there does exist, however, a brief audio clip from a 1982 rehearsal<\/a>).<\/p>\n1. Broadcast \u2013 Before We Begin
\n2. Camera Obscura \u2013 The Sweetest Thing
\n3. Dressy Bessy \u2013 Just Like Henry
\n4. The Cookies \u2013 I Want A Boy For My Birthday
\n5. The Chiffons \u2013 He’s So Fine
\n6. The Honeys \u2013 He’s A Doll
\n7. The Ronettes \u2013 Baby I Love You
\n8. Velocette \u2013 Get Yourself Together
\n9. The Aislers Set \u2013 Hit The Snow
\n10. Frankie Valli \u2013 You’re Ready Now
\n11. The Angels \u2013 My Boyfriend’s Back
\n12. Spearmint \u2013 Sweeping The Nation
\n13. Belle and Sebastian \u2013 Women’s Realm
\n14. Morrissey \u2013 Sister I’m a Poet
\n15. The Chills \u2013 Heavenly Pop Hit
\n16. Carole King \u2013 I Feel The Earth Move
\n17. Shirley Bassey \u2013 Spinning Wheel
\n18. Dexy’s Midnight Runners \u2013 Plan B
\n19. The Supremes \u2013 Come See About Me
\n20. Aztec Camera \u2013 Oblivious
\n21. Stereolab \u2013 French Disko
\n22. Camera Obscura \u2013 French Navy
\n23. The Smiths \u2013 Ask
\n24. The Shangri-La’s \u2013 Give Him A Great Big Kiss
\n25. Nancy Sinatra \u2013 These Boots Are Made For Walking
\n26. Chairmen of the Board \u2013 Give Me Just A Little More Time
\n27. Gloria Jones \u2013 Tainted Love
\n28. Labelle \u2013 Lady Marmalade
\n29. Modern Lovers \u2013 Roadrunner
\n30. The Who \u2013 Substitute
\n31. Blondie \u2013 Dreaming
\n32. Sister Sledge \u2013 Thinking of You<\/p>\n
When Ian plays ‘Turn, Turn, Turn’ by The Byrds, I mishear one line as ‘There is a time for everything \/ And a time for breakfast.’<\/p>\n
I’m reminded of another gem of a misheard lyric, related to me recently. It’s the opening line of Elvis Presley’s ‘Suspicious Minds’: ‘We’re courting a tramp.’<\/p>\n
Ian W plays a new artist he’s keen on, Withered Hand. Sweet and pretty music, if a rather unattractive name. Still, once the music becomes known, a band name becomes meaningless.<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
Tuesday 25th March 2014<\/i>. To the Hackney Picturehouse to see The Grand Budapest Hotel, <\/i>the new film by Wes Anderson. Like Moonrise Kingdom<\/i> and his other work it exists in its own strange and idealised bubble world, where everything is a treat for the eyes and people act in a quirky and unrealistic way.<\/p>\n
It’s often the case that a comedy wants to be the audience’s friend. Just as stand-up comedy tries to connect with everyday observations, comedy films usually say ‘here are people just like you in funny situations’. There is none of that in Wes Anderson films, where the people are very much not like the audience \u2013 or indeed like any real person. \u00c2\u00a0In Moonrise Kingdom, <\/i>though, he managed to cut through this barrier by turning up the artifice to the point it became a kind of magical campness<\/i>, while offsetting this with the poignancy of the two child actors.<\/p>\n
Children cannot do camp. They’re still learning how to operate on a nominal level, let alone a knowing one. We are all born without irony, and only acquire it on the day we get the big cosmic joke \u2013 that the world isn’t made for us after all. Some of us bravely carry on as if we haven’t<\/i> realised this joke, but I digress.<\/p>\n
In The Grand Budapest Hotel<\/i>, what makes the audience care is a combination of two things: Ralph Fiennes’s energetic and charismatic main character, and the device of nesting his tale within three outer frame stories. Like Shahrazad in the Arabian Nights<\/i>, the tension of having to hold a frame story in one’s head increases the connection: we keep watching to see not just how Mr Fiennes’s story ends, but how the stories of Jude Law, Tom Wilkinson and the girl in the graveyard end too.<\/p>\n
But what really intrigues me about the film is the way the Fiennes character is camp himself, in the aloof and sexually ambiguous sense. His discussion of a priceless stolen painting, ‘Boy With Apple’, is rather more Ronald Firbank than Allo Allo<\/i>. The villainous Adrian Brody character, meanwhile, sees the flamboyant and perfume-obsessed Fiennes as something of a threat to masculinity de facto<\/i> (see also David Tennant in the early 2000s BBC TV series Casanova<\/i>).<\/p>\n
If someone were to revise Susan Sontag’s ‘Notes on Camp’ essay today (and by ‘someone’ I obviously mean ‘me’), they’d definitely have to include The Grand Budapest Hotel<\/i>. And given the film is by no means a niche taste \u2013 it’s number one in the charts – perhaps Wes Anderson has become the mainstream saviour of old-fashioned camp.<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
Thursday 27th March 2014. <\/i>I get the mark back for the class presentation. It’s a 71 \u2013 a low First. This seems something of a dip compared to my recent trio of 80-plus marks, but as it’s my first graded presentation and not an essay, I can’t complain. According to the tutor’s comments, my shortcoming was to skim over too many different points within a limited slot.<\/p>\n
I still find the art of conciseness and selectivity difficult \u2013 which may be something to do with my dyspraxia. I either find it hard to start writing, or hard to stop. Writing for me is a long, slow bleeding process onto the page, followed by the equally long and slow trimming and moving about of what’s there. The second process is more enjoyable, but it still takes me ages.<\/p>\n
Three more essays to do between now and May.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Saturday 22nd March 2014. To the Phoenix in Cavendish Square for the 60s soul & indiepop club night How Does It Feel To Be Loved. It’s been going for nearly twelve years now, and I’ve been a guest DJ there once a year for quite a few of those years. It’s flattering that Ian W […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[593,669,368,670,668],"class_list":["post-3484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-camp","tag-college-marks","tag-hdif","tag-the-grand-budapest-hotel","tag-wes-anderson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3484"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3495,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3484\/revisions\/3495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}