Nowhere Man
September 8, 2009
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Who the fuck does John Niven think he is?
An article in the Daily Mail – Tuesday’s edition – sees Niven wax lyrical about the evils of the Beatles’ excursion into remastering territory, dismissing the decision to mark the 40th anniversary of Abbey Road with the release of Beatles Rock Band and a newly-remastered back catalogue as “pure greed”. In his 1300 word rant, Niven lays into the alleged futility of both gestures, convinced that this new venture is in complete contradiction to Lennons’ communist plea that we should “Imagine no possessions”. However, for a former A&R man (I assume it’s the same John Niven who was responsible for Kill Your Friends, anyway) he displays a staggering lack of understanding about the music business and entertainment industry in general.
I’ve already jumped to the defence of Guitar Hero, Rock Band’s counterpart, in an earlier post, and I really don’t have the inclination to do all that again here, but I have a funny feeling it’s inevitable, simply because it keeps coming up. It does seem to be fashionable to stomp on the consoles of late, as if the release of such products were in some way hampering creativity and dissuading teenagers from actually going out and taking up an instrument. As recently as today, Bill Wyman has stuck his oar in – the remarks were presumably taken completely out of context, but his comment that Rock Band “encourages kids not to learn” is completely missing the point. In the wake of other complaints from Jack White, Chad Kroeger and every Peter, Paul and Mary with an album to plug, Wyman has predictably jumped on the bandwagon, suggesting that playing the game “makes people less and less dedicated to really get down and learn an instrument”.
How anyone could jump to this conclusion is frankly beyond me, because if you’re going to go down that road, you could say that Wii Sports is hampering sports tuition, and that children are sitting in the comfort of their own lounges instead of heading down to boxing clubs, or throwing a plastic remote control round the room instead of hanging out on a tennis court. That may be true. But Wii Tennis is absolutely no substitute for the real thing, as anyone who’s ever played it (and I suspect that most of these musicians haven’t) will testify. It’s just that some people don’t actually want the real thing. The ones who spend a leisurely evening practicing their lob using a pixellated caricature at the expense of heading down to the nearest sports centre for a spot of doubles were, let’s face it, never going to get down there anyway. If you want to exercise properly, you’ll do it, console or no console. Similarly, I’ve seen no evidence that Guitar Hero actually dissuades potential musicians – nothing other than mindless speculation.
To be honest, I suspect that there’s a certain amount of sour grapes on behalf of the rock stars, who can’t really deal with the fact that you can now attain, with a little plastic-bashing, the sort of applause that it took them years to earn, albeit on an entirely synthetic and ultimately quite hollow level. Nick Mason more or less acknowledging this in the BBC article when he admits that “It irritates me having watched my kids do it – if they spent as much time practising the guitar as learning how to press the buttons they’d be damn good by now”. That’s fine, but it isn’t that simple. Bashing out a perfect solo to ‘Hotel California’ gives a feeling of warm satisfaction, even on the easy setting, but all the sampled cheers and onscreen affirmations that “You rock!” are never going to come close to the rush that you get doing it for real, any more than winning a Gran Turismo championship is going to equal the thrill that Lewis Hamilton undoubtedly felt back when he was driving properly, and I think if we’re seriously suggesting that teenagers are incapable of making that distinction and realising that for themselves, we are giving them far less credit than they deserve.
The fact is that some children are simply indisposed to learning an instrument, and simply don’t want to do it. And no amount of cajoling or coaxing or rock star posturing is going to get them to change their minds. But tell that to Wyman. Perhaps it’s a generation gap thing. Many of the critics are those who presumably do not own consoles themselves, being either too old to belong to the target audience or too busy living the rock star dream. I also think there’s a lot of territory-marking going on here. You might as well have Chad Kroeger come in and urinate all over the plastic Les Paul imitation. I suppose there’s a reason they call it a Wii.
Niven’s remarks about Beatles Rock Band were not restricted to a critique of the game’s general principle, although he does quote “a friend” who laments that it’s impossible to get the game-playing zombies to do anything, like, real with their lives, man – “Try to get some of these kids to take guitar or piano lessons and you’d get stabbed in the heart”. (That’s probably true in inner-city London, but again I think it’s awfully unfair if it’s applied to kids in general.) Niven also claims the game’s extensive band package is a waste of money, freely citing the £500 you’d have to spend in order to pick up the game, full band kit, microphone stands (in order to replicate those harmonies) and the plastic guitar replicas, conveniently ignoring the fact that you do not actually have to buy any of this in order to enjoy the game (you don’t even have to buy the guitar, given that the more recent Guitar Hero controllers are perfectly compatible). The logic is so inherently false – even if he is trying to prove a point – that it almost defies belief. You can picture him saying “London’s so expensive, man. The stretch limo I hired from King’s Cross was a real wallet-emptier after my first class rail ticket, and then there was the Swedish massage parlour, the front row seats at the Apollo, the Planet Hollywood bill…Jeez, what a con!”.
Where Niven really shoots himself in the foot, though, is his critique of the Beatles’ remastering project. Somewhat rhetorically, he asks “Doesn’t the very remastering concept itself suggest that something was wrong with the old version?”, as if he expects us to shuffle our feet awkwardly and admit no, guv, the Beatles are national treasures, and lord, we can’t be touchin’ them sacred recordings. This completely ignores the rather obvious fact that them sacred recordings were not what we’ve been listening to on CD for the past fifteen years or so – instead we’ve had to be content with pale, fluffy fascimiles of the originals, as Niven would know or realise if he’d done any research into exactly what you’ve been able to buy and how hollow it sounds next to the vinyl. Evidently the man has either forgotten everything he learned in the studio, or he was simply never there to begin with.
