Haven’t gotten off the Internet yet. Can’t resist posting a few more YouTube videos. Particularly as the previous two were of Welsh and American people. This is meant to be England Day, so here’s some video examples of some very splendid English things.
And here’s New Order playing ‘Temptation’ for a live radio session in 1984. I find this clip adorable for many reasons. Let me count the ways: cute singer, great song built around simple loops and riffs, obscene shorts, bleached 80s hair, forgetting how to play one’s own guitar, getting bad tempered in public, drummer playing like a computer, the old Radio 1 logo. Likewise ‘Age Of Consent’.
One of London’s celebrations tonight is an open-air screening of Monty Python And The Holy Grail in Trafalgar Square. But I know the film so well I can pretty much run it in my head at any time.
Mr Dan Rhodes sends me a compilation CD. It’s the second time this year I’ve been sent music by an acclaimed author, following a two-cd affair by Scott Heim.
In fact, Mr Rhodes sends it to me care of The Boogaloo, which is something else that’s started to happen to me. Just as well I go in the pub fairly often.
At his book event there the other week to launch his new novel Gold, he provided his own choice of music for the bar’s CD player. There was one song I rather liked but was unfamiliar with, so he’s sent me a few tracks. I’m now pretty sure it’s My Heart’s On Fire by Richard James. Not the Aphex Twin one. The one from the now defunct Welsh indie band, Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci.
And I’ve just found out that another Richard James is the inventor of the popular Slinky toy. It’s discovering this kind of information that puts a spring into my step, ho ho.
Mr Rhodes also provides me with Blue Flower by Slapp Happy, the eccentric German band of the early 70s. And again, my mind makes little trivia connections and I think of the two rather good cover versions of this rather good song. Like buses they appeared within months of each other, in the early 90s. One by Mazzy Star and one by the Pale Saints.
Here’s the video to the Pale Saints version, spotlighting singer Meriel Barham’s striking countenance. The Pale Saints belong to that rare subsection of bands who replace their lead singer with one of the opposite sex, in the midst of their recording career. She took over from Ian Masters, who had a beautiful, girlish voice and indeed a rather feminine hairdo. So I like the symmetry of Ms B’s boyish hairdo in this video.
(checks YouTube link)
Oh, it’s not on YouTube anymore. Surely this is a common sensation of the day? In which case, someone must come up with a word to describe it. It’s a very 2007 feeling.
YOUTUBESOLATION,n. Disappointment on finding a YouTube video has been removed.
I listen to some tracks by the USA band My Favorite before watching a movie on DVD called Another Gay Movie. It’s a John Waters-esque bad taste romantic comedy, putting a gay spin on those American Pie type films. Jokes about quiche in that same capacity. Has its moments, not least Scott Thompson of The Kids In The Hall playing a gay version of the Eugene Levy embarrassed-dad role. Graham Norton also appears as a Russian teacher lusted after by one of his pupils.
During the film, I hear a song I rather like playing in the background and look it up. Turns out to be The Happiest Days Of My Life by My Favorite:
This is diary is nothing if not a record of the way my brain works. Trivia, ephemera, connections, tangents, androgyny, twists, degrees of separation, coincidences, synchronicity and symmetry. Little thought-dances.
And here’s that Richard James song, assuming I can get these links to work.
Last night – to the Boston Arms Music Room in Tufnell Park, for Lea Andrews’s birthday bash. The building is a something of a small legend for gigs: I remember seeing Amelia Fletcher, Comet Gain and other indie bands here before I even moved to London. Billy Childish and his various bands have played his particular brand of raw garage rock here for years, and it also saw a packed early gig by the White Stripes in the height of their Next Big Thing period, due to their association with Mr Childish.
These days The White Stripes are one of those bands whose works can be found on karaoke machines. Which is as good a measure of success as any. For Ms Lea’s birthday, she’s booked a curious melding of karaoke and a party band: Live Punk Rock Karaoke. Like the usual kind of karaoke, a screen provides the lyrics to sing along to. But instead of the backing music tinkling away on a backing track, it’s provided by a live band: a guitarist, bassist and drummer. The drummer wears headphones to keep him in sync with the lyrics screen, and the band plays along.
