Monday, December 29, 2003
The quest question
If I don't post again, it will be because I have dared to venture beyond my front door for the first time since casting aspersions on the Lord of The Rings, and I have been gunned down by the angry gunmen I see moving in the shadows at twilight. There will be a single silenced pinpoint shot; I shall gasp once, then fall quietly amongst the pots on the door step in a deeply poignant juxtaposition of death and the tiny tips of this year's crocuses. Beautiful, tragic, and, I like to think, bleakly photogenic.
But, naturally, I digress, and before I succumb to my untimely demise, I want to try and clarify what I mean about films involving long walks - the question of the quest.
It's not the walk itself that is the problem. No stranger to the long distance footpaths of Southern Britain, I'm all in favour of yomping out the knots in one's soul. As someone who has twice completed 50 miles cross country in a day, in competition and carrying survival kit, I understand the character building nature of testing the limits of one's physical and psychological endurance. The outer journey and the inner journey, yadda, yadda - trust me, I get it.
And yes, I also know that all that's just walking; it's not a quest. For it to be a quest, there has to be some higher purpose, some moral or spiritual dimension, and this is where I beg to differ with so many films that stake any kind of claim to the genre.
Let's start with Rabbit Proof Fence - two small Aborigine girls go for a very long walk. They encounter assorted difficult obstacles and it is a remarkable journey, but it's not a quest. Their purpose was to get back to their people - an important battle for natural justice against the evil machinations of colonial rule? Arguably it could have been, but the story as told was more a case of wanting to be home in time for tea and a bedtime story.
In contrast with that pretty small scale homespun kind of movie is the all-star outing Cold Mountain. All kinds of people tell me it's an outstanding novel, but I can't imagine being as bowled over by it as respected critical opinion suggests I should, because again, what they like is the quest. Forgive me if I'm already getting repetitive but it's not a quest - it's a long walk. Inman trudges a zillion miles back from the Civil War front he sees gruesome action at, permanently within millimetres of his life, shot at and beaten at every turn, half starved and delirious with pain. He shows quite extraordinary courage, compassion and dignity in facing his circumstances. He is heroic in going way beyond any human kind of endurance. But again, why is he doing this? Well, for himself - to get back home to the idealised vision of a woman he barely knew before he went to war.
Doesn't such a true and noble love qualify as quest material? Arguably, but to my mind it can only truly work if it is never attained - isn't the striving the spiritual thing; the achievement a merely material satisfaction? I think I'm arguing here for a quest aesthetic in which the only acceptable outcome is death on the road, and that of course, is inimicable to the Hollywood ending.
So, where does that leave Lord of The Rings? Well, I dunno yet, cos I haven't got round to completing the physical and psychological endurance test of the final 3.5 hours down the UGC. But let's face it, we all know I'm not likely to be impressed.
Morally and spiritually, on the surface it appears to have quest potential - furry feet boy has to save the universe from doom and destruction. But hey, just stop and look at this again. Call 'doom and destruction' change and Frodo becomes a force of intolerable conservatism, desperate to keep his furry little world cocooned away from the other peoples of the planet. Are they really so bad? Well, I for one still can't tell which wizard is which, each seeming to have about the same desire for violence, trickery and mindless destruction.
But I will magnanimously accept, for the sake of argument, that this is quest material, and the reason it is so tedious lies somewhere off to the side of this. And I think it's this - that although the battle of good versus evil is important, actually it is not central either to the film or what I have managed to endure of the novel. What is constantly foregrounded is information, and not character or story. It is an exercise in geekery, with all those maps and character types, names, places, languages, customs...
Yes, this creates a unique and coherent fantastical world, and plenty of people like this. But I come back to my point about cocoons and intolerable conservatism. And this is, I think, my problem with all fantasy fiction. The reader has no place in it. It cannot change. It's always a furry world with everything exactly in its place, and which you can only enter if you are prepared to do The Knowledge. It's like needing to know the name of the Prime Minister and the captain of the England cricket team to be accepted as an asylum seeker. And I don't think much of that either.
I have no doubt Frodo will save the universe and be back home in time for tea and a bedtime story, but there will be an unpleasant price to pay for this in the longer term. It will take generations for hobbits to be able to eat chicken tikka masala, play the blues, and dance like the devil without grandpa Frodo and his mates playing the furry world conservation card.