And who, pray tell, has been saying for years that the Beatles CD recordings are inadequate? Bingo. The fans. The ones who were planning to buy the remasters – when they can afford them, and certainly not at the RRP. Most of us will wait for a 3-for-£20 offer on Amazon, or simply keep our collective eyes on Ebay. Because the truth is, while we are the first to admit to jumping on the bandwagon whenever there’s a new fad in town, we’re not entirely lacking self-control or the will to make our own decisions, or wait before we part with our cash. The communists may cry foul play and claim that we’re being grievously ripped off, but truth be told some of us were rather looking forward to September and the prospect of a digitally clean recording that allows us to hear ‘A Day In The Life’ the way it was meant to be heard. It’s true that a lot of this conviction that the remastered catalogue is such a vast improvement has come at the hands of the music press: they’ve told us that it’s going to be worth the wait, and we’ve believed them. But somehow they state their case with far more conviction and reasoning than our friend Mr Niven – who, to be fair to him, is somewhat handicapped aurally. Because I suspect that he’s never going to grasp the concept of improved sound quality. I have a feeling that he’s been unable to hear the difference between the old and new recordings not because of some puritanical vibe, or anti-capitalist principle, or even the need to Keep It Real, but simply because his head is stuck so firmly and completely up his arse.
Pillow Talk
September 10, 2009
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Lying in bed, Duke Special’s Songs From The Deep Forest on the stereo. I Never Thought This Day Would Come, recently purchased, lying nearby, waiting to be played. ‘Salvation Tambourine’ is in full swing, as Duke intones “I could go to London, maybe that’s where you are / I could go to Paris, I could look from the tower / I could go to London / I could go to London…”
“You know,” said Emily, “we should get this record publicised. Because then they’d use it in TV programmes for London montages, instead of the bloody Clash.”
“Tell me about it. I love ‘London Calling’, but it just gets everywhere.”
I did a post about records that get everywhere – itself an old diary entry rehashed – some months back, so I don’t think we need to re-tread old ground. It’s true, however, that ‘London Calling’ is used in virtually every TV drama, and more than its fair share of documentaries, where a quick overview of our nation’s capital is needed. Cue any combination of the following images: a car travelling down the M1 with signs for London; passengers disembarking at Paddington and staring around at the admittedly impressive architecture with amazement; pearly kings and queens; punks; heavy traffic; Nelson’s Column; Evening Standard vendors outside tube stations with polystyrene coffee cups; Parliament; Westminster; the Thames; the Bloody Tower; the Bloody London Eye…I could go on, but I think realistically we’re done here.
“The problem is that not many people really know about Duke at the moment,” said Emily. “So they wouldn’t think of using it. Although he’s getting more popular.”
“Do you think Miriam is going to accuse him of selling out?”
Miriam is Emily’s younger sister. She’s followed Duke Special since the early days of his career, consisting of small, almost low-key gigs where he’d experiment with a gramophone: Edwardian scratching, if you like. In later years his orchestrations have become more conventional, but his writing has improved. Live, he possesses a manic energy, captivating the crowd with flamboyant showmanship, raucous singalongs and some overwhelmingly powerful musical performances. In the climax of his set at Greenbelt, he crowd-surfed and then upturned the piano. I am told that this is typical Duke.
I don’t think that Miriam would ever accuse Duke Special (or Peter Wilson, to momentarily use his real name) of selling out, but she does find his later work a little less interesting, a claim which has some merit. She and her husband are more taken with the comparatively sparse arrangements on the now-deleted Adventures in Gramophone album, as opposed to the slick, polished production of the later records, which I personally prefer. If anything, any future resentment on her part may stem from the fact that if he becomes as much of a household name as, say, Arcade Fire, it will become much harder to see him live. The problem is that as stars get bigger, we have to start sharing them. The Liverpool girls wept when the Beatles scored their first number one, because they knew that it was the beginning of the end, and that the boys would never come home again – and, in many respects, they never did. When fringe artists reach the mainstream, however they manage it, it can become very difficult to get tickets.
“So you listened to the new album today?” I said.
“Yes, as well as half the old one. It was very good. A lot of the stuff he played when we saw him. When you think about it, that CD arrived just in time. We were lucky we ordered it when we did.”
“I know. Otherwise we’d have had to delay listening to it until next year.”
“Duke’s fab,” she says, “because he’s a little like elements of The Divine Comedy crossed with The Polyphonic Spree. I found that in the car today, when I was listening to ‘Brixton Leaves’, and he was singing “The sun will rise once more if we let her…”, and I thought it lay somewhere between ‘Sunrise’ and ‘It’s The Sun’.”
It’s lovely when Emily is in moods like this; typically it’s me shouting my mouth off about something, as I do far too often, while she reacts to my opinion. To be able to react to her is fantastic.
“Absolutely,” I say. “I get the same thing, now I think about it, although I’ve never strictly defined it.”
“And he translates really well to record, which is more than you can say for The Polyphonic Spree.”
“Well, that’s not strictly true. Together We’re Heavy is great. The Beginning Stages Of…, not so much. But they got slicker in the studio for that second album. And there’s a third, which I haven’t got round to buying yet.”
“This year has done wonders for your CD-buying habits really, hasn’t it?”
“Absolutely,” I concur.
“Have I heard Together We’re Heavy?”
“No.”
“Have we had a ‘P’ week?”
“Back in April.”
“What was I listening to?”
