Sun
13-May-2007

eurovision night 07

We stocked up on beers from various European countries at our fabulous local beer shop, the incomparable Kris's Wines on York Way, and settled in for a fab Eurovision night with Ben.

It went very well. We had printed out score cards from the Eurovision website, and gave the various performances marks for singing, performance, dancing and outfits. Matt favoured the Serbian operatic lesbian dirge, and as ever proved he has his finger on the pulse of the Europop beast. Ben and I preferred the pink campness of the French entry, which had a deranged bald Francophone Bez in a pink hat running around the stage every time they sang "je cours je cours" ... I think Alex voted for them too.

We also liked Slovenia, who had a load of glowing spots on her hand, and Belarus, which although shite, with a gurning plodding orange skinned singer, did have two amusing backing dancers who attached themselves to a wall like cheap silhouetted Bond girls at one point. "The poor man's Bond", as Matt called it.

We also took a dab of speed in our beer and were feeling quite frisky by the time the songs were all finished. Out we went to Profile in Soho to meet up with Gilson, over from Portugal for the weekend, and his friends. Then we headed over to Too 2 Much, a plausible prospect as one of Gilson's friends got our entire gang in for free.

Amusing aside, Gilson has grown really long Eurohair since he went to Portugal. One of his posse had greeted Gilson when he saw him in Profile with: "I'm not going to talk to you until you have a haircut." So this guy who got us all into Profile phoned up the bouncers when we were on our way there to tell them: look, we're all coming over now, I want you to let us all in, apart from the tall guy in the long black coat, you have to specifically make sure that he pays, and make it hard for him!

So he suffered for insulting Gilson's hair. Let that be a lesson to us all.

Tue
13-Mar-2007

everclear

Cycling to work in glorious warm sunshine, listening to Santa Monica. It all makes sense...

We can live beside the ocean,
Leave the fire behind,
Swim out past the breakers,
Watch the world die!

Thu
18-Jan-2007

bat out of hell III

I've been listening to Bat Out Of Hell III since I got the CD for christmas. It's marvellous epic ballad rock stuff, if not as good as the other two albums.

Half of it was written by Jim Steinman: you can tell from the song titles. In particular, "Bad For Good", "In The Land Of The Pig, The Butcher Is King", "If It Ain't Broke, Break It" and "The Future Ain't What It Used To Be" are authentic Jim Steinman titles. His songs are stuffed with the rock cliches, pounding piano lines and overused aphorisms we know and love.

If it ain't real, fake it! If it ain't yours, take it! If it don't exist, you make it! If it ain't broke, BREAK IT!

I think the best Steinman song is Seize The Night - in which a gratuitously angelic choirboy sings "Dies irae, Kyrie, Libera me, Dominae" as Meatloaf howls over the top: "Seize the night! You do what it takes to make it last!" It's just under ten minutes long - it's big, it's epic, it's the GLORY OF ORCHESTRAL CHORAL DEMONIC ROCK!!

The non-Steinman songs are not so good, I think, but with one exception. What About Love, written by Desmond Child, the album's producer, and others, is probably my favourite song on the album. Very catchy, with slow verses, fast verses, and a huge fat swelling almighty chorus!

It's just all too much! I'm running out of large adjectives...

Wed
17-Jan-2007

got to get you into my life

Check out this MP3 of Ad and Kayla's band, Foxes, doing Got To Get You Into My Life for Oxfordshire BBC Radio. It's sweet!

Thu
09-Nov-2006

the beatles

Just read a nice post by Jordan on one of his blogs on the Beatles... and it set off lots of Beatles memories of my own.

New Year's Eve in Devon and Chas and Rachel bouncing round the living room ecstatically to Twist and Shout, as we have a headbanging shake it shake it shake it baby now moment until the speaker blew and Chas had to wire up another one; driving down to the Eden Centre with Matt, Alex asleep in the back of the car, as we sang along to the cute flapper dance-band strains of Honey Pie; sitting round night after night in happy stoned rooms at uni with Abbey Road marking the intense shared climax of every evening, the moment when conversation slowly died out until everyone was air guitaring to She Came In Through The Bathroom Window; happily moshing round my room alone to Revolution in third year, in between my final exams, high on life, Red Bull, panic and lack of sleep, but with a certain clarity from the amazing acid I'd taken in Poland a few days before; the time in York Place when Jim bought up every single Beatles album and then listened to them all in order as we slouched around the house writing essays and nibbling on chocolate hash cake; Good Day Sunshine as the sun came up after a night of first year chatting in Steve's room in the Wayneflete; sitting on the back of a pickup truck wending through Nyanga with Charles, Jon, Steve and Ceri bellowing If I Fell In Love With You and other classics from A Hard Day's Night; I remember the feel of the vinyl copy of A Hard Day's Night that we had in our house in Derbyshire which I listened to religiously, it's still all the classic songs of the second half of that album that send childish shivers down my spine; and further back I remember the long car journeys to Italy for family holidays, listening again and again to one of the greatest introductions to any album ever: dum der dum der dum, it was twenty years ago today...

Fri
28-Oct-2005

hedwig and the angry inch

Matt and I bought two last minute tickets to see Hedwig and the Angry Inch at Too 2 Much in Soho. We didn't really know what to expect. I had vague notions of something like the Rocky Horror Picture Show. It definitely takes after Rocky Horror, but it's less a musical, more a cabaret show with a few singing interludes. Though all the songs are fantastic, with great tunes and excellent clever lyrics.

