mona lisa musta had the highway blues
Via Stereogum, and exciting only to two readers of this blog (one of whom is also the writer, both of whom are sitting in this living room):
Look at this picture. Doesn’t that look awfully like Ben Nichols of Lucero singing with Craig Finn while recording The Hold Steady’s new album?
Is it February yet?
Facebook Scrabble? Pah! Here, “where the magic happens”, we like our distractions to be a little more traditional. Besides, there’s a chance I actually win this one.
And today I have needed all the stress relief I can get. Thankfully everything appears to have worked out though.
It has been a bad week for me where electronic games are concerned, although perhaps it serves as a lesson to unplug my earbuds and focus on a reality that is not of my own creation on occasion (I’m trained as a journalist – you’d think this would come easy!).
It’s a long story but it begins last night on the bus where I was minding my own business, as usual, when the lights went off and this tremendous piercing siren that cut through my self-reflection. Collectively, we passengers started and then glanced around, eye contact and nervous smiles, looking for the wee Glesga wifey (there’s always one) who would venture forward to see if the images of disaster flashing through my brain (the driver was dead! heart attack and collapsed right there on the steering wheel!) were accurate. The noise stopped and the lights came on before she made it to standing and we recommenced the traditional rush-hour inch-forward, Renfield Street becoming Union Street, one of the city’s main arteries despatching commuters southwards and eastwards from its beating centre.
The shock over, I began to slip into my music and computer games as a way to distract me from the evil four-year-old who was regularly booting the back of my seat. What did I tell you about kicking the lady’s seat? his mother kept scolding, and I wondered why she didn’t just grab the little brat by the throat and… breathe. I’ve recently downloaded a new BlockBreaker game (or Breakout, or Alleyway as I think it was called on my sister’s old Nintendo Game Boy) which is probably my favourite puzzle game, and in this new version you get to pick up mines and rockets and nuclear warheads with which to destroy the offending blocks as well as the traditional ball.
In my defence I’d like to say that the bus was packed more tightly than normal, and the windows were steamed up, but by the time I glanced up to check our progress we were already halfway down Corkerhill Road, some distance away from where I should have disembarked. Walkable, possibly, but not in a hurry and not in the freezing rain in a pair of knee-high boots. I had no option but to shiver at the bus stop for half an hour, watching the traffic stream by on the other side of the road, before one arrived to take me home where I made fajitas and hid under my hoodie all night.
I wouldn’t like to label myself as particularly shallow, but I have to admit that I have on occasion been a sucker for something pretty. And so, despite only having heard one preview track from Death Cab For Cutie guitarist/producer Chris Walla’s solo album, Field Manual, I was in raptures when a little package arrived from Barsuk Records yesterday. I had pre-ordered the deluxe CD version of the album and it’s stunning: a hardback, clothbound case which opens like a book, and then the CD and a 32-page booklet of abstract photography and lyrics.
This is why I can’t bring myself to buy more than odd songs on iTunes: of course it would be a fallacy to say that every artist takes as much care presenting an album as a complete work of art, a package of music, texture and visual, but there’s usually something. A booklet to flick through. A joke that’s hidden in the credits. The colour of the CD itself. I love what the internet has done in terms of revolutionising the ways in which we present and transfer information (be it music, photography, text) and I still think there is much to explore, but give me something I can hold over a bunch of ones and zeros anyday.
Or at least, a little bit of both because I don’t want to take away from this gorgeous website either. And there are free mp3s if yu buy the album from the label before 5th February.
Just need to hope the album lives up to its packaging now 
[Related, if you haven't heard: the new album from Walla's day job, coming out in May, is called Narrow Stairs.]
Speaking of pretty things: go see Sweeney Todd if you haven’t already, unless you don’t have the stomach for gore. A gorgeous Gothic musical, filmed so artfully as to be presented practically in monochrome bar the frequent splashes of red, red blood. Lots of laughs too, if you like your humour as black as Tim Burton certainly does. Proof too, that my recent I Am Legend fixation is no evidence that I need my cinema hearts-and-flowers vanilla. Do you know what the difference was? Yes: other people. And songs, of course.