“The Proclaimers, I expect. And The Pet Shop Boys. Next time we draw a ‘P’, listen to both the Spree albums, preferably back to back.”
“Why, because the second is better?”
“No – simply because I think they’re supposed to be more or less one sequence. There’s a lot of thematic unity.”
“I’ll keep a look out for it next time. So,” she said, straightening her pillow, “are we going to do this again next year?”
“I don’t know. Do you want to?”
“If we did do it again,” she said, “we’ll have to introduce a twist of some sort. Just to keep it fresh.”
“What did you have in mind?”
“Maybe we could listen to all the albums that we didn’t listen to this year.”
“What, still by drawing letters randomly?”
“Yes, but we’ll prioritise the albums that we didn’t play in 2009. And,” she said, leaning up on one elbow and becoming visibly animated, “we can weight them according to artists where we have more stuff. Because, like, there’s only two or three albums for ‘Y’, but – ”
“ – a whole bunch for ‘M’,” I finished. “So we could have, say, four weeks for ‘M’, and miss out ‘Y’ completely. How would we do it, though?”
“Well, I could write a computer program to do it.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier to just go around the shelves with a pen, making notes?”
Emily’s look was not unlike the one that Chandler gives Ross in a second season episode of Friends. Ross is having difficulty choosing between two girls who are both after his affection, and Chandler, keen to use his new laptop, suggests making “a list – Rachel and Julie, pros and cons. We’ll put their names in bold, with different fonts, and I can use different colours for each column.” Ross, weary and bemused, asks “Couldn’t we just use a pen?” to which Chandler retorts “No, Amish boy!”
“It’s fine,” Emily said. “I’ll do a program that will pick and choose. It’ll be high-concept art. Sophisticated. Clever-clever. Pretentious.”
“Rather like the project in general. And the blog I’m writing.”
“You’re really going to send it to Bill?”
“Probably. I doubt he’ll read it. But yes, once the year is out. Just to get closure.”
“It’s just that it’s very…long.”
“So is 17.”
“And it’s quite tangential.”
“Again, so is 17. It started as a book about the primal choir, and it sort of sidetracks when he starts talking about music in general. He keeps honing it back to The 17, but it’s practically bursting at the seams with other stuff. I didn’t intend for this blog to emulate that, necessarily, but it just happened. Art imitates art.”
“Art and maths are combined,” she said, “which is why I need to write a program. Mathematics is viewed in many circles as being just another art form.”
“I could see that.”
“When I was at university, actually, we could choose between doing a B.A. or a B.Sc. for Maths. I think most of us went for the B.Sc., because let’s face it, that’s far more useful. We’d look at the B.A. candidates and think ‘lightweights!”
“Agreed. The B.A., as fun as it is, often doesn’t get you very far.”
“Who’s this I can hear now, by the way?”
“It’s Jimmy Durante,” I said.
“Interesting way of singing.”
“He was a comedian.”
“Well, it doesn’t sound very funny. It sounds like a dog, actually. I keep expecting to see him in a Churchill commercial.”
“Anyway. You’re going to write a program.”
“Yes, I can do that. And perhaps, when you’ve got all the CDs catalogued – ”
“Not this year,” I said.
“Next year?”
“Maybe.”
“Well, when you do, we can get it to pick an album at random, and force ourselves to listen to that, however inappropriate. Or, say, twenty, if we’re going away.”
“That’s a good idea.”
“I’m getting really into this now.”
“I had noticed.”
Jesse’s Playlists – Week 36
September 14, 2009
———
This week, I have mostly been listening to…
Neil Diamond – Twelve Songs
Dire Straits – Love Over Gold
Miles Davis – Miles Ahead
Miles Davis – Kind Of Blue
Claude Debussy – The Classical Collection
Duke Special – Songs From The Deep Forest
Duke Special – I Never Thought This Day Would Come
Jimmy Durante – As Time Goes By: The Best Of Jimmy Durante
The Divine Comedy – Regeneration
Fuzzy Logic
September 18, 2009
———
“Mike?”
“Yeah?”
“You know how when you go to a football match, the fans chant ‘You’re going home in a great big ambulance’?”
“Yes…?”
“Well, generally, you don’t, do you? I mean, the role of the ambulance is primarily to transport you to the hospital.”
“That’s quite true.”
“So it’s wrong.”
Jessica looks up from her proofreading with a wry smile. “What you need to do is go to a football match and then get up halfway through and quietly explain that.”
“No, it’s just something that’s bugged me for years. I do appreciate the dual usage of the ambulance, and concede that an ambulance might be taking you home after a stay in hospital, at which point you will be fully recovered and once more fighting fit. But that’s not what it means here. What it in fact means is that you, the heathen scum who support the opposing side, will suffer righteous fury at the hands of the rest of us, thereby necessitating hospital treatment and the need for an ambulance.”
Mike thinks for a second. “I remember Alan Smith breaking his leg. The fans sang ‘You’re going home in a great big ambulance’.”
“Except he wasn’t. He was going to hospital.”
I swore back in February that I wasn’t going to write yet another rant about poor grammar, and I don’t intend to go back on my word now (except to say that I recently noticed that the children’s classic, ‘Me And My Teddy Bear’, contains a tremendous clanger. It opens with the lines “In the house right next to me / a little boy lives there”, which simply doesn’t work as a sentence or even as a coherent lyric – it’s like someone just jotting down random thoughts on paper). No, I’m more interested today in lyrics that simply don’t make any sense.
