tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-55992102900574482392024-02-19T08:10:51.384-08:00Corrib NotesCorribnoterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09914258600674577772noreply@blogger.comBlogger83125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5599210290057448239.post-31153394962225938992022-01-21T23:50:00.003-08:002022-01-21T23:50:42.299-08:00<p> <span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Going back to <i>Graceland</i></span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><i> </i></span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbXj-hiKQ7_OCeaEoaCf7Qq9WzLlJrU12DsTq-jr0W8a-_ASlrry6pZYysMu9CSARJCt0N0-DNfFiwpRhgkeuIaaf8IxPjxoP1tPvIDUIsu6SoVM3WfoTJpeSeylFbmar9OOZ9BijrUnA/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="1000" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbXj-hiKQ7_OCeaEoaCf7Qq9WzLlJrU12DsTq-jr0W8a-_ASlrry6pZYysMu9CSARJCt0N0-DNfFiwpRhgkeuIaaf8IxPjxoP1tPvIDUIsu6SoVM3WfoTJpeSeylFbmar9OOZ9BijrUnA/" width="240" /></a></div><br /><br /><p></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><br /></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="font-size: 13px; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">After spending many a pandemic half-hour listening to the consistently entertaining 1001 Album Club podcast, I decided to set up my own club of music-loving friends. The people at 1001 have taken on the herculean task of discussing every one of the albums form Robert Dimery’s 1001Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. It’s a good listen mainly because most of the friends are musicians with broad tastes. As a result, they respond thoughtfully to whatever they have to hear and tend to give the albums about five or six listens each. As they have some studio experience, they speak quite authoritatively on the various techniques employed by the artists but they wear their knowledge lightly and never lay it on too thickly. As with most podcasts I’ve heard, it’s a wee bit too pally at times and the contributors tend to laugh at one another very easily, but that is what happens when friends have a chat, isn’t it?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I have enjoyed listening to albums in advance of the podcasted discussions and feel pleased when I appear to be singing off the same hymn sheet as the contributors. Only occasionally have I had a clash of views with them. They couldn’t take Ian Dury’s songs, sound or singing while as much as I admire Bruce Springsteen and recognise his songwriting talent, I found <i>Darkness on the Edge of Town </i>painfully overwrought.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Anyway, when I proposed a form of album club to three music fan friends, there was enthusiastic agreement (if you can trust how people express themselves on WhatsApp). I didn’t mention the 1001 Album Club, which is a good way to force yourself into sampling things you ordinarily wouldn’t touch with a bargepole, suggesting that choices be open.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The tallest of the group suggested <i>Graceland</i>, an album he’d never heard but which he’d read mentioned in a recent interview.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I have a history with this album. It was the first album I ever got, a Christmas present on cassette, bought in the shop next door to ours on Xmas Eve 1986. That shop was a kind of jack of all trades one-stop, stocking stationary, cheap plastic toys, board games, ornaments, a few sweets,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>cigarettes, greetings cards, records and tapes. Unwrapping <i>Graceland</i> with its cryptic tribal art tile image on pale yellow cover, was no surprise. After all, it was me who had purchased it the day before. But this would turn out to be the album I listened to more than any other.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I was unaware of Paul Simon’s history in one of the most successful musical duos when I saw ‘The Boy in the Bubble’ video on TV. At the time, chart radio and TV were still a mixed bag of radically different pop sounds, and ‘The Boy in the Bubble’ with its opening accordion line followed by fat, threatening bass and a detached-sounding voice singing about shattering shop windows, slo-motion CCTV and ‘the automatic earth’ sounded like nothing I’d ever heard before.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Of course I was unaware that this was a South African sound. It just sounded extraordinary. Over the remaining days of my Christmas holidays, I must have listened to Graceland at least a hundred times and over the course of 1987 I probably listened to it several hundred times more. It became a kind of joint soundtrack for my Dad as we did a painfully intricate jigsaw puzzle.</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>As seems to happen when you binge on an album, there comes a point when you are almost allergic to it, and I remember never wanting to hear <i>Graceland</i> again, and even finding it a little embarrassing to think about my brief but heavy crush on it.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Going back to it last week in advance of our album club has been both a confirmatory and revelatory experience. I used to wonder why I had been so stuck on the album as a twelve-year-old. I quickly realised why when I played it through for the first time last week. The music, the playing, and the backing vocals are gorgeous from beginning to end, and the production is immaculate.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I felt myself moving to it and feeling like dancing, and I wondered what it might be like to listen to a version that omitted all of Paul Simon’s vocals. Most of it would make a fine party album. As is common knowledge, most of the songs were pre-existing numbers written by other people, onto which Simon placed his sometimes wonderful and sometimes lightweight lyrics.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The aforementioned ‘The Boy in the Bubble’ builds up a kind of dystopian vision of a world on the cusp of environmental and technological disaster while ‘Graceland’ itself features that great observation about heartbreak: ‘She says losing love is like a window in your heart / Everybody sees you’re blown apart / Everybody feels the wind blow’.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>On the other hand, some of the songs have a daffy mid-life crisis feel. ‘Don’t I know you from the cinematographer’s party?’ and ‘Aren't you the woman who was recently given a Fullbright’ asks Simon in ‘I Know What I Know’, while a group of female singers whoop beautifully over a muscular bass riff. It feels a bit like Woody Allen on a visit to Africa. ‘You can call me Al’, ‘Gumboots’ and ‘Crazy Love Part II’ also have a kind of ‘navel-gazing shlub’ feel to them, the musings of guys who have been left temporarily unmoored by the vicissitudes of life. In normal circumstances, that might be hard to listen to, but here the music is so beautiful and Simon’s voice is so coolly unobtrusive, that the overall sound is unharmed.</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>There were a lot of mysteries to the album when I listened to it back in the 1980s and thanks to wikipedia I have discovered that the mysterious but alluring lines from ‘Diamonds on the soles of her shoe’ (‘She makes the sign of a teaspoon / He makes the sign of a wave’) relates to sign language and might describe how the couple are dancing.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>One question remains. Why did Simon employ the Everly Brothers, two of the most distinctive singers in the history of popular music, to sing backing vocals on ‘Graceland’ only to mix them so low as to render them anonymous? <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></span></p>Corribnoterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09914258600674577772noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5599210290057448239.post-60232450583292289002021-12-28T06:11:00.002-08:002022-01-21T23:51:38.210-08:00The Best Books I Read in 2021<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBeu6v58S8uW4gXkd4Rsz-mXJmcJOVO4Sz8ziLHMTQqSTA7g6jLpyNusKrL73uBNlsXj_cnwp0bay0ojUS7_Gd3T47643QkbMy6SfFE1hLWnT9E8OgRTotom4y6bUQ-uIdykQy5Yy1kBU/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="335" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBeu6v58S8uW4gXkd4Rsz-mXJmcJOVO4Sz8ziLHMTQqSTA7g6jLpyNusKrL73uBNlsXj_cnwp0bay0ojUS7_Gd3T47643QkbMy6SfFE1hLWnT9E8OgRTotom4y6bUQ-uIdykQy5Yy1kBU/" width="161" /></a></div><br /> <p></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-6b5dd251-7fff-5c91-9205-25e6b6679712"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Best Catholics in the World</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by Derek Scally</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Small Things Like These</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by Claire Keegan</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Best of Me </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">by David Sedaris</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Fun Home</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by Alison Bechdel</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Dharma Bums</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by Jack Kerouac</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">East-West Street </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">by Philippe Sands</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Flaubert and Madame Bovary: A Double Portrait</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by Francis Steegmuller</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wunderland</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by Caitriona Lally</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">1971: Never a Dull Moment </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">by David Hepworth</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Dark Stuff</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by Nick Kent</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">All-Star Superman</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: medium;">At this time of year, I usually take stock of what I’ve read over the previous twelve months and try to identify the titles that particularly impressed me. Of the thirty-three books I read this year, just five were published in 2021. I don’t tend to keep up to date with what’s new on the shelves and I have a long list of books I have yet to read from years ago. I am also conservatively inclined to be sceptical of new books as they all tend to be raved about in the hype industry of publishing. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But I do think Derek Scally’s </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Best Catholics in the World</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">deserved the many plaudits that came its way. It’s a cool and steady appraisal of the role of the church in Ireland over the last 150 years and because the author has lived in Germany for over twenty years, it has a distance that gives it extra resonance. Scally draws some unsettling but insightful parallels between the relationship between Irish people and the Catholic church and the relationship between Germans and the Nazis. He skewers the popular narrative that the clergy represented a brutal regime that oppressed the public and instead puts the spotlight on the tendency of the public to collude with the church authorities. His conclusion that Irish people need to follow the Germans and take collective ownership of the atrocities committed by the church is fascinating. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The quiet collusion of laypeople in a system that brutalised women and children is also explored in Claire Keegan’s sad and beautiful novella, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Small Things Like These</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Her long-awaiting follow-up to the similarly slender but powerful Foster reveals the rot beneath the Catholic poster-child Ireland of the 1980s. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Unlike the protagonists in this novel, I grew up in privileged circumstances, but Keegan’s depiction of life in a small rural town still caused me to feel a shudder of recognition. This could well be something that my imagination has filled in for me but I’ll see what my mother thinks of it. Everything about the book was perfect save for the silly, forgettable title.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Some of my favourite books were brutally honest memoirs. David Sedaris is perhaps the only author whose work makes me laugh out loud every few pages and his collection </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Best of Me</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">is a juicy collection of prime cuts. In the last section, he writes with extraordinary candour about how frustrated he is with his sister’s suicide and how it left him having to deal with interviewers’ questions about her and the impact her death had on him. When one asks him how he felt about the event, he says he is angry with her because the bitch owed him five hundred dollars. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Alison Bechdel’s </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Fun Home</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> was also hilarious and startling, a graphic novel in which the author explored her relationship with her closeted father, a complicated and troubled individual who had been arrested after being caught in sexual congress with some of his male English students and who later died after being knocked down by a truck. I read this one after my friends and I had chosen the follow-up novel,</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I am my own Mother</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> for our Zoom bookclub. And I quickly tracked down a copy of her recent </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Secret of Superhuman Strength.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">An examination of her lifelong obsession with health and fitness, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Secret of Superhuman Strength</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> also featured illustrated extracts from Jack Kerouac’s </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Dharma Bums</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">,</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> which I read straight afterwards and loved. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It had been years and years since I had read </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On The Road</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and imagined that Kerouac might be dated, proto-hippy stuff. But apart from the miserable attitude to women, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Dharma Bums </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">was a thrilling read based around some mountaineering escapades with Gary Snyder. Reading of their freewheeling rambles into nature inspired me on my own, modest two day bike ride from Maynooth to Mullingar. Few books have so successfully communicated electric enthusiasm and a sense of utterly unfettered freedom. Sixty years down the road, it’s not hard to see why Kerouac was a publishing sensation in his day. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Another book that had a strong personal element was Philippe Sands’ masterly examination of the history of the main movers in the Nuremberg Trials: </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">East-West Street</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Also wonderful was Francis Steegmuller’s story of the genesis and creation of one of the world’s most famous novels. In </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Flaubert and Madame Bovary: A Double Portrait</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">,</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> he uses Flaubert’s brilliant letters to create a picture of a volatile and frequently hilarious man whose life was changed forever following the tortured birth of the book that launched his career. What I liked most about this one was its exploration of friendship. The childless and unmarried Flaubert managed to cultivate a group of friends who were as loyal and frank as friends could be and they helped one another out to an admirable degree. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> There are few novels on my list but I did get an almighty kick out of Caitriona Lally’s second novel, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wunderland</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. The story of a brother and sister whose personalities range from the eccentric to the disturbed, the brother’s exploits as a wayward cleaner in a miniature world museum in Hamburg were weirdly, hilariously fascinating. I frequently laughed aloud while reading though I was sometimes uncertain as to whether that was the desired effect. </span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To be honest, I probably got more joy from books about music than any other reading matter this year. Maybe it’s the pandemic effect, but I’ve never listened to so much music or discovered more albums in the last twenty months. Eight of the 33 books on my list were about music and the best of them was probably David Hepworth’s thrilling </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">1971: Never a Dull Moment</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A book that really lived up to its title, it made for a convincing argument that 1971 was the greatest year in the history of modern pop. It was one of four books by Hepworth I read this year and along with an impressive wealth of knowledge, he also had some sensible things to say about music appreciation. The most notable for me was his insistence that a person’s interest in a certain kind of music or artist was simply linked to whether or not it made them want to move, hence his love of the long discarded term ‘beat’ music. Despite our frequent wish to appear sophisticated, our love of music is at heart a primitive thing.</span></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The other music book that excited me this year was Nick Kent’s ‘best of’ collection, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Dark Stuff</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. It’s one I should have read years ago as I was aware of its reputation as one of the greatest pop tomes. Kent managed to get intimately acquainted with just about all of the main players in the 1970s and very few come out of the book with reputations enhanced. There is a seediness running through each of his essays and many of the stars are depicted as abusers of drugs and of women (a surprising number of them appear to be wife-beaters). Kent is brilliant at character sketches that are both grotesque and hilarious. </span></span></p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">My last pick is Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline;">All-Star Superman</span><span style="font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">,</span><span style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"> a two volume comic that was a joy to read from start to finish, a wondrous combination of superheroics and extreme science fiction executed by creators with a gorgeous light touch. Very much the way I like my comics. I am by no means a fan of Superman but this was irresistible. </span></span></div></span></span>Corribnoterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09914258600674577772noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5599210290057448239.post-90172683883853849582021-07-23T04:09:00.002-07:002021-07-23T04:09:23.185-07:00<p><span style="font-size: large;"> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">How Oliver Stone Destroyed The Doors</span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Of all the qualities a performer needs to be a star, one of the most important is mystique.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">When I was a teenager, there was a host of relatively silent icons to admire and dream about. One of the most popular posters was a black and white image of a shirtless Jim Morrison with arms outstretched, staring with almost cross-eyed intensity. A transgressive depiction of a defiant young man in Jesus pose, it also appeared on the sleeve of The Doors’ Greatest Hits album.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>It was Morrison who drew a lot of people to The Doors. When you listened to their songs, you were always aware of the singer’s rebel image and that’s what made tolerable the often sluggish or camp blues rock they produced. For a teenager, Morrison’s lyrics, with their lizard kings, crystal ships and funeral pyres seemed powerful and eerie.</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I got into The Doors later than my peers and listened to little else throughout 1990, the year Oliver Stone announced he would be directing a biopic of Morrison. This was exciting news: I had seen and admired Born on the Fourth of July and the idea of a heavyweight director taking on the life of a seemingly heavyweight pop star was intriguing.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>But the film effectively ended my interest in the band. The figure whose voice I’d only heard in the songs or in his posthumous poetry album ‘An American Prayer’, whose leather-clad image had adorned several walls in my boarding school, and who died at the glamorously young age of 27, was suddenly speaking on the screen and doing things off-stage. And what a dick he was. A selfish drunken goon, the kind of person I’d have crossed the street to avoid. I don’t think it was Stone’s intention to do a hatchet job on Morrison but that is what The Doors essentially is. In every scene, he seems irredeemably stupid: here he is throwing a strop in film school because other students think his art film is daft, here he is leading a chant in the desert. And he is surrounded by fawning eejits who think he is a genius. Meg Ryan is smitten when he talks bullocks to her; Kyle MacLachlan is thunderstruck when Jim sings him a song at the beach and two seconds later they are in the studio recording Light my Fire. By the time the film was released, I had been losing interest in The Doors but the film made me resistant to them.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Thirty years later, I had another listen to them via Spotify. Some of the songs have worn well and Morrison remains a terrific performer with an attractive baritone voice and an ability to vocally explode.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>But the film effectively destroyed the mystery of Jim Morrison by showing what a relentless gobshite he was and how somehow lots and lots of people were impressed by that.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>There are plenty of biopics that show their famous subjects behaving horribly but most viewers will be willing to accept that if the quality of their work is superb. But The Doors were only so good and a lot of Morrison’s lyrics now sound pretty silly. <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I suppose the longest lasting legacy of The Doors will be the model Morrison left behind as the frontman of a rock band. All that brooding, dark sexiness and self-absorption has been mopped up by hundreds of singers who came after him, and several of them, most notably Iggy Pop and Ian Curtis, turned out to be superior artists to Jim himself.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></span></p>Corribnoterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09914258600674577772noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5599210290057448239.post-86428029985017347132021-04-18T04:18:00.002-07:002021-04-18T04:18:08.956-07:00Review: Flaubert and Madame Bovary: A Double Portrait by Francis Steegmuller<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgh6JZH7nqHBFNLwKw9phCzKvnDOx5QDrfkJlVsSjdRWvd3P3KqW10LkirMCAMD0_prIju6ndAgMzXP-erxzZHOb8BQWdqCgs0Kh-q-N7Gl3wAd18D0MuZXROSzxVK2BD4U94prreEUfM/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="285" data-original-width="177" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgh6JZH7nqHBFNLwKw9phCzKvnDOx5QDrfkJlVsSjdRWvd3P3KqW10LkirMCAMD0_prIju6ndAgMzXP-erxzZHOb8BQWdqCgs0Kh-q-N7Gl3wAd18D0MuZXROSzxVK2BD4U94prreEUfM/" width="149" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-size: large;">Flaubert and Madame Bovary: A Double Portrait by Francis Steegmuller</span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">(First published 1939)</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">It’s been a long time since I read Madame Bovary but on finishing this enthralling story of the creation and publication of the novel, I can't wait to return to it. Re-published by New York Review of Books Classics, Francis Steegmuller’s biography charts the decade in which Flaubert made an abortive attempt at a first novel, embarked on a grand tour of Egypt and surrounding countries and then wrote his most famous book. Much of A Double Portrait comprises of letters from Flaubert to various important correspondents such as his wayward lover and muse, Louise Collet (who became a model for Madame Bovary herself) and his close friends, Alfred, Maxime du Camp and Louis Bouilhet.</span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> Friendship is at the heart of this story with Flaubert’s friends proving to be essential guides on his route to ultimate success and he helping them in kind. After he completes his first novel, The Temptation of St Anthony, his three closest confidantes condemn it out of hand as a total failure, and urge him to write instead about reality as he knew it, and to pare back the rich imagery. Though initially depressed by their response, once he returns from the east, Flaubert gets to work on three new ‘realist’ stories, before deciding to stick with the one inspired by a recent case of an adulterous woman in his native Normandy. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>As he writes Madame Flaubert in his quiet home town of Croiset, Flaubert receives weekly visits from Louis Bouilhet, an exacting critic who drives Flaubert to greater heights. Flaubert later helps Bouilhet to attain success as a playwright by coaching him in how to flatter and coax the various grandees of the Parisian theatre scene. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Prone to melodrama, Flaubert is often comically excessive, though the scheming and selfish Louise is perhaps the greatest source of comedy in the book. At one point, she describes habitual garlic-eater Bouilhet as smelling ‘like a whole coachload of Southerners’. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>After five years of doubt and exasperation, it’s hard not to feel happy for Flaubert when Madame Bovary is finally published to instant acclaim and commercial success in his friend Maxime's literary magazine in October 1856. His aim had been to create a ‘thunderclap’ and such was the noise that the novel created, it was still ringing in the author’s ears right up until his death in 1880, overshadowing all of his subsequent novels. </span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> Steegmuller's biography makes superb use of Flaubert's intense and effusive letters: of particular note are the incredibly sensuous descriptions of North Africa that he includes in his correspondence with his mother. </span></span></p>Corribnoterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09914258600674577772noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5599210290057448239.post-57863982180561576802021-04-17T04:02:00.003-07:002021-04-17T04:02:34.940-07:00<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDt4eOSl6_9YAP2x2nPRMneW-LyUDBu1W-aRZu_WFVB2fP_eGpSCPPfchRCKXuzJ4eS3ReKRbxoI4MfBNzq8RWBLN0xV0823ZOPb5EXAfVERgJbkbJx3AeC9ZemlizxYYqp4HGdU_ejso/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="400" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDt4eOSl6_9YAP2x2nPRMneW-LyUDBu1W-aRZu_WFVB2fP_eGpSCPPfchRCKXuzJ4eS3ReKRbxoI4MfBNzq8RWBLN0xV0823ZOPb5EXAfVERgJbkbJx3AeC9ZemlizxYYqp4HGdU_ejso/" width="240" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> Just finished reading Graham Kibble-White’s </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The Ultimate Book of British Comics: 70 Years of Mischief, Mayhem and Cow Pies</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">, a diverting and occasionally very funny collection of pen pictures of weekly anthologies for children produced mainly by IPC and D.C. Thompson between the 1950s and 1980s. While not a definitive history of the UK scene - it begins with 1950’s Eagle and ends with late eighties effort Wildcat - this lively book captures the essence of the comics output of the era: the stock characters, the often ludicrous premises, the chummy editorial voices, the endless mergers, the bog-standard bogroll paper.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Kibble-White mainly focuses on the first issue of each comic, pinpointing the USP, describing the initial line-up and the inevitable free gift stuck to the cover. As children in the monochrome world of the fifties and sixties were starved of colour, it was relatively easy to snare an readership of 200,000 youngsters with boarding school and ballet tales for girls, straightforward cowboy/astronaut/soldier derring-do for boys, and ho-hum japes featuring grumpy park-keepers and platefuls of sausages for the younger ones. Girls’ comics were almost all had female monikers such as Judy, Tammy and Mandy (though <i>Jinty</i> remains a strange one) while boys’ comics had rugged-sounding titles like Victor, Tiger, Valiant and Hotspur. Hugely popular, they were being cranked out in their millions right up until the early seventies. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>But as Kibble-White demonstrates, there was a growing sense of desperation in the industry from the 1970s until its virtual collapse in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This was manifested in their attempts to compete with TV and then later with video games. With the advent of colour TV, and the emergence of blockbuster movies, children were now exposed to a host of shiny pop stars and slick, violent cop shows and disaster films that made the weekly comics fare look stale and tame. Traditional boys comics like Eagle, Lion and Valiant couldn’t compete with the more visceral delights of Dirty Harry and The Sweeney. And so DCT responded with gritty war comic Warlord and IPC with similarly martial Battle and then the bloodthirsty Action. Girls comics stories became crueller and nastier and the new humour titles took a turn for the zany with characters breaking the fourth wall and celebrities making regular appearances. Despite brief bursts of interest, and the uncovering of seriously talented writers and artists still plying their trade today, all-round sales of comics continued to plummet. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Now, just three of the hundred or so titles Kibble-White writes about are still in existence - The Beano, 2000AD and Commando. The continued success of Commando is beyond me as war went out of fashion in the weeklies some time in the mid-1980s but Beano and 2000AD contain instantly recognisable characters who have attained iconic status over the years, and have gathered a loyal fanbase many of whom are much older than the actual target audience. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Kibble-White’s book will provide a bit of a nostalgia buzz for certain middle-aged people from Britain and Ireland (and anyone with a love of the daft old titles such as ‘Spooky Cookie: He Cooks for the Spooks’ or ‘Pansy Potter, the Strongman’s Daughter’). It’s also fun to read about the first issues of comics where desperate attempts are made to appeal to increasingly sceptical children. And it’s remarkable to see Look-In clone Tops feature a story starring Adam Ant as a kind of time-traveller adventuring through the centuries. Highly reccommended. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><br /></p>Corribnoterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09914258600674577772noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5599210290057448239.post-74359183397677424732021-04-14T06:48:00.001-07:002021-04-14T06:48:03.064-07:00Prince Philip's Death Coverage<p style="text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-size: large;">T</span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">he record number of complaints to the British Broadcasting Authority about the BBC’s blanket coverage of reaction to Prince Philip’s death last Friday evening was indicative of changing times but was probably also connected to the pandemic.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>By replacing all advertising programming on their three terrestrial channels with lengthy tributes to the late consort, Britain’s national broadcaster was probably following the dictates of the ‘important royal deaths’ protocol. The last time a person of Philip’s stature died was in 1952 when Elizabeth II’s predecessor shuffled off his ermine furred gown. At that time few people had televisions - the coronation of EII the following year was a major catalyst for TV purchasing and viewing - and a cancellation of programming on the single available channel would have made sense to most British folk following the death of the head of the world’s largest empire.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Flicking away at the remote that Friday evening, though, it just looked a bit odd to see the same glum, respectful faces on three consecutive channels while life went on as usual on the 97 other ones. Yes, there was extended programming on Philip on ITV, the BBC News channel and on Sky news, but at least there were different people, on different couches talking about life and times of the Greek. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Unlike in 1952, when a small, select group of individuals decided what those with televisions should watch, the growth of online streaming means that today’s viewers are used to watching what they want when they want to. Another possible factor behind some of the outrage was the changing stature of television during the pandemic. Over the course of the lockdowns, TV has provided more comfort than ever to millions people with reduced options for entertainment and little to look forward to. The cancellation of ‘Gardener’s World’, a show greatly boosted by the increase of horticultural interest during the ‘stay at home’ era, was understandably a bridge too far for some. Of course, the BBC is an easy punchbag for anyone feeling frustrated with modern life and it gets a regular kicking from those on the right, those on the left and a fair number in the middle.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>But the filling up of three channels’ worth of screen-time with the same content as a mark of respect for the duke did seem like a gasp of stale air from a more deferential time. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p>Corribnoterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09914258600674577772noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5599210290057448239.post-8082821776117511862021-04-13T04:10:00.001-07:002021-04-13T04:10:20.174-07:00'Very 20th Century'<p style="text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I was recently teaching a novel set in rural Ireland in 1981 and was drawing the students’ attention to the influence on the community of the Catholic Church: the ban on contraception and divorce, the deference to priests.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">One student commented that it was ‘very twentieth-century’. And after a moment’s thought, I realised she was right. The status of the church in Irish society began to crumble in the early to mid-nineties following the revelation that the Bishop of Galway had fathered a child and then the exposure of cases of clerical child abuse and the subsequent attempts to cover them up. Though the largely-discredited church retains a tight grip on education and still owns vast tracts of land all over the country, Ireland post-2000 is a very different place. But it felt strange to hear of something being typical of the century in which I grew up.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">‘Very 20th century’ was a term I’d never heard before. I have used the term ‘19th century’ many times, though ‘Victorian’ is a more common appellation used to evoke a sense of strictness and deprivation, as well as bushy moustaches and music hall acts. I have also regularly referred to the post-war period, the fifties (characterised in cliche by rock n’roll, communist paranoia), the sixties (revolution, experimentation), the seventies (decline of the industrialised west, brown clothing), the eighties (nuclear threat, capitalism ascending). </span></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">One decade I don’t tend to think about is the nineties because it was a formative time for me, a time when, like many 15-25-year-olds, I was centre-stage in the film of my life. In lazy shorthand, it was a time when it looked as though the west had won, and freedom was on the rise everywhere. And that of course, was a myth born of a kind of baby boomer triumphalism crystallised by Fleetwood Mac playing ‘Don’t Stop...thinking about tomorrow’ at Bill Clintons’s inauguration in November 1992. This was of course, a world dominated by privileged (and in hindsight, extremely complacent) white westerners. </span></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">But while we regularly define the key characteristics of decades, how will we remember the entire last century? As my student suggested, there will be little debate about how we characterise twentieth century Ireland. But on an international scale, I suppose we will also call it the age of the car and the age of the assembly line, maybe the great age of pop music. All of those are ‘very twentieth-century’. It might also be known as the century of nationalism and of brutality. It was a time of mass destruction, a time when long-range weapons of mass destruction were created that put a desensitising distance between the perpetrators and the victims. </span></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">There is now a growing divide between the last century and this one: issues that were bubbling beneath the surface (and in some cases, suppressed) such as climate change, immigration, the status of women and minorities, and the mechanisation of labour, are now at the forefront of daily discourse. And the pandemic is re-shaping our lives in a multitude of different ways. In the years to come, I expect to hear a lot more utterances of ‘very 20th century’. </span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><br /></p>Corribnoterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09914258600674577772noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5599210290057448239.post-11763895409501467212021-04-01T09:00:00.003-07:002021-04-04T02:37:06.739-07:00Changing Attitudes: Star Trek and Sub-Cultures<p style="text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-size: large;">Needless to say I’ve watched a lot of TV in the last twelve months, and various clips on YouTube. Thanks to the rise of the latter and to the large number of TV channels devoted to recycling old material, it’s now easier than ever to make lazy judgements on the mainstream culture of the past. Recently, two clips, both from the 1980s, stood out for me and got me thinking about the how attitudes change.</span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> The first was of Terry Wogan asking Joan Collins about her appearance on an episode of the original Star Trek. At the time, Star Trek was a growing cult with a relatively small number of devotees. The movies were being released every few years to healthy box office sales but the show had yet to become part of the world’s cultural wallpaper. When Wogan mentioned her guest starring role, Collins hooted with embarrassment, hinting that her career had been at a low ebb when she took the role. The audience reaction was gleeful. Sci-fi, like fantasy and horror, was still on the fringes, usually</span><span style="font-size: x-large;"> considered frivolous and lacking in substance. My father would have fitted in well in that audience. He was generally open-minded as a film viewer but had a complete blind spot for science fiction - he couldn't accept imaginative worlds though he did enjoy A Clockwork Orange probably because it was so obviously grounded in reality. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Looking at the clips over thirty years after they first appeared, it struck me how much has changed since then. Dynasty now seems much more ridiculous than the ambitious, innovative Star Trek with characters that are as recognisable and iconic as any in 20th century fiction. The long-standing jokes about Star Trek (the creaky sets, the primitive special effects, William Shatner’s overacting) have been superseded by an appreciation of the makers’ ideas and its afterlife has had a cultural imprint far deeper than the likes of Dynasty, which is a story that has been re-told constantly before and since: the recent Succession is a brilliant recent spin on power struggles inside a wealthy and entitled family. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>There is a possibility that Joan Collins will ultimately be better remembered for her sole appearance on Star Trek than for anything else she ever did. For billions, the brilliantly versatile Alec Guinness is Obi Wan Kenobi; for a dwindling number, he is a sophisticated actor in David Lean and Ealing classics. Like Collins, he was scornful of his foray into science-fiction even though he took a chunk of the toy royalties as part of his fee. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> N</span>ow that Hollywood depends so heavily superhero blockbusters and TV, and streaming services are on the look-out for the next Game of Thrones, the sneery attitude towards celluloid fantasy and sci-fi is no more. Some argue that this is indicative of the infantilisation of mainstream culture but I prefer to see it as revenge of the nerds. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"> The other old clip that indicated changing times was an RTE investigation into youth culture in the late 1980s in which a reporter wandered the streets of Dublin city centre on a Saturday afternoon, looking for distinctive groups of young people - goths, punks, rockabillies - and asking them about their choice of clothing and make-up. The reporter had a bemused tone when interviewing her subjects and sometimes got a frosty reception.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Watching the RTE clip, I was struck by how the person who now looked the strangest of all was the reporter herself. Her big, big hair, big shoulder pads and big, big glasses make her look dwarfed by her clothes and accessories while the young people didn’t look remotely peculiar. And yet it was the reporter who was representing the mainstream, conventional world of the 90 per cent. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></span></p><div><br /></div>Corribnoterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09914258600674577772noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5599210290057448239.post-44232857425436906042021-03-31T05:07:00.001-07:002021-03-31T05:07:05.628-07:00Music 20/21<p style="text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-size: large;">I can remember the last gig I attended: the basement of a pub in Dublin City centre, a Sunday afternoon, all the way back in March 2020, the launch of a friend’s new album. The cosy faux-’old pub’ room was decked with an odd mixture of posters and pictures - black and white images of Ireland in the 1950s, GAA teams and scantily clad females - and planted against one of the walls, there was an awkward snug, done up like a shebeen with lattice windows. I gave in to temptation and had two of what tasted like the creamiest pints of stout that had ever passed my lips.</span></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>As ever, the drink knocked the itchy Sunday feeling out of me and I successfully unwound. A few numbers into the support act’s set, one of the songs sent me somewhere else for three minutes and as a result I was open to whatever was played for the rest of the afternoon. I find that happens at gigs: one good song or moment leaves you receptive to the rest and more generous and supportive of the artists.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I had the usual little chats with familiar faces from previous gigs, some of them barely more than an exchange of a few words, and I ordered a bowl of chips with my second pint. I could feel the velvet balloon of wellbeing swelling up inside me and I smiled when I saw lovers entwined on a couch in one of the nooks in the venue. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Stepping out of the venue, half-drunk and ready for a curry, the streets were lightly buzzing. A meal in a popular Indian and then a cycle home, my last night out in town for thirteen months. A few days later, Leo Varadkar delivered that unnervingly understated speech that introduced some ominous words like ‘wave’ and ‘cocooning’. The live music scene as it was went into hibernation, and musicians were limited to broadcasting performances from their own homes on social media platforms. I checked out a few of these but because I was already spending so much time online I wasn’t very enthusiastic about looking at screens again outside of work.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Martin Carthy live from his house in Robin Hood’s Bay gave me cheer. He was rusty for the first half hour, inevitably I suppose, but then got into his stride, finding his unmistakeable foghorn voice and fluidity in his playing. The quality was of secondary importance to me. He is someone I have seen in concert five or six times so it was comforting enough to see him and hear him again in whatever capacity. A reminder of his tremendous knowledge and good humour. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>During the pandemic period, I finally bought a smartphone and then headphones and began to access as much music as possible using the Spotify app. This was facilitated by the daily dog walks and by my semi-regular runs. Thanks to Spotify’s enormous catalogue, I was able to dive into the works of Black Sabbath, sampling the first six albums, re-visit The Fall’s mighty oeuvre, listen to albums I’d always meant to try like PIL’s first two, The Human League’s Dare, The Court of the Crimson King, a lot of post-punk, a lot of krautrock, New Order, plus a fair amount of new music.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Because it’s been such a long winter, I have found myself leaning towards bright electronic sounds - early albums by New Order, The Pet Shop Boys’ Very - and venturing into contemporary pop music which often sounds like the aforementioned acts. HAIM, Thundercat, Dua Lipa, Taylor Swift. Light, optimistic-sounding stuff, not very demanding, delightfully surface-y, a lot of it designed to be played in heaving pubs and nightclubs filled with shiny young people. A far cry from my last ‘gig, stout and chips’ outing but a cheerful vision to have in these times.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"><span> </span><br /></span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px; text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></span></p>Corribnoterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09914258600674577772noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5599210290057448239.post-90439733095581532172020-08-14T03:14:00.001-07:002020-08-16T03:29:26.409-07:00ZZ Top: That Little Ol' Band from Texas (2019 Documentary)<p><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><img alt="ZZ Top | Discography | Discogs" src="https://img.discogs.com/fmkuOz_O9jUSZuXe16vGI_xX-bY=/fit-in/300x300/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(40)/discogs-images/A-113655-1404833022-9434.jpeg.jpg" /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: x-large;">T</span><span style="font-size: x-large;">he iconic nature of a musical act can be judged by the
speed with which you can draw a cartoon of them. The Beatles: four dark circles
with offshoot side burns and maybe a pair of granny glasses. Madonna: conical
bra. David Bowie: lightning bolt across a forehead and cheek. Grace Jones:
black rectangle with wide eyes and big bared teeth. Slash: big hat, big
sunglasses, cigarette dangling precariously from lips. Freddie
Mercury: crew cut, moustache.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: x-large;">ZZTop are perhaps the easiest of all to draw: three faces
all with sunglasses, two with rectangles of beard and hats, one with a
moustache and curly hair. Like AC/DC, whose image has been defined since the
beginning by Angus Young’s schoolboy uniform, the Top’s cartoonish look has given
them instant brand recognition and also helped to deflect attention away from their
personal lives. In the likeable documentary ‘That Little Ol’ Band from Texas’,
the only dip into this area is the disclosure that drummer Frank Beard had been
in rehab in the mid-seventies. There is absolutely no information about the
non-Top lives of other bandmembers Billy Gibbons or Dusty Hill, a refreshing
anomaly in an era when we are constantly being served the most mundane
information about anyone who’s been on the telly. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: x-large;">According to the film, in the band’s early years, manager
Bill Ham had insisted that they avoid appearing on TV as a way of developing a sense
of mystery. It’s possible that Ham’s decision may have had more to do with the
fact that the band consisted of three very ordinary looking men. If so, it was
a good move: during a two-year hiatus from recording and touring, Gibbons and Hill
grew their now trademark ultra-long beards and later adopted the sunglasses
that completely masked their faces and turned them into the most instantly
recognisable band in the world. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: x-large;">The documentary is mostly about the early years, and while
that is almost always the best part of any such film, I was surprised by the
speed with which the MTV mega-stardom years were glossed over. There was a
little bit about discovering a new, turbo-charged, processed sound and a bit
about the making of the unforgettable video for ‘Gimme All Your Loving’, which
looked incredibly slick at the time, and a clip of the follow-up ‘Legs’ and
then a blank. Nothing about the global success that followed, the sudden jump
to stadium concerts and life at the top table, no clips from the videos of
subsequent hits. Was this the result of a contractual obligation? Was the
recent death of Bill Ham a factor? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It
reminded me of the Dolly Parton doc that omitted any mention of ‘Islands in the
Stream’. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Despite this puzzling omission, the film is worth a look.
