged, and she would become wife number six... or is it seven, it's not easy to recall, since he married one twice, and anyway, it mostly happened when he was inebriated, i.e. incessantly between the ages of 14 and 40.

Anyway, Sunday afternoon, the festival winding down and the mud depleting any remaining energy, I went to see Patty Griffin in the same Acoustic Tent. She was marvellous, but unusually poorly attended. It seemed like the crowd consisted of just me... and Steve and Allison. He was pretty rock n' roll, with shirtsleeves rolled up right over his biceps, and his wallet attached to his jeans with a long robust chain, enough to deter anyone from trying to pinch either. And they were standing right next to me.

As Patty finished her set, I brayed for an encore and was just about to give Steve a friendly nudge (I figured that he would agree with me that he, Allison and Patty were all pretty damn fine at this singer/songwriter stuff), when I turned to see them walking off hand-in-hand towards backstage. Missed my chance.

I just finished reading Hardcore Troubadour: The Life and Near Death of Steve Earle by Lauren St John, and that missed chance weighs more heavily.

If Steve Earle weren't a living, breathing person, he'd be a character in a blues song -- a raucous ballad about a gifted rebel who drank too much, lost most of his women in a blizzard of crack and cocaine addiction, and always came out on the wrong side of the law. Somewhere in the midst of all this, he also managed to weld rock to country, the Beatles to Springsteen, and bluegrass to punk, establishing himself among the most thoroughly original and politically astute musicians of his generation. Granted unrestricted access to Steve and his family and friends, Lauren St John has given us a sometimes shocking, often moving, and completely unvarnished biography of one of America's most talismanic sons.

You can tell that St John worked for The Sunday Times and also writes biographies of professional golfers - I'm not sure that amongst the wild and hoary epithets I have for Steve Earle's life, him being hit for six would figure. Nevertheless, she does a great job. Ironically, I now like Steve the person less, but respect his music more.

Which leads me to introduce the first of a series of Axiomatic Things I've Learned At Gigs (ATILAGs):

There is no live music set which cannot be improved by a guest appearance from Steve Earle.

viz. Sharon Shannon, Allison Moorer and The Waterboys at this summer's Cambridge Folk Festival, where a hirsute Steve made another Friday night for me.

When lost for something to talk about, bring up the weather

2007-09-01T10:04:00.000+01:00

Met Office spokesman John Hammond said Oxfordshire had endured the worst summer on record.

There was 298.8mm of rainfall by the end of July and the nearest comparable figure to that was in 1960 when 266.3mm was recorded. Oxfordshire is normally one of the drier counties and this kind of rainfall only occurs every 200 years. Most of the rain fell in July, but the west of the county was considerably harder hit than the east with precipitation in Brize Norton recorded at 27.6mm on July 19 - but 100.2mm on July 20.

Yes, all to obvious to us in the rural north of the county - flooded house, trees falling down in the garden, and the money pit that is our swimming pool sliding towards primordial soup with disinterest.

The bit which made me laugh was the coda:

Mr Hammond said the forecast for September would be drier by comparison.

It would be so tempting to append to the quote "he added, matter-of-factly, or ...insipidly, drolly, or even acerbically... anything but ...dryly."

Petition - please sign

2007-08-25T11:43:00.000+01:00

I received this e-mail from a good friend - reading it made me angry. His son has CF and has just turned 18 years old.

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to remove NHS prescription charges for adult sufferers of Cystic Fibrosis. Before being elected to power in 1997, this government made a commitment to remove prescription charges for adult sufferers of the genetic condition Cystic Fibrosis (CF). CF is an incurable genetically transmitted condition which often results in death in childhood or early adulthood and is the only illness of its type where sufferers have to pay for prescriptions for life saving day to day treatments. To date this government has yet to uphold it's pledge of over 10 years ago.

Please click here to sign the petition.

Overheard at the Cambridge Folk Festival

2007-08-01T21:45:00.000+01:00

How about a sea shanty? Actually, how about a disco sea shanty? We found it in the Oxford Book of Disco Sea Shanties.
   - Bellowhead intro

You people at the very back - did you enjoy Nanci Griffith... from a distance?
   - Opening remarks from Shooglenifty, the final act on Sunday night, following the incomparable Nanci, who did sing mostly crowd-pleasing hits

Only people who think they are cool don't like "Imagine".
   - Irate fellow punter to me, after he overheard my remarking that I was disappointed in Joan Baez' selection of closing song (IMHO, Lennon in trite, dreary mood). Joan did score the most cool points earlier, however, with a goose-pimple inducing version of Tom Waites' Day After Tomorrow.

