Every band I've seen live #2 Iron Maiden, Bath Pavilion, 27/6/1980

So if Wishbone Ash could prove astonishingly good, my expectations were high for Iron Maiden, at the time the figurehead of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal that had emerged as a sort of parallel to punk from the industrial towns of northern England.   They were much-lauded by the press and with the release of their first album and singles had broken through to the charts.

The set list was probably:

The Ides of March
Sanctuary
Wrathchild
Prowler
Remember Tomorrow
 Killers
Running Free
Another Life
Transylvania
Strange World
Charlotte the Harlot
Phantom of the Opera
 Iron Maiden
Drifter
I've Got the Fire

Probably is the word, alas.  As someone commented on the recent documentary on Iron Maiden on tour: great logistics, rubbish songs.  It is significant that, unlike Wishbone Ash, I was left with no desire to go out and buy the records afterwards.    The Gothick mythology conjured an air of evil that verged on self-parody (it is no coincidence that Spinal Tap used very similar stage sets); the unreality of the image was emphasised by the audience, a good half of which were 14-year-old girls wearing new Iron Maiden T shirts.  There's nothing so likely to lead you to question your taste than the knowledge that it is shared by trendy tots.

Karen Carpenter and the Nick Drake effect

The 40th anniversary of the start of The Carpenters' career has been marked by a publicity push, revining some ancient meoroies.  Although their music is some distance from my usual fare, I could recognise the quaility of production, good choise of song, pop craftsmanship and, above all, Karen's warm and clear voice.   However, there is a major challenge to fully enjoying the music now, as a result of an inversion of teh Nick Drake effect.  Nick's death, as a result of an accidental or deliberate overdose on his depression medication, has cast a retrospective sincerity and dignity over his all too scanty recorded output,  adding a layer of irony to his musings on confusion, isolation and world weariness.  In contrast, the knowledge that Karen died of anorexia, anxious and  unhappy, makes it hard, or indeed impossible, to enjoy the optimism and joie de vivre that marked the Carpenters' best work, often in tesnion with the lyrical content.  

Rock band name generator

A few suggestions:
NSFW
lol
redlink
TB:DR
H1N1
Cervarix
The Moat Cleaners
Edit war
Special guests
Huggahoody
Stealth tax
Troper
BLIX
e:zing
What the thunder said


.. or is that the new music stage line-up for Glastonbury 2010?

Obscured by obscurity: La Vallee (review)

The film La Vallee has intrigued me ever since seeing some stills on the cover of the Pink Floyd soundtrack album Obscured By Clouds, which I bought in 1974 or so on the grounds that it was cheaper than Dark Side of The Moon; it remains one of my favourite Floyd albums, partly because it retains a complexity and imprecision, recounting a narrative in verbal snapshots, interspersed with droning instrumentals.

It is hard for people nowadays to relaise just how obscure the obscure used to be. Even a film whose soundtrack was provided by one of the most famous groups in the world was almost impossible to access - it wasn't even shown in cinemas in the United States until 1978, and never made it onto VHS. It is easier these days to watch a celebrity sex tape than it used to be to watch a non-mainstream foreign film (or so I've heard). This is progress. A search result in You Tube suddenly reminded me that I could at last, with no expense and minimal effort, see the film in all its glory (La Vallee, I mean, not the sex tape). Although many clips have been posted on YouTube, most have been deleted for copyright reasons, but an apparently legitimate full version has been published on Google Video.


The film was directed by Barbet Schroeder, using a French cast (with some English dialogue), and was filmed in the mountains of Papua New Guinea, an area still remote and largely unexplored, and more so in 1973. The key character is Vivian (the beautiful Bulle Ogier) who travels (literally and metaphorically) from the unsatisfying materialistic world of a privileged Westerner to more primitive and simpler freedoms, in the company of a hippy gang and the natives they meet on the way to the mysterious valley whose location is unknown even to mapmakers since it is obscured by clouds.

Viewers should note that there some nudity and sex and some pigs being killed (less than these screenshots would imply - they have for some reason chosen the two most explicit parts of the whole film), but the main danger is that of boredom - its pace is slow and it adopts a documentary-style approach to both travel and encounters.






Is it any good? To me, there is strange culture historical shift in viewing a nearly-40-year-old film - the natives are still natives, but the colonials and the hippies are dinosaurs. The consistent moral contrast between white civilisation, violent, money-grubbing, exploitative and shallow, and primitive cultures which seemed happiest when far removed from contact, could be read as a critique of colonialism and cultural imperialism. But I don't think that Schroeder's intent is so political; he is more interested in the philosophical question of how we should live, and in particular, whether the path of Western consumerism and matrimony is a dead end as far as fulfilment is concerned.


For a long French film with an intellectual agenda, there is, in fact, remarkably little talking, let alone debate. Vivian's transformation is one of actions, not words. As ever with hippy films, the case for free love is unconvincingly made - here it appears to mean the freedom for women to spend time with a variety of selfish, lazy, pompous, arrogant, and sexist men (as someone once observed, free love was a godsend to ugly men because it made not sleeping with them seem uncool). But then, all of the hippies are shallow and feckless, keen on drugs, hugs and sex but little else; their intrinsic moral superiority to the colonial whites is pretty marginal. Unfortunately, the negative aspects of native culture are largely ignored, suggesting that moving closer to primitivism is a good thing, although, as one character says, they are just tourists, its lying to pretend you can fit in.