Their repertoire favours punk classics of the late 70s, but also a few recent rock hits of note. Such as Seven Nation Army by the White Stripes, whose riff is arguably as timeless as Smoke On The Water or My Sharona. I think the actual stage in the Boston Arms has been moved from one part of the room to the other since The White Stripes played here, but I like the historical link.
I drink too much, talk a lot of nonsense, dance about to the DJ sets, and discuss autobiographical graphic novels with Jenni Scott, as she was doing on Radio 3 lately. I also say hi to Ms Anna S, Ms Charley S, Mr Phil of Club V, Ms G the professional wrestler who was once in Stereolab and who has taken me to a Cage Rage event, plus Ms Other G who was once in My Bloody Valentine, who hasn’t. Plus Mr Ed of the Soul Mole club, who is slightly surprised I’m here and asks how I know the birthday girl, Lea Andrews.
It’s a perfectly good question. In fact, Ms Lea said to me a few months ago that she’d just realised I was one of the London people she’s known the longest. I can’t quite remember the first meeting, but it would have been around the Leyton Queercore scenesters with whom I had associations circa 1993. Bands such as Sister George and The Children’s Hour and Kidnapper, from whom Lea’s own band, Spy 51, is directly descended.
En route, I pop in for a drink at The Boogaloo, and chat with the Dean Sisters, Ms Rachel and Ms Emily. I mention I’m reading Neil Gaiman, and Ms Emily tells me she knows him personally, via her friend Ms Jane who adapted his book Stardust for the big screen. Shane MacGowan is there too, wearing a rather nice suit. I say hello to Miss Red, who assures me now that in the interests of my blood pressure she WON’T be booking The Anne Frank Peep Show for the next B&D, although it’s apparently a genuine act doing the cabaret rounds. Instead, she’s hoping to get a male voice harmony group or something equally unusual but universally inoffensive.
The band Billy Ruffian email me. They request permission to include Fosca’s “It’s Going To End In Tears” on their downloadable mixtape of influences. I say yes.
Am rather excited about procuring a copy of the RSC Shakespeare. It’s a major new edition of Mr S’s complete works, updated to include all the latest research and arguments over which lines should read what, and so on. But it’s also designed to be reader-friendly rather than academic and part of the furniture. Seems pretty much the perfect all-purpose Complete Shakespeare, and there’s a quote from Judi Dench on the cover to that effect. One of the book’s editors is Ms Lucy Munro, who’s been on tour with Fosca. Though I don’t think she mentions that in her notes.
I watch a clip on YouTube of John Lennon performing Instant Karma. It’s in a TV studio, presumably circa 1970, in the Top Of The Pops style. John sings and plays piano, and Yoko is knitting onstage, while wearing a blindfold. They both look fantastic: matching black polo neck jumpers with neat blue jeans, and matching cropped hair. Which in 1970 is quite unusual – everyone else in the TV studio has the more fashionable long hair of the day. For all my protestations against mass jeans-wearing, I do approve of deliberate jeans ensembles like this one. I once knew a couple in Bristol who always dressed like that: it was black polo necks and blue jeans wherever they went. And it suited them. I used to imagine them having long discussions about jazz.
I really must write about that Cage Rage event sometime.
From the Dickon Edwards revision of The Devil’s Dictionary:
MIXED FEELINGS, n. An alibi offered by an abject coward and fence-sitter.
More thoughts on last Thursday night’s Beautiful & Damned.
Even though I didn’t book the live act in question (as some Smart Alex put it, “Dickon was only obeying orders…”), and my mixed feelings on heckling aside, notwithstanding my stance on confrontations outside of wrestling matches, I do feel bad for anyone who had a less than nice time. If the club wasn’t free entry, I’d offer them their money back. And assuming My Friend The Heckler ever speaks to me again, I will buy him a drink.
For all my perceived haughtiness and disdain at current modes of fashion, I do want everyone to be be happy, one way or the other. Without anyone getting hurt or upset. Unless that’s what they’re into. My doctor is still convinced I’m a classic S&M case in denial. Heigh ho, anything for an interesting life.