I come back to my earlier point that Buffy always does it better. The final episode shared that same old end of quest deflation - oh look, we did it - but you need to read the show better than that to see its final beauty. The real quest was not Buffy's (let's face it, she was always gonna win) but Spike's.
Spike started as a mummy's boy several centuries ago. Not the obvious stuff of questing heroism, any more than the vicious vampire he later became. True love lifted him into the realms of mythical heroism, with harsh rejection at first and spiritual unrequitedness at best to sharpen his plight. Utterly degraded by the power of his frustrated passion, he performed tortuous labours of Hercules, and against all his inclinations and intentions, got his soul back. Painfully, cruelly aware that his rejection by Buffy was deserved, he strived simply to serve at her side. And when the right time came, he just stood there - a noble, heroic, self-sacrificing man, letting the forces of goodness shine their light through him to destroy the hellmouth, his soul on fire not only to redeem his mortal damaged past but also to save the world the woman he loved loved, at the expense of his own life. But worth a thousand times more than just this Christ-like sacrifice was what he said, because in a few simple words he stuck two fingers right up to the forces of intolerable conservatism (including Buffy and all in her cosy furry world), saying "I wanna see how it ends!"
Now that's what I call a quest...
If I don't post again, it will be because I have dared to venture beyond my front door for the first time since casting aspersions on the Lord of The Rings, and I have been gunned down by the angry gunmen I see moving in the shadows at twilight. There will be a single silenced pinpoint shot; I shall gasp once, then fall quietly amongst the pots on the door step in a deeply poignant juxtaposition of death and the tiny tips of this year's crocuses. Beautiful, tragic, and, I like to think, bleakly photogenic.
But, naturally, I digress, and before I succumb to my untimely demise, I want to try and clarify what I mean about films involving long walks - the question of the quest.
It's not the walk itself that is the problem. No stranger to the long distance footpaths of Southern Britain, I'm all in favour of yomping out the knots in one's soul. As someone who has twice completed 50 miles cross country in a day, in competition and carrying survival kit, I understand the character building nature of testing the limits of one's physical and psychological endurance. The outer journey and the inner journey, yadda, yadda - trust me, I get it.
And yes, I also know that all that's just walking; it's not a quest. For it to be a quest, there has to be some higher purpose, some moral or spiritual dimension, and this is where I beg to differ with so many films that stake any kind of claim to the genre.
Let's start with Rabbit Proof Fence - two small Aborigine girls go for a very long walk. They encounter assorted difficult obstacles and it is a remarkable journey, but it's not a quest. Their purpose was to get back to their people - an important battle for natural justice against the evil machinations of colonial rule? Arguably it could have been, but the story as told was more a case of wanting to be home in time for tea and a bedtime story.
In contrast with that pretty small scale homespun kind of movie is the all-star outing Cold Mountain. All kinds of people tell me it's an outstanding novel, but I can't imagine being as bowled over by it as respected critical opinion suggests I should, because again, what they like is the quest. Forgive me if I'm already getting repetitive but it's not a quest - it's a long walk. Inman trudges a zillion miles back from the Civil War front he sees gruesome action at, permanently within millimetres of his life, shot at and beaten at every turn, half starved and delirious with pain. He shows quite extraordinary courage, compassion and dignity in facing his circumstances. He is heroic in going way beyond any human kind of endurance. But again, why is he doing this? Well, for himself - to get back home to the idealised vision of a woman he barely knew before he went to war.
Doesn't such a true and noble love qualify as quest material? Arguably, but to my mind it can only truly work if it is never attained - isn't the striving the spiritual thing; the achievement a merely material satisfaction? I think I'm arguing here for a quest aesthetic in which the only acceptable outcome is death on the road, and that of course, is inimicable to the Hollywood ending.
So, where does that leave Lord of The Rings? Well, I dunno yet, cos I haven't got round to completing the physical and psychological endurance test of the final 3.5 hours down the UGC. But let's face it, we all know I'm not likely to be impressed.
Morally and spiritually, on the surface it appears to have quest potential - furry feet boy has to save the universe from doom and destruction. But hey, just stop and look at this again. Call 'doom and destruction' change and Frodo becomes a force of intolerable conservatism, desperate to keep his furry little world cocooned away from the other peoples of the planet. Are they really so bad? Well, I for one still can't tell which wizard is which, each seeming to have about the same desire for violence, trickery and mindless destruction.