Before we discuss this, we ought to differentiate between lyrics that don’t work and lyrics that don’t sound right. The songs of Abba are a good example of the latter: Benny and Bjorn wrote fantastic, melodious pop that’s lasted for over thirty years, survived any number of tribute acts and covers and spawned a smash West End musical that eventually became a blockbuster movie (even if Pierce Brosnan did sound like something rather precious to him had been caught in his zip). I’d imagine that their lyrics read quite well in Swedish, but the English translations (constructed with more than a little help from Stig Anderson, at least early on) are a frequent source of amusement. As well as having to rhyme “Glasgow” with “last show” in the well-meant but whiny ‘Super Trouper’, Frida and Agnetha were also forced to stumble through some extremely awkward English in ‘Fernando’, as the two girls admit that “Now we’re old and grey, Fernando / Since many years I haven’t seen a rifle in your hand”. The word ‘since’ would only work, in this context, if it implied that the duo’s pipe-and-slippers state of affairs was directly connected with the state of the rifle, which is almost certainly not true, unless we’re talking about a magic Winchester that rejuvenates and prolongs life in the style of Bilbo’s ring or Dorian Gray’s hideous portrait. As it stands, it’s just an unfortunate enjambment of two phrases that don’t really go very well together, written and delivered by musicians who are having to construct tourist English, in the absence of having it as a first language. At least they don’t ask if we would like to go back to their place, bouncy-bouncy.
There are some songs that make the hairs of your neck stand up for entirely the wrong reasons. The violin-obsessed farmer of John Martin Sommers’ ‘Thank God I’m A Country Boy’, for example, begins his fourth verse with “I fiddled with my daddy ‘til the day he died”. At least, that’s how it sounded the first (and subsequently every) time I heard it – a quick Google reveals that it’s actually “My fiddle was my daddy’s ‘til the day he died”, but Denver storms through the song at such a breakneck pace that the damage is already done. (When I pointed this out to Emily, she reasoned that it would have been far worse if Denver had sung “My daddy fiddled with me”.)
I’m not advocating a Gold Standard of songwriting, nor am I suggesting that every lyric should read like a scientific paper. I’m just baffled by some of the things I hear. Alanis Morisette, for example, rhetorically asked “Isn’t it ironic, don’t you think?” before the rest of us were forced to cry in one voice “No!”. (Alanis, quick English lesson: Rain on your wedding day, as you’ve already been told by a thousand comedians and bloggers who forget to name their sources, is only ironic if you’re a weatherman who predicted a dry spell. A traffic jam when you’re already late is Sod’s law. And a black fly in your Chardonnay is a clear sign you’re in the wrong restaurant.) I don’t care if it was supposed to be funny or light-hearted or if the irony was that there was very little irony in there at all. It’s still sloppy writing.
I’d also point out that I’m deliberately excluding nonsense songs, mystical acid-themed trips or anything by Genesis (pre-1975, anyway). Some songs are just not meant to make sense, and I can live with that. (Others are purposefully stupid, their apparent contradictions delivered with a knowing wink to the listener: ‘I Remember It Well’ is an obvious example.) I don’t think that there’s a single person who’s ever managed to adequately explain ‘I Am The Walrus’ – the late Ian MacDonald’s conviction that it was a rant against the establishment, through its use of compromised authority figures, simply doesn’t wash with me. As far as I’m concerned it’s just an effort on Lennon’s part to avoid yet more analysis by concocting a melee of images that are so abstract you can’t possibly explain them.
Others, however, can be explained, but they still make no sense. I can remember hearing ‘You’re So Vain’ a whole bunch of times, across a period many years, before suddenly realising that Carly Simon was in complete denial. Having spent the first verse describing a conceited gentleman who enters the home of a soiree like he was “walking onto a yacht”, complete with light linen suit (tailored), tasteful scarf and all the right moves, she then goes on to detail his womanising tendencies and various mistresses, at least one of which is “the wife of a close friend”. Simon’s understated rant about a man who may or may not be James Taylor is eloquent, thoughtfully constructed with some beautiful imagery (it really doesn’t get much better than “I had some dreams, they were clouds in my coffee”) and not a little bitter. That’s the coffee, you understand.
But it’s in the chorus where she screws up. After copious physical descriptions of an egotist who is so self-obsessed he could give Jennifer Lopez a run for her money, our dear Carly makes her fatal slip, as she sings “You’re so vain / you probably think this song is about you”. Well, who else was it about? I’m sorry, Carly, but I’ve spent hours analysing this and I don’t think you’re singing about yourself. I can only assume that you’re directing your narrative at a set of egotistical men who are standing in front of you (Ms. Simon has admitted more than once that “the song is a composite of three people”) and you’re goading your victim into giving himself away through simply narcissism. All hail the power of suggestion, but you really do need to make these things more obvious.
Abandoning horses in Saratoga and heading for hippos in the Serengeti, we end up instead in the middle of a jungle, where we find a lion, apparently having a snooze. Except he isn’t, surely? I’m no biologist, but the last time I checked, there was a general dearth of Panthera Leo in the jungle. They tend to restrict themselves to grassland, except in parts of India, where they live in scrub forests, which is not the same thing. And yet we’re supposed to believe Solomon Linda’s assertion that “in the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight”. I mentioned this over dinner one evening to Emily’s friend Kirsten, and was swiftly rebuffed: “He’s lost! All right? He’s lost. He made a wrong turn and wound up in the jungle. Deal with it.”
The second verse begins
“In the village, the peaceful village
The lion sleeps tonight…”
That’s better. Now we’re getting somewhere. I can certainly envisage a big cat taking a nocturnal stroll through a settlement right next to the pride lands, and deciding it would be as good a place as any to bed down for the night. Having said all that it does remind me of the old joke about two lions who escape from Blackpool Zoo and decide to take a walk along the beach, whereupon one of them remarks to the other, “Not many people about for a bank holiday”. Perhaps it would have been better of Solomon had rewritten his second verse so that it read “In the village, the peaceful village / The lion sleeps tonight / but the villagers probably won’t.”