At the end of the evening Miss Red told me, “You should see what I’ve got for next month. It’s called The Anne Frank Peep Show.” She was joking. I hope she was joking. There’s only one way to find out. For the March B&D, she booked a wonderful act called Kitty La Roar, a more traditional but perfectly stylish and entertaining cabaret singer. I should really plug her website:
I’d quite like to book a few acts myself, as I know all kinds of glamourous performers from various London scenes. None of them impersonate known figures of genocide in an allegedly entertaining fashion, but I still think I’d feel personally accountable if they went down badly. I realise that anyone who agrees to performing in a bar must also know how to handle a crowd. And they are adults, after all. But I’m not sure if I could take the stress by proxy.
Mum muses that this sort of anxiety runs in the family. My Uncle Mike wrote on his call-up papers for National Service that his religion was ‘devout coward’. She emails to remind me of The Cowslip Incident:
I think you were witness to my only ever face-to-face confrontation with anyone publicly, when I leapt out of the car to harangue that man picking cowslips from the bank between here (Bildeston, Suffolk) and Hadleigh. I know there were plenty, but they are protected so we can all swoon at their numbers on a passing bank, not screech to a halt to grab a few personal trophies…
I remember that well. Again, a stomach-tightening experience. Mum stopped the car on a country road, got out and heckled a man for picking rare flowers. I sat in the car and stared at my shoes. If the man had responded violently to my mother, what would I have done? Wars have started for less. But my mother is an experienced teacher of both children and adults, and I rather think that helps.
I now have a picture in my mind of Prince Harry, dressed as Hitler, picking cowslips from a roadside, while Bryan Ferry looks on and applauds. And running to accost him, the audience from that Python sketch about the cannibal undertaker.
It’s about time I posted some photos. Here’s one from Young Miss Seaneen, who writes a blog about her bipolar disorder. It’s been nominated for awards, and can be found here:
Thursday night’s Beautiful & Damned is certainly interesting. Miss Red and Mr O’Boyle have booked some live acts, which means that my contributions are limited to a couple of short DJ sets and the provision of the silent movie, The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari. Which has the most wonderfully designed caption cards I’ve ever seen. Not the usual white text against a black blackground, but shaded greys and boxes and chunky fonts at slanted angles, almost like the speech balloons in those Roy Lichtenstein paintings.
First up is a cheery band from California called The Procession, who are bouncy and listenable in that Donovan, Ben Folds-y way. We also have the gentlemen known only as The Rabbi, a fellow Boogaloo character and chum of Mr Doherty. Plus we get a song from Shane MacGowan himself, who sings something unkind about the English.
And there’s another act called Frank Sanazi, an actor friend of Miss Red’s. His act entails dressing as Hitler and singing Sinatra numbers with excruciating puns on the names associated with the great unkind of history. Osama Bing Crosby. That’s Reich! That sort of thing. “Have you seen me before?” he asks the audience. “No!” “That’s just how it starts…”
I’m reminded of “Heil Honey, I’m Home”, the notorious sitcom which never made it beyond its first episode. Much like that doomed TV series, some people find this act entertaining whether at face value or because of the coupling of bad taste with bad puns. But some find it not just unfunny but offensive and upsetting. As he continues, persons from the latter camp make their position abundantly clear by first vociferously heckling him, then actually taking to the stage and wrestling the mic from his hands. I squirm uncomfortably in the corner. Then I squirm even more when I realise that one of the hecklers is a friend of mine. Then Miss Red goes over and remonstrates with the act’s ill-wishers, and my squirming is taken to record levels. I understand the differences of opinion, but given my position as both a co-host of the evening and as someone who doesn’t like to see one’s friends in a heated dispute, I know I should take firm, decisive action and intervene in the only way I know how.
So I stare silently at my shoes until the moment passes.