But I will magnanimously accept, for the sake of argument, that this is quest material, and the reason it is so tedious lies somewhere off to the side of this. And I think it's this - that although the battle of good versus evil is important, actually it is not central either to the film or what I have managed to endure of the novel. What is constantly foregrounded is information, and not character or story. It is an exercise in geekery, with all those maps and character types, names, places, languages, customs...
Yes, this creates a unique and coherent fantastical world, and plenty of people like this. But I come back to my point about cocoons and intolerable conservatism. And this is, I think, my problem with all fantasy fiction. The reader has no place in it. It cannot change. It's always a furry world with everything exactly in its place, and which you can only enter if you are prepared to do The Knowledge. It's like needing to know the name of the Prime Minister and the captain of the England cricket team to be accepted as an asylum seeker. And I don't think much of that either.
I have no doubt Frodo will save the universe and be back home in time for tea and a bedtime story, but there will be an unpleasant price to pay for this in the longer term. It will take generations for hobbits to be able to eat chicken tikka masala, play the blues, and dance like the devil without grandpa Frodo and his mates playing the furry world conservation card.
I come back to my earlier point that Buffy always does it better. The final episode shared that same old end of quest deflation - oh look, we did it - but you need to read the show better than that to see its final beauty. The real quest was not Buffy's (let's face it, she was always gonna win) but Spike's.
Spike started as a mummy's boy several centuries ago. Not the obvious stuff of questing heroism, any more than the vicious vampire he later became. True love lifted him into the realms of mythical heroism, with harsh rejection at first and spiritual unrequitedness at best to sharpen his plight. Utterly degraded by the power of his frustrated passion, he performed tortuous labours of Hercules, and against all his inclinations and intentions, got his soul back. Painfully, cruelly aware that his rejection by Buffy was deserved, he strived simply to serve at her side. And when the right time came, he just stood there - a noble, heroic, self-sacrificing man, letting the forces of goodness shine their light through him to destroy the hellmouth, his soul on fire not only to redeem his mortal damaged past but also to save the world the woman he loved loved, at the expense of his own life. But worth a thousand times more than just this Christ-like sacrifice was what he said, because in a few simple words he stuck two fingers right up to the forces of intolerable conservatism (including Buffy and all in her cosy furry world), saying "I wanna see how it ends!"
Now that's what I call a quest...
Sunday, December 21, 2003
The word arse is a wonderful thing
Okay, I've held off long enough. I've given them every chance. I didn't spoil anybody's mobile phone voting fun. But just while I'm on the subject, what is that about, eh? Don't get me wrong, I'm all in favour of modern communication technologies, and I'm easy with anything that increases participation in the processes of democracy, but really, do people not understand the multiple pleasurings to be had from a polling station?... Lying on your sofa to vote, with a bottle of Becks in one hand, and your other thumb on a teeny keypad - the size of which must lead to all sorts of accidental voting horrors - just doesn't give the process due respect. No, there is something deeply reverential (well, okay, maybe that's because my polling station is in the local methodist church) about entering that little plywood booth (and who makes them? - another one for my forthcoming series of careers pamphlets, though I suspect it may, in a stroke of very black cosmic humour, be Chinese political prisoners). And the stubby pencil on a bit of string - it's poetry to txt-voting's lumpen pseudo-prose.
But I've digressed before I've even started - how bad is that?!... Today's blog-topic is the nation's favourite read. And how the hell a nation that produced the genius of Blake, Dickens, Woolf and Frances Hodgson Burnett, a nation of the greatest writers, which must find its logical corollary in a nation of great readers, how could it have voted the bloody Lord of the sodding tedious Rings "The Nation's Favourite Read"?
I have been shunned from polite society in the past few years of epic film-of-the-book-going for saying this, but I shall say it again. It has no plot: two small boys with hairy feet go for a very long walk; the end. It has crap characters I simply can't give a toss about: goblinny furry people of the most yak-inducing sentimentality. The eternal theme of good triumphing over evil? - well, I'm sorry, but Buffy does it infinitely better. She killed the love of her life for the greater good, died to save the world and her sister, was unwillingly resurrected, and still she faced down the final apocalypse and won. Bilbo Baggins, my arse...
