May 2003 Archives
They're stacked up on the heater, on the table, on the player, on a chair, and the racks are full and overflowing. CDs everywhere you look, from 'House, A' to 'Zazou, Hector'.
How many? I've lost count. There are tapes too. Many. Music, music everywhere and not a note to play.
I'm afraid I'll end up one of these boring old farts who cling to their old favourites and stop listening.
Tell me your favourite songs. Turn me on to something new.
Kate Bush demos, early versions, rarities.
Now where did I go from 'straight legs gooood' to 'oh-mi-god straight legs ugly pants from HELL'? How does that happen? Are drugs involved? Do shops employ aromatherapy? In any case, am now owner of brand new pair of slighly flared jeans.
This is exactly what happened to me, but fortunately it happened a few years earlier so I could at least experience most of S5, 6 and 7 in realtime. (Via Tom)
I definitely am going to buy Maria McKee's High Dive - having heard the tunes. I didn't like her last couple of albums much, but this release on her own label, freed from record company intrusion, is a return to her old grandeur - a perfect blend of her Lone Justice cow punk roots and later diva-esque warbling. Lovely orchestrations on some of the songs -- Piaf meets Tammy Wynette. Don't like the doubling of her vocal tracks here and there, but otherwise a great and unexpected return to form. (And I fully expect her more... conservative fans to hate it with the passion of a thousand suns. Yeehaw.)
This is a treat. I've praised actor Tony Head's singing and phrasing before and I'm going to do it again. He sung three songs at Fedcon in Germany this month, just guitar and voice and some kind soul's put them up on the web in Real Audio. Check it out, go for Babies, my fav track off his solo album.
Does the pope have a CD player? Dutch news programme "interviews" Madonna (Real, broadband).
I've never liked S.P. M. But this interview makes him a mensch.
Downloaded a DVD screener of The Life of David Gale - a mediocre film with good acting performances, directed by Alan Parker. I think the last Alan Parker film I liked was Shoot The Moon (1981). Go see it if you absolutely must drool over Kevin Spacey. Otherwise, don't waste your bandwidth.
Friends J and W took me out for a belated b-day dinner here in Amsterdam, at Lieve on Herengracht. Belgian cuisine. There was a lot of fish on the menu and after last week's debacle I declined and opted for pork. For starters I had a sweetbread salad. Sweetbread has nothing to do with sweets or with bread, it's a gland found only in calves. Tastes quite fatty and sweet. I think they put some kind of five-spice type dressing on it, because it ended up tasting quite like Siu-Yeh Fan or Fo Nam. Lieve is a pleasant place - not too expensive (25 euro for a 3-course meal...) and the food's passable. I always enjoy myself there -- could be the company.
Here's an article about Kerala restaurants, focusing on the owners of Rasa Samudra, where I had my birthday dinner. I would like to go back and have some more and jot down the names of the dishes so I can cook them myself.
I'm Aspasia and Hero, at least.
I'm Judith, and Jael, and Madame de Stael;
I'm Salome, moon of the East.
Here in my soul I am Sappho;
Lady Hamilton am I, as well.
In me Recamier vies with Kitty O'Shea,
With Dido, and Eve, and poor nell.
I'm all of the glamorous ladies
At whose beckoning history shook.
But you are a man, and see only my pan,
So I stay at home with a book.
-- Dorothy Parker
Thanks to ~E for a copy of Whipping Boy's Heartworm album. She gave it to me on tape many years ago, but I couldn't find it and needed it to check out whether Interpol really sound like them. No time to offer you the 'proof' right now, but will get right to it when I get back from London.
Jarvis Cocker turns into A Sister of Mercy. (Via Hg)
There's a strange Father/Son meme running through my weekend -- as Road to Perdition focuses on that theme. Enjoyed this but it really needs to be seen on the big screen, not my crappy little TV. Top performance from Newman (idol of my teens). Hanks is an empty shell - perhaps that's what this film needed. Wouldn't mind reading the graphic novel that spawned this film. There weren't any extras on this rental -- would have liked to see a Newman interview.
Very often, one song can be enough for me to buy an album. On Dave Gahan's solo effort Paper Monsters that would be 'Black and Blue Again'. (That doesn't mean I bought it.)