And then I play Bryan Ferry’s ‘These Foolish Things’, which at least is a response you can dance to. Mr Ferry has recently been in the news, accused of saying nice things about The Nazis in some interview or other. He’s had to do the inevitable embarrassing apologies, setting the record straight and so forth. It’s all so unnecessary, but some people do like to spend passion and energy finding things to get upset about. Sometimes it’s warranted and worthy, but sometimes it’s self-righteous; the accuser is getting a buzz just from being an accuser. And an accuser often has the air of immunity by being on the better end of the finger. Their rule is: let he who casts the first stone be without sin. It’s all aggression of a kind, and I’m ultimately against aggression. In a very passive way.
On the subject of heckling, I’m not sure if it’s best to deal with an atmosphere of tension, ie finding an entertainer excruciatingly un-entertaining, by eclipsing it with an atmosphere of more tension, ie heckling. I never wake up and think “You know what the world needs? More tension!” Though that’s clearly how many people DO wake up, otherwise there’d be nothing to read about in the newspapers.
Some people – including performers who relish dealing with a heckler – think tension makes them feel alive, makes life worth living. To which I say, fine, but go and see it in its proper place, like at a wrestling match. I like music, but I don’t think it should be broadcast everywhere you go, or loudly through walls. Everything in its place. Consideration. Moderation.
I’ve never heckled in my life, though God knows I’ve sat through enough bands and acts I wished would just leave the planet. I either go to the toilet, or I leave, or I grit my teeth and sit it out. Like backpacks, there’s just no style to heckling. It’s not just a vocal, instant, critique; it has an aggressively solipsistic side, coupled with the danger of being lost in translation. It forces everyone in the room to pay attention to someone they can’t necessarily see, who has decided to be part of the show. It colours the event with a third party view rather than forging your own. It’s a reaction that demands a reaction. On some occasions, an ugly pack mentality. And alcohol and peer pressure are nearly always included in the equation. I’ve seen hecklers who were clearly just performing for their friends around them.
In the dark of a venue, a halo can resemble a burning pitchfork.
And it’s just all so aggressive.
Yet on the other hand, I may not ever feel the buzz from being a heckler, but I can’t deny the buzz of being around uneasy situations of conflict. Anything for an interesting life. Heckling is still a show.
I’m just trying to think if there’s ever been such a thing as a beautiful heckle, a stylish heckle, a gentle, kind heckle. Or just a really brilliant one that merits applause in any context. One that springs to mind is from a routine by David Baddiel:
Heckle: “Everybody hates you. You must know from school.”
Anyway, this is actually only one small element of the Beautiful & Damned evening. Like heckling itself, it’s pulled the focus of this diary entry, but isn’t representative of the whole event. A couple of women come up me later to say how much they enjoyed the club’s music.
A bright and warm day in Highgate, just as there’s been for the last few days. Low-cut tops on women, shorts and short sleeves on men. Not me. I take my jacket off from time to time, but that’s about it. I can’t remember the last time my legs saw sunlight. It’s been so long that the shock might kill them. Or kill someone passing by – pale doesn’t come close.
Pink blossom from the tree next door drifts past the window in little bursts; noiseless, hypnotic. Twice it’s snowed this year in London, and twice I was out of town: Suffolk and Tangier. But I’ll settle for little rains of pink blossom.
Discussing with Rowan Pelling what I’m doing for the Cambridge WordFest event on the 28th. Although it’s a book festival, she’s trying to bump up the entertainment side of things. So instead of reading my bit from the Decadent Handbook about holidaying with Mr MacG, I might now do Quentin Crisp’s Greatest Hits, which I did at the Bistrotheque last year. It’s essentially Dickon does Steven Wright does Quentin: one-liners in a row, quote after quote. I take care to make it a specially-assembled and personal selection of QC’s wit and wisdom, to stop it becoming an indulgence. I once saw a cabaret act at the Edinburgh Fringe where a man recited the Woody Allen stand-up routine about the moose. That was his entire act. I suppose it was a kind of cover version.
Or I could write and perform a kind of Dickon’s Rules For Living monologue based on this diary. Or I could do an acoustic set of Fosca songs, the wordier ones. Which are more like strings of tragicomic quips and musings posing as songs. We shall see. But whatever I do, I shall work at it. So it works.