It begins as Hedwig, resplendant in glittering drag, enters the room and begins to tell us about his life. He used to be Hansel, a boy growing up in 1970s Germany with his cold mother and paedophile father, listening to American radio in the oven because that's the only place his mother would let him do it. In time he falls in love with a GI, Luther, who persuades Hansel to have a sex change operation so that he can marry him and go to America. The operation is botched, and he is left with a mutilated "angry inch". After Luther leaves him, he realises that his future lies in being a rock n roll drag queen, and so he becomes Hedwig.

It's an interesting premise for a musical show, and it really works. It is mostly hilarious, but in the manner of drag and cabaret, it has a raw, dark and moving side that is often hard to bear.

The central theme of Hedwig and the Angry Inch is love, and the idea of finding your 'other half', the one person who will make us whole. One of the loveliest songs in the show is called The Origin of Love. It's based on a story told in Plato's Symposium, where in the first age of humanity the gods made us four-legged with two heads and two sets of sex organs, but such was our power that the gods decided to separate us down the middle. The four-legged creatures had three sexes, either male-male, male-female, or female-female, and depending on who their other half had previously been the new two-legged creatures were heterosexual or homosexual.

The lyrics of the song say it much better than that though:

Last time I saw you we had just split in two.
You were looking at me, I was looking at you.
You had a way so familiar, but I could not recognize,
Cause you had blood on your face; I had blood in my eyes.
But I could swear by your expression that the pain down in your soul
Was the same as the one down in mine.
That's the pain cuts a straight line down through the heart;
We call it love.

Hedwig and the Angry Inch has lots of twists and turns, and doesn't seem to offer any particular judgement on sexuality and gender, save that there is little that is fixed and certain. And that there is redemption for the "misfits and the losers" in the glory of rock and roll!

It was great seeing the show in Too 2 Much - its decadent strip club ambience was the perfect setting. We were sat in the comfy sofa 'cabaret' seats which are arranged in a couple of tiers around the stage. The price of the ticket included a glass of champagne and we followed up with cocktails, which went well with the glam rock drag tragedy that unfolded before us.

my mother's hymn book

I've been listening almost obsessively to the Johnny Cash album My Mother's Hymn Book, the gospel album that you can find on the final Unearthed box set. It is the very essence of gospel, evoking in its sincerity all that is beautiful and moving about religious faith.

What is it that is so wonderful about these old songs though? It is not just that this particular album is so well produced, with Rick Rubin creating a quiet, joyful space for Johnny's voice to soar over the pared down acoustic guitar. It is something in the songs themselves. I remember how moved I was when singing hymns at school. I think it is the persistence of the poetry, the dogged affirmation of faith and hope in the face of hardship and death. The repetition is central. On My Mother's Hymn Book, there's a song 'Do Lord' where it goes round and round:

Do lord oh do lord
Do remember me
Do lord oh do lord
Oh do remember me
Do lord oh do lord
Do remember me
Way beyond the blue

I've got a home in glory land that outshines the sun
I've got a home in glory land that outshines the sun...

So many of the songs come back to death, the greatest and most important fact of life. I guess their solemn magic is in combining the meditative repetitions of transcendental awareness with the hankering for justice that millions of nameless strugglers have felt throughout history, toiling away with little hope but that "some glad morning when this life is o'er", injustice would be righted and they would have their place in the sun.

Sun
19-Sep-2004

twenty-seventh birthday

Well, I'm twenty-seven today, and it's a very pleasant sunny Sunday for it really. I'm off to the Dove in Hackney in an hour or two to drink beer all afternoon, but before then I'm sat here listening to Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of War of the Worlds, which Wesley has given me for my birthday. It's SO good! A crazy, camp, seventies, prog-rock adaptation of War of the Worlds. It's so theatrical and over the top, but takes itself very seriously, thus rendering it fabulous. The dramatic narration and songs meld together charmingly with all kinds of cool, inventive sonic effects.

It raised itself to full height, flourished the funnel high in the air, and the ghostly terrible heat ray struck the town. As it struck, all five fighting machines exulted, emitting deafening howls which roared like thunder: Ooooooolaaaah! Ooooooolaaaah! Ooooooolaaaah! Ooooooolaaaah! Ooooooolaaaah! Ooooooolaaaah! Ooooooolaaaah!

Tue
28-Oct-2003

thoroughly modern millie

Last night Matt and I went to see Thoroughly Modern Millie for Matt's birthday! I love musicals. I see so few of them. This was the first since seeing Cabaret in New York in February.

It's a broadway remake of a 1960s film, and a homage to a crazy tap dancing silly version of Art Deco New York. Great fun, though with strange 1960s Chinese elements - there's an Oriental villain called Mrs Meers who runs a lodge that's a front for a white slave trade in young women. I loved all the scenes with people running around dancing madly in 1920s outfits, and there was some very entertaining choreography in the office scenes where tap dancing typists banged away on typewriters and oranged-socked business men marched around waving bits of paper in time.

Fri
12-Sep-2003

good bye johnny cash

The windmills're turning on the west Texas plains but he's dry as an old river bed
He's just like the dust that's a searching for rain but he knows he'll be ridin' again
So he rolls up a smoke and he sips his Old Crow
Whipes the whiskers that cover his chin
He grins as he dreams of the next rodeo to be the all around cowboy again...