Silent Library has to be the greatest exploitative TV game show of all time. Any show with a round entitled "Old Man Bites Tenderly" ranks right up with Vic and Bob in the pantheon of TV surrealism. Click and watch!
An Indian Summer
I was going to call this my Summer compilation, but I’m not sure how much summer is left in the UK, where I guess most listeners will be, so here’s the hypothesis: it’s early September, and an Indian Summer has arrived. A warm afternoon mellows into a balmy evening. This is what plays on your stereo as you enjoy a few drinks in the garden. Of course, these tunes work just as well for an ordinary summer day. It starts with some storming afro-beat, sashays into some latin grooves, takes an electronic turn and turns folksy at the end.
Click here to listen to my Indian summer compilation (61.5mb quicktime file). I’ll remove it after two weeks, just in case someone takes issue with me putting tunes here.
The link has been removed.
Hurrah!
There are few things that make me dance around the living room singing when I’m not already drunk, but I confess the arrival of a new Divine Comedy album is one of those things. I realise I’m a little behind, and that everyone back home is about three single releases ahead of me, but I’m surrounded by the uninitiated here in California. The album’s not even released in the USA, so last week I ordered it from a company based in Hong Kong.
So far it sounds like Neil Hannon’s most consistent piece since 1999’s Fin de Siècle but I’m only six songs in. It definitely starts strongly; I’m going to have to keep myself from singing "I don’t want to die a virgin!" in front of my staff at the cinema.
So far my favourite lyric is from Diva Lady
She’s got a famous boyfriend
They go out in style
She makes him look hetero
He helps her profile
Dead Appliance Rock
This is the best thing I’ve seen all week. A Total Eclipse of the Heart performed by Norwegian appliance-bashers, Hurra Torpedo. This is the place where art and rock collide.
Time Trumpet
The forthcoming Armando Iannucci series, Time Trumpet, looks like my kind of programme. It appears to be a nostalgia show set in 2031, in which celebrities reminisce about events like the shooting of Tony Blair, a beautiful fireworks display over Baghdad, the day Dale Winton exploded, and a home shopping channel that sells nothing but bacon.
A bit like the incontinent elephant on Blue Peter, but even more so. Golden memories!
La Science des Rêves
It looks like we’re seriously pursuing The Science of Sleep to screen at the Varsity in late August. I love Michel Gondry’s work, so I’m really excited. Check out the trailer here.
It looks as if both a French and English-language version were shot, which is unusual, but not unprecedented. I seem to remember a lame Gerard Depardieu comedy Mon Père ce Héros / My Father the Hero being shot in two different languages. Or maybe it was dubbed and my memory is inventing things.
Inside
Once in a while I discover a song which sounds like the inside of my head. The latest of these discoveries is from the Talking Heads 1979 album Fear of Music. Mind sounds much like a superior version of one of the tunes that my head creates but never expresses.
Fuck me, America is weird
There has just been a tenfold increase in the fine federal government levies against broadcasters who violate “decency standards.” It used to be $32,500, now it’s $325,000, with a maximum of $3m for repeated violations.
The rules do not apply to satellite TV or radio, or to cable TV (such as HBO, which makes the Sopranos). I don’t know why, but it does mean that my new favourite programme, The Thick of It, is being broadcast on BBC America (because the channel is available on digital cable and satellite only). For those who don’t know, it’s a political satire with a shitload of fucking good swearing in it. An example:
Hugh Abbot, minister of Social Affairs, has been savaged in the press by a reported call Simon Hewitt. He discusses the matter with his staff.
Hugh: So, how do we respond to this?
Terri: Right, we don’t exchange insults with bloody Simon arsepipes tittytwat.
Ollie: Is that honestly the best swearing you can come up with?
Terri: Or…
Glenn: This is a bucket of shit. If someone throws shit at us we throw shit back at them. We start a shit-fight. We throw so much shit at them that they can’t pick up shit they can’t throw shit, they can’t do shit.
Hugh: That’s top swearing, Glenn, well done.
Ollie: Watch and learn.
If only it were playing on conventional US TV, it would be the most expensive sitcom ever made.
On the Fringe
My friend Jeff Palmer has started a blog about the experience of creating and selling a DVD of his own feature-length indie movie, On the Fringe. Is the indie film world all one-way traffic? How do you get people to notice your film when you don’t have the budget of, say, Miramax?
Smoke from the big head tastes like marshmallows
Last night Jeff and I went to an art show in a cannery. The place has lain empty since 1999, and is due to be demolished in the next few days. Last night, however, it was turned over to a group of University of California art students to do with as they wished. They put on a show called Uncanny.
John Barleycorn Must Die!
Today I picked up the appropriate soundtrack for the fast-approaching long weekend of drinking in the Catskill mountains with Courtney’s family. John Barleycorn Must Die is an ancient song which has a number of well-established interpretations. Most obviously, though, it’s a song about barley and the drinks one can make from it – beer and whisky.