I wonder if, from now on, I should only watch movies made before, say, 1960. I had a pretty miserable weekend, for one reason or another, and the one bright spot was Sabrina on in the background as I sorted through my proofs. Audrey Hepburn is loveliness personified: in fact, I have a “coffee table” compliation of quotes from Audrey Hepburn interviews called How To Be Lovely that I bought from a street merchant in New York. I’ll take her and Humphrey Bogart over ZOMG! VAMIRE DOGGZ! any day of the week.
Saying that, we might go and see Sweeney Todd tonight.
This weekend I also caught up on Torchwood via the easy-access wonder that is BBC iPlayer. And I started to realise something. I suspect that, despite an adolescence consisting mainly of episodes of The X-Files, Buffy and Star Trek: Voyager, I don’t actually like science fiction. What I do like is realistic, likeable characters who have meaningful relationships and interaction. Torchwood, or Torchwooden as I will hereby call it for my own amusement, has none of these things and whenever they start talking about weevils and warps I start involuntarily rolling my eyes and turning into my brother, muttering oh for fuck’s sake under my breath.
Torchwood, an underground human rights abuse centre masquerading as the Government’s secret line of defence against alien invasion, is staffed by five paper cut-outs with the morals of rutting dogs. So far, so Eastenders. There is John Barrowman as Captain Jack, who flits between charming and sadistic at the drop of a hat-pin but has now held down so many Saturday evening light-entertainment shows that he is completely unbelievable at playing the latter. He is assisted by the weasel-faced Dr Owen Harper, played by Burn Gorman (Guppy from the BBC adaptation of Bleak House), who thinks he is God’s gift to women despite having a face like a slapped arse. Toshiko, the technology expert, is all “nice legs, acts like she’s reading off an autocue”. I want to hide behind the sofa every time she opens her mouth, and it’s nothing to do with Daleks.
Gwen, who was recruited at the start of the first season yet for some reason seems to be second-in-command already, is sweet and has too big a heart for covert ops. She’s the second most likeable thing about the show; but the best lines are reserved for Ianto – last season a shrinking violet, now coming out with a wisecrack every other minute. He got over the death of his half-cyberwoman girlfriend last series, and under the boss who killed her, a little too quickly.
Anyway. I’ll still be watching it because there’s nothing else on TV, the show is taking itself a lot less seriously than last time around, and one cannot live on West Wing boxsets alone.
Now, a couple of CATASTROPHICALLY EXCITING MUSIC LINKS:
- Whiskeytown’s fantastic Strangers Almanac is getting the double-disk reissue treatment in March. One of my favourite albums – if it’s not Ryan Adams’ finest work, it’s certainly up there. VERY VERY EXCITED and hoping it’s on vinyl.
- And Jeffrey Lewis has drawn a three-page comic book “press kit” to go alongside The Mountain Goats’ Heretic Pride. Awesome.
I’ve been following with some degree of interest the appeal against a defamation finding that an Irish newspaper is currently pursuing.
The case relates to a restaurant review which was published in the Irish News in August 2002. The article allegedly criticised the quality of the food and drink, the staff, and the smoky atmosphere in a West Belfast Italian resident, as well as awarding it one star out of five. The restuarant’s owner, who claimed the article was “a hatchet job”, was granted a defamatory verdict by a unanimous jury.
The verdict was something which I as a journalist, blogger and sometime reviewer found deeply troubling. Cricism has always been a stalwart of the newspapers’ art or features section, perhaps even more so in this day and age where newspapers are constantly having to reinvent themselves with colour supplements and DVD giveaways to compete in the interet age. There is a perception of the critic as a talentless hack whose role in life is merely to destroy what he cannot himself create.
But there are critics and there are critics, many of whom are motivated by a genuine love for their subject matter and a talent for wordplay. It is a matter of pride and of journalistic integrity that a review be a genuine expression of honest opinion: neither nasty for the sake of it nor overly nice because you don’t want to bite the hand that feeds you with tasty nuggets of PR.