The sumbitch wasn't plugged into the motherf@cker.
   - Steve Earle explaining temporary mandolin technical amplification hitch. Gee, these musicians do have some unique jargon, don't they?

Massive nights

2007-07-25T10:11:00.000+01:00

One of my work colleagues just asked me about The Hold Steady, who are playing a warm up gig in late August before some festival headline slots.

The Hold Steady are an absolutely fabulous live band - saw them at Glastonbury where they ripped the tent roof off, and in Portsmouth a few weeks later, where this somewhat abashed nearly-50-year-old clambered to the front and revelled at the feet of the band like the teenager still trapped somewhere within the portly folds.

This is a pretty good review of a live gig. And here is a video:

A rock band, some well-noted Springsteen elements, with a slightly punk-ier aesthetic.

I suggest you move fast, as they are likely to sell out gigs very quickly at the moment. I also suggest you move fast because there is a feeling that The Hold Steady are just on the cusp - either they are peaking and will never be this good again, or they will be massive.

We had some massive nights
We got the songs just right

A long long way

2007-04-24T19:12:00.000+01:00

Yes, it surely was. But it would be worth it.

The occasional what have you read lately? opener would be met with an un-returnable passing shot. Knowing that a brief pre-adolescent fling with a Classics Illustrated comic would no longer sum up the experience.

Last year, I determined to read, for the first time, some Charles Dickens.

Unfathomably, I chose the longest, most concrete building block-like kilo-pager, Bleak House. I started it in almost ideal conditions, a short spring break in Barcelona - sadly, a mite too short to finish it, and it got abandoned when real life kicked in again. When it came time to pick it up once more in an effort to finish it before the year was out, I realised that the 400 pages I had already read six months before had completely vanished from memory. I read them again. So I did finish it, and it was good - box ticked.

Reading Bleak House sort of overwhelmed the rest of the year, not necessarily in literary quality, but certainly in shear bulk. There were other memorable moments, book-wise, but not many.

Luckily, just coming in under the wire was A Long Long Way, by Sebastian Barry. It is the story of a young Dubliner caught up with fighting with the British Army in WWI, at the same time dealing the Easter Uprising back home. Colm Toibin:

This is Sebastian Barry's song of innocence and experience composed with poetic grace and eye, both unflinching and tender, for savage detail and moments of pure beauty. It is also an astonishing display of Barry's gift for creating a memorable character, whom he has written, indelibly, back into a history which continues to haunt us.

Magnificently descriptive and brutal about war, it is also a brilliant evocation of an innocent trying to come to terms with the complicated politics of the Irish question. The book is powerfully sad - I kept hearing the anti-war songs of Eric Bogle whilst reading it.

Best book I read in 2006, by a long, long way.

In the lottery, we got a caravan with a burly chassis

2007-04-02T09:32:00.000+01:00

Tense moments indeed, as we logged on yesterday morning at 9am to get our Glastonbury tickets, in the select company of about 250,000 other online souls. Friend Jim, legendary gig-goer and now a hero yet again, managed to get our allocation at about 10am. Cheers all round! 135,000 were sold in less than two hours, from the 400,000 who had pre-registered.

Chris immediately booked our caravan. I trust we will get our usual slot in the cardigan and slippers corner.

Now, who can give me an accurate weather forecast for Shepton Mallet in 12 weeks time? That's when Shirley Bassey will be amongst this year's acts.

Hey, get this Hey Ya

2007-03-01T21:25:00.000Z

Undeniably, Hey Ya by Outkast has been one of the singles of the last few years. But please have a look at this cover by Mat Weddle. Absolutely genre busting. The scary thing is the end - the guy is in pieces, but where is the rapturous applause?

The title is titles

2007-01-24T10:21:00.000Z

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is:
Earl Peter the Potential of Burton-le-Coggles
Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

James Brown RIP

2007-01-16T17:48:00.000Z

Mixing it up

2007-01-14T14:22:00.000Z

Thank you to Chris - in a riposte to a copy of the borborygmus 2006 CD, he sent me one in return.

It includes a couple of live recordings from this year's Cambridge Folk Festival - one being Emmylou Harris singing Boulder to Birmingham. For that alone, it's a treasure.

When I foist these CDs into the hands of oft-bemused friends, I have no high hopes that through such evangelism they will fine tune their quite varied musical tastes to my, somewhat superior, ones. But it would be gratifying if they discovered somebody new and went out and bought a record on the back of it. On that basis, I have ordered Roddy Woomble's CD from Amazon.