(In case you hadn't seen the new version of Blogger, 'Dano' yet.)
About a boy. Perfect Sunday afternoon film. It's funny and sad and romantic and Bwitish. Lovely. Unfortunately, the ending, written by the directors, not by Nick Hornby is sickmakingly sweet. Also... the Weitz brothers? Creepy.
On the late train back from London, in New Cross, Lewisham or Hither Green, we sit talking quietly when a face appears at our window. A young lad --tracksuit, bowsie haircut -- shouts at us, grimacing. He pushes his distorted features up against the glass.
"Look at the state of you, you faaking foreign CUNT!"
He's not addressing me. He's addressing my thoroughbred European friend who could be English, or Italian. He happens to be Dutch.
It's too ridiculous to respond to. We ignore the idiot as he keeps pulling faces while the train departs and we continue our conversation until we've both digested what's just happened.
It is a violation. A blemish on the day.
This kid will one day have children who he'll teach the same lovely values pased on by his unfortunate parents. Or maybe he was just doing as his peers. Who knows.
I don't know why I think of this while I am watching Peter Gabriel's Growing Up tour at the Ahoy in Rotterdam. Maybe because I am disengaged from what is going on on stage my mind wanders.
"You've seen too many live shows," I am told when afterwards I say I thought it was "good, in places."
How can you see too many shows? You have to see many to find the ones that transcend. I know when they do and when they don't. It has little to do with the production or the quality of sound. It's the x-factor, the chemistry between the on stage and the off stage. Does the magic find its way beyond the first few rows? Most of the time, it doesn't. When it does - it's ectasy. Without the pills.
I seek more from live performance than a good night out. I want to be transported. I want other worlds to open for me. I want to be seduced. I want god.
The real action at a live show that doesn't find lift off, happens in the front rows where you pick up on the little things. Facial expressions, fuck ups, flaws and moments of joy between individuals and performer.
Where I am seated, the 40-something audience sits, claps, yawns, enjoys in measured bouts. The couple in front of me, suit and frock, suck on Magnum icecreams. I have one myself.
Gabriel speaks a lot -- disjointing the show, never letting it find its own flow. Despite an abundance of mics at his disposal the sound is low, I can barely make out his mumbling and those less fluent in the language surely don't follow at all.
It is a clever production -- a round stage with two independantly rotating circles, and a large metal, wire and cloth construction suspended overhead. Sometimes a close encounters mothership, sometimes the warp core, sometimes a bulbous head, sometimes a womb. Sometimes a cage, sometimes the moon. This imagery of birth, rebirth and passing should touch the viewer -- but on the night all I can see is metal, wire, cloth. Sometimes it is a long way from my brain to my gut.
I see and hear ideas I've seen explored before. After ZOO TV, Gabriel's The Barry Williams Show feels tired. Sonically, More Than This is a rehash of Red Rain -- and really, flooding the venue with red light for that one is just a little tacky.
Gabriel, aging -- still handsome, cycles around the stage and walks upside down suspended from the mothership. He bounces around in a large plastic bubble. For Mercy Street a boat is lifted onto the stage and he tells us to imagine it's in the water. I want to scream 'Show! Don't tell!'
Lights and trickery, props and metaphor be damned. Somewhere behind all that you find the singer's voice. A voice that cuts through flesh and bone. It is the saddest sound.
But it doesn't get to me until the very end of the show.
Signal To Noise starts it up - a perfect blend of sound and vision, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan reaches us from the otherworld. The first encore, In Your Eyes, with its endearing little dance, is a song I come back to again and again.
My spirit lifted, Gabriel returns to play Father, Son on his own.
He makes a tiny figure stuck behind his keyboards. He opens his mouth and something clicks.
Inexplicably, I burst into tears.
"Youve got her in your pocket
and theres no way out now
put it in the safe and lock it
cause its home sweet home
Ok. Ok. Ok. I will! Fuck' sake!
I just read "Joss Whedon - The Genius Behind Buffy" in about an hour alltogether. It is 1. a sycophantic hagiography 2. boring, since it tells you nothing new (if you keep up with online interviews, etc) Don't buy it.