Not seeing the valley at the end frustrated some viewers, but unreasonably, I think. But this results from the more legitimate criticism, that having implied that modern and ancient culture and religion was lacking, there is no hint of what Schroeder feels should be put in their place.

So it's a bit boring. Any time Bulle is off-screen it drags; the plot is very literal, even if the filming is sumptuous. Perhaps the single biggest criticism is the poor use of the Pink Floyd soundtrack - apart from the credit sequences, most are used only in short segments, and they feel very much as an extraneous element to the film.

David Gilmour - Live in Gdansk (CD review)

The packaging of the album reflects the contents quite well, in that one sticker calls him 'the voice and guitar of Pink Floyd' and the other highlights the inclusion of 'all the songs from the {solo) album On An Island', and two ost-Waters Pink Floyd songs (High Hopes and A Great Day for Freedom).

The Pink Floyd songs are well-chosen, including the first four tracks of Dark Side of the Moon and Shine On You Crazy Diamond. These are presented in almost precise replications of the record versions (assisted no doubt by the presence in the band of Richard Wright (keyboards) and Dick Parry (saxophone); in a way, this process is so accurate as to become pointless - why not listen to the original version? Echoes is stretched further by a long and meandering, almost jazz-style, keyboard / guitar work-out. 'Fat Old Sun' is rescued from the obscurity of Atom Heart Mother, and is better than the original mainly from improved vocals.

The solo material is worse, and it's hard to work out why. Partly, there is the obvious point that to choose ten Floyd songs from 15 or so albums is easier than all of the songs from one, so you would expect some drop in quality. But beyond that, the solo stuff suffers because the arrangements are guitar-heavy and lack the sophisticated interplay of a band where all the instrumentalists contribute. Finally, it must be said that Floyd's musical style, and Gilmour's guitar and voice, is prone to grandness and bombasticism, making them better suited to subjects like madness, war and death than seaside walks and being in love (this isn't quite true: the albums from 1968 to 1972 included a batch of touching whimsical murmured emotionally sincere tracks, but these have been largely overshadowed by the 'classic' (Waters-written) more popular work). As a result, the On An Island sequence comes across as strained and aimless, with nice (mainly instrumental) moments but no momentum.

So the album isn't bad, but hardly makes a case for being a necessary purchase for Floyd fans.

Brinsley Schwarz is beautiful

There isn't much rational about which bands or artists people latch onto as their favourites. Whenever I try to triangulate my tastes the results don't work: how can I like Pink Floyd, Deep Purple and Wishbone Ash but not Genesis, Led Zep and U2? I don't think that it is coincidental that my attachment to these bands was formed in the late 70s when I was a teenager. It's odd, now, looking back: when people talk about 1977, or 1976, as the year of punk, I remember it as the year that I bought Pink Floyd's 60s albums. Almost all of my listening was an exercise in rediscovery. Unlike the purist muso, who loves nothing better than knowing of some obscure work of which nobody else has heard, I have always felt isolated: surely I can't be the only one who likes Patrik Fitzgerald?

Brinsley Schwarz: Brinsley Schwarz (1970)


My interest in Brinsley Schwarz was first inspired by recognising that the guitarist in The Rumour used to have a band; when I found that it also contained Ian Gomm and Nick Lowe, both of whom I had heard and liked, it seemed likely that I would also like it. I did, I suppose, although it was a bit of a shock: 50s and 60s retro, country rock, reggae, all in a strange mix with sharp lyrics.

Listening now, what you notice is the super-abundance of talent: a Hammond organ riff is overlain by sparkling melodic guitar, punctuated by a bubbling bass line, creating a joyous noise packed full of grace notes. The group stands head and shoulders above their contemporaries.

You can see, though, why they never broke through. Quite apart from the early hostility of the music press, who felt they'd been hyped, the records they made weren't really pop, any more than Nick Lowe's work is now. Good, yes, pop, no. And there is a thinness to the writing: every album has a couple of fillers, and the reliance as a fall-back on good-time rock and roll cliches can get wearing. I guess I'm trying to justify my opinion that, as all muso purists say, the early stuff is the best:

"Warm summer morning with nothing to do
Over my shoulder there's a beautiful blue
Guess I'll walk the four miles to Ebury Down
Go to see my lady when there's noone around"

Ebury Down (Nick Lowe) from Despite It All

I find it impossible to listen to their music without smiling and thinking of summer.

What music companies don't get about the web

A lot of people writing on the web criticise music companies for their antiquated approach to managing digital rights, ie by trying to control them. 'Why can't it be free?' they ask, apparently unconcerned with the impact of such a change on the artists they profess to admire. Experiments in giving away material for free have had an uneven history: Prince is presumably happy to have sold out his O2 concerts on the back of handing out his CD, but Radiohead are less sure. But as long as music companies exist and artists hope to make a living from their creative content, making stuff free can only be a tactical gimmick rather than standard policy. So, perhaps against the conventional wisdom, I would say that music companies are right to be worried about copyright evasion on the internet, right to attempt to prevent it, and right to take action against those who facilitate it.