Perhaps the most jaw-dropping example of poor logic in lyric writing that I’ve encountered occurs in an excruciating 1969 recording by Pat Campbell, who also recorded T. Texas Tyler’s ‘Deck of Cards’. In that, a young soldier is arrested for starting a round of patience during a church service, but rather than admit his crime, he pulls off a dazzling ruse, managing to convince his commanding officers that the cards symbolise days of the week, months of the year and assorted Biblical types. (In some versions of the song the charge against the soldier is dropped, while in others it’s left somewhat ambiguous, although Wink Martindale’s rendition concludes, sickeningly, with the words “And friends, the story is true. I know…I was that soldier.”)
A quick sniff of his biography – such as it is, the details on the web are scant – shows that this sort of rubbish is perfect for Campbell. The back cover of his 1970 album, Just A Quiet Conversation, reads “Pat Campbell was born in Ireland, but it might just as well have been Nashville. He’s been there many times and he’s welcomed as a friend by the biggest names in the world of country music. On each visit he brings a little piece of Nashville home with him, but also leaves a little of Pat Campbell there in return.” He was trying to avoid passport control, then. (For those of you who are interested or particularly sadistic / masochistic, the whole album is available for download, gratis, from WFMU’s 365 Days project.
If ‘Deck of Cards’ is twee, sentimental claptrap of the highest order, it does at least have some semblance of common sense about it, which is more than you could say for ‘The Deal’, our song of choice this afternoon. On this occasion, dear old Patrick assumes the persona of a young man in a hospital waiting room, who is placed into an appalling moral dilemma when doctors tell him that because of “complications” (and because this is the 1960s), lives are at stake and he will have to choose between saving his wife and his unborn child. Devastated, he stumbles into the chapel, whereupon he offers himself as a substitute – “If you gotta take one, please, please let it be me”. Back in the corridor, he finds his legs giving way, and he shuffles off this mortal coil just as the doctors come rushing through from surgery to inform him that against all the odds, both wife and child have survived.
Campbell delivers the song in the form of a spoken monologue, with a vague sense of cadence at the end of what you might consider to be ‘verses’. A chapel organ – perhaps the very one keeping him company in the hospital – drones in the background. It’s all very cheap and cheerless, but it’s the subject matter that really grates. The concept of Campbell’s dilemma is akin to the episode of The Simpsons where Ron Howard, in an obvious parody of his real life persona, pitches a movie to a bored executive by suggesting that there’s “this robot, he’s got a heart-breaking decision to make about whether his best friend lives…or dies.” When the executive appears nonplussed, Howard swiftly adds “His best friend is a talking pie!”, which gets him a huge bag of cash and a reprise of the Happy Days theme.
Even before this, things are pretty grim: left alone in the waiting room while his wife goes through the labour without him (this was the 60s, don’t forget) Campbell (yes, I know he’s only playing a character, but his delivery is so revolting I am going to permanently weld him to the song) describes his nerves about the impending arrival of his “long-awaited son”, before allowing himself a chuckle with the realisation that “it could be an old girl”. (A very young one, actually, but let’s not go there.) You can almost visualise his thought process: “Ooh, it’s going to be a boy! Except I don’t actually know.” It’s like Carousel’s ‘Soliloquy’ condensed into fifteen seconds, with none of the emotion.
It’s in the chapel that things get much worse. It’s worth noting, purely as an aside, that none of my whinging about this would amount to anything if the song had been delivered with even a trace of irony, but that’s not the case – the implication throughout is that we’re supposed to take ‘The Deal’ absolutely seriously The pleading, heartfelt anxiety of Campbell’s prayer to his heavenly father is undermined somewhat by the fact that this whole thing makes no sense at all. I really don’t want to get too theological here, but in the first instance I take great issue with his assertion that “You must love them an awful lot, Lord…because you can’t make up your own mind which one to extend your loving hand to”. What, there wasn’t room for both? That’s not evidence of a loving God. That’s evidence of a sadistic bastard who delegates to avoid the guilt. Why Campbell isn’t pacing the floor shouting at the ceiling in his hour of need is frankly beyond me, but I’m willing to let that go, because he’s undergoing emotional trauma. That being said, his crowning moment of stupidity is his decision to offer himself in order to save his family.
Now, I’m all for the idea of laying down your life for your friends. I’m not sure I’d ever be able to go through with anything quite so unselfish, but there can’t be many more noble ways to go out. If you do it well enough, they name a high school after you. Nonetheless, Campbell’s actions here aren’t an act of glorious self-sacrifice akin to Ryan Chappelle’s untimely execution in 24, or the guy who chucks the wounded colleague over the lava, destroying himself in the process, halfway through Volcano. Because his decision to save his wife and child and ask for himself to be taken in exchange entirely fails to take into account the fact that he’s leaving them to manage on their own. It could be that it’s actually a blessing in disguise for Campbell’s wife, given that she can presumably now raise their boy / old girl in comparative peace without the threat of one of his mawkish monologues every time they experience a momentous event, or even worse, a trivial one. “Look, Celia, these are playing cards. Did I ever tell you the story about the time I was caught playing cards in church…?”.