Anyway, I'm ringing up the BBC to demand a recount. All those people have not actually read that book - they've just watched the films, and that cannot possibly count as a "read". How can I speak with such authoritative conviction? Well, have you ever actually tried to read those books? At school fetes there was always this dumb "game" where you paid money to see if you could eat a whole packet of cream crackers without a drink - or presumably, without choking to death, which may have been the point, teachers generally being in possession of a very disturbed sense of humour. Well, reading Lord of the Rings is just like that. I'd rather do the cream crackers.
Number 2 in the poll was Pride and Prejudice and the same argument holds - it is Colin Firth's wet shirt that has done it, because reading a whole Jane Austen novel is also technically impossible. It thrums with tedium, and no amount of clever dinner party yakking will ever convince me that this is hilariously ironic in a deliciously ahead of its time postmodern kind of way. No, it's a clear case of The Emperor's New Clothes here - it's arse and we all know that really!
It's almost enough to put one off reading for life, but I resolved last New Year to read 10 whole books, like, you know, cover to cover, this year, and these fragments I shall shore against my ruins. Haven't quite hit 10 yet with 10 days to go - have only just entered the third epoch of Wilkie Collins and his not terribly mysterious woman in white, and still have a whole one to go after that - but here's the rest of my actual, with a book, not just the film adaptation, reading year.
Claire Tomalin's biography of Samuel Pepys
Okay, so I don't read enough books, but this was a brick and I read it all. Best bit: his ability to persuade every young woman he ever met to give him hand relief under his cloak on the carriage drive home. I may yet buy a cloak and start travelling by bus.
Haruki Murakami's Dance, Dance, Dance
You want stories of parallel dimensions? Read Murakami, whose characters are always slipping outside the planes of reality in ways that make entirely logical sense in our crazy fucked up modern world. Best bit: the sheep professor. Erm, that's a professor who is a sheep, not an expert farmer.
Ian McEwan's Atonement
The master of striking visual scenes accompanied me to a caravan on an Italian hillside. Good bit with the fountain, but not a patch on Enduring Love and the balloon accident.
William Dalrymple's White Mughals
Now I gave up history at the earliest possible opportunity, and I just can't read the stuff - unless it's written by William Dalrymple, with whom I would definitely sleep simply on the strength of his elegant, intelligent, lyrical prose style. Oooh, steady.... Great story of pre-Raj British in India, without all the colonialist crap that came later.
William Boyd's Any Human Heart
A curious one, this. All the way through I thought pretentious, self-referential, self-satisfied, up-it's-own-arse postmodern bullshit. And then I put it down and cried because it was actually a very beautiful story about human endurance. My novel of the year - and my second year A Level class are defintely getting the bit where the hero eats dog food mixed with curry powder and considers it quite tasty as an unseen appreciation passage.
Matthew Kneale's Sweet Thames
Re-read English Passengers too in preparation for teaching it, but this earlier work was ghastly by comparison. Boring crap about crap. Don't bother.
A.C. Grayling's The Meaning of Things
Philosophical ruminations on life, drawing on all religions and philosophies great and small. I particularly enjoyed the part where he said that going out on a bender now and again was a critically important part of every individual's understanding of self and humanity. I knew there was a reason!!
Salam Pax's The Baghdad Blog
A must-read and next time the exam board set war literature, this is going in the anthology whether they like it or not. Witty, irreverent, and caustic about politics. Very cool funky prose style - but I'm afraid I only really go for lyrical poetic beauty when it comes to sleeping with writers in my fantasy debauchery league. Sorry Salam, but hey, let's have a beer some time - I think we could have some fun.
So, that leaves rather tedious Wilkie Collins to finish - I am just SO SO rubbish at reading mystery novels and should never have got started with this one. I know I shall finish it still not knowing whodunnit or why, but hey-ho, one must soldier on. That's only going to leave me a few days to read the tenth resolution book, and I know already that it's going to be Nigel Slater's Toast.
A celebrity chef's autobiography, I hear you gasp in horror! Well, yes, I know, I know, but in my defence (a) it's a slim easy read and I will achieve my goal and (b) just thinking about Nigel Slater's description of a hot chip butty has got me rushing straight off for a cold shower. What better way to end 2003 than with his prose juices running down my chin?.....