The three bandmembers make for genial, self-effacing interviewees and they remain
a curious rarity as 1960s garage band also-rans who became superstars in the 1980s.
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><o:p></o:p></p>Corribnoterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09914258600674577772noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5599210290057448239.post-90266992012965518002020-07-31T14:39:00.002-07:002020-07-31T14:39:31.421-07:00Q Magazine, 1986-2020<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><font size="5">‘Lock up your granddaughters: it’s The Rolling Stones!’ That
was the caption on cover of the first issue of Q magazine I bought, back in September
1989. I suppose an updated version would read ‘great-granddaughters’. That same
snoot-cocking irreverence is also in evidence in this month’s final issue of Q
in a republished interview with Lou Reed. The godfather to a million rock bands,
and writer of ‘Femme Fatale’, ‘Heroin’, ‘Pale Blue Eyes’ and ‘Walk on the Wild
Side’ is described in the first paragraph as a ‘legendarily cantankerous old
moaner’. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>British rock journalists haver
rarely had much time for preciousness and Q’s writers were no exception. <o:p></o:p></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><font size="5">According to editor Ted Kessler, it was the pandemic that
did for Q in the end, though apparently it had been operating on slim margins
for most of his tenure at the helm. Truth be told, had I not learned of the
magazine’s passing via the internet I probably wouldn’t have noticed its disappearance
from the shelves of my local mag-sellers. The final issue was the first copy I
had bought in over twenty years. <o:p></o:p></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><font size="5">A thick square book of a monthly jammed with reviews of the
latest releases, Q was pretty conservative. The editorial team invariably chose
dependable mainstream megastars for their covers. Paul McCartney (desperately
unfashionable for people under thirty) was the first cover star and the likes
of Annie Lennox and Phil Collins (both of whom had entered dull mid to late
eighties zones) made regular appearances. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mark Ellen, the original editor, had seen a
gap in the market (the music weeklies were at their most politicised and sceptical
about the post-Live Aid ‘rock aristocracy’ and there was a large middle-aged pop
music audience who were ready to shell out for CD re-releases of old classics)
and he exploited it. <o:p></o:p></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><font size="5">But despite its devotion to comfy shoe-wearing superstars, Q
could be funny. As well as making fun of the ageing Stones, it also teamed
grumpy Van Morrison with Spike Milligan for a photo shoot and for several years
its opening feature was the often brilliant interview series ‘Who the Hell does
… think s/he is?’ in which Tom Hiddleston regularly punctured the pomposity of stars
of varying stature. Long before Louis Theroux, his interview with Jimmy Saville
caught the spiky weirdness of the man. ‘I hate children’ was the eyebrow-raising
quote highlighted in a text-box. <o:p></o:p></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><font size="5">As a teenager just finding out about pop music, I had purchased
it now and again but on discovering NME and Melody Maker it seemed immediately and
irreparably staid. It was definitely not the place to go if you were looking
for bands on independent labels and even ultra-populist throw-back merchants
Oasis didn’t appear on the cover until ‘What’s the Story, Morning Glory’ was a global
best-seller. <o:p></o:p></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><font size="5">NME and Melody Maker were the angry teenagers to Q’s
comfortable big brother. And they were also where I first read about Captain
Beefheart, The Fall, The Velvet Underground and a slew of brilliant albums from
the sixties to the nineties. There was less to discover in Q where stadium-fillers
like Clapton, Collins, Eurythmics, Dire Straits, Peter Gabriel, Bowie and Sting
always seemed to be in the spotlight. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
no doubt that changed over the years as younger readers got on board. <o:p></o:p></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><font size="5">Like all magazines, it had been under the cosh for years, struggling
to hold its head up within the flood of freely available digital content – I seem
to recall it rebranding itself for a while as a ‘lifestyle’ magazine. and has
now gone the way of the weeklies. All that’s left on the shelves are Hot Press (which
I always thought survived because of its wide-ranging remit: music but also
film, sport, politics and sex) and the rock heritage monthlies Mojo and Uncut.
Both of the latter are specialist publications aimed squarely at collector nerds
but they do provide oxygen for plenty of new artists. How long those three will
survive is anyone’s guess. Online there is Pitchfork and the excellent The Quietus
and millions of people blogging, vlogging and commenting on music as a hobby. <o:p></o:p></font></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div>Corribnoterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09914258600674577772noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5599210290057448239.post-81561350457953124312019-04-25T08:32:00.003-07:002019-04-25T08:32:58.904-07:00Death and Rembrandt<img alt="Image result for rembrandt" class="mimg" data-bm="32" height="204" src="https://www.bing.com/th?id=OIP.ffu2M7rJsS8WPXsnuMTrQgHaFj&w=272&h=204&c=7&o=5&pid=1.7" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; border-collapse: collapse; border-image: none; border-spacing: 0px 0px; border: 0px rgb(102, 102, 102); color: #666666; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,Sans-Serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; left: 136px; letter-spacing: normal; list-style: none; margin: 0px -136px 0px 0px; max-height: 204px; max-width: 272px; orphans: 2; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; position: absolute; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: -9999px; text-transform: none; top: 102px; touch-action: manipulation; transform: matrix(1, 0, 0, 1, -136, -102); white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" width="272" /><b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><br />
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<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: large;">Watching the
excellent BBC 4 documentary on the life of Rembrandt over the last few weeks
got me thinking about our relationship with death. The artist’s life was
presented as being dogged by personal and financial difficulties. As well as
being a genius, Rembrandt was improvident with money, a spendthrift whose
profligacy and poor management led to chronic debts. But his life was also
touched by tragedy with the deaths of three infant children, his wife Saskia, and
then Hendrickje, the woman who succeeded her as his live-in lover.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Modern viewers would of course view this as
tremendously unlucky but while death and illness are of course still central to
our lives they tend to jump out at us like proverbial bogeymen. In the 17<sup>th</sup>
century, they were part of the fabric of everyday existence. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Death is something most of us wish to avoid
contemplating until it becomes unavoidable. I sometimes wonder if people lived
more intensely in the past.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>In my
lifetime, I have had little exposure to illness and death. I don’t know anyone
who has died giving birth, or anyone who had a stillborn child or whose infant
died from illness or complications. Cancer has cast its shadow over my life as
it has done over the lives of most people in the western world but it tends to
creep around in the dark corners rather than stride through the main thoroughfares
of existence. Modern medicine has made pain quieter; thicker walls and greater
privacy have made it quieter still. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>How
different were the lives of Rembrandt and the people of his time. Life was a
toss-up. Pregnancy was a hugely dramatic, and much more painful, event and the
death of mother, child or both parties was commonplace. How must that have made
women feel? How much stress must they have experienced over the course of their
child-bearing years? Imagine being continually pregnant and constantly unsure
if you or the child would make it out alive? If you were lucky enough to survive
the rocky passage into existence or giving birth to a baby, you then had to
contend with various pre-penicillin ailments and diseases – plagues and poxes, infections
caused by the tiniest of cuts. Making it to forty must have felt like something
of a victory. Sixty must have been considered positively ancient. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>I
wonder how the pervasive fact of death affected people?<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>These days, most of us are insulated from
death – it’s tucked away behind the walls of hospitals, hospices, and houses populated
by small numbers of people. When we do see it, it’s a rare and haunting
occasion featuring a family member or an accident. We are considered very
unlucky if it touches us during our childhood or young adult years and we call
the death of a young person a tragic event. We can plan for our retirement
years, confident that we will be thriving at seventy and still relatively
healthy ten and twenty years later. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;">In Rembrandt’s
times, the opposite was the case.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>I wonder if the greater fragility of existence
had a profound effect on how people saw the world and other people, how they
experienced life.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></span></div>
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<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px; text-align: justify;">
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<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span>Corribnoterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09914258600674577772noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5599210290057448239.post-54537530543556365552019-04-21T12:49:00.002-07:002019-04-21T12:49:34.708-07:00Scott Walker<a class="irc_mutl i3597" data-cthref="/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiu0rP_-eHhAhXITBUIHbCBCZ0QjRx6BAgBEAU&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thejakartapost.com%2Flife%2F2019%2F03%2F25%2Fsinger-scott-walker-dies-aged-76.html&psig=AOvVaw1hBFcA7mGyUc5x-VUPl0du&ust=1555962443401089" data-noload="" data-ved="2ahUKEwiu0rP_-eHhAhXITBUIHbCBCZ0QjRx6BAgBEAU" href="https://www.google.ie/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiu0rP_-eHhAhXITBUIHbCBCZ0QjRx6BAgBEAU&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thejakartapost.com%2Flife%2F2019%2F03%2F25%2Fsinger-scott-walker-dies-aged-76.html&psig=AOvVaw1hBFcA7mGyUc5x-VUPl0du&ust=1555962443401089" jsaction="mousedown:irc.rl;focus:irc.rl" rel="noopener" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: #1a0dab; cursor: pointer; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13.33px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; left: 0px; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; outline-color: invert; outline-style: none; outline-width: 0px; position: absolute; text-align: center; text-decoration: underline; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; top: 20px; white-space: normal; width: 100%; word-spacing: 0px;" tabindex="0" target="_blank"></a><b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><a class="irc_mutl i3597" data-cthref="/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiu0rP_-eHhAhXITBUIHbCBCZ0QjRx6BAgBEAU&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thejakartapost.com%2Flife%2F2019%2F03%2F25%2Fsinger-scott-walker-dies-aged-76.html&psig=AOvVaw1hBFcA7mGyUc5x-VUPl0du&ust=1555962443401089" data-noload="" data-ved="2ahUKEwiu0rP_-eHhAhXITBUIHbCBCZ0QjRx6BAgBEAU" href="https://www.google.ie/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiu0rP_-eHhAhXITBUIHbCBCZ0QjRx6BAgBEAU&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thejakartapost.com%2Flife%2F2019%2F03%2F25%2Fsinger-scott-walker-dies-aged-76.html&psig=AOvVaw1hBFcA7mGyUc5x-VUPl0du&ust=1555962443401089" jsaction="mousedown:irc.rl;focus:irc.rl" rel="noopener" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; color: #1a0dab; cursor: pointer; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13.33px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; left: 0px; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; outline-color: invert; outline-style: none; outline-width: 0px; position: absolute; text-align: center; text-decoration: underline; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; top: 20px; white-space: normal; width: 100%; word-spacing: 0px;" tabindex="0" target="_blank"><br /></a>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">The
first time that the name ‘Scott Walker’ properly impinged on my consciousness
was when the NME published in successive issues, their critics’ choices of best
albums of the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and of all time. This was simultaneously a
celebration of the rich legacy of thirty years of proper pop lps and a
submission to a wave of nostalgia and ‘look back’-it is. It marked the beginning
of an era when many acts began to wave their influences about like gaudy flags.