I had a chat with a contact in the media law field on this and another similar case towards the end of last year. What it comes down to, at least as far as I’m concerned, is the difference between the representation of fact and the representation of opinion – and it is really rather insulting to infer that the average reader of a review column is so stupid that he or she might not know the difference. There is a distiction, my contact and I agreed, between saying that a restuarant’s kitchen is full of rats and describing a chicken tikka masala as “so sweet as to be inedible“.
It would be “perfectly ludicrous” if libel proceedings could be issed every time a critic pens a bad review, Lord Lester QC is said to have told the panel of three judges at Laganside Court. Newspapers and bloggers across the country should, too, be hoping common sense prevails in this case.
Day 183: halfway through my 365Days project, so here’s half my face! Well, sorta. I suppose halfway is technically 182 and a half, but in common with most of my co-conspirators on this project I’ll have to do 366 days if I want to come full circle and end on the date before I started. I haven’t thought that far ahead yet. It still seems like a long way off.
I might not have always taken the most technically proficient photographs, but what I am proudest of is the fact that fickle little me has perservered: through bad hair days, low self-esteem days, and just general all-round lack of ideas. I don’t think that I’m improving as a photographer particularly, but I’m certainly having fun and have met some amazing people along the way.
So this is for Jehane and Tim, for people like Chrissy and Stefani and Dark and Broody who I have found through the 365 Days community and who have left such supportive comments, for my friends who have gotten the bug from me whether they have persevered or not (Whitney, Rachelle Renee, Jules and Diana spring most obviously to mind – and the latter two need a boot up the bum!) but most importantly of all, for Kristoli and Kymee who encouraged me to take up this project in the first place.
Only six months to go, guys! It’ll be a blast.
PS This is exciting: a Jesse Malin covers album is in the offing, featuring that Hold Steady cover. When I interviewed Jesse last year he had mentioned that he had thought about a covers album, on which his cover of the Replacements’ “Bastards of Young” was supposed to feature, but I didn’t realise it was something he was still planning. Whee!
If I was wanting to change the subject to something more cheerful, it really doesn’t get any better than wandering round the most amazing sweetie shop in Glasgow with my good friend Sarah – something that is becoming a post-physiotherapy habit, and which makes changing buses in the West End so much easier to bear.
And how’s this for an awkward seague: as well as being my good friend, Sarah is also (as many of you will know) an an extremly talented musician). However, she is not one of my Official Last.fm Top Ten Artists, although she did link me to this meme in which I get to talk about ten bands who are clunkingly obvious to anybody who has been reading this blog longer than a week.
My Top 10 Artist List, according to Last FM (as of Jan 22nd 2008)
1. Ryan Adams
2. The Mountain Goats
3. Death Cab For Cutie
4. Elliott Smith
5. Jesse Malin
6. Bob Dylan
7. Sleater-Kinney
8. The Weakerthans
9. Whiskeytown
10. The Replacements
What was the first song you ever heard by 6?
I don’t think it was the first song I ever heard by Bob Dylan, because the music that your parents listened to almost breeds itself into your DNA along with the pieces of theirs. I didn’t have a “Bob Dylan moment” when I heard a song on the radio, or a mix, and stopped still while the music played around me and the story of my life slowly rewrote itself. What I do remember is being crammed into the back seat of a car without enough seatbelts on the way back from my cousin’s wedding in deepest darkest Falkirk, and “Mr Tambourine Man” coming on the stereo, and my dad and I singing along.
First up: somebody’s gotta buy me this t-shirt. If I buy it for myself it can’t be true, see?
Somewhere, some years ago, some scientist or other with too much time on his or her hands sat down and sketched out a formula. “I know,” he (as we will use throughout: women have infinitely better things to do) thought. “I will guarantee that my name and minimal achievements live on throughout history by crafting a clever press release; and for the rest of time, as long as the third Monday in January is a slow news day – as, let’s face it, it usually is – copy editors desperate to fill some space will devote feature articles and editorial to how this is THE MOST DEPREZSING DAY OF TEH YEAR.”