I once saw Billy Childish perform a solo set at the ICA, reciting poems, stories and singing a cappella. The crowd in the bar downstairs was so loud that he gave up on the spoken word and resorted to the songs. Songs cut through chatter. Particularly if you scream them, as he did.
There’s the chance the people who run the Latitude Festival might book me for something or other, which I’m really hoping will happen. Partly because I’m from Suffolk, partly because I can stay with my parents in their cottage by the Southwold lighthouse. But mostly because it’s such a magical little festival. Last year I wandered around there as a punter, and people came up to me to ask me when I was on. They didn’t know about me, they just thought I looked like a performer. So I really should be more of a performer. I love making up stories, fictional conversations and general musings; it’s just a case of working out if they work best in a song, or in text to read out.
A message:
I’m looking forward to reading the short story you just wrote. Will it only be available as part of the CD, or will it be published somewhere else?
It’ll just be on the CD by This Year’s Model for the time being. I plan to include it within a book of stories, lyrics and essays at some point between now and the grave, but that won’t be for some time. When the CD is available to buy, I’ll put the details here.
Last night: watch ‘New York Doll’, the documentary about Arthur Kane of the New York Dolls. Beautifully made, and features contributions from Morrissey and the great Nina Antonia. The reunion scenes are much like the underrated Bill Nighy film Still Crazy. Mr Kane is revealed to be a gentle Mormon librarian in a shirt and tie, who just happened to be a seminal rock star, if a financially unsuccessful one. Content with his religion, though still harbouring deep resentment at never having made it all those years ago, while watching countless bands – those who are clearly influenced by the Dolls – do so much better.
I look at posters of young bands on London billboards and my abiding thought is, how long will they last? Which jobs will the band members do when the inevitable split happens? And will these jobs be really them, or just an excuse, a nervously smiling alibi till the grave? The tragedy is built-in. Here are some young men. This is now, and this will be gone.
Then again, it only applies to those to whom it applies. If you’d told me in 1990 that The Charlatans would still be happily recording and touring in 2007, while The Stone Roses, Ride and Happy Mondays would be long departed, I’d never have believed it. I wonder who the equivalent of The Charlatans will be in 2024?
More emails suggesting ways of watching Region 1 DVDs on my iBook, this time recommending programs which copy the DVD to one’s hard drive and render it multi-region. I can’t burn my own DVDs, as it’s only a CDRW / DVD-reading drive. But the idea is I can watch it in situ, then wipe the space later. So I rip the disc, and spend over an hour fiddling with VLC trying to get the resulting files to play, but with no joy. Never mind. Thanks to the readers who mailed me about it, though.
To the ICA to see Prick Up Your Ears and drink strawberry beer with Ms Shanthi. She’s currently the sub-editor at Arena, one of those men’s magazines with thick spines. To my delight, the ICA cinema has improved since I was last here, for a terribly muffled and scratchy print of Metropolitan. This screening is a brand new print, because it’s the 20th anniversary of the film. There’s been little fanfare for this re-release of an 80s classic. Shame, as it’s certainly better than any new movie currently playing. The poster says, “From the director of The Queen and the writer of The History Boys.”
Prick Up Your Ears was itself made 20 years after the events it depicts: Orton and Halliwell’s last months in 1967. Apart from the occasional distracting blast of very 80s-sounding incidental music, it’s still as funny and as sad as ever. And I’m still noticing new things about it.
The young Orton utters one of Alan Bennett’s favourite phrases for his characters when thinking about all the books they’ve never read: “I’ll never catch up”. In fact, he says it twice.
A new favourite quote from the film, when Paul McCartney gets in touch to discuss the Beatles script Orton’s writing:
Orton: Was that Paul McCartney on the phone?
Halliwell: No, it was someone cultured. His chauffeur, I think.
We don’t get to see the young McCartney, but if we did, there’d be a scene where he’d play Orton the songs from Sgt Pepper, then in the recording stage.