Which is not to say that I think they 'get' the web. They don't. Over the last year I have been looking at the online presence of a range of artists, from Kate Bush, superstar, Sandi Thom, contemporary minor chart artist, Nick Lowe, cult artist, to Roy Harper, forgotten cult artist. What they have in common is that in terms of the web they are spread all over the place: a My Space page, artist home page, record label page, wikipedia entry, YouTube videos, and fan sites, and they are represented inconsistently in each. For example, when Sandi Thom was promoting her last single on her website and MySpace page, the record label website didn't even mention it. Nick Lowe's latest release, At My Age, didn't have a wikipedia page until I created one. The only good examples of use of the web as a promotional and information tool were for Neil Young and Graham Parker.

But why is it so bad? Partly because looking after the web takes time: somebody has to sit down and update the pages, respond to queries, etc; it isn't clear whether this responsibility should fall on the artist, management, or label, and so in many cases it is done by nobody.

Underlying this is the more basic problem: music companies are used to a B2B (business-to-business) model, where they produced the physical product and handled promotion, but supplied the product to shops to sell to the consumer. Their 'audience' was therefore made up of retailers on the one hand and media on the other. They are completely unequipped for the activity of selling things direct to consumers: this is reflected in the reluctance of record companies to get involvced with selling digital downloads of their songs from their sites: usually, potential buyers are sent to itunes to buy it, letting them take a share of the revenue. Similarly, physical product is sold via Amazon.

Another result is a total focus on the new and exciting. In most businesses, it is much harder to reach new customers than to keep existing ones. The music business is obsessed with selling new artists to teenagers, generally through the singles chart. But that is only part of the market. Why not exploit the older consumer, with more time and money, who might be persuaded, fairly easily, to buy back-catalogue CDs, DVDs and books from an artist they like, or liked?; this is a market which has outgrown the need for things to be free: even a full-price CD is cheap cmpared to other expenses. A sensible music company would make damned sure that its artist profiles covered past as well as present and had links to sell things.

In the past the media, particularly radio, were the best way of reaching out to potential purchasers, but the web provides others. This should, eventaully, change the practices of the industry: it may become economically viable for some artists to sell very small numbers of tracks, as long as they don't cost much to produce and promote. The danger (from the companies' point of view) is that they may have little role, since the artists may be quite capable of handling it themselves.

But it is strange when audiences for broadcast media are declining and fragmenting, that there is a new audience on the web eager for information and opportunities to buy, and they are being ignored or left to the mercies of established players like itunes.

UPDATE
Holly A Hughes suggests, correctly, that artists should see this as an essential part of their brand. I'm not sure I agree about the fan forum, though: I've seen a lot of tumbleweed forums which make you feel that you are distrubing the dead (Sandi Thom's, for one, but even Kate Bush's has gone very quiet in last last year).

Sandi Thom: a last farewell

I have been an accidental archivist of the Sandi Thom saga for four years now, fighting a guerilla war over her Wikipedia pages to correct the more extravagant and lazy claims of her PR company. In the course of doing so, I have learned a little of how conventional publicity works: the sudden stream of 'lifestyle' features that precede any new record release, the positive gloss on any events in which the start is involved, the attempt to promote controversy by being banned from YouTube or criticising Lily Allen, and , underlying it all, a deliberate vagueness about tour dates, audiences and record sales.

What is funny is that not long ago this could have gone on largely unnoticed: if the media picked up on it, it was true, if not, it was forgotten, consigned to wastepaper baskets overnight. But thanks to the Internet, nothing ever really goes away. This means that everything is potentially 'on the record', and potentially therefore a future embarassment.

Just in the last few weeks, Sandi has said that she is:

* writing songs for films
* moving to Brighton
* moving to New York
* planning to marry and have a baby
* concentrating on becoming established in America
* touring Europe
* releasing another single off the last album
* recording a new album
* undertaking a tour of small venues in Scotland

Well, that will keep her busy!

But I won't be watching. If I am going to spend some of my time in monitoring Internet activity relating to an artist, I think I'd rather it was someone whose work I admired. So long Sandi - it's been, well, you know.

Kate Bush: underrated genius?

I must admit that Kate Bush is one of those artists that I have always quite liked but never got as far as buying any of their records. Partly I think that this was a reaction to the distrust of my motives: did I just like her because she was beautiful?

Having spent some time looking at YouTube clips and their comments, I see that I was unusual in worrying about this. No wonder she distanced herself from her fans: I would. Not that she really was a recluse. It's funny how easy it is these days to become a recluse: stop going to film premieres, refuse to appear on quiz shows, move outside the M25, and suddenly you'e Simeon Stylites living up a pole in the desert.

But as I say I mostly liked her work. Looking back now, you can see that the unusual side to it is not its variation in quality, but in its ambition. She avoids straightforward autobiographical narrative. You can argue whether she does manage to evoke Joyce's Ulysses in The Sensual World, but how many other artists would you even think of asking the question?