I know, I know - I really must resolve to get a life in 2004...
Okay, I've held off long enough. I've given them every chance. I didn't spoil anybody's mobile phone voting fun. But just while I'm on the subject, what is that about, eh? Don't get me wrong, I'm all in favour of modern communication technologies, and I'm easy with anything that increases participation in the processes of democracy, but really, do people not understand the multiple pleasurings to be had from a polling station?... Lying on your sofa to vote, with a bottle of Becks in one hand, and your other thumb on a teeny keypad - the size of which must lead to all sorts of accidental voting horrors - just doesn't give the process due respect. No, there is something deeply reverential (well, okay, maybe that's because my polling station is in the local methodist church) about entering that little plywood booth (and who makes them? - another one for my forthcoming series of careers pamphlets, though I suspect it may, in a stroke of very black cosmic humour, be Chinese political prisoners). And the stubby pencil on a bit of string - it's poetry to txt-voting's lumpen pseudo-prose.
But I've digressed before I've even started - how bad is that?!... Today's blog-topic is the nation's favourite read. And how the hell a nation that produced the genius of Blake, Dickens, Woolf and Frances Hodgson Burnett, a nation of the greatest writers, which must find its logical corollary in a nation of great readers, how could it have voted the bloody Lord of the sodding tedious Rings "The Nation's Favourite Read"?
I have been shunned from polite society in the past few years of epic film-of-the-book-going for saying this, but I shall say it again. It has no plot: two small boys with hairy feet go for a very long walk; the end. It has crap characters I simply can't give a toss about: goblinny furry people of the most yak-inducing sentimentality. The eternal theme of good triumphing over evil? - well, I'm sorry, but Buffy does it infinitely better. She killed the love of her life for the greater good, died to save the world and her sister, was unwillingly resurrected, and still she faced down the final apocalypse and won. Bilbo Baggins, my arse...
Anyway, I'm ringing up the BBC to demand a recount. All those people have not actually read that book - they've just watched the films, and that cannot possibly count as a "read". How can I speak with such authoritative conviction? Well, have you ever actually tried to read those books? At school fetes there was always this dumb "game" where you paid money to see if you could eat a whole packet of cream crackers without a drink - or presumably, without choking to death, which may have been the point, teachers generally being in possession of a very disturbed sense of humour. Well, reading Lord of the Rings is just like that. I'd rather do the cream crackers.
Number 2 in the poll was Pride and Prejudice and the same argument holds - it is Colin Firth's wet shirt that has done it, because reading a whole Jane Austen novel is also technically impossible. It thrums with tedium, and no amount of clever dinner party yakking will ever convince me that this is hilariously ironic in a deliciously ahead of its time postmodern kind of way. No, it's a clear case of The Emperor's New Clothes here - it's arse and we all know that really!
It's almost enough to put one off reading for life, but I resolved last New Year to read 10 whole books, like, you know, cover to cover, this year, and these fragments I shall shore against my ruins. Haven't quite hit 10 yet with 10 days to go - have only just entered the third epoch of Wilkie Collins and his not terribly mysterious woman in white, and still have a whole one to go after that - but here's the rest of my actual, with a book, not just the film adaptation, reading year.
Claire Tomalin's biography of Samuel Pepys
Okay, so I don't read enough books, but this was a brick and I read it all. Best bit: his ability to persuade every young woman he ever met to give him hand relief under his cloak on the carriage drive home. I may yet buy a cloak and start travelling by bus.
Haruki Murakami's Dance, Dance, Dance
You want stories of parallel dimensions? Read Murakami, whose characters are always slipping outside the planes of reality in ways that make entirely logical sense in our crazy fucked up modern world. Best bit: the sheep professor. Erm, that's a professor who is a sheep, not an expert farmer.
Ian McEwan's Atonement
The master of striking visual scenes accompanied me to a caravan on an Italian hillside. Good bit with the fountain, but not a patch on Enduring Love and the balloon accident.
William Dalrymple's White Mughals
Now I gave up history at the earliest possible opportunity, and I just can't read the stuff - unless it's written by William Dalrymple, with whom I would definitely sleep simply on the strength of his elegant, intelligent, lyrical prose style. Oooh, steady.... Great story of pre-Raj British in India, without all the colonialist crap that came later.