But for people like me, it was also an education and from those lists I found
out about many, many great works of art. Before those lists, I had never heard
of ‘What’s Going on’, ‘Exile on Main Street’, ‘Blue’, ‘Trout Mask Replica’, ‘Innervisions’,
‘Spirit of Eden’ and host of other brain-bending records. Somewhere on the
1960s list, there were the curiously titled Scott 3 and Scott 4. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: large;">A couple of
years later, I was in a workmate’s flat. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>He rolled a joint and put Scott 4 on stereo. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>It was a surprising listening experience: some
of the songs had MOR show-tuney arrangements but others were startling, sparse
and strange. There were glacial harp sounds on the breathtaking ‘Boy Child’,
distorted narcoticized keyboards on ‘The World’s Strongest Man’. And on top of
everything was the almost comically velvet voice of the intense young man
staring disconsolately from the cover. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>My next encounter was through a compilation
which included jaunty Brel-influenced songs of seedy glamour ‘The Girls on the
Streets’ and ‘The Amorous Humphry Plugg’, and those wonderful immersions in
pure melancholy ‘The Bridge’ and ‘Big Louise’. Like a lot of the best pop music
(and other artforms too, I imagine) the songs teetered on the brink of the
farcical, and were perhaps too daft for a lot of modern listeners, but I loved
them.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: large;">Later on, I
was amazed to learn that his first three solo albums had been huge sellers, no
doubt partly to do with the phenomenal success of his previous band, The Walker
Brothers, and his status as a gloomy pin-up. The fourth of the ‘Scott’ series
had been the first to feature all original material but he made the apparently
fatal error of crediting the record to his real name (Scott Engel) and without
brand recognition, it disappeared and Scott entered the wilderness. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: large;">What followed
was one of the most curious journeys in the history of recorded music. Walker retreated
into MOR covers albums, heavy drinking and drug use and then, in the mid-seventies
reconvened The Walker Brothers to produce the hit ‘No Regrets’, two straight albums
and then one leftfield leap into art rock with their final lp, Nite Flights.
From there on, Walker slid into wilful obscurity, re-emerging once a decade for
the next thirty years with a group of increasingly dissonant and
confrontational albums that sounded next to nothing like the glorious quartet
of ‘Scott’ albums.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>I’ve only attempted
to listen to one of the later albums but couldn’t get to the end of it. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Watching him being interviewed in the 30 Century
Man documentary, he is down-to-earth, plain-speaking, bright-eyed; he seems utterly
uninterested in image or in the kind of reminiscing that is the staple of this
kind of film. The work he is doing right then is all that matters to him and his
past is of no importance. In a more recent BBC interview now on youtube, he is
asked about his reputation as a recluse and how he feels about people wondering
why they haven’t heard from, or seen, him. ‘I’m not a recluse; I’m low-key,’ he
says smiling. ‘Generally, if I’ve got nothing to say or do, it’s pointless to
be around.’ Spoken like true artist. Scott Walker R.I.P.</span></div>
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<div style="margin: 0px 0px 10.66px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36pt;">
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<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span>Corribnoterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09914258600674577772noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5599210290057448239.post-83065688706204876372018-07-06T03:25:00.002-07:002018-07-06T03:26:29.800-07:00Review: Tyrant: Shakespeare on Power by Stephen Greenblatt<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
y<a class="irc_mil i3597" data-ctbtn="2" data-cthref="/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwiOkrahoYrcAhVlCcAKHXJ1A_sQjRx6BAgBEAU&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.independent.co.uk%2Farts-entertainment%2Fbooks%2Freviews%2Ftyrant-shakespeare-on-power-stephen-greenblatt-review-trump-a8376991.html&psig=AOvVaw0qkYrmF0izkzicXEIdp1fe&ust=1530959109470697" data-noload="" data-ved="2ahUKEwiOkrahoYrcAhVlCcAKHXJ1A_sQjRx6BAgBEAU" href="https://www.google.ie/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwiOkrahoYrcAhVlCcAKHXJ1A_sQjRx6BAgBEAU&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.independent.co.uk%2Farts-entertainment%2Fbooks%2Freviews%2Ftyrant-shakespeare-on-power-stephen-greenblatt-review-trump-a8376991.html&psig=AOvVaw0qkYrmF0izkzicXEIdp1fe&ust=1530959109470697" jsaction="mousedown:irc.rl;keydown:irc.rlk" rel="noopener" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; border-image: none; border: 0px rgb(26, 13, 171); color: #1a0dab; cursor: pointer; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13.33px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; orphans: 2; outline: 0px; text-align: center; text-decoration: underline; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" tabindex="0" target="_blank"><img alt="Image result for tyrant greenblatt" class="irc_mi" height="366" src="https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2018/05/31/09/tyrant.jpg" style="background-color: white; background-image: -webkit-linear-gradient(45deg, rgb(239, 239, 239) 25%, transparent 25%, transparent 75%, rgb(239, 239, 239) 75%, rgb(239, 239, 239)), -webkit-linear-gradient(45deg, rgb(239, 239, 239) 25%, transparent 25%, transparent 75%, rgb(239, 239, 239) 75%, rgb(239, 239, 239)); background-position: 0px 0px, 10px 10px; background-size: 21px 21px; border-image: none; border: 0px rgb(26, 13, 171); box-shadow: 0px 5px 35px rgba(0,0,0,0.65); margin-top: 0px;" width="232" /></a></div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><br />
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tyrant:
Shakespeare on Power</i>, Stephen Greenblatt examines how various megalomaniacs
and their supporters are depicted in six of Shakespeare’s plays. Without
mentioning the name of the current incumbent of the oval office, he draws numerous
parallels between U.S. president number 45 and some of the greatest villains in
literature. </span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-size: large;">There is Richard III’s bogus identification with the masses, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Winter’s Tale</i>’s King Leontes’ demand
for loyalty above principles, Macbeth’s infecting of the entire body politic.