Which is not to say that great rock needs to have literary pretensions: but it does need to have some form of intellectual complexity if it aspires to be more than good time rock and roll. I like Oasis, me, but would be the first to admit that their lyrics are basically:

some stuff here
some stuff here
hoo-oo-oo-ook

In interviews she is eloquent and polite; this is enough of a rarity to make her sound like a genius in the context of music programmes. She might be a genius; but more to the point she is thoughtful. You can see how she reponds to questions: she thinks it over, then tries to get from a mundane fact 'You learned the violin, didn't you?' to something worth saying, like how this taught her music theory and discipline.

Listening to something like Aerial requires a degree of attention unusual these days, both in terms of the music and in the lyrics which are diffuse and referential; but it is precisely this complexity that provides the intrigue.


Perhaps it is a sign of genius that you are cleverer than your fans: certainly Bob Dylan, Neil Young and Leonard Cohen are.

So are Metallica, but that's not quite the same thing.

End of the road for Sandi Thom

"Did you know that Sandi Thom is working at Abbey Road with Will Young, Michelle McManus and David Sneddon?"

"Are they recording?"

"No, they're the night shift at St John's Wood MacDonalds."



I have been following the story of Sandi Thom with, perhaps, more interest than it deserves, especially since I have no strong views on her music. It happened to be one of those news stories, like the WMD dodgy dossier, where it was obvious at the time that the media had been fed a line. At the time, those unfamiliar with the Web might believe that electronic word of mouth might increase nightly webcast audiences from zero to 40,000 in three weeks, but nobody else did. In the rush of skepticism that followed, many were left believing that the whole webcast thing was a stunt and that she had been signed to RCA/Sony beforehand, which isn't true (or at least is specifically denied by those who would be in a position to know).

It seems that the sands of time are running out on her career. The follow-up album charted for a single week, the single for two, despite media and personal appearances, interviews and advertising on YouTube. Any day now, RCA will surely pull the plug. It remains baffling that of the 300,000 people who were happy to buy the first album, only 1% wanted to buy the second (whatever its merits): she just seems to be one of those people who can sell large numbers of records without inspiring loyalty or affection from the purchasers. It looks as if "Punk rocker" will suffer the same fate as the Diana version of "Candle in the wind" as a record people are reluctant to admit having bought.

Last thoughts on Sandi Thom

Sandi's been down in Australia, which would account for the lack of promotion of her current UK single, 'Lonely Girl', which was scheduled for release last week. 'Punk rocker' is their song of the year, having sat for 14 weeks at No. 1. In an article in the Melbourne Age, the webcast myth is taken at face value:

But while her webcasts attract thousands, her popularity doesn't necessarily translate to the clubs. After details of a "secret show" in the city were released online on Tuesday, a crowd of only 25 turned up. The concert was then cancelled.

The article is respectfully titled "Very modern artist longs for age of innocence", but their web editor lets their feelings through by giving the page url as "that-blooming-punk-song".

Desolation Row: Bob Dylan's wasteland

Although he now disavows any studious intent in the construction his songs, Dylan's absorption of high and low culture and fashioning it into masterpieces of allusion is undeniable.

"You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images" Wasteland, line 21


I had always thought Desolation Row was his best song in its glorious Highway 61 version, delicately punctuated by acoustic guitar breaks. But now it is bookended by the earlier take, with electric guitar, on the No Direction Home soundtrack CD, and the strummed acoustic Live 1966 version; each is in its way nigh-perfect, but the minor changes in the lyrics emphasise just how precisely right the rest are.

It is a commonplace that the overall shape and structure of the song parallels that of T. S. Eliot's Wasteland, but as I looked at each line possible references came flooding in. This isn't to say that they were in Dylan's head when he wrote it; but they are there in mine when I hear it. I have marked the parallels with ** where I believe they are close enough to represent conscious references, and * the less definite ones.

Lyrics are copyright Bob Dylan.

I

They're selling postcards of the hanging

The bleak thrown-away horror here is masterful. Without the anger driving overt protest, it is as if the commercialisation and celebration of execution were too expected to be worthy of note.

Wasteland reference: line 55 'the Hanged man' [Tarot card reference: tarot=postcard] *

They're painting the passports brown

This line is less clear, although it is notable that the emphasis in this line is on the 'they' at the start: in line 1, it's almost lost, just syaing 'postcards are being sold', but here it is a They who is doing the painting. Brown is associated with soil, shit and death, and 'means noone no good'. My image of this is of visas or identity cards being stamped 'cancelled' before being returned to the now trapped citizens.

Wasteland: line 208 'under the brown fog of a winter noon' and line 211: 'documents at sight'

The beauty parlor is filled with sailors

What are the sailors doing there? Presumably being sexually transgressive. The world is turned upside down.

The circus is in town

I connect circus here with carnival and in turn to a feast of the senses, or debauchery, and with the 'freak show' cover photograph of the Basement Tapes.

Wasteland: line 56 "I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring" *

Here comes the blind commissioner

On first hearing, you automatically interpret this as a commissionaire, dressed up in hotel finery: a blind one might not be much good, but unworthy of note. Actually, thouygh, he quite definitely sings and writes 'commissioner', in which case he is presumably meaning some government official with quasi-judicial functions. The 'blind' then presumably relates to his powerlessness or unthinking fairness (blind justice with her scales).