And I can’t say anything, because I did it myself once when I was desperate for a starting point for my editorial.
But ladies and gentlemen, my beloved blog readers, I am here to refute that scientist’s formula. It was actually yesterday that was the most depressing day of 2008: yesterday when, as a favour to a friend, I subjected myself to the hour and a half of sheer nihilism coupled with a tacked-on Judeo-Christian redemptivist ending, that was I Am Legend.
This may involve considerable spoilers, so I’ll spare your blushes by inviting you to join me after the jump for what really amounts to the sort of thing I used to write on LiveJournal.
It does one good to get “worst film of 2008″ out of the way early, although I suppose as a 2007 release I Am Legend doesn’t really count. It’s one I might have to write about later, if only to get its creepiness and despair out of my system, but it doesn’t do one any good to dwell on these things on a Sunday night.
So, to take my mind off it, I’m starting this one early. One of my “101 things [to achieve] in 1001 days” is to document each month with a mix CD, and I figure if I’m making one anyway I may as well share. These mixes may have a theme but more likely they’ll be a mish-mash of songs old and new I’ve enjoyed in a given month. They might be representative of films (I’m Not There is well represented in this instance, with tracks from both Bob Dylan himself as well as Marcus Carl Franklin from the soundtrack; and that Monkees cover from Stranger Than Fiction which we re-watched quite recently makes an appearance), shows (not this time, sadly) or new albums (MARAH!). And for January, there’s at least one song that pushed my buttons in 2007 which I couldn’t put on my end of year mixes since it was released the year before.
This will, unless bandwidth prevents it, be up until replaced next month.
distiguished colleagues, dead music writers, brides, I apologise: last month’s mix Jan 2008
1. Stars, “Midnight Coward”
2. Marah, “Angels on a Passing Train”
3. The National, “Slipping Husband”
4. Okkervil River, “Unless It’s Kicks”
5. Destroyer, “Your Blood”
6. Broken Records, “If Eilert Lovborg Wrote A Song, It Would Sound Like This”
7. Marcus Carl Franklin, “When The Ship Comes In”
8. Wreckless Eric, “Whole Wide World”
9. Bob Dylan, “Visions of Johanna”
10. Clem Snide, “Find Love”
11. Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros, “Coma Girl”
12. Glen Hansard, “Too Many People”
13. Arab Strap, “Don’t Ask Me To Dance”
14. Cloud Cult, “Pretty Voice”
15. The Weakerthans, “Big Foot!”By popular demand – now with 100% more .mp3! [.zip file, left click and save]
After the jump, seeing as we’re here and I haven’t done it since the last time I reinstalled iTunes, my Monthly Most Played.
Continue reading ‘list season starts early: last year’s month’s mix january 2008;’
It’s been a while since I posted a Disney clip for you, and seeing as it’s Friday (which means, if you’re anything like me, you’ve got seven hours to get through before you can go home – actually, if you’re anything like me you’ve got seven hours until you can go home to a pile of work you’ll have sent to yourself for over the weekend) I think a little vintage cheer is needed. I was going to post it yesterday, but obviously Events Overtook. Molly, I apologise if this one gets stuck in your head all day too.
Megara (“My friends call me Meg, at least they would if I had any friends”) is my favourite Disney Princess; not least because she isn’t a princess. She’s strong, sassy and although the boy does have to save her in the end, you get the impression that it’s under duress. I remember Dom and I loving this film when my dad took the three of us to see it one Sunday afternoon – there were a couple of subtle references in it that younger children would have missed, and we talked about how clever it was that the film was layered to appeal to a wider audience. We were 15 and 13 respectively, according to IMDB. Pretentious or what?
I love this song because it’s the only one I get to sing the lead part to. My sister plays it for me in the car when I’m feeling down, and we scream along stopped at a Govan traffic light while she sings the part of the Muses. She refuses to learn the words because she thinks it’s more fun her way.
My sister’s in Spain for the weekend. I miss her.
Lis. Writer/Photographer/Muso/Traveller/Waffler. Famous on the internet since 1999. Got something you think I should hear? Get in touch!
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