William Boyd's Any Human Heart
A curious one, this. All the way through I thought pretentious, self-referential, self-satisfied, up-it's-own-arse postmodern bullshit. And then I put it down and cried because it was actually a very beautiful story about human endurance. My novel of the year - and my second year A Level class are defintely getting the bit where the hero eats dog food mixed with curry powder and considers it quite tasty as an unseen appreciation passage.
Matthew Kneale's Sweet Thames
Re-read English Passengers too in preparation for teaching it, but this earlier work was ghastly by comparison. Boring crap about crap. Don't bother.
A.C. Grayling's The Meaning of Things
Philosophical ruminations on life, drawing on all religions and philosophies great and small. I particularly enjoyed the part where he said that going out on a bender now and again was a critically important part of every individual's understanding of self and humanity. I knew there was a reason!!
Salam Pax's The Baghdad Blog
A must-read and next time the exam board set war literature, this is going in the anthology whether they like it or not. Witty, irreverent, and caustic about politics. Very cool funky prose style - but I'm afraid I only really go for lyrical poetic beauty when it comes to sleeping with writers in my fantasy debauchery league. Sorry Salam, but hey, let's have a beer some time - I think we could have some fun.
So, that leaves rather tedious Wilkie Collins to finish - I am just SO SO rubbish at reading mystery novels and should never have got started with this one. I know I shall finish it still not knowing whodunnit or why, but hey-ho, one must soldier on. That's only going to leave me a few days to read the tenth resolution book, and I know already that it's going to be Nigel Slater's Toast.
A celebrity chef's autobiography, I hear you gasp in horror! Well, yes, I know, I know, but in my defence (a) it's a slim easy read and I will achieve my goal and (b) just thinking about Nigel Slater's description of a hot chip butty has got me rushing straight off for a cold shower. What better way to end 2003 than with his prose juices running down my chin?.....
I know, I know - I really must resolve to get a life in 2004...
Saturday, December 06, 2003
2003 - a good year for the roses?
So, it's December and the only thing to be done is to ride the festive wave, adding my review of 2003 to the swelling tsunami in all the papers. From the vantage point of my future memoirs, when I am crippled with repetitive strain injury and have to type with a stick blutacked to my forehead, 2003 will undoubtedly prove to be one of those shudder-inducing but hugely formative years. 'Oh yes', we shall say, nodding sagely and pouring another sherry, 'that was the year of The Merger'. But the worst of times have a funny way of producing some of the best of times too, and 2003 can report its share with pride and dignity.
February - The Be Good Tanyas at The Old Market
Didn't like their new stuff nearly as much as their first album - pretty, and technically accomplished, but without the raw edge of true greatness. Bumped into the Ex Ex's Ex which sure was a strange blast from a distinctly dim and distant past, and one that left me wondering whether everyone comes face to face with their entire personal history in Brighton, or just me... Best of all, Gig Buddy was back.
March - Jackson Browne at The Dome
Oh deep joy... What else can one say?... Though I couldn't hear anything for at least a week afterwards, having had a seat that was actually inside one of the speakers. But the man was unutterably cool, the music brilliant, and the company of Eastbourne's biggest JB groupies highly entertaining as they vied to out-geek each other on the subject.
May - Bruce Springsteen at Crystal Palace
Can't say that I saw an awful lot of The Boss, as I was the shortest person in the whole of the Crystal Palace arena, and mostly I viewed shoulder blades. So that led to a rather spine-chilling moment... Tired of shoulder blades, I gazed upwards as the living legend played one of the soulful September 11th numbers and though I tried and tried not to, I just couldn't help thinking what a bizarre coincidence it would be if the plane flying overhead through the picturesque dusk right that minute should happen to explode, victim of an inexplicable act of South London terrorism. That started me off on a long dark night of the soul moment that could only possibly end in tears - lost on the way back from the portaloo, unable to find The Boys, Gig Buddy lost in a parallel friendship dimension, and then the band struck up 'You're Missing' just like that, as if they knew. Five minutes of beautiful unrelenting bleakness that threatened never to stop.