And of course, there is also a host of self-serving toadies who enable these
men to rise, some through sheer self-interest, some because they are convinced
they can exert some control over the tyrant.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>In every instance, the man who attains his position by courting the
masses or through shrewd skulduggery turns out to be completely unsuited to
rule and chaos ensues. Greenblatt also notes how in Shakespeare’s plays, despots
tend to emerge when there are deep political divisions in a kingdom. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-size: large;">Greenblatt writes about each play with
great clarity and wisely avoids making explicit reference to the current
turmoil in his home country. Shakespeare appeared to use many of his history plays and
tragedies to look at contemporary events from an oblique angle (to be explicit
could lead to accusations of treason and punishment by torture or execution). Save
for his vague comments on the 2016 presidential election in the acknowledgements
section, Greenblatt wisely does the same. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>This admirably clear and thoughtful book adds yet
more support for Jonson’s claim that Shakespeare is ‘for all time’. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></span></div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><span style="font-family: "calibri";"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span>Corribnoterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09914258600674577772noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5599210290057448239.post-70205824927386197892018-07-05T06:49:00.000-07:002018-07-05T13:21:17.304-07:00The Return of Microdisney<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a class="irc_mil i3597" data-ctbtn="2" data-cthref="/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjzhIPhi4jcAhUnC8AKHVsnAUsQjRx6BAgBEAU&url=https%3A%2F%2Finews.co.uk%2Fculture%2Fmicrodisney-reform-80s-irish-cult-indie-the-smiths%2F&psig=AOvVaw39JBBMeVmXF_FVmB4fEto2&ust=1530884600248185" data-noload="" data-ved="2ahUKEwjzhIPhi4jcAhUnC8AKHVsnAUsQjRx6BAgBEAU" href="https://www.google.ie/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjzhIPhi4jcAhUnC8AKHVsnAUsQjRx6BAgBEAU&url=https%3A%2F%2Finews.co.uk%2Fculture%2Fmicrodisney-reform-80s-irish-cult-indie-the-smiths%2F&psig=AOvVaw39JBBMeVmXF_FVmB4fEto2&ust=1530884600248185" jsaction="mousedown:irc.rl;keydown:irc.rlk" rel="noopener" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: transparent; border-image: none; border: 0px rgb(26, 13, 171); color: #1a0dab; cursor: pointer; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13.33px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; orphans: 2; outline: 0px; text-align: center; text-decoration: underline; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" tabindex="0" target="_blank"><img alt="Image result for microdisney" class="irc_mi" height="249" src="https://res.cloudinary.com/jpress/image/fetch/c_fill,f_auto,h_1327,q_auto:eco,w_1700/https://inews.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/IMG-0041_300.jpg" style="background-color: white; background-image: -webkit-linear-gradient(45deg, rgb(239, 239, 239) 25%, transparent 25%, transparent 75%, rgb(239, 239, 239) 75%, rgb(239, 239, 239)), -webkit-linear-gradient(45deg, rgb(239, 239, 239) 25%, transparent 25%, transparent 75%, rgb(239, 239, 239) 75%, rgb(239, 239, 239)); background-position: 0px 0px, 10px 10px; background-size: 21px 21px; border-image: none; border: 0px rgb(26, 13, 171); box-shadow: 0px 5px 35px rgba(0,0,0,0.65); margin-top: 0px;" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-size: large;">In advance of Microdisney’s recent reunion to play
their 1985 album <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Clock Comes Down the
Stairs</i> album live in Dublin and London, BBC 6Music’s Mark Radcliffe asks founding members Cathal Coughlan and Sean O'Hagan the inevitable question: if the two
shows go well, will they go on tour?<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>Their decision to re-form in the first place must surely have been a
difficult one – seeing them play both concerts and listening to their recorded
output from the 1980s gave me the impression that this was a band driven by a
deep-rooted contrariness.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>In interviews,
they allude to having annoyed a lot of people in the music industry, while when
they actually perform at the two venues, singer Coughlan makes several
references to his fiery younger self. Like many great artists who underachieved commercially,
Microdisney were seemingly allergic to compromise. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Though
they were obviously eager to make a successful career out of music – they
signed to major label Virgin in 1986 and many of their songs are hook-laden
earworms that recall The Beach Boys, Steely Dan and the intellectual pop strand
of the early 1980s represented by Prefab Sprout and Scritti Politti – listening
to them thirty years later, and seeing them in performance in the National Concert Hall and Barbican Centre, gave me a clearer
idea as to why they remain an acquired taste. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Take
their single ‘Birthday Girl’.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Over an
infectiously bouncy melody (further brightened by O’Hagan’s glistening
guitar) Coughlan sings a chorus as sweet as any you will hear in the chart:
‘Birthday girl, rosy and special / Will this night last forever?’<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>But his mournful Cork baritone lends the song
an unavoidable sense of melancholy and listening closely, you can later hear him sing ‘Feed the birds poisoned bread / In the square beneath my place of birth'. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The effect is like biting down on a slice of brack only for your teeth to come in contact with the hidden ring.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/hBKOszNMmBQ/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hBKOszNMmBQ?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><br /></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Microdisney were renowned for their live shows
and in the reunion gigs, they are punchy and sparkling. Coughlan is often
hunched over, his face twisting into a ferocious snarl as he sings. While
utterly compelling, it also cements the impression that this is a band who were
more intent on creating interesting, original work than on attracting
listeners. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Halfway
through their rendition of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Clock</i>,
the band welcome on stage Dublin singer Eileen Gogan, whom they have enlisted
to sing the female vocal parts, and their performance of ‘And’, the final song
on the album, is one of the highlights of both evenings. Like several of the
songs – ‘Are You Happy Now’, ‘Begging Bowl’ – ‘And’ appears to explore the
bitter residue of a failed relationship. </span></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/OZss3Us-A6c/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/OZss3Us-A6c?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-size: large;">A similar combination of disillusion
and defiance is evident on the sublime ‘Loftholdingswood’, one of the non-<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Clock</i> songs they play once they get
through the tracks on the featured album.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>A brilliant mixture of synth-pop and country that contains one of the
all-time great lines – ‘I died on the cross / Now I’m the boss’ – the song
manages to be simultaneously timeless and utterly redolent of rainswept 1980s urban decay. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Answering Radcliffe’s question, Coughlan and
O’Hagan claim that they won’t be extending the two gigs into a tour. Maybe that
is for the best. Being part of the nostalgia circuit would doubtless make a
band as sceptical and sardonic as Microdisney feel uncomfortable, despite the
obvious financial incentive. So those of us who managed to see them in the NCH
and the Barbican can count ourselves lucky. </span></span></div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><span style="font-family: "calibri";"></span>Corribnoterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09914258600674577772noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5599210290057448239.post-65872211397146331182018-04-13T08:38:00.003-07:002018-04-13T08:38:49.097-07:00Three Books About The Fall
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> <img alt="See the source image" data-reactid="26" src="https://thebigmidweek.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/tbmpbcover.jpg?w=200" style="height: 308px; width: 200px;" width="200" /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"> T<span style="font-family: Calibri;">he death in January of The Fall's Mark E Smith, and the subsequent internet deluge of tributes and reflection pieces has rekindled my interest in this most unusual
and perplexing band. As well as re-visiting the music, I have read three relatively recent books about The Fall, two by former members and one by an obsessive fan. </span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Steve Hanley and
Brix Smith Start’s autobiographies couldn’t be more different. At times in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Big Midweek</i>, Hanley, The Fall’s
bassist from 1978 to 1998, might be writing about working on a building-site
rather than touring the world with a highly combustible art rock band. He is so
low-key and self-effacing, it’s no surprise to read that he enjoys his current
job as a school caretaker. It’s also easy to see how important he was to the
band as a calm and solid presence willing to tolerate the often provocative and
domineering Smith.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The latter needed
good, but passive players to realise his vision and Hanley and guitarist Craig
Scanlon fitted the bill. Co-written by Olivia Piekarski, this is a
matter-of-fact account of twenty years in The Fall that contains several good-natured
anecdotes about Scanlon and Marc Riley (Hanley’s childhood friend). </span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>As befits someone
whose childhood was shaped by regular trips to Disneyland and visits to
Hollywood sets, Brix Smith Start’s memoir <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Rise, The Fall and The Rise</i> is a lively, technicolor affair in which the
erstwhile Fall guitarist charts her journey from broken homes to college band
to the fateful concert in Chicago where she met Mark E Smith, her future
husband and band-mate, to her later career as the co-owner of a fashion boutique.
<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Smith Start has a sharp eye for details
relating to clothes and locations and for Fall fans, her description of Mark’s
flat in Prestwich in 1982 will be worth the price of the book alone. Smith
presented such a formidable public image over the years – alternatively
derisive and defensive on record and in interviews – that it’s fascinating to
read about ordinary details such as his home life, his working habits and the
cruise he went on with Brix’s family. </span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Dave Simpson’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Fallen</i> is primarily about Smith as
seen through the eyes of some of the sixty-plus people who have been in The
Fall. In interviews, Smith often described himself as ‘bloody-minded’ and that
is borne out by the testimony of the various ex-members whose memories create a
picture of an artist who controlled whoever was in the band like a cantankerous
sergeant-major and who exerted his control even to the commercial detriment of
The Fall. Hanley and Smith Start both refer to Smith’s tendency to
self-sabotage, regularly following up albums that had commercial appeal with harsher
sounding, slap-dash, efforts.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Of the three books,
this is the funniest and the one that would be of most interest to the non-fan.
Such is the wealth of recorded material and accompanying stories, a mini industry
of books about The Fall might yet emerge. </span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span>Corribnoterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09914258600674577772noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5599210290057448239.post-38933445086625466562018-04-09T02:59:00.001-07:002018-04-09T02:59:20.785-07:00Mark E Smith (1957-2018)<br />
<a class="irc_mil i3597 iaxnBsVoKbBs-zixyDjKkw5M" data-ctbtn="2" data-cthref="/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwif9sGc96zaAhWDqaQKHTAzDGcQjRx6BAgAEAU&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pinterest.co.uk%2Fpin%2F682365781011661450%2F&psig=AOvVaw1bSVjHQ4CgU6sA6afhMOm5&ust=1523354300169928" data-noload="" data-ved="2ahUKEwif9sGc96zaAhWDqaQKHTAzDGcQjRx6BAgAEAU" href="https://www.google.ie/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwif9sGc96zaAhWDqaQKHTAzDGcQjRx6BAgAEAU&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pinterest.co.uk%2Fpin%2F682365781011661450%2F&psig=AOvVaw1bSVjHQ4CgU6sA6afhMOm5&ust=1523354300169928" jsaction="mousedown:irc.rl;keydown:irc.rlk" rel="noopener" tabindex="0" target="_blank"><img alt="Image result for mark e smith" class="irc_mi" height="366" src="https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e1/34/64/e13464ea133d55cf7449e612f3e9c853.jpg" style="margin-top: 0px;" width="263" /></a><br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: large;">Maybe I shouldn’t have been shocked to hear of the death of Mark E Smith
in February. The evidence of hard living had been etched on his face since he
was thirty, and since I had become a fan, in the early 1990s, he had always
looked at least fifteen years older than his actual age. But having lost
contact with The Fall I hadn’t known he was gravely ill, wheelchair bound and
had been struggling to fulfil concert dates at several points during 2017. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Like many fans of
the band, I suspect, I went through a spell of intense interest in The Fall
(from 1992 to 1994) before moving on and rarely listening to them again. I was
in my final year in school walking from one class to the next when a friend
offered me a listen through one of his earphones to a snatch of ‘Birmingham
School of Business School’. Over a scuzzy electro keyboard, a sarcastic voice
slurred its way through a chorus. It was strange and unattractive but
interesting. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>My next exposure to
The Fall was their ‘B Sides 84-89’ album, to which I listened to constantly
over a period of six months until Smith’s voice and words imprinted themselves
in my memory. My friend and I would often say snatches of the lyrics to each
other and the one we quoted most often was ‘Slang King’. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>A song that contains a bizarre and
rib-tickling mixture of ideas, it begins with Smith declaiming ‘Whip wire!’ and
‘Hawk-man!’ before turning into a song that appears to be about ‘Lord Swingo’
and ‘his triumphant procession’. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>But
then there’s mention of a ‘lime green receptionist’ and ‘Horst the viking’, and
a reference to three little girls whose fifty pence doesn’t cover the cost of
their chocolate purchases: <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>and so they ‘had
to take, had to put, the Curly Wurley back’. All of which Smith sing-speaks
with complete conviction over typical Fall music: a muscular guitar riff
accompanied by thunderous bass and drums and spooky circular keyboard motif. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>It was a combination I found baffling,
hilarious and exhilarating. </span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: large;">On another song from the same album, ‘Clear off!’, skeletal
keyboards and liquid guitar <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>create a
suitably eerie soundscape over which Smith, shadowed by a witchy Gavin Friday,
repeats the sinister chorus ‘Over the hill, goes killer civil servant’. But
then, at the end, it turns colloquial when Smith says, as though he is shouting
at someone across his fence: ‘Who’s there? What’s wrong? Clear off!’<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>This blend of the strange with the prosaic was
one of the hallmarks of Smith’s endlessly intriguing lyrics.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>At times the songs sounded like Coronation
Street on acid or a Kes/Dark Crystal crossover. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: large;">Around the same time, I discovered the NME, the
highlight of which was always the occasional interview with Smith, who espoused
views that you would normally associate with people twice his age and who often
launched attacks on other bands including U2 (most memorably when he claimed
that Jesus would throw bottles at the band). This was delightful for any U2-sceptics
like myself, as in late eighties and early nineties Ireland, the blanket media
cheerleading of U2 was suffocating. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: large;">Smith carried the confidence that was so apparent on
the songs and in the interviews onto the stage where his apparent disdain for,
and indifference to, the audience was utterly compelling. The Fall were a
legendarily erratic live band and I had the great fortune to witness just one
bad show out of the five I attended. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;">Over the years, my interest in the band waned and was replaced
by other sounds though I continued to marvel at Smith’s productivity as I
noticed that hardly a year went by without the release of a new Fall album. I
had seen his obvious physical decline over the years but it was a tremendous
shock to see footage of a wheelchair-bound, cancer-wracked Mark, his body
twisted and misshapen, his face entirely unrecognisable, on-stage in Glasgow at
The Fall’s final gig in October.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>But
after the feelings of amazement and pity passed I felt more admiration for Mark
than ever before. While most people with such debilitating health problems would
(understandably) be keen to hide themselves away from the public eye, Smith put
the music first and chose to fight on until it just wasn’t possible anymore. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span></div>
Corribnoterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09914258600674577772noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5599210290057448239.post-36080112023551269952018-01-14T23:54:00.001-08:002018-01-14T23:54:09.974-08:00Half Arsed Half Biscuit at Bello Bar, 13 January 2018
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img height="320" src="https://halfarsedhalfbiscuit.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/hahb-dukla.jpg?w=720" width="320" /></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;">If The Beach Boys summon up visions of sun-kissed California and
Kraftwerk bring German transport networks to mind, Half Man Half Biscuit are
the sound of a rainy afternoon in a big midlands town. So perhaps it’s no surprise
that the excellent tribute band Half Arsed Half Biscuit come from Limerick. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Despite the name, there is nothing careless about
their dedication to the worthy cause of imitating Birkenhead’s greatest musical
exports.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Well, ‘export’ is perhaps
a little ambitious, as HMHB’s oeuvre has been, since the beginning of their
career in the mid-eighties, solidly British in outlook, their songs filled with
often vitriolic references to C grade celebrities, many of whom can be filed
under ‘Where are they now?’.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>You now
need to be of a certain age to fully appreciate titles such as ‘Rod Hull is
Alive – Why?’, ‘Dickie Davies Eyes’, ‘A Case of Vitas Gerulitis’, ‘The Len
Ganley Stance’, ‘I Hate Nerys Hughes’ and ‘The Bastard Son of Dean Friedman’. And
that is reflected in the age profile of the crowd who have turned up in Bello Bar
tonight, several of whom are dressed in Dukla Prague FC tops (in honour of one
of the Biscuits’ greatest songs, ‘All I Want for Christmas is a Dukla Prague Away
Kit’). </span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Winningly, the band
play it straight throughout and are always respectful to the songs, the singer
(whose resemblance to early HMHB champion John Peel is a little jarring – that’s
two tributes in one night!) replicating Nigel Blackwell’s leaden tone to
perfection. It is always surprising when he talks in his own Limerick accent
between songs and at one point he apologises to any British people in the
audience if he doesn’t get Birkenhead just right.</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The show is at its
best when the joyful audience sing along to ‘Fuckin’ ‘Ell, It’s Fred Titmus’
and ‘I Was a Teenage Armchair Honved Fan’ and there is some proper moshing
going on by the time they get to ‘Kendo Nagasaki’ and the ferocious ‘Trumpton
Riots’. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>At several moments
there are reminders of the frequent brilliance of HMHB’s bedsit/dole poetry. ‘The
light at the end of the tunnel / Is the light of an oncoming train’ is worthy of
Leonard Cohen, while though I am now probably halfway through my time on this
earth I still find it hard to argue with their contention that ‘There is
nothing better in life / Than writing on the sole of your slipper with a biro.’