I still cannot get into critics' darling Joanna Newsom, whose Ys is being raved about. Harp and wailing nu-folk. Igor Stravinsky's Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end is apt.

Music: borborygmus 2006

2007-01-01T16:35:00.000Z

This is the annual (2004, 2005) borborygmus track list. As before, tracks are chosen from releases in 2006, or releases from 2005 which did not hit my radar until 2006.

1. Hummalong
The Drams from Jubilee Dive
2. Star Witness
Neko Case from Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
3. A Woman Like You
Bert Jansch from The Black Swan
4. I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor
Arctic Monkeys from Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
5. Change
KT Tunstall from KT Tunstall's Acoustic Extravaganza
6. Cruel
Calexico from Garden Ruin
7. Head Home
Midlake from The Trials Of Van Occupanther
8. I Will Not Wear The Willow
Karen Matheson from Downriver
9. Easy on Yourself
Drive-By Truckers from A Blessing and a Curse
10. Like the 309
Johnny Cash from American V - A Hundred Highways
11. Massive Night
The Hold Steady from Boys And Girls In America
12. Jersey Clowns
Josh Rouse from Subtitulo
13. Delirious Love (Wilson)
Neil Diamond (with Brian Wilson) from 12 Songs
14. January Man
Rachel Unthank & The Winterset from Cruel Sister
15. Steady As She Goes
The Raconteurs from Broken Boy Soldiers
16. Black Cadillac
Rosanne Cash from Black Cadillac
17. King and Country
Seth Lakeman from Freedom Fields
18. I Should Get Up
Teddy Thompson from Separate Ways
19. Drop Me Down
Tres Chicas from Bloom, Red & the Ordinary Girl
20. Do It Again
Nada Surf from The Weight Is a Gift

A really enjoyable year, musically. The highlight for me must be finally seeing Emmylou Harris at the Cambridge Folk Festival, although that was not the only marvellous thing about the weekend. The borborygmus tracks of the year are influenced from that experience, as well as other gigs.

The Drams (ex-Slobberbone people with a rep) were fantastic at a recent Railway gig, and rounded off a year of sweaty US crunching guitar bands at various venues (e.g. Bottle Rockets, Cracker). Neko Case's album was probably the year's favorite overall - wonderful voice, great songs and evocative production. In the first of a series of incestuous cross fertilisations in this list, members of Calexico feature on the record, amongst others. Swooned at one of her London gigs as well. Bert Jansch just keeps doing the same guitar thing in a superior way, but is fortunate to have been caught up in the general folk revival. The title track was also very good, but too long to fit on my compilation CD.

The Arctic Monkeys made a best-selling, ubiquitous record with a repulsive sleeve - but it was still a damn fine album. One of the many where I struggled to decide on the representative track, so you get the big hit. KT Tunstall made what seems like an interim record between huge chart hits, recorded in a few days in a remote Scottish sitting room - accoustic and cute. Calexico go from mariachi to pop sensibilities.

Midlake took a bit of getting into. I should have immediately loved it, as it was billed as a CS&N-style blend of Laurel Canyon influences - but I also found it a bit prog. It worked eventually. Karen Matheson is the singer with Capercaillie, seen at the Cambridge Folk Festival. Her solo record is sung almost completely in Gaelic. The Drive-By Truckers are, simply, the best rock band in America today. I think this latest record to be a tad weaker than The Dirty South, but then that was a masterpiece. Another fantastic live gig this year.

Johnny Cash - a poignant tune from his last(?) record, said to be the last song he ever wrote. The year's ultimate issue of Uncut magazine gave The Hold Steady's release five stars. I had to agree after just one listen, in spite of, or maybe because of, the heavy sprinkles of early Springsteen throughout. Josh Rouse gave us the lead-off track last year, but I was less impressed with his album this year. However, this track just popped up on my mp3 player in the last few days, and I had to reassess the whole Subtitulo.

Neil Diamond, like Johnny Cash, produced by Rick Rubin - could Rubin effect the same sort of resurgence as he did for Cash? Probably not, but I have always liked Diamond's voice and he was a magnificent songwriter. This version of the song features Beach Boy Brian as a guest. In a quite small but heaving tent in Cambridge, we saw Rachel Unthank & The Winterset give a charming set of really quite traditional northern English folk music. The Raconteurs are this year's supergroup, featuring Jack White of The White Stripes.