Wasteland: line 46 "(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)" *

They've got him in a trance
One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker
The other is in his pants

I connect this with walking the plank: justice is not only blind but imperilled. In the early take, his hand is 'nailed in his pants', perhaps a cricifixion reference, but in the final version it appears the commissioner is choose to keep his hand there, presumably masturbating. And you know that makes you go blind.

And the riot squad they're restless
They need somewhere to go

The 'mob' of riot police is another aspect of the overturning of authority, when those supposed to uphold the law are keen to breach it.

As the Lady and I look out tonight
From Desolation Row

Wasteland: lines 49/50 "Here is Belladona, the Lady of the Rocks, / The lady of situations" **

II

Cinderella, she seems so easy
"It takes one to know one," she smiles
And puts her hands in her back pockets
Bette Davis style

The narrative here starts in the midst of a scene: clearly the singer has just said something while flirting with her, and she appears to respond positively.

Wasteland: line 253 "When lovely woman stoops to folly and / Paces about her room again, alone, / She smooths her hair with automatic hand, / And puts a record on the gramaphone." *


And in comes Romeo, he's moaning
"You Belong To Me I Believe"
And someone says, "You're in the wrong place, my friend
You better leave."

He's in the wrong place because love and sincerity of feeling do not operate on Desolation Row. The 'someone' who answers is presumably the singer.

And the only sound that's left
After the ambulances go

Obviously Romeo declines to leave quietly, and a fight ensues.

Dylan, "Pledging My Time": "They called for an ambulance, and one was sent / Someone must've got lucky, but it was an accident"

Is Cinderella sweeping up
On Desolation Row

Sweeping up the broken glass from the fight. No Prince Charmings on Desolation Row.


III

Now the moon is almost hidden
The stars are beginning to hide

Hidden by gathering doom-laden clouds.

The fortunetelling lady

Wasteland: line 43 'Madam Sosostris, famous clairvoyante' *

Has even taken all her things inside

The time to worry is when psychics panic.

All except for Cain and Abel
And the hunchback of Notre Dame
Everybody is making love
Or else expecting rain

Cain and Abel are too busy fighting; Quasimodo knows his beloved is dead. But sort of rain can be expected from such an ominous cloud?

And the Good Samaritan, he's dressing
He's getting ready for the show
He's going to the carnival tonight
On Desolation Row

Charity and good fellowship have been replaced by cynicism and hedonism.


IV

Now Ophelia, she's 'neath the window
For her I feel so afraid
On her twenty-second birthday
She already is an old maid

Because she has gone to the Nunnery.

To her, death is quite romantic
She wears an iron vest
Her profession's her religion
Her sin is her lifelessness

She chooses death rather than devotion only to God.

And though her eyes are fixed upon
Noah's great rainbow

The rainbow is supposed to be a sign of God's ultimate forgiveness, so she hopes for redemption.

She spends her time peeking
Into Desolation Row

But she is too aware of reality to succumb.


V

Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood
With his memories in a trunk
Passed this way an hour ago
With his friend, a jealous monk

Einstein presumably regrets the consequences of his genius.

Wasteland: line 362 "There is always another one walking beside you/ Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded" **

He looked so immaculately frightful
As he bummed a cigarette
Then he went off sniffing drainpipes
And reciting the alphabet

Einstein is reduced to an idiot savant.

Now you would not think to look at him
But he was famous long ago
For playing the electric violin
On Desolation Row

Fame is transient; nothing endures.


VI

Dr. Filth, he keeps his world
Inside of a leather cup
But all his sexless patients
They're trying to blow it up

The doctor's name hardly inspires confidence, and neither does the reaction of his patients. He sounds like a Nazi doctor in the death camps.

Now his nurse, some local loser
She's in charge of the cyanide hole

The medicinal use of cyanide confirms the interpretation.

And she also keeps the cards that read
"Have Mercy On His Soul"

Wateland: line 52 "And this card, which is blank, is something he carries on his back, which I am forbidden to see". *

They all play on penny whistles
You can hear them blow
If you lean your head out far enough
From Desolation Row


VII

Across the street they've nailed the curtains
They're getting ready for the feast

The Last Supper.

The Phantom of the Opera
A perfect image of a priest

Judas.

They're spoonfeeding Casanova
To get him to feel more assured
Then they'll kill him with self-confidence
After poisoning him with words
And the Phantom's shouting to skinny girls
"Get Outta Here If You Don't Know
Casanova is just being punished for going
To Desolation Row"

Casanova is being punished by being crucified.


VIII

Now at midnight all the agents

Wasteland: line 232 "A small house agent's clerk, with one bold stare, One of the low on whom assurance sits"

W. H. Auden , 'The Fall of Rome': "Agents of the Fisc pursue/ Absconding tax defaulters"

And the superhuman crew

This wraps up Nietzsche's Superman and Shaw's 'Man and Superman', covering both left-and right-wing politics.

Come out and round up everyone
That knows more than they do

The hatred for educated people is a good indicator of tyranny, shared by the book-burning Nazis, Mao's Great Leap Forward, and the lunacy of Pol Pot's victimisation of anyone wearing glasses.