<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The singer talked
about possibly playing Spirit Store in Dundalk later this year – check out
their facebook page for more details. </span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span></div>
Corribnoterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09914258600674577772noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5599210290057448239.post-66314242053614803742017-12-29T08:07:00.002-08:002018-01-15T12:21:23.429-08:00The Last Jedi<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: large;"><img height="137" src="https://i0.wp.com/media2.slashfilm.com/slashfilm/wp/wp-content/images/Luke-and-Rey-The-Last-Jedi.jpg" width="320" /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: large;">The Last Jedi is a beautiful empty thing that follows
a similar template to its predecessor, The Force Awakens: a band of plucky
rebels attempt to stymie a new imperial threat while old favourites from the
original trilogy are added to warm the hearts of older fans.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>But unlike TFA, this film lacks the brio
and momentum provided by JJ Abrams’s direction as well as its surprise elements
(the new villains, the new masks, the new lightsabres, the stormtrooper turned
hero subplot, the Han and Leia family issues). The Last Jedi is a flabby affair
that needed some ruthless editing – there is too much aerial footage of Skellig
Michael; there’s a section set on an intergalactic version of Las Vegas that
seems to have been included to show off CGI technology rather than advance the
plot; and at least three endings. There is also too much Carrie Fisher, who
really doesn’t seem match fit and too much Mark Hamill, the inclusion of whom
feels like a victory for sentiment over storytelling: they are there to appease
fans rather than advance the plot. Remove the film from the canon and you would
wonder why any director would want to spend so much time lingering on these two
characters. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>As pretty as The Last
Jedi inevitably looks, the villains seem more underpowered than ever before.
Maybe it’s partly due to Po Dameron’s baiting of him in the opening scene, but
Domhnall Gleeson is a watery, dweebish imperial commander and his accent and
bearing are reminiscent of an antagonist in a school play. Adam Driver, so good
in Paterson, is just too much like a sad sack bloodhound to be a convincing bad
guy and why bother making Andy Serkis into dent-headed skull creature when
there are few scarier actors than Andy Serkis himself?<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Daisy Ridley and
John Boyega put in solid turns but they are not given the scope they had in
Force Awakens when they were allowed be funny and moving. Instead, the
spotlight is turned on the veterans Hamill and Fisher, who were never much good
in their roles. </span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>As ever with
blockbusters, you are left wondering about the behind-the-scenes machinations,
the compromises that billion-dollar franchises inevitably force film-makers to
make to keep the fans happy, to secure marketing deals, to win over audiences
across the world.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>After all, this is as
much about maintaining the integrity of a brand and selling merchandise as it
is about telling a story, hence this slavishly conservative film that is aimed,
like all of the Star Wars films, at children but is desperately trying to keep
its nostalgic older viewers satisfied.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Watching The Last
Jedi you always feel aware that it is one segment of an enormous business, a
unit that is there is help keep the merchandising juggernaut ticking along. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><span style="font-family: "calibri";"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span></div>
Corribnoterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09914258600674577772noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5599210290057448239.post-38334256277070561662017-12-29T07:57:00.000-08:002018-01-15T12:23:57.699-08:00Review: Starman by Paul Trynka<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: large;"><img src="https://d39ttiideeq0ys.cloudfront.net/assets/images/book/large/9780/7515/9780751542936.jpg" /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: large;">More than any other rock star, David Bowie was intent
on writing his own story, and fostering his legend, through his careful control
of his musical output and image.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Starman</i>, Paul Trynka’s unfussy 2011 biography gets behind the mystery and presents him as a
cultural sponge whose lack of natural musical talent was compensated for by a
genius for marrying styles and for coming up with grand concepts. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: large;">The book records
a life packed with incident and activity, detailing the various false starts of
the 1960s, his eventual ‘sudden’ emergence as icon and innovator in 1972, the
frequently addled years of super-charged creativity that characterised the rest
of that decade, the moribund eighties, the reinvigorated nineties, the more
reclusive domestic years of the new millennium and the late creative and
commercial resurgence in the three years prior to his final disappearance. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>There is a lot of fascinating material in this compulsively readable book which creates a
beguiling picture of an intellectually restless and ferociously driven
individual who, in common with many great artists, was addicted to taking risks,
to following impulses (and to taking the ‘contrary’ action) and who tended the
get phenomenal results from his various collaborators. </span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Trynka gives credit
to Mick Ronson for fuelling the sound that made him a major star, to Tony
Visconti’s production wizardry on his most daring records, to ex-wife Angie for
helping a reluctant Bowie to go for broke with his extraordinary image in the
early to mid-1970s. Brian Eno, Nile Rodgers, Carlos Alomar, Mike Garson, the
other Spiders and manager Tony de Fries are also given their dues. While many
musicians feel they were not properly acknowledged for their input into his
greatest recordings, Trynka does make the fair observation that few of them
produced anything as interesting without Bowie’s encouragement and the
experimental atmosphere he created in studio. And there is much made of his
successful role in helping to rehabilitate the careers of Lou Reed and
especially Iggy Pop, whose chaotic 1980s provides an intriguing counterpoint to
the carefully-planned and tightly-controlled world of Bowie at the same time.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>His hunger for success
and artistic experimentation is complemented by a hunger for physical
gratification in the form of sex, cigarettes, coffee, cocaine and alcohol and
like so many successful people, one is left marvelling at his physical
strength. There are moments when he appears to teeter on the brink of mental
collapse (a period spent holed up in L.A. with cocaine paranoia in 1975 is
perhaps the nadir) but unlike many others is able to haul himself up and move
onto the next project.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Like all human
beings, he is a complex and it will take years before a genuinely definitive
biography will be written about him, and Trynka gives him the benefit of the
doubt whenever some contentious issue emerges such as his aunt’s accusation
that he neglected his mentally unstable step-brother, his long-term falling out
with Iggy Pop, his ex-wife Angie’s scornful remarks about his behaviour, his
refusal to play at the Mick Ronson tribute concert, his sometimes cruel
dismissal of musical partners (often attributed to drug problems), <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>and his early embrace of the type of security
entourage that became de rigeur for<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>superstar musicians in the 1980s. It’s possible that Trynka, a working
journalist, hoping someday for an interview with his reclusive subject, decided
that it might be in his favour to be even-handed in his approach.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The last two chapters of the revised edition,
written shortly after Bowie’s death, in which Trynka gives a brief account of
his re-emergence from domestic semi-retirement with two acclaimed albums before
dying, feel understandably rushed, – there will be much more to say about this
extraordinary late period in which the artist embarked on one final act of
self-mythologising. </span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: large;"> </span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><span style="font-family: "calibri";"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span></div>
Corribnoterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09914258600674577772noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5599210290057448239.post-81452887104404123002017-11-14T23:39:00.001-08:002017-11-14T23:39:17.191-08:00Lifesaving Poems - A Review<img height="320" src="https://anthonywilsonpoetry.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/11336171_749913378451242_279057721_n.jpg" width="320" />
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: large;"><i>Lifesaving Poems</i> (edited by Antony Wilson, 2015, Bloodaxe Books)</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;">This collection, edited by Anthony Wilson and containing his choice of
favourites with a short essay after each one, has an unfortunate title. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>It inevitably reminds one of those books that
promote poetry as a form of self-help or therapy: poems to relax you, poems to
inspire, poems that make men cry... Yes, poetry has been co-opted by the life
coaching brigade, but I suppose anything that gets more people reading it can
only be a good thing. And a good poem can stand up to any sort of treatment.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>But following my
recent experience of bereavement, I can see why people turn to poetry for help
and consolation. When the odd bout of grief hits me, it’s a queasy, destabilising
sensation that feels like someone has given a jar of water a shake and a layer
of sediment has risen from the bottom and turned the water cloudy. Poetry,
which often reminds me of what’s there in front of me, such as permanent
features in nature and in our lives, has served to help me maintain some sense
of equilibrium at a disturbing time. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lifesaving Poems</i>, Wilson, a poet and a
teacher, selects and comments on, poems that helped him become a poet, poems
that stunned him and on poems that helped him through cancer. As he writes in the
introduction, the book ‘is a thank you to the people who have shared a love of
poetry with me.’ Despite the title and occasionally grim subject-matter, his
choices are devoid of drama and sentimentality. Like all the best poems, they
look at life in an unflinching manner, and they aren’t afraid to pick up the
stone and observe what’s going on underneath. And that’s what the best poets
do, I suppose: look hard at the things most of us turn away from or want to
avoid thinking about. </span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Wilson includes
fantastic poems by the likes of Jo Shapcott, Raymond Carver and Sharon Olds and
his short essays neatly balance analysis with personal reflection; his
observations are always illuminating but they never steal the spotlight from
the poems themselves.</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>What’s most
endearing about this book is the editor’s giddy enthusiasm for the poems and
his championing of unknown or forgotten poets such as Stephen Berg, whose <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New and Selected Poems</i>, Wilson writes,
is available on Amazon for 13p.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Of
Martin Stannard, he claims ‘had he come from New York or Zagreb, we would <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">all</i> be called him a genius by now.’ <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Poets need proselytisers and the ones included
in this collection are lucky to have one like Wilson.</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span></div>
Corribnoterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09914258600674577772noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5599210290057448239.post-66603619548117135542017-11-09T00:03:00.003-08:002017-11-09T00:03:53.616-08:0010 Rillington Place - Film Review<img height="248" src="https://media.baselineresearch.com/images/390539/390539_full.jpg" width="320" /><br />
<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">
<b><br /></b><br />
</span><br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">The story of the
killing of Beryl Evans by her landlord John Christie and his subsequent framing
of her husband Timothy, Richard Fleisher’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">10
Rillington Place</i> is a queasy masterpiece. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Murder apart, the depiction of Christie’s
flea-pit of a boarding house is unpleasant enough in itself: ragged carpet lifts
off the stairs, the cramped hallway is lit by a single dim lamp, he and his
wife’s tiny quarters have barely enough room for a rope webbing deckchair and a
medical cabinet containing the rubber tube he uses to gas his victims. </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The tenants are a sadly
pathetic young couple, a feckless braggart played by John Hurt and his guileless
wife (Judy Geeson) who are already struggling to support their baby daughter
when they move into Christie’s house. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>After discovering she is pregnant again, when
Geeson decides to have an abortion, both she and Hurt show tragic naivete in
putting their trust in the mild-mannered Christie, who assures them he has the
medical experience to be able to help Beryl. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The unsettling nature
of the film has much to do with the realistic look of the production – there is
nothing idealised in this portrayal of grimy post-war poverty – and the
horribly inevitable manner in which the poor (and poorly educated) are exploited
not only by Christie but also by the law.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>But the key element in making this such a