June - Bonnie Raitt at the Dome
Now there's a woman who knows how to rock. 50 plus, a voice that leaves you in no doubt that she's been using the t-shirt for dusters a long time, and a double phalanx of guitars on stage that say 'I ain't come here to mess about'. If I just start now, maybe I too could be a rock legend by the time I'm 50 - 12 years and 45 days MUST be long enough, surely? (Minus the time it will take me to get round to buying a guitar...) And the gig? A lesser mortal would have been hospitalised after singing 'I can't make you love me' the way she did...
August - Gillian Welch at St George's church
Such sublime music in such a sublime setting that I would have come away quite taken with the notion that I may finally have found God, if it hadn't been for David Rawlings once more ravishing me senseless with his guitar playing. Watching him squeeze and tease and coax notes out of that instrument is hardcore porn on a plate, and I find myself in serious danger of yelling out 'me next, me!' at entirely inappropriate moments. What with that and the serving of Stella Artois, it really was the strangest night I've spent in a church, but one that may yet lead me on the path to redemption.
September - Gillian Welch at the Shepherd's Bush Empire
But once with David Rawlings is never enough and I had to go back for more, and oh, what more! Nothing less than the full 15 minutes of 'I Dream A Highway' as an encore!! Good choice for an encore because let's face it, there is nothing else to play after that...
October - Easyworld at the Concorde
Gig Buddy and I may have been the oldest people there, with the possible exception of Dav's dad, but we were certainly the coolest - turning up for the support act and then leaving in the most casual, nonchalant way before the ultra-cool ex-Skunk Anansie woman took the stage. Scared of the Mini-Me biker punk-dykes chained together through assorted body parts? Nah, just out on a school night... If those boys don't hit the big time in 2004, I will both buy a hat and eat it. And if they do, I'm hoping Dav will remember to thank me in his songwriting credits for teaching him everything he could possibly need to know about poetic form.
November - Laura Cantrell and Ralph Stanley at the Barbican
Last November I had the distinct pleasure of not seeing Ralph Stanley at the Barbican, as he was snow-bound back in the States. I mean no disrespect to the old bluegrass buffer, but his absence meant that Gillian Welch played the whole 3 hours and I smoked my first post-David-Rawlings cigarette. So this time round I got to see him at last, and I can report that I have never seen such a strange looking band - hillbillies one and all, with alarming physical conditions that one couldn't be sure weren't more the product of close familial relations than of natural ageing. Just a shame about the weather - could have listened to Laura Cantrell for 3 hours most happily. In her dreadfully short set, she didn't have time to play the achingly beautiful 'Oh so many years', but she can make up for that omission at the music festival I'm putting on when I win the lottery. That'll be the day right after I buy a ticket... And a guitar...
November - Emmylou Harris at the Hammersmith Apollo
Another night, another legend, and this time an artist who didn't neglect to play my favourite song, 'I Will Dream'. And yes, in case you were wondering from all this, I will shortly be releasing the latest addition to my bestselling portfolio of 'The Greatest..... Songs Ever' CDs. From the musical stud-farm that brought you 'The Greatest Divorce Songs Ever' and 'The Greatest Post-Coital Songs Ever' comes 'The Greatest Tragically Unrequited Seen Right Into The Darkest Recesses Of Your Soul Love Songs Ever'. It's a dead cert for Christmas number 1...
And the roses? They were good too.
So, it's December and the only thing to be done is to ride the festive wave, adding my review of 2003 to the swelling tsunami in all the papers. From the vantage point of my future memoirs, when I am crippled with repetitive strain injury and have to type with a stick blutacked to my forehead, 2003 will undoubtedly prove to be one of those shudder-inducing but hugely formative years. 'Oh yes', we shall say, nodding sagely and pouring another sherry, 'that was the year of The Merger'. But the worst of times have a funny way of producing some of the best of times too, and 2003 can report its share with pride and dignity.
February - The Be Good Tanyas at The Old Market
Didn't like their new stuff nearly as much as their first album - pretty, and technically accomplished, but without the raw edge of true greatness. Bumped into the Ex Ex's Ex which sure was a strange blast from a distinctly dim and distant past, and one that left me wondering whether everyone comes face to face with their entire personal history in Brighton, or just me... Best of all, Gig Buddy was back.
March - Jackson Browne at The Dome
Oh deep joy... What else can one say?... Though I couldn't hear anything for at least a week afterwards, having had a seat that was actually inside one of the speakers. But the man was unutterably cool, the music brilliant, and the company of Eastbourne's biggest JB groupies highly entertaining as they vied to out-geek each other on the subject.