You can hear Johnny calling to his daughter Rosanne Cash at the beginning of this powerful song. She sings: It was a black cadillac drove you away... one of us gets to go to heaven, one of us has to stay here in hell. Seth Lakeman must be my discovery of the year - in contrast to Rachel, contemporary folk music from south west England, brimming with local historical references. His set at Cambridge featured the happiest percussionist I have ever witnessed. Also saw Teddy Thompson at the Folk Festival, who has a better voice than his father, Richard - but judging by the latter's stunning set in the same tent that same weekend, has some catching up to do in the guitar department. Still, a excellent album.

Americana from Tres Chicas, one of whom is Caitlin Cary (formerly of Whiskeytown and also in last year's list in a different guise). Finally, had to sneak in Nada Surf, which was really released last year, but I only found just recently. Do It Again. OK!

Liked but did not make the list: Love (the Beatles mash-up), Centro-Matic, Cracker, Dixie Chicks.

Not sure about: Bottle Rockets, Damien Rice, Cat Power, Howe Gelb.

Completely barmy: Joanna Newsom!

Turkey?

2006-11-26T14:59:00.000Z

We don't normally celebrate Thanksgiving here in our house in Oxfordshire, England - not through any special laziness, but it would not be simple. It is a normal working and school day here, and more importantly, so is the next one, a Friday. It coincides with a plethora of family birthdays in the preceding and following weeks, so we have already had whatever excuses we needed for get-togethers. With two kids away at University, these are a challenge. The longer and more languid Christmas break in a few short weeks beckons, when turkey is again the featured dish on Christmas Day. In effect, Thanksgiving is rather superfluous.

But Norman Rockwell's Freedom From Want, a 1943 Saturday Evening Post cover can still inspire some pangs of longing for a special kind of Americana.

This picture is one of the Four Freedoms series inspired by a January 1941 speech by Franklin Roosevelt:

In the future days which we seek to make secure, we look
forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and expression -- everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way -- everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants -- everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor -- anywhere in the world.

That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called "new order" of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.

Plus c'est la meme chose, plus ça change. Thanksgiving weekends too, hopefully. Trust you had a great one.

What was the question again?

2006-10-30T09:01:00.000Z

Question 4 from this morning's times2 QUIZ:

What anatomical sound does the word borborygmus describe?

Obscurity blurred with credibility.

The evidence is irrefutable, m'lud

2006-10-29T11:00:00.000Z

I finally got around to watching my recorded BBC FOUR coverage of the Cambridge Folk Festival last week, after BBC FOUR finally got around to showing it over two nights.

To my somewhat childish (and, I think, endearing) delight, I was clearly captured by the camera.

It was during Seth Lakeman's set.

No, not these guys, just after...

There I am!

Then I remembered that Chris had text'ed me to say that he had spotted us in Julien Temple's Glastonbury film. I had watched the DVD before, with no success, but TV stardom gave me renewed vigor, and last night I found us at about minute 8 of the film.

It was during a morning set from Tinariwen.

No, not this bloke.

Here we are! Chris in white T shirt on the left, me in hat.

Some notes are in order:
1) I am wearing the same sad shirt in both scenes (once under a sweatshirt). This is now my lucky media shirt, which I will wear at any camera-ridden music event, as long as it's summer-y.
2) Obviously, still pictures do not adequately portray the rather splendid and maniacal dancing with which I am indulging myself and my groove thang... well, in both scenes I am bobbing a bit.
3) Seth Lakeman was hugely enjoyable, and I rushed home and bought two records by him. Tinariwen were hugely enjoyable, and I wouldn't care if I never heard them again. It's a festival thing, go figure.

At last, a jolly good read

2006-10-15T13:54:00.000+01:00

After quite a few years where I could easily point to really great books for those "best of the year" lists (The Time Traveler's Wife, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Vernon God Little), 2006 has been mostly barren. I suspect that the publishing world hasn't dropped the quality ball, slippery as it may be - I just haven't picked up the right tome.

This book is not the chosen one either, just a really good thriller, such as I have not read since, oh, The Long Firm.

Bangkok 8 - take the style of Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum novels, transport from New Jesey to Bangkok, make funnier, sexier and more gritty, and toss in some Buddhism. A gripping thriller, with wry views on the Thai character, sex industry and police corruption. Not a great ending, unfortunately, but enthralling all the same.

Analog rules!

2006-09-04T13:46:00.002+01:00

borborygmus compilation released on latest media format:

Not really...

Bring back gentle slang

2006-08-31T10:09:00.000+01:00

A day or so ago, I am sure I heard on the radio that someone had made a bish of something, and it rang some extremely rusty and dusty bells. Yes, we did used to use this word when I was young, although I haven't heard it for years.

Don't quibble. You've made a frightful bish and you're about as much use as a radio-active suet pudding.