Traffic’s 1970 version is highly regarded. I think it was in an issue of Mojo that I read Steve Winwood was reincarnated was Paul Weller without actually dying. The comparison is particularly relevant when you compare John Barleycorn… to Weller’s Wildwood. There’s a similar pastoral tinge, and Weller’s instrumentation is almost a direct lift – with bluesy piano, gutsy hammond organ and fluttering flute augmenting guitar, bass and drums.
Lyrics for John Barleycorn Must Die are the other side of the link below.
First impressions of Black Swan Green
It’s very good for homesickness. I can see all the locations. I know Jason Taylor’s route to school. I remembered that he would have attended the Hill School (it’s called Upton upon Severn Comprehensive in the novel), and not Hanley Castle until he was older.
I’m amused at the way Mitchell has turned place names from the area into names of teachers: Mr Kempsey, Mrs Wyche, Mr Inkberrow. I wonder if I’ll start recognising some of the teachers? I’m also amused by the mention of “the pork scratchings factory in Upton on Severn.” I knew the manager’s son. The gossip was that he was illiterate, and his son certainly was.
I’ll post some notes on its literary qualities shortly, but right now I’m wallowing in the nostalgic smell of ashtrays in the school bus and the fear of being at the bottom of a pile-on on the playing fields.
Suddenly I’m reminded of how a friend of mine got barred from a Worcester music shop owned by one of our ex-teachers. My friend P walked in and was greeted by Mr. C with “Hello P, you’re looking fatter.” P wasn’t too impressed and responded with “Hello Mr. C, you’re looking balder.” And that was the end of that.
Back to the book…
Aaaah-tchooo!
There’s an awful lot of pollen in Davis. The air is disgustingly fecund right now, and my hayfever is the worst it’s ever been. Clarityn, my antihistamine of choice, is unable to stem the flow of phlegm. I can actually feel the sting of the pollen as it blows into my engorged eyeballs.
Now I have health insurance I can go to the doctor and get a prescription for something stronger then Clarityn, but it’s not at all obvious which doctors participate in my health insurance scheme. If I go to one that’s not on the list I have to pay in full for my consultation. Whatever its faults, I’ll take the NHS any day.
I’ve been spending quite a few hours lying in my darkened bedroom with wet paper towels over my eyes, which has one advantage. This enforced rest has given me time to listen to some new music.
First, there’s the fairly recent re-release of a record I first heard in Israel in 1999, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts by David Byrne and Brian Eno. In the process of making the record they experimented with new ways to make music from tape loops, trying to “[find] music where music wasn’t supposed to have been,” they invented what later became known as sampling. They took snippets of from late night talk show conversations, radio evangelist sermons and arabic pop records. To create the backing for their samples they drew on an astonishing range of music including, of most interest to me right now, the work of Miles Davis and Fela Anikulapo Kuti. The album they made sounded like nothing else in 1980, and it sounds unique even now. This re-release features excellent liner notes written by David Byrne that give a fascinating insight into the work without explaining it away.
The first time I heard the hysterical evangelist railing against MTV on Mylo’s Destroy Rock & Roll I thought of My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. Contemporary electronic musicians are still drawing from the well sunk by Eno and Byrne.
Second, I picked up Stereolab’s latest full-length CD, Fab Four Suture. It’s a collection of EPs released in the last year that you can find in the kind of bleeding edge ultra-cool record shops that don’t exist in Davis. Stylistically it’s trademark Stereolab, but I have a great appetite for complex arrangements of vintage synths, muted trumpets and jangly guitars and songs sung in French about the principles of Mutualism. There are some wonderful grooves on it, too. Particularly in the middle of Get a Shot of the Refrigerator.
I’m still getting round to devoting the right amount of time to the Cinematic Orchestra’s first album, Motion, which I downloaded from bleep.com and Belle and Sebastian’s latest, The Life Pursuit, on loan from Rev Rehash. There’s a song on it, Sukie in the Graveyard, that reminds me of Lloyd Cole & the Commotions. It’s in the vocal delivery, the hammond organ and the tone of the lyrics – so pretty much the whole song.
When I’m forced to rest my eyes I can still exercise my ears. Every cloud of powdery plant jizz has a silver lining.
Weasel Under the Cocktail Cabinet?
I’m looking forward to Dominik Moll’s new movie, Lemming. The American trailer isn’t ready yet, so here’s the French one. It looks sexy, creepy and absurd all at once.
Philip French, of the Observer, made it his movie of the week. I hope we get it at my place of employment.
Bad Interviewer
Today I saw a CNN Showbiz Tonight interview with Neil Young about his new album, Living With War. Neil gave a very good account of himself, despite the ridiculous tone of the questioning, which was politically hostile and inept by turns. At one point the interviewer asked:
You’ve written a song called Let’s Impeach the President. What’s that about?