But still. It’s the principle here. If you really want to strike any sort of deal with the Almighty, you don’t offer yourself in exchange. This isn’t Watership Down. You say “Dear Lord, if you have to take someone…take Oscar, who I know has been embezzling the company for months even though I can’t prove anything. Or take my mother-in-law. No, please, take her. Or the chap who cut me up on the A46 this evening.” But oh no. Not good enough for our Pat. Far better to say “It’s fine, God, I don’t mind the pain of the sudden coronary and the inevitable blast of guilt that will catch me in my final moments, with the realisation that I’ve left my wife as sole breadwinner and my baby boy / old girl without a father. I’d rather go out knowing I’ve made the supreme sacrifice. And widow’s benefits really aren’t that bad these days.” Campbell isn’t a Captain Oates, he’s a frigging idiot.
Pedantry comes very naturally to me, largely because being able to pick out the details is one of the few things I’m good at. Details are important, but not in the grand scheme, and over the years I’ve got used to the fact that people care about this sort of thing far less than I do. Besides, you can’t analyse art the same way you would a piece of A-Level coursework, because that’s not its purpose. I do wish that ‘Angels’ (a song about nothing, even if it is supposed to be about dead babies) had not been held up as a shining example of good writing to the extent that it won Best Song of the Past 25 Years at the Brits, but I guess some people go for style over substance. Which means that confusing songs will continue to be written, and as a result of this I’m guessing that poor logic will, ultimately, be an inevitability – although I don’t think it could get much worse than ‘The Deal’.
I was thinking about all this, albeit in a far more truncated form, over the course of about three or four seconds, in the middle of our conversation about football, and the thought of men collapsing and requiring ambulances brought me back to the football chant we’d been discussing. Perhaps at the end of the day it’s how you look at the song, rather than what it was supposed to represent. Maybe songs are no longer the creative property of their owners once they’ve been unveiled, at least not really: the way in which the artist relates to his work is always going to be unique and as such that relationship will always be special, but perhaps there needs to be room for another set of views – the people who will hear the song, and claim its subject matter as their own, and to all intents and purposes own it for themselves.
“The thing is,” said Mike, “I could see one interpretation – as in we’re going to beat you up so badly that the hospital will now become your new home.”
“I’d not thought of it that way.”
Mike takes another contemplative pause, and then adds:
“But I don’t think that’s what it means.”
“Neither do I.”
Jesse’s Playlists – Week 37
September 20, 2009
———
This week, I have mostly been listening to…
Johnny Cash – American Recordings
Johnny Cash – American II: Unchained
Ray Charles – Genius Loves Company
The Cure – Greatest Hits
Crowded House – Recurring Dream: The Best of Crowded House
Johnny Cash – American III: Solitary Man
John Coltrane – Blue Train
Clannad – Magical Ring
Crash Test Dummies – God Shuffled His Feet
Chicago – The Heart of Chicago 1967-1997
The Corrs – Talk On Corners
Cosmic Rough Rider – Enjoy the Melodic Sunshine
Coldplay – Parachutes
Elvis Costello – The Very Best of Elvis Costello (Disc One)
Tracy Chapman – Collection
Jesse’s Playlists – Week 38
September 27, 2009
———
This week, I have mostly been listening to…
Fleetwood Mac – Rumours
The Feeling – Twelve Stops And Home
Fleetwood Mac – The Best of Fleetwood Mac
John Farnham – Greatest Hits
Fat and Frantic – Fat and Frantic sing The Best of Wendy Craig
Rachelle Ferrell – First Instrument
“…and they’d none of ‘em be missed…”
October 1, 2009
———
Running late for work, and hurrying down the A4130 as fast as is legal and safe. ‘Grace Kelly’ is playing on the stereo. I ignored Mika’s bouncy shuffle for too long, until the night I caught him on Jools Holland. For months after that the lyrics were more or less unintelligible – his flamboyant falsetto saw to that – until I gradually picked up words here and there, the song gradually shifting into focus, like a developing Polaroid, or the procedures and policies in a new job. The song is supposed to satirise musicians who “try to reinvent themselves to be popular” (according to Wikipedia) but what struck me listening to it this morning was the sense of colour, in a quite literal context. It’s not quite Tim Rice does Joseph, but it does feel like Mika is flipping through the Dulux catalogue, selecting hues for his bedroom wall: “I could be brown, I could be blue, I could be violet sky…” It’s a miracle that it hasn’t been used in a paint commercial by now. Or perhaps it has. I don’t watch enough TV to be sure.
I’m ambivalent about list songs. On the one hand they’ve always struck me as a rather lazy way of writing. A particularly murky example is ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’, in which the normally-quite-good Billy Joel takes five minutes to sing through a list of politicians, movie stars and world events, spanning almost forty years, FOR NO REASON OTHER THAN BECAUSE HE JUST CAN. It really is incredibly lazy, coming as it does from the pen of the man who gave us ‘The Entertainer’, ‘An Innocent Man’ and ‘Scenes From An Italian Restaurant’. I don’t care that it has a relatively interesting video, or that history teachers across the U.S.A. have been singing its praises for almost two decades. It’s still crap.
Jim Carroll’s ‘People Who Died’ (Died!) has the same driving beat, and is similarly miserable. It’s excused on the grounds that for all the morbidity of its lyrical content (quite literally a list of Carroll’s friends who’d shuffled off this mortal coil, predominantly from substance abuse or as a result of doing something stupid under the influence) it is nonetheless reasonably tongue in cheek. And I’m sorry, but I’ve simply never understood the appeal of ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’, which goes on and on through Epiphany and doesn’t finish until it’s nearly Easter, and ‘Fifty Ways To Leave Your Lover’, which has a tremendous set of verses but one of the most ridiculous, pointless and uninspiring refrains that Paul Simon ever committed to paper. (And yes, that includes ‘The Dangling Conversation’.)