Then they bring them to the factory
Where the heart-attack machine
Is strapped across their shoulders
And then the kerosene
Is brought down from the castles
By insurance men who go

Industrial evil: death factories.
Kafka (the insurance clerk): the Castle, the tyranny of bureaucracy

Check to see that nobody is escaping
To Desolation Row


IX

Praise be to Nero's Neptune
The Titanic sails at dawn

Wasteland: line 56 "Fear death by water" *

And everybody's shouting
"Which Side Are You On?"
And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot
Fighting in the captain's tower

While calypso singers laugh at them
And fishermen hold flowers

Wasteland: line 261 "The pleasant whining of a mandoline / And a clatter and a chatter from within / Where fishmen lounge at noon" *

Between the windows of the sea
Wasteland: line 47 "the drowned Phoenician sailor" *

Where lovely mermaids flow

Wasteland: line 96 "In which sad light a carved dolphin swam"
Prufrock: "I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each" *

And nobody has to think too much
About Desolation Row


X

Yes, I received your letter yesterday
(About the time the door knob broke)

Wasteland: line 411 "I have heard the key / Turn in the door once and turn once only / We think of the key, each in his prison" *

When you asked how I was doing
Was that some kind of joke?

Wasteland: line 115 "I never know what you are thinking." *

All these people that you mention
Yes, I know them, they're quite lame
I had to rearrange their faces
And give them all another name

My reality is unique to me and we can't even agree on what to call things that are 'out there'.

Right now I can't read too good
Don't send me no more letters no
Not unless you mail them
From Desolation Row

The letters here are a reference back to postcards at the start, making the song cyclical.

Sandi Thom: What if I'm crap

The moment of truth for Sandi Thom is nigh. On 31 August, her follow-up single to the No. 1 international smash "I wish I was a punk rocker (with flowers in my hair)" will be released, and we will see once and for all whether it was all hype or if she has established a fanbase. She has spent much of the last few months appearing at numerous festivals, a trick employed with some success by Roy Harper in the 60s, so it is still unlcear whether people will actually pay to see her (and in the light of the webcast saga, it is notable that so few of the people who saw her live in 2005 liked it very much).

I did quite like "Punk rocker": it was at least original in arrangment, going for acapella and then full band, when it could easliy have been Katie Melua style acoustic wibbling. I even smiled at the start, although I tended to get bored by the end. But it was catchy and instantly memorable and energetic. I've only heard "What if I'm right" once on the radio, but it seemed to be none of those things.

Lyrically, it is different (Full lyrics here): the nostalgia of Punk rocker led those who are cynical to suggest that the song was largely written by the co-writer rather than Thom. "What if I'm right" sounds more like a young person's view of the possible future. But it's not very good: here's my comments:

It wont be an uphill struggle, on you I can depend
...
you'll cover me in diamonds, there's nothing I want more

"On you I can depend" has to be one of the most awkward lines ever written, and all to achieve a poor rhyme.
Nothing she wants more than being covered with diamonds?
An odd ambition.

...
And you'll always tape the football
And let me watch my soap

Nothing like being a modern woman, is there? He'll 'let you' watch your soap (which nearly rhymes with coat).

And when I give birth to our children
I will feel no pain

Planet Earth calling Sandi: don't be so superficial. And you know, birth might hurt. You'd certainly thinks so from the screams from the delivery suite.

And you'll bring the showers

What? Showers?

You'll say I'm thin and bring the washing in

What a charming domestic vignette: you're thin, and here's the washing.

And when you need to change the light bulb
You won't hand me the chair

I'm not sure is 'handing you the chair' is some obscure euphemism: it certainly isn't a conventional phrase.

You'll sell your vinyl records
And go get us a loan

She obviously knows someone obsessed with vinyl, since it also came up in Punkrocker (unlike, I would add, Bob Dylan and Neil Young who have always been keen to explore what new technology might bring). As I put it in Written in your heart:

ED: Yes, they ought to warn you when you're 18 that you are forming your musical tastes for life. I've just been buying the Dylan remasters. It's not the same, though. There's something about vinyl. You HAD to respect it- no finger nails, keep it clean, put it away. Not like CDs - Is that a CD or a coffee mat? Answer: both. And the little booklets in one-point type. No substitute for a lyric sheet.

CHARLOTTE: Still, all my vinyl records are unplayable: scratched and warped.

ED: Oh, if you want to be practical! Spoil my Nick Hornby moment!

You'll be my sympathetic lover
And won't steal the covers
But I've got my doubts and what if I'm right?
You won't forsake me
Your mother won't hate me
...

Now, there is a strong tradition of near-rhymes in popular songs, but this is usually used to allow the use of informal and idiomatic language, not drivel about stealing covers, forsaking (FFS), and mothers in law.

It looks as if Punkrocker was a fluke and that Sandi's natural role is as a teenage wordsmith, indistinguishable, apart from by PR, from all the millions of MySpace 'friends'.