Coming out of the cinema, we collide with the other event at the ICA. It’s some sort of O2-sponsored NME-compatible band night. Lots of photographers, security, people with those tell-tale laminated passes around their necks. For one night, the ICA has become Backstage At The Reading Festival. Loud, drunk young men everywhere. All of whom look like clones of Pete Doherty, or Russell Brand, or Alex Zane, or Mr Arctic Monkey, or Donny Tourettes.
Young men in 2007 London can dress any way they like. Yet they insist on picking one look from the above five; whether it suits them or not. It’s like those CGI crowd effects in films, where they take a small number of extras on the screen, and digitally repeat them to make a huge crowd. Their female counterparts are not only better dressed (which was always the case), but more individually dressed. You can look fashionable without being a clone. It just helps if you’re a girl. Boys can look good, but they have to look compatibly good.
Many young men here either haven’t shaved properly, or have yet to start shaving. While I’m at the urinal in the packed Gents, a gaggle of them make cackling comments about my appearance, saying I’m going off to King’s Cross to pick up rent boys, or some such. Though this crowd of rockist striplings aren’t at all typical of the venue, I feel it’s something of a wry achievement to solicit the usual idiot jeers in the supposedly broad-minded and arty ICA, especially after seeing Prick Up Your Ears there. It reminds me of the time I had the ‘watch your backs, boys’ comments in a gay bar near Charing Cross station, by unwitting businessmen having a drink before their train.
Amongst this young NME-friendly crowd, I feel terribly old, and terribly intimidated. But I also feel relieved that I’m not in that world anymore, that I have zero desire to attend any rock festivals as a spectator, Latitude excepted. However, I’m happy for these young men if they’re happy, what with their Maximo Party Chiefs or whoever it is.
In your twenties, you don’t really notice or care if you actually like the music you’re meant to like. It’s more important to be one of the crowd, or play to the crowd, or least know about what the crowd is talking about.
In your thirties, the crowd is the last thing you want to be involved with, particularly when they’re 10, or even 20 years younger than you. There is danger in numbers.
I don’t know where my place is. But I do know where it’s not.
Terribly tired last night, and retired early. Which means today I’m up with the dawn, swishing opening the curtains to Mr Gershwin’s An American In Paris on Radio 3. It’s good curtain opening music.
I really love waking up to Radio 3’s news bulletins. Just the basic headlines and details, spoken soberly and evenly. Just enough to keep you in touch. If you need to know more, you tune elsewhere. Otherwise, back to the music. You go from reminders of the worse deeds of humanity, man killing man (more often than not), followed by the better deeds of humanity, such as Mr Tchaikovsky’s Waltz of the Flowers.
It’s also a good way of feeling better about getting out of bed full stop. People have died; you haven’t, yet. So be thankful, get up and use your life. And if it’s not what you want to do with your day, or indeed with your life, change it. Write a symphony like Tchaikovsky, or do whatever you have to do in a beautiful way. Be the Tchaikovsky of data entry. Help others; all help is beauty. Try not to hurt anyone.
One more note about my short visit to Dublin. In Ireland, Magners Irish cider is called Bulmers, and always was. They can’t be Bulmers elsewhere because their rivals in the UK (who make Strongbow) are also called Bulmers and own the name, at least for cider. It sounds like a huge coincidence, but on further investigation (ie Wikipedia) it transpires that both companies were once associated. People moved companies, tradenames changed hands, the usual petty things. But on going to a Dublin bar, I found it amusing that a famous Irish cider is called the same all over the world, except in Ireland itself.
Ian Watson sends me a list of some more angel songs:
“The Black Angel’s Death Song” by the Velvet Underground
“Angels With Dirty Faces” by Sham 69
“Gabriel’s Wings” by the Family Cat
“Sledgehammer” by Peter Gabriel
“A Sinner Kissed An Angel” by Frank Sinatra
Something from the “Wings Of Desire” soundtrack
I mention this because I remember “Gabriel’s Wings” very well. One of those songs which could have been a massive hit had it not been recorded by a ragged low-budget indie band. Likewise “Gabriel” by St. Christopher. The indie scene has always been full of better songs than many of those in the mainstream chart, from the 80s till now. But of course, a good song is never the whole package. The Family Cat never had the legs of Girls Aloud. In every sense.