The central problem is that it’s a tempting choice when you’re in a tight spot – they’re easy to write, but difficult to write well. It’s relatively simple to come up with imagery, once you have a theme. Rogers and Hammerstein must have had a field day when they sat down to write ‘My Favourite Things’, a song which works because it’s a musical attempt to calm down a group of terrified children in the middle of a thunderstorm, and because it’s being sung by Julie Andrews, who is so adorable in that film that you just want to take her home with you and make her a dress out of curtains. Unfortunately, such examples are typically the exception rather than the rule, because most writers seem oblivious to the fact that establishing your theme and imagery doesn’t let you off the hook as far as melodic inventiveness, consistency or plain old human interest is concerned. The laundry list is therefore all too frequently an unimaginative gimmick, pretentious or tedious or tawdry, or all three.
On the other hand, there have been some tremendous list songs. Koko’s monologue from The Mikado is one of the funniest moments in any operetta, with Arthur Sullivan’s pointed melody perfectly undercutting W.S. Gilbert’s diatribe. Koko is tearing down the fourth wall with a vengeance, as he rants not against the hang-ups of a conventional Japanese executioner but instead against the less appealing characters of Victorian society. The song’s even better when you update it, as I managed to do for Ewan’s production of The Hot Mikado earlier this year. They didn’t use the new lyric, deciding instead to stick with the old jokes that went completely over the heads of the audience (not that I object to using the traditional material, it’s just that doing so isn’t particularly imaginative). Nonetheless, the joy was in writing it, rather than seeing it performed. Here it is, for the sake of posterity:
Ko-Ko:
As some day it may happen that a victim must be found,
I’ve got a little list I’ve got a little list
Of society offenders who might well be underground,
And who never would be missed, who never would be missed!
There’s the whiny brats in restaurants who simply can’t behave
With parents glued to mobiles who are still too young to shave
The folks who read the papers and believe that it’s all true
The winos watching Tricia, and the chavs and hoodies too
And that expert in hypocrisy, the televangelist,
I’ve got him on the list (Amen!), I know he’ll not be missed
Chorus:
We’ll put him on the list, we’ll put him on the list
And we don’t think he’ll be missed, we’re sure he’ll not be missed.
Ko-Ko:
There’s the wretched Amy Winehouse, that frightful tattooed thing
Who’s nearly always p-p-p-p-….plastered…I’ve got her on the list!
The would-be entertainers who don’t know that they can’t sing
They’ll all go on the list – I know they won’t be missed -
There’s every faux celebrity in Closer and in Heat
And everyone who thinks that Peter Andre’s really neat (Don’t get me started on his wife….)
That fellow at the cinema who’s chatting to his friends
Who heckles through the second act and tells you how it ends
And the Trekkies and the Star Wars freaks who’ve never yet been kissed,
I’ve got them on the list, I’ve got them – in Klingon, boys!
Chorus:
Ghah ghat-a-jah chah daq, ghah ghat-a-jah chah daq;
Chah dich daq pag vo-chah tah, dich daq pag vo-chah tah.
Ko-Ko:
There’s Top Gear’s Mr Clarkson, and Robert Kilroy-Silk,
I’ve put them on the list – I think you’ve got the gist
All idiot boy racers and the others of their ilk
I don’t think they’ll be missed – I’m sure they’ll not be missed….
There’s the party-throwing neighbours who will keep you up at night
The left-wing hate extremists and the others on the right
And David Cam’ron, Gordon Brown, and also you-know-who…
The task of filling in the blanks I’d rather leave to you
But it really doesn’t matter whom you put upon the list,
For they’d none of ‘em be missed, they’d none of ‘em be missed!
Chorus:
You may put ‘em on the list, you may put ‘em on the list;
And they’ll none of ‘em be missed, they’ll none of ‘em be missed!
Sometimes list songs can be wonderfully melancholy; perhaps nowhere more so than in jazz and popular songs. Cole Porter’s ‘Let’s Do It’ is one of the best examples. ‘These Foolish Things’ is another. It’s the fact that the list is so long, as much as anything else, that increases our sympathy for the deserted lover, simply because his sense of loss has permeated the world around him, so much so that everything he encounters reminds him of the girl who is presumably now casting her silk stockings over somebody else’s bed. It’s a rambling, slightly disjointed list of items and contexts that are connected thematically, if not necessarily geographically: the swings of a playground, midnight trains at empty stations, a closing bar, an unanswered telephone call; the world, empty and deserted.
It’s the sense of momentum that gives the list song its power, at least when it’s done properly: the idea of building, of actually going somewhere. This is why ‘These Foolish Things’ works, while ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’ doesn’t – the former weaves together seemingly random objects into a tapestry of a broken heart, while in ‘Fire’, Billy Joel reels off icons and events left, right and centre, apparently with the intention of showing us that the world has always been a mess and that its current state has nothing to do with him. Nonetheless, the juxtaposition of positive (Chubby Checker, Marilyn Monroe) with negative (thalidomide, the Korean war) is jarring, and the overall effect is whiny and dispassionate, rather than epic and powerful, with Joel coming across like a prominent political figure who is floundering in the death throes of his leadership. If, on the other hand, I’ve completely misunderstood the song’s intention and it’s just a list of stuff that happened in Billy Joel’s lifetime, what the hell was the point?