From some Jennings book or other, by Anthony Buckeridge.

The Omnificent English Dictionary In Limerick Form defines the word with:

You have ordered your favourite dish,
Lemon eels (and six snails, if you wish),
But your waiter unveils
Melon peels and six nails.
If he's British, he's just made a bish.

How much more elegant but equally satisfying than, say, cock-up?

Isn't it ironic?

2006-08-04T14:02:00.000+01:00

I heard an interview on the wireless this week (Radio 5 Live) with Allen Carr. Allen has just been diagnosed with lung cancer, which appears to be terminal in a short time.

Allen Carr is the giving up smoking guru, who has sold zillions of books. He gave up his 100-a-day habit, and has since spent his time and career helping others do the same.

He stopped me smoking.

It was in the mid-80's, before he was very famous. I was failing to give up, despite living with an asthmatic wife and a newborn baby. I made an appointment to see him at his nondescript terrace house in Raynes Park, London. The fee was not insubstantial (about 6 months worth of the bad habit, if I recall correctly).

I walked out of his living room about 2 hours later. He predicted that I would leave my smoking paraphernalia behind - I did. I have not smoked since. Not even a craving. I never even dream about it. I don't really know how he did it - some hypnosis was involved.

Obviously, it was some of the best money I have ever spent.

The irony is, despite decades of not smoking, lung cancer will finally take him. One terrible aspect to all this is that, having given up himself, he spent many hours in smoke-filled rooms helping other people give up.

On the radio, he sounded sanguine and fulfilled. I don't know if he will be seen as a great man. He was to me, for an hour or two in a sitting room in south west London twenty years ago.

Free Seth track download

2006-06-25T13:29:00.000+01:00

The run up to the Cambridge Folk Festival has included an e-mail from the organisers:

As we head towards the Cambridge Folk Festival 2006 we are pleased to welcome back Mercury Music Prize nominee Seth Lakeman, one of the artists who created a huge stir at the festival in 2005, playing to a packed out club tent on the Sunday night with tracks from his self released second album Kitty Jay. In anticipation of his two sets at the Festival this year the E-card below includes a free download of Setting Of The Sun taken from Seth's stunning new album Freedom Fields (due in July 2006).

I think you can avail yourself by going to www.sethlakeman.co.uk/settingofthesun. I did. Nice.

Think, not rant... then rant some more

2006-05-20T15:43:00.000+01:00

I'll admit to a large smirk when hearing that the reviews for The Da Vinci Code movie have not been good. The huge sales of the book, and the surrounding fuss, have just been so undeserved. I am afraid, like a Grumpy Old Man, I have been known to rant about this, offended that I am.

I suppose it would have been better if the Christian church (of which I am not a practicing member) had stood up for itself a bit better. One view has it that this current turmoil is trivial and transient - leave it a few years and it will go away. True, hopefully.

Nevertheless, it was great to receive a very interesting article from a friend (poor chap, had been on the receiving end of one of my rants), where the response is just not pompous in any way:

I think a lot of people have read the book, not just as a popular page-turner but also as an experience in shared frustration with status-quo, male-dominated, power-oriented, cover-up-prone organized Christian religion. We need to ask ourselves why the vision of Jesus hinted at in Dan Brown's book is more interesting, attractive, and intriguing to these people than the standard vision of Jesus they hear about in church. Why would so many people be disappointed to find that Brown's version of Jesus has been largely discredited as fanciful and inaccurate, leaving only the church's conventional version? Is it possible that, even though Brown's fictional version misleads in many ways, it at least serves to open up the possibility that the church's conventional version of Jesus may not do him justice?

For all the flaws of Brown's book, I think what he's doing is suggesting that the dominant religious institutions have created their own caricature of Jesus. And I think people have a sense that that's true. It's my honest feeling that anyone trying to share their faith in America today has to realize that the Religious Right has polluted the air. The name "Jesus" and the word "Christianity" are associated with something judgmental, hostile, hypocritical, angry, negative, defensive, anti-homosexual, etc. Many of our churches, even though they feel they represent the truth, actually are upholding something that's distorted and false.

I also think that the whole issue of male domination is huge and that Brown's suggestion that the real Jesus was not as misogynist or anti-woman as the Christian religion often has been is very attractive. Brown's book is about exposing hypocrisy and cover-up in organized religion, and it is exposing organized religion's grasping for power. Again, there's something in that that people resonate with in the age of pedophilia scandals, televangelists, and religious political alliances. As a follower of Jesus I resonate with their concerns as well.

You can read the entire piece from Brian McLaren here. A free registration is required.