If I were one of those shadowy men behind the pop acts, I’d buy up the better indie songs and give them to the boy bands and girl groups with shinier hair but duller songs. It has happened on occasion. The Sundays’ “Here’s Where The Story Ends” was covered by a jolly dance pop outfit, and became a hit. And Cher had a hit with some lesser-known indie song which escapes me.
Tonight, in lieu of seeing anything at the cinema which we can agree on, I’m seeing Prick Up Your Ears at the ICA with my friend Ms Shanthi.
Thoughts on the movie Sunshine. Looks great for its UK Lottery money, Cillian Murphy is great, and I like the fat gold spacesuits especially. Only drawback is that the plot is too full of sci-fi cliches for my liking. I’ve been told that they’re not cliches, they’re influences, references and deliberate homages to other films. But that just makes me want to watch the other films instead: Dark Star, Silent Running, Alien, Cube, 2001. Even the more recent Event Horizon and Sphere seem more original than Sunshine, at least in the plot.
I think in these pop culture-saturated days, there has to come a point where you must be careful not to pay homage and make references so much that it’s at the expense of your own work. Don’t go to pains to join in when you could blaze your own trail. This applies to bands, too. If you like someone else’s work so much, go and start a website.
Which is in itself a reference to a Joss Whedon-directed episode of Angel. The ballet one. Sorry.
Thanks to the emailers who sent me some tips for viewing Region 1 DVDs on my iBook. Sadly, none of them work, as I’ve got the very last revision of the 12″ iBook G4. This comes with an unfortunately named ‘combo drive’, the Matshita CD-RW CW-8124. I’ve had a look at a few forums online, and this one has yet to be successfully ‘hacked’ with ‘firmware’ (I’m making lots of inverted-comma finger gestures here) for region-free playing. And no, the VLC program doesn’t play Region 1 discs either. No, it really doesn’t. Not for me. Honest. But thanks all the same.
The main advice for this model is, I understand, to replace the entire CD drive. Which would cost over £200, as I’d have to pay for a professional to rip the thing apart and install the drive. Seeing as you can buy a region-free stand-alone DVD player for under £20 these days, changing the drive seems an unnecessarily pricy measure to take.
Enough computer talk. Yesterday, while London sweltered, I sat indoors and finished that little story for the band This Year’s Model, “Rhoda’s Pocket Doomsday”. I tried to do something a little Saki-meets-Borges, in the old songwriting method of aiming for different influences at once and failing, but finding your own voice somewhere along the way. I need to do more.
Popped over to Claudia Andrei’s for tea and Doctor Who. The episode, “Gridlock”, was very 2000AD, very Fifth Element, very Brazil. It looked wonderful, and David Tennant is unquestionably the most energetic and physically fit of The Doctors. Hard to imagine any of the other ones jumping so nimbly between row after row of hover-cars. He also has such a watchable face: all mad eyes and Mr Punch-ish pointy nose and chin, but handsome with it rather than goofy. Perfect for the role, and with Billie Piper gone, he takes hold of the programme’s core continuity.
An email:
Glad you have met Andrew Martin–the Stringer books are fantastic, esp. The Lost Luggage Porter (the new one) despite Faber’s attempt to flog them to the nostalgia circuit with like, old people and that on the covers. Comics: Have you read Chris Ware? The *utter, utter cruelty* of children….
Oh yes, I’ve read Jimmy Corrigan, and found it astounding stuff. It’s sad that even Guardian award-winning graphic novels are still regarded by mainstream readers as something lower than even the trashiest, most formulaic prose fiction. Whenever there’s any piece in the media about comics or even one particular comic, there’s this sense the article has to get defensive. “It’s a comic book, BUT – “.
This prejudice works two-ways. When you’re talking to the converted and the cognoscenti, it seems you have to know everything about the medium itself. Enjoying graphic novels feels you have to belong to a private club, with all the pros and cons that suggests. Graphic novels aren’t a genre, but they’re filed and treated as one. It seems odd to like some comics.