Somewhere back in 2007, some bright spark had the idea of taking list songs – or songs that were veering in the list direction without actually going there – and putting them down in bullet point form. Bullet points are the new black: they’re a staple of any PowerPoint slideshow (frequently to the detriment of the quality of the presentation) and in a fast-moving world where we seem anxious to soak up as much information as possible, they can provide an invaluable method of disseminating a large amount of data in a relatively short amount of time / printed space. So why not go the whole hog, and take some pop and rock standards, and categorise and compartmentalise them so that they’re easier to read?
News of the LiveJournal discussion eventually drifted through to the bulletin board I was frequenting at the time (and of which I’m still a user, albeit on a less regular basis). We started our own collection, and a few of my favourites are listed below. Some work better than others, although the ones that didn’t work at all aren’t included here. I take credit for the Beatles ones, and Mika’s closing proposition; the remainder are by other users. It’s possible that some of these were already covered, in a slightly different form perhaps, in the original LiveJournal entry, but I’m not inclined to trawl through thirty-six pages of comments to find out.
We open with the original post from LiveJournal –the Ghostbusters theme song in list format.
* Things I ain’t afraid of:
o no ghost
* Strange things in the neighbourhood (partial list):
o seeing things running through head
o invisible man sleeping in bed
* Things that make me feel good:
o bustin’
* Who you gonna call:
o Ghostbusters
o I can’t hear you
o Louder
———
I’m too sexy for:
———
Irony
* ninety-eight year old wins lottery and dies the next day
* Black fly in chardonnay
* Dead row pardon two minutes too late
* Rain on your wedding day
* Free ride when you’ve already paid
* Good advice that you didn’t take
* Traffic jam when you’re already late
* No smoking sign on your cigarette break
* Ten thousand spoons when you need a knife
* Meeting the man of my dreams and his beautiful wife
Mr Play it Safe
* Scared of flying
* Packs suitcase
* Kisses kids goodbye
* Plane crashes
* Thinks “Isn’t this nice”
Life
* Funny way of sneaking up on you when
– you think everything is OK
- you think everything is going right
* Funny way of helping you out when
– you think everything has gone wrong
– everything blows up in your face
———
Items not required:
· education
· thought control
· dark sarcasm in the classroom
Instructions to teachers:
· leave kids alone
· Hey!
———
Things to do today:
1300-1600
- Rock
1700-2000
- Rock
2100-0000
- Rock
———
Today, in no particular order, I:
· read the news (oh boy!); two stories -
– a lucky man who made the grade
– ten thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire
· saw a film; observations:
– the English army had just won the war
– a crowd of people turned away
– it was a novel adaptation
· woke up
· got out of bed
· dragged a comb across my head
· found my way downstairs
· drank a cup
· looked up; noticed I was late
· found my coat
· grabbed my hat
· made the bus in seconds flat
· found my way upstairs
· had a smoke
· went into a dream after someone spoke to me
———
A guide to Old Flat Top
Physical Description
· joo joo eyeballs
· hair down to his knees
· toe jam football
· monkey finger
· walrus gumboot
· Ono sideboard
· feet down below his knees
· early warning
· muddy water
Memorable Quotes
“I know you, you know me”
· “One thing I can tell you is you got to be free”
· “One and one and one is three”
Powers and abilities
· a joker
· a spinal cracker
· a roller coaster
· a Mojo filter
· good looking, ’cause he’s so hard to see
Character biography
· comes groovin’ up slowly
· wants holy rollers
· does what he pleases
· wears no shoeshine
· shoots Coca Cola
· bags production
———
Things that I will do for love:
- Anything.
Things that I won’t do for love:
- That.
———
All that you:
· touch
· see
· taste
· feel
· love
· hate
· distrust
· save
· give
· deal
· buy, beg, borrow or steal
· create
· destroy
· do
· say
· eat
· slight
Everyone you:
· meet
· fight
All that is:
· now
· gone
· to come
The sun:
· Everything under it is in tune
· But it’s eclipsed by the moon
———
Things I can be:
· Brown
· Blue
· Violet sky
· Purple
· Hurtful
· Anything you like
Things I have to be:
· Green
· Mean
· Everything more
Things I could be
· Wholesome
· Loathsome
Points for consideration
· Do I attract you?
· Do I repulse you with my queasy smile?
· Am I too dirty?
· Am I too flirty?
· Do I like what you like?
· Why don’t you like me?
· Why don’t you like yourself?
· How can I help it?
· How can I help what you think?
· Should I bend over?
· Should I look older just to be put on your shelf?
Jesse’s Playlists – Week 39
October 5, 2009
———
This week, I have mostly been listening to…
Mike and the Mechanics – Hits
Katie Melua – Call Off The Search
Thelonius Monk – Original Jazz Classics
Mika – Life In Cartoon Motion
Massive Attack – Blue Lines
John Martyn – Serendipity: An Introduction To John Martyn
Meat Loaf – Bat Out Of Hell
Maroon 5 – Songs About Jane
Madonna – Ray of Light
Joni Mitchell – Turbulent Indigo
Van Morrison – Astral Weeks
Jesse’s Playlists – Week 40
October 12, 2009
———
This week, I have mostly been listening to…
Lighthouse Family – Postcards From Heaven
Jacques Loussier Trio – Bach’s Goldberg Variations
Soundtrack – Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Steve Lawson – And Nothing But The Bass
Julie Lee – Stillhouse Road
Lambchop – Damaged
Julie London – The End of the World / Nice Girls Don’t Stay For Breakfast
Level 42 – The Collection
The Lightning Seeds – Jollification
Jacques Loussier – Air on a ‘G’ String: The Very Best of Jacques Loussier
Lindisfarne – The Best of Lindisfarne
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