Update: a sad statistic from the Sandi Thom official website Forum:
Most users ever online was 24 on Sun Jun 04, 2006 7:53 pm

Sandi Thom: I wish I was a PR man with money in the bank

Her CD has a sticker: "The singer who webcast to the world from her Tooting basement". It is becoming clear that, far from being an impoverished artist using new technology to reach an audience, her success is a triumph of conventional marketing. The webcasts were effectively showcase gigs intended to garner major label interest, after last year's small-label release failed to get any higher than No. 55 despite Radio 2 airplay. The vagueness of ST and her backers about the numbers of viewers of the webcast smacks of fiction: if there really were 70,000 (or, later, 40,000) people tuning in having picked up on an Internet buzz, it is astonishing that so few blogged about it, mentioned in on a website measured by Technorati, or visited her MySpace site: the Internet buzz followed the press reports, not the other way round. It looks as if she used the webcast angle as a way of making unverifiable claims for popularity in order to get the labels hungry. They did, and RCA (or rather Sony BMG, trading as RCA) eventually snapped her up.

Her current success has been driven partly by expensive PR: when was the last time a debut (or 'debut') single was released (re-released) with two weeks of TV adverts? But more than that, there has been the collusion of the press, which has picked up on the webcast thing and given her massive exposure in the print media. A little digging, or even the application of memory or common sense, would have led to a more critical approach, but everyone seems to have concluded, with the editor in The Man Who Shot Liberty valance, that given the choice of telling the truth or printing the legend, you should print the legend.

The 'new star created by the Internet' story is a popular one, one that people keep trying to foist on any act with enough savvy to register their own web domain. I think the appeal lies in the Cinderella myth: the daydream that someone can become rich and famous overnight, without having paid any dues. ST has been plugging away for years, touring, recording, session singing, but that's not what people want: they want Chantelle success, similar to the daydream you enjoy in the period between buying a lottery ticket and finding out you haven't won. This is nothing new: when video first came along, Toni Basil found instant stardom (although Wikipedia tells me that her first single was recorded 15 years before 'Hey Mickey'); when Paul Macartney 'discovered' Mary Hopkin, she was already an experienced and well-trained singer in the Welsh music scene.

What is perhaps surprising is the fury that ST's success has unleashed. The air is thick with complaints about a 'cynical marketing ploy', a phrase that has always seemed to me to be redundant: what, you mean it isn't a good old philanthropic altruistic marketing ploy? Yet those who continue to be amazed at the antics of the music business always seem to forget the 'business' part. Music involves money. I can remember one rock god saying despairingly that you could tell you had made it when you were employing people you didn't even know about. Music is expensive. Mainstream acts can revel in this: the manufactured nature of the Spice Girls, Westlife, the Sugababes is part of the fun. But for left-field acts you're supposed to ignore it, so that U2, the Rolling Stones, Sting, retain some credibility (or are supposed to) while also raking in money faster than many small countries. Again, this is nothing new: Pink Floyd appeared in the 60s on the Harvest label, an EMI owned company which was intended to obscure the corporate nature of the organisation behind the band.

It would of course be totally cynical to suggest that the press gave the Sandi story such an easy ride because Sony BMG places so much advertising in their papers. It wasn't like that in '69 or '77. Except it was- as Patrik Fitzgerald said at the time, it was "Come and get your punk in Woolworth's / Bondage trousers - twelve pounds" (Make it safe).

I was going to put a link to Sandi Thom's website, but then I thought, 'Why should I? She never links to mine!' (Copyright the estate of Spike Milligan) Her website needs Flash to view it. These crazy web nuts!


Update

Sandi appeared on BBC Radio 4's arts magazine, Front Row, on Wednesday 19/7/06, and was asked specifically about the webcast/PR controversy. She said the whole 'penniless songwriter' thing had come from the press, not from her, since she acknowldedges she had the backing of a small record label, a management company and a PR firm before the Tooting webcasts started. This is a little disingenuous, since her she has certainly seemed keen to emphasise the squalor of the 'piss-stained basement', as if to imply that she had no backing. Quized about the webcast audience figures, she preferred to talk about how cool it was that people [however many there were] were viewing from all over the world. That doesn't impress me much: even this humble blog is regularly visited by sleepless people in Southeast Asia who want to know what "Blowin' in the Wind" means , or about megalomaniacs. Sher did end by endorsing the Web as a place where people can say what they think, which is good in its way, I suppose.

Bob Dylan and the Dead Sea Scrolls

"You gotta heed the Teacher of Righteousness
If you want to know the Way
The Wicked Priest's a spouter of lies
You can't belie-ee-eeve him when he prays"

Could be a John Wesley Harding , Slow Train Coming or Infidels outtake, but in fact has been cobbled together by me: the phrases in bold are from the Dead Sea Scrolls. In Chronicles Vol. 1, and elsewhere, he has made it clear that he doesn't (as most of his commentators imply) sit down with his reference books around him and laboriously construct his songs like a crossword. Instead, he simply inhales a wide range of cultural sources and leaves them to emerge from his unconscious. But for all four of the key elements of the Scrolls texts to reflect so closely his concerns is evidence enough for me that he has at some point come across them.