The Varsity Story on DVD
I feel as if I was a little rushed trying to get this together two weeks after the grand opening, especially with all the hours I’ve been putting in at the coffee shop and the cinema, but on Saturday 22nd April DVDs of The Varsity Story went on sale. For $10 you get the DVD, complete with bonus materials in an attractive plastic case. That’s about five quid in real money.
In the process I’ve discovered that Apple’s iDVD program is a real pain in the arse to use if you want to do your own design rather than using the default templates. If in the future I want to produce my own DVDs, I will need serious pro-level DVD authoring software, which isn’t cheap. I also learnt that Kinko’s doesn’t configure its colour laser printers properly, and that if you want a good quality print it pays to hook your own laptop up to their printers rather than using the shoddy worn-out Dell computers they provide.
I’m fairly happy with the results. To my eye it’s not perfect, but as far as I’m concerned the project is finished.
It’s on sale in Davis, both at the Varsity and the Hattie Weber museum.
All Neon Like
Life has been hectic this past month, hence the lack of bloggage.
The big news is that the Varsity opened on Thursday 6th April to a capacity crowd, with all the usual paraphernalia. I didn’t have my camera with me, and to be honest I missed most of the fun stuff because I was busy changing into respectable clothes, but we had the Things We Like jazz trio on the roof of the box office playing to our guests as they walked up the red carpet and the Mad Cow String Band on stage.
Sinisa and Jon stood up, gave quick speeches and then called me on stage to introduce my documentary. I forced out a few words and then parted the curtains so my movie could run. It seems to have gone down very well. People laughed in all the right places, and even at bits that I didn’t expect to be so amusing. Afterwards I was nudged back on stage to take a bow. As I stood up I realised my buttocks had been clenched for the entire twenty minutes.
Home on the Dynamic Range
I’m coming closer to a final cut of The Varsity Story, the documentary I’m making for the opening of the Varsity Theatre (cinema, really) on 6th April. I’m happy with the content and how I’ve orgnised it. I’m pleased with the colour correction. The one big thing I have left to do is tidying up the sound editing. I’ve never done sound editing before, and for me it’s probably the dullest part of the editing process. Nearly the whole project was recorded too “hot,” so I need to add compression filters to everything in order to narrow the gap between the loudest and quietest parts of the movie. If I don’t fix this people will turn their TV’s up for the quiet bits and have their ears blown off when an interviewee coughs. Additionally, the Varsity has a brand new sound system which will expose my shoddy sound mix workmanship if I don’t do a good job.
Of course, the compression filter is just one of a number of sound treatments I need to apply. I’m very glad I don’t need to serve coffee tomorrow.
Dots
As promised, here’s a photo of my first painting. Click on it for a bigger view. I made this piece in response to the cafe manager, Alli, declaring that the only art on display in the cafe during the month of March would be created by the staff. As I couldn’t rig up a projector or a plasma screen I couldn’t contribute a piece of video art, so I had to think of another way of getting at least one image onto the wall.
Say No to Strangers
I’ve just discovered this link to a treasure trove of Public Information Films, some of which I remember seeing on the telly, like Say No to Strangers. There’s a creepily odd one called Strange Caller with a fantastic innuendo at the end, a young skinny Rolf Harris urging you to teach youngsters to swim, and about a hundred more.
Drained (in a good way)
Today I edited video for about ten hours, and painted for a further hour or so. Consequently I’m too tired to blog anything particularly worthwhile, other than to note that I’m excited about both projects, and that it feels good to be so busy working creatively. I do, however, have the mental juice left to point everyone at the latest Doonesbury cartoon. I must confess it took me a long time to actually get into Doonesbury as so much of it is about US politics, but it’s generally perceptive and clear-headed.
The painting, if you’re wondering, isn’t freehand stuff and it’s not really pointillism, although I’m painting lots of dots. It will all become clearer when I finish the piece and post pictures on the blog. I think it’ll look pretty decent. It’s about all sorts of things, but quite a large chunk is about how our lives are becoming a convergence of the physical and the digital.
Vive la Révolution!
The closure of 25 McDonalds “restaurants” in the UK has prompted a tremendous celebratory article by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall in the Guardian. I dream of the day when the only McDonalds in the UK will be those frequented by homesick American tourists.
Varsity News
We have an opening date for the Varsity, April 6th. I’ve also allowed myself to be roped in to promoting the opening night. All sorts of interesting plans are afoot, but for now you can check out the Davis Wiki entry for the cinema, and the official site, www.thedavisvarsity.com, a preliminary version of which is now online.
My movie, now titled The Varsity Story, is progressing fairly well. I’m shooting yet more material at some point in the next week. Any time I’m not in the coffee shop it seems I’m shooting or editing the movie, or promoting the cinema. It feels good to be busy working on something I care about.
Unearthed
My good friend Jeff has an exhibition of paintings starting on 1st March in Gino’s cafe, Sacramento. Called Unearthed, it’s a series of abstracts ranging from the folksy to the formal.