May - Bruce Springsteen at Crystal Palace
Can't say that I saw an awful lot of The Boss, as I was the shortest person in the whole of the Crystal Palace arena, and mostly I viewed shoulder blades. So that led to a rather spine-chilling moment... Tired of shoulder blades, I gazed upwards as the living legend played one of the soulful September 11th numbers and though I tried and tried not to, I just couldn't help thinking what a bizarre coincidence it would be if the plane flying overhead through the picturesque dusk right that minute should happen to explode, victim of an inexplicable act of South London terrorism. That started me off on a long dark night of the soul moment that could only possibly end in tears - lost on the way back from the portaloo, unable to find The Boys, Gig Buddy lost in a parallel friendship dimension, and then the band struck up 'You're Missing' just like that, as if they knew. Five minutes of beautiful unrelenting bleakness that threatened never to stop.
June - Bonnie Raitt at the Dome
Now there's a woman who knows how to rock. 50 plus, a voice that leaves you in no doubt that she's been using the t-shirt for dusters a long time, and a double phalanx of guitars on stage that say 'I ain't come here to mess about'. If I just start now, maybe I too could be a rock legend by the time I'm 50 - 12 years and 45 days MUST be long enough, surely? (Minus the time it will take me to get round to buying a guitar...) And the gig? A lesser mortal would have been hospitalised after singing 'I can't make you love me' the way she did...
August - Gillian Welch at St George's church
Such sublime music in such a sublime setting that I would have come away quite taken with the notion that I may finally have found God, if it hadn't been for David Rawlings once more ravishing me senseless with his guitar playing. Watching him squeeze and tease and coax notes out of that instrument is hardcore porn on a plate, and I find myself in serious danger of yelling out 'me next, me!' at entirely inappropriate moments. What with that and the serving of Stella Artois, it really was the strangest night I've spent in a church, but one that may yet lead me on the path to redemption.
September - Gillian Welch at the Shepherd's Bush Empire
But once with David Rawlings is never enough and I had to go back for more, and oh, what more! Nothing less than the full 15 minutes of 'I Dream A Highway' as an encore!! Good choice for an encore because let's face it, there is nothing else to play after that...
October - Easyworld at the Concorde
Gig Buddy and I may have been the oldest people there, with the possible exception of Dav's dad, but we were certainly the coolest - turning up for the support act and then leaving in the most casual, nonchalant way before the ultra-cool ex-Skunk Anansie woman took the stage. Scared of the Mini-Me biker punk-dykes chained together through assorted body parts? Nah, just out on a school night... If those boys don't hit the big time in 2004, I will both buy a hat and eat it. And if they do, I'm hoping Dav will remember to thank me in his songwriting credits for teaching him everything he could possibly need to know about poetic form.
November - Laura Cantrell and Ralph Stanley at the Barbican
Last November I had the distinct pleasure of not seeing Ralph Stanley at the Barbican, as he was snow-bound back in the States. I mean no disrespect to the old bluegrass buffer, but his absence meant that Gillian Welch played the whole 3 hours and I smoked my first post-David-Rawlings cigarette. So this time round I got to see him at last, and I can report that I have never seen such a strange looking band - hillbillies one and all, with alarming physical conditions that one couldn't be sure weren't more the product of close familial relations than of natural ageing. Just a shame about the weather - could have listened to Laura Cantrell for 3 hours most happily. In her dreadfully short set, she didn't have time to play the achingly beautiful 'Oh so many years', but she can make up for that omission at the music festival I'm putting on when I win the lottery. That'll be the day right after I buy a ticket... And a guitar...
November - Emmylou Harris at the Hammersmith Apollo
Another night, another legend, and this time an artist who didn't neglect to play my favourite song, 'I Will Dream'. And yes, in case you were wondering from all this, I will shortly be releasing the latest addition to my bestselling portfolio of 'The Greatest..... Songs Ever' CDs. From the musical stud-farm that brought you 'The Greatest Divorce Songs Ever' and 'The Greatest Post-Coital Songs Ever' comes 'The Greatest Tragically Unrequited Seen Right Into The Darkest Recesses Of Your Soul Love Songs Ever'. It's a dead cert for Christmas number 1...
And the roses? They were good too.