Languor in Leeds: Corinne Bailey Rae's Yorkshire

Corinne Bailey Rae's 'Put your records on' is all over the radio at the moment, and is a charming piece of pop. But it doesn't quite ring true of Corinne's Yorkshire home, so when it comes on the radio, I have to add a response to the less credible lines:

Summer came like cinnamon, So sweet IN LEEDS
Little girls double-dutch on the concrete. IN LEEDS

Blue as the sky, sombre and lonely, IN LEEDS
Sipping tea in the bar by the road side, IN LEEDS

But I suppose the most surprising thing is that she knows what records are, rather than guessing vaguely that they were some quaint technology that old people used to have before there was electricity.

Say it isn't so

As well as being a novelist-who-can't-finish-a-novel and a mainly unpublished poet, I am also a songwriter manque (or, as someone said, a manky songwriter). I have put together a demo of songs, which I would rate (as far as I can tell) as very good songs played moderately well and sang borderline bearably. (The songs include Have to remember to forget you and Cuts both ways.)

But I have been encouraged by Erin Monahan's more generous view:

Now, in his note he warns me that he can't sing, which as far as I can tell is pure English modesty, or a good ole crock'o'shit because I thoroughly enjoyed each song.

If anyone is interested enough to want a copy, just leave a message so I can get in touch.

That's entertainment

One thing they say about the film industry is that "Nobody knows anything". It is impossible to predict which of the under-written over-hyped star vehicles that Hollywood churns out will turn into a billion-dollar money spinner and which will be a Heaven's Gate or Waterworld. Everybody says it, everybody knows it, but nobody wonders why. The reason why is simple: nobody knows anything because nobody learns anything. It seems just a week ago (but is in fact two years) that the BBC decided to re-launch Top of the Pops on Friday night to halt the decline in audience and in particular to recapture the elusive hip young audience (aka the dim and ignorant); their secret weapon was Fearne Cotton, who is as intelligent as she is talented (see my Live 8 post for details). Unfortunately, the radical redesign only accelerated the decline, and so the programme was moved: new channel, new time, new day, new look, new--no, same presenters. And what happens? New TOTP loses half its audience. If there's a common factor, I just can't think of it.

This reminds me of the story of the man in the hospital talikng to his wife "You were with me when I lost my job; you were with me when my dog died; you were with me when the roof fell off the house; you were with me when I was in a car crash; and now you're with me when I'm sick. Face it, woman, you're a f***ing jinx!"

The obligatory Live8 post

[IRONY MODE: ON]

There's been quite a backlash against the rich and famous people who used to be quite popular who took part in the concerts, suggesting that they are ignorantly and hypocritically spouting off about trendy issues without understanding them. This has annoyed political commentators, because that's their job.

I for one would rather hear a multimillionaire tell me about the importance of looking after other people than their more usual topics, encouraging gun crime, drug abuse, or vague New Age mysticism. I remember being shocked when Nelson Mandela agreed to be photographed meeting the Spice Girls; but now he's had his garden done up by Alan Titchmarsh and the Ground Force team, it's clear he's just a has-been C-list celebrity who would attend the opening of a packet of crisps if there was going to be a photographer there.

I saw in one comment the view that "Live8 has proved that miracles can happen - if the members of Pink Floyd can be persuaded to share a stage for 10 minutes then sorting out poverty and the environment will be easy".

I didn't actually catch much of the concert, partly because the BBC TV coverage seemed to assume that having assembled a panoply of stars unparalleled in the history of pop (or whatever), the music should be punctuated (and obscured) by witless interviews backstage, mainly by Fearne Cotton (who is born to do witless). (Incidentally, the BBC seem desperate to try to turn her into a happening presenter, unaware that she was disqualified for a Best New TV Personality award because she hasn't got one).

Our 4-year-old was happily dancing to Ms Dynamite, and my wife said "She would love to be there if she was older". I said that with any luck there would be another global catastrophe in 20 years time, and she could go to that.

I'd've liked to see Neil Young closing the Canada concert, but the BBC ignored that one completely. (Apparently it was very good. Thanks, BBC)

[IRONY MODE : OFF]

Overall, though, I'd have to say that any event which united the 18-25 lads and ladettes in thinking about the world, the future, and other people, is a good thing, and that the Big Brother gang cannot be taken as representing a true cross-section of the population. Thank St Bob for that.

A list of very short musical lists

No, not my top 20, 50, 200. I'm going for the hard categories, with only 1 entry (or so).

Metamusic (songs about songs)

1. Good songs with "Rock'n'Roll" in the title
.... and the winner is Bowie "Rock'n'roll suicide"

2. Good songs with "Radio" in the title
...and the winner is Elvis Costello "Radio radio"

3. Good songs with "Music" in the title
...and the winner is Heart "Love me like music (I'll be your song)"

Good songs about Sarah
None (see below)

Good songs about Sara
Tie: Fleetwood Mac, Dylan

Meisterworks (Concept albums where the concept is worth having)
...and the winner is Pink Floyd "Wish you were here" [and NOT "Dark Side..." or "The Wall"]
runner-up Neil Young "Greendale"

Live albums better than studio versions
...and the winner is Dylan "Live 1996 Manchester Apollo (The "Royal Albert Hall Concert")" (extra points for snappy title)
runners-up Nils Lofgren "Night after night" , Wishbone Ash "Live dates"

Double albums without padding
... and the winner is Dylan "Blonde on blonde" [duh]
runners-up: can't think of any

Blog lists without padding
None - oops