I also note that Richard & Judy’s TV Book Club – the most powerful UK influence on selling books of recent years – still hasn’t featured any graphic novels. They do the cookbooks and the celeb biogs and the chick-lit and the popular fiction that the broadsheets avoid. But not graphic novels. Which I think is a terrible shame.
I was in Waterstones Bond Street recently, and they have a section for visiting authors to recommend their favourite new books. Zadie Smith, of all people, plugged two graphic novels: Epileptic by David B and But I Like It by Joe Sacco. Ms Smith’s little card attached to the books said “Graphic novels take so much time and care to make. The least we can do is read them.”
This Thursday 19th is Beautiful & Damned night once again. Miss Red and I haven’t yet grown bored of it, and she’s now booking live cabaret acts in addition to my selection of silent movies. We also have a MySpace page here:
Currently reading: Nada by Carmen Laforet. 2007 edition, trans by Edith Grossman. London Library copy.
Currently writing: a short story for the Swedish group This Year’s Model. It’s for their CD booklet, and the other contributors are Vic Godard (Subway Sect) and Jessica Griffin (Would-Be-Goods). My story is called “Rhoda’s Pocket Doomsday.”
Currently listening: Radio 3 or Radio 4, some BBC news and arts podcasts, plus “The Arts And How They Was Done” by the National Theatre Of Brent, on Radio 4. The funniest thing on the radio.
Currently watching: Doctor Who, Peep Show, a new documentary on The Carpenters and an old documentary on the Chelsea Hotel (Arena, 1981, it’s quite famous in itself). All via downloaded torrents.
These days, I only really use my real TV and DVD player for playing Region 1 DVDs, as that’s one of the few things the iBook can’t do. There’s no ‘region hack’ for the iBook either. I do hate that ruling about regions. Either put out a DVD which you can play anywhere (as opposed to buy anywhere) or don’t, I say. Or make all equipment multi-region, or don’t. When I buy an imported American edition of a book (eg because there’s no UK edition), it doesn’t ‘not open’ in the UK. Though if there was a way to make that happen, I’m sure publishers and lawmakers would implement it at once.
I feel the same way about CDs and digital formats that only work in certain machines, even though you’ve paid for an official copy entirely legitimately, with the proper slice of your money going to the creators.
Oh, and I feel the same way about unskippable copyright announcements at the start of DVDs themselves. And unskippable adverts for other movies that go on forever. I’ve paid my money, I own the product, so stop ordering me about, thank you very much. Put the warnings and trailers on the disc, sure, but don’t make them unavoidable.
It’s all about ‘rights’. By which they mean, the rights of the manufacturer eclipsing the rights of the consumer who’s actually bought their product.
I should stop ranting.
I forgot to mention: I met JP Donleavy of “The Ginger Man” fame at Victoria Mary Clarke’s book launch. He’s another author with a beautiful speaking voice, and spoke elegantly and articulately at the event about his admiration for Ms VMC. A lovely man.
I should also mention I’m doing my own reading-aloud debut outside of London very soon. It’s at a festival called Cambridge Wordfest, or “cambridgewordfest” as they advertise it. There’s Michael Rosen, Jeanette Winterson, Billy Bragg and something with me called The Decadent Cabaret. Here’s the details.
Saturday 28th April, 10.15pm. Cambridge ADC Theatre.
cambridgewordfest presents
The Decadent Cabaret
£8/£6
A scandalous entertainment of readings, burlesque and music, performed by contributors to The Decadent Handbook, which is edited by Rowan Pelling. Exclusive to cambridgewordfest the event includes a performance by Miss Sugar Kane, a top burlesque striptease artiste, music from ska-punk duo Salt Peter and Norman Brock’s band Doghammer. There will be readings by assorted libertines and jezebels including Michael Bywater, Salena Godden, Dickon Edwards and Medlar Lucan and Durian Gray (internationally debauched authors of the Decadent Gardener and Decadent Cookbook). Not for the faint-hearted.
Michael Rosen is on at 10 in the morning there, doing an event called “Wake Up With Poetry”. I have fond memories of him captivating young audiences at The Puffin Shows in the early 80s and am toying with the idea of catching an early train to see him, and to make a day of it in Cambridge.