disturbing experience is the chilling lead performance of Richard Attenbrough
who moves soundlessly and half-whispers his way through the film. We often hear
about the cold, calculating behaviour of psychopaths; as Christie, Attenbrough
captures this perfectly. His calm and reasonable manner and apparent
preoccupation with making tea is brilliantly complemented by the volatile,
agitated Hurt, playing the perfect foil for his manipulative landlord.</span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The BBC produced a
second adaptation of the story, the three-part <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rillington Place</i>, in 2016. </span></div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span>Corribnoterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09914258600674577772noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5599210290057448239.post-11858692376362889782017-11-08T23:11:00.000-08:002017-11-08T23:11:02.877-08:00 Loving the Alien: Nemesis the Warlock
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><img src="https://www.previewsworld.com/news_images/198621_1127916_5.jpg" /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: large;">The fifth issue of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">2000AD: The
Ultimate Collection</i> features the frankly mind-bending <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Nemesis the Warlock</i>. When people talk about the subversive side of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">2000AD</i>, it’s this truly bizarre story
that quickly springs to mind. Pat Mills’s future version of an earth where quasi-religious
fanatic Torquemada demands the annihilation of all aliens (or ‘deviants’ as he
calls them) is brought to life by Kevin O’Neill’s startlingly grotesque,
Bosch-like visuals in which clothes and buildings have a medieval/sado-masochistic
look and everything appears to be alive.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"> It’s a strip that pulsates with anger,
the work of two former Catholic schoolboys gleefully giving the finger to rigid
authoritarian figures and dogma of all kinds. It’s somewhat hard to believe
that this stuff was first published in the early-1980s, in a weekly comic aimed
at pre-teens, one that shared the same stable as <i>Tiger</i> and <i>Roy of the Rovers</i>
but, as managing editors from the time have since explained, it would have been
foolish to tamper with a winning formula. And at that point, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">2000AD</i> had become a huge success with a
significant readership among teenagers and college students.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: large;">The titular character is the leader of an alien
resistance force dedicating to alleviating the lot of those suffering under the
yoke of the intolerant humans of Termight. The joy of the tale is in how
readers’ expectations are confounded as the frequently hideous aliens are
presented as sympathetic victims of the Klan-like human mob.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Kevin O’Neill’s artwork is sometimes so
surreally detailed and deliberately unpleasant, it can be hard to look at but there
are many unforgettable images here such as Nemesis’s Great Uncle Baal’s study
with its fantastic collection of oddities including a chair made from a human
skeleton, the joust between armour-clad female warlocks and the dizzying chase through
the travel tube. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: large;">One of the most overtly political strips ever to
appear in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">2000AD</i>, with its extreme
depiction of what fear of ‘the other’ can drive people to do, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Nemesis the Warlock</i> remains as relevant
as on its first appearance. </span></div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span>Corribnoterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09914258600674577772noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5599210290057448239.post-12104331969106952072017-11-01T00:52:00.000-07:002017-11-01T00:52:40.954-07:00 Brexit and the Attempts to Shut Down Debate<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: large;"> I read an article recently in which the writer claimed that the U.K. was
having a collective nervous breakdown.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>It’s certainly felt like that for this blogger. I’ve watched BBC’s Question
Time every week since the European Union referendum (usually on Youtube a
couple of days after the live transmission) as I am fascinated by the
persistent mood of anger and frustration among audience members and by the
members of parliament who were Remainers but since the vote have become zealous Brexiters.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>If that programme
is an index to the general state of the nation, it seems a few springs have
come loose. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>While I am sad about
the impending departure of Britain from the E.U. (it’s bad for Ireland, where I live, and bad
for Europe) what makes me sadder still are the attempts of some to stifle debate.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>On Question Time,
one regularly hears panellists and audience members admonishing those who complain about the decision to leave and demanding that those who are sceptical of the
government’s approach stop criticising them and leave them to get on with it.
Those who question the decision to leave the community are branded sore losers
and remoaners and even traitors who are intent on ‘talking down’ Britain and weakening
its bargaining position. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>For someone who has
for years watched British democracy with a great deal of admiration, this is a
sorry state of affairs. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"> Having lived six months in Britain, and having spent much
of my life watching British television and reading British newspapers, I have
always been struck by how much complaining people do over there and this extends to the country's media. Reading the
home news in any British newspaper and you would think the U.K. was teetering on
the brink of collapse (failing schools, struggling health service, creaking
infrastructure).<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Unlike
most people in Ireland, the British have long been highly critical of public
services and government and this is partly due to a lingering notion that life
on that island was better in the<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>decade
or so after World War II.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>But I think this
propensity to complain and criticise is also linked to the fact that the U.K.
is a mature, stable democracy where people know that the state can withstand
scathing attacks. Complaint and
criticism are expressions of freedom and confidence. Ireland is still an immature
state where many people are afraid to ‘talk down’ the country by pointing out
its flaws. During my lifetime, that has not been the case with the U.K….until now. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>I’ve always considered
Britain to be a complex place but one in which reason and pragmatism were the
chief values of its people and its parliament: many of the greatest Enlightenment
thinkers were British, its political system has been remarkably stable for more
than 350 years, and the U.K. has been in the vanguard of countries that have
introduced progressive </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: large;">policies for society at large.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>Fascism has never put down strong roots in Britain partly because the people genuinely cherish freedom of expression.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>And that is why
headlines like ‘Crush the saboteurs’ or the sight of columnists, politicians
and members of the public telling dissenters to shut up and allow the
government to do its work, are so depressing. Debate is the one essential
component of a democracy and if this is dampened in one of the world’s most
argumentative countries, it spells trouble for everyone. </span></span></div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span>Corribnoterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09914258600674577772noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5599210290057448239.post-23245116960544161722017-10-21T23:52:00.002-07:002017-10-21T23:52:31.391-07:00Shades of 'Broken Britain' in the Scream! and Misty Special.
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<img height="320" src="https://www.bleedingcool.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/ScreamMistySpecial-600x789.jpg" width="243" /></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> <b> </b></span><span style="font-size: large;"><b>‘Not for the Nervous!’</b> was the
warning the first <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Scream!</i> comic
carried on its cover. But the free gift of a set of plastic vampire teeth and
the fact that it was printed on IPC’s standard toilet roll quality paper made
it look a bit silly. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Like so much of
that publisher’s output, it looked cheap, dowdy and even a little desperate. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>I didn’t read it during its short run and only
discovered it a few years later when a stack of unsold copies was being sold
half-price in a suitably dusty old newsagent’s. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>By that time I had become a
regular reader of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">2000AD</i> so the
gothic humour of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Scream!</i> did appeal
though it lacked the frequently mind-bending quality of the Galaxy’s Greatest.
Despite its very short run (it was cancelled during a publisher’s strike after
its fifteenth issue) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Scream!</i>
attracted a band of hardcore devotees who helped the comic maintain an online
presence and re-published some of the stories. More recently, Rebellion’s
purchase of IPC’s stable of comic characters in 2015 led to the publication of
collected editions of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Scream! </i>strips <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Monster</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Dracula Files</i> with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Thirteenth
Floor</i> to receive the same treatment in 2018. It’s an impressive feat for a
weekly that only lasted for four months. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Scream!</i>’s predecessor,
the Pat Mills-created girls’ comic <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Misty</i>
(1978-1980) was an anthology of supernatural stories that also had an impact that
belied its relatively short lifespan.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>And some of its best stories have been reproduced in collected form too,
beginning with last year’s pairing of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Moonchild
</i>with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Four Faces of Eve</i>. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>As well as republishing old stories,
Rebellion have been able to create new adventures for the old characters and
their first attempt has led to the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Scream!
and Misty Special</i>. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>But this is much
more than a nostalgia fest for those of us in the throes of a mid-life crisis…</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>What is particularly striking
about this comic is the way in which the re-booted stories, like all good
horror tales, reflect contemporary concerns. In the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Special </i>version of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Thirteenth Floor</i>, in which Max, the deranged computer who controls a tower
block, exacts punishment on wrongdoers by bringing them by lift to the
mind-shattering location of the title, there are echoes of the Grenfell
disaster when it is revealed that the building fell into ruin and was then
cheaply restored. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Unsavoury echoes of modern
Britain are also apparent in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Sentinels</i>, in which there are hints of the worst emissions released by the
Brexit debate.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>In a rundown area on the
outskirts of the city (urban decay is a running theme) a cranky older man
shouts racist abuse at a teenage boy wearing a turban.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Overlooking the scene is an abandoned tower
block (again!) which functions as a portal into an alternative reality where
the same man is the totalitarian leader of a Britain that was defeated in World
War II. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>But the original <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Scream! </i>never took itself too seriously
and there is plenty of levity in these pages. Those old enough to remember IPC
characters from the early to mid-1970s will doubtless get a kick out of seeing
the revival of the tremendously eccentric <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Black
Max</i> (a perma-grinning World War I pilot assisted by an army of bats!) and
the host of vintage characters who make up the supporting cast of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Death Man</i>, while the joint editorial
team of the putrescent Ghastly McNasty and the ethereal Misty makes for a
comical clash of styles. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin: 0px; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>What will perhaps be most
gratifying for older readers (and the vast majority of readers will be older)
is seeing these characters and stories at last in full colour, and on high
quality paper, and seeing once again the jagged <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Scream!</i> logo jumping out from the newsstands.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>A worthy revival. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></span></div>
<b></b><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><i></i><i></i><span style="font-size: large;"></span>Corribnoterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09914258600674577772noreply@blogger.com0