Category: Culture

19/02/2006 Music

Music from Norfolk and Belgium

Beth Orton - Comfort of Strangers album cover

I wasn’t a huge fan of Beth Orton’s previous album, Daybreaker, but I’m back in love with her thanks to the new one, Comfort of Strangers. Produced by Jim O’Rourke, who’s been working with Wilco recently, it’s pure Beth stripped of the lavish arrangements that characterised Daybreaker. Consequently her voice returns to the fore, complete with its endearing quirks and occasional flashes of Naarfolk accent. Folksy.

I also treated myself to a long-overdue Django Reinhardt album, 1949’s Djangology, recorded in Rome with Stephane Grappelli. I’ve been using a version of Django’s Minor Swing to time my editing of the Varsity Documentary opening sequence. I’m not going to be able to use it in the final film for copyright reasons, so I hope the musician who’s helping me out will be able to deliver something with a similar feel and exactly the same timing!

Django Reinhardt - Djangology album cover

I’ve been into Django since I was a little ‘un, thanks to Mum and David-Dad taking me to the Upton Jazz Festival every year. The event is always overburdened with mediocre old white beardy trad players, but there is always one stage dedicated to Hot Club style gypsy jazz, and that’s where we’d hang out. Over the years I’ve seen many, many excellent Djangologists, including Manouche gypsy Fapy Lafertin, but all of them had the use of all the fingers on their left hands (the tendons of Django’s pinkie and ring fingers were damaged in a caravan fire when he was eighteen). A couple of days ago I came across a video file of Django complete with a close-up on his two-fingered fretboard style. It was a pretty wonderful thing to behold.

Click here to see the movie, and click here to see where I got it from. The WFMU page also has a link to France Gall performing dirty old Serge Gainsbourg’s Poupee De Cire, Poupee De Son. Cracking.

14/02/2006 Davis, Food, Picture of the Week

The Way of the Barbie

Yesterday the sun was shining, the sky was blue and I was seized by an uncanny urge to buy a barbeque, so I did. Refusing to tell Courtney what was up I ushered her into the car and drove to a hardware shop in the town centre.
“Where are we going?” she asked, “I’m so confused.”
I did not reply. I just grinned and let her figure out what was up.

In the event, Courtney was just as excited as me to be buying a barbeque. We settled for a circular charcoal grill with three legs, two wheels, vents on the bottom and a round top. We bought metal skewers, a barbeque spatula, a metal cleaning brush, a bag of charcoal and a bottle of lighter fluid and returned home well pleased.

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27/01/2006 Davis, Film

Birds of Prey

Lobby card for The Eagle and the Hawk, 1950

The Varsity doumentary is coming along. I shot interviews two weekends ago, and now I’m amassing documents. Above is an original lobby card for the first movie to play in the Varsity cinema on June 9th 1950. By all accounts, it was a bit of a B movie, albeit one presented in glorious Technicolor.

Update: 1st Feb 2006

Lobby card for The Eagle and the Hawk, 1950 remixed by Jeff Palmer

On further investigation, it seems that The Eagle and the Hawk was in fact the original Brokeback Mountain, as this alternative version of the lobby card conclusively proves. Who’d have thought? Thanks to Jeff for sending that along. ;-)

28/12/2005 Books

Black Swan Green

From the Random House website:

From award-winning writer David Mitchell comes a sinewy, meditative novel of boyhood on the cusp of adulthood and the old on the cusp of the new. Black Swan Green tracks a single year in what is, for thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor, the sleepiest village in muddiest Worcestershire in a dying Cold War England, 1982.

David Mitchell himself says:

It’s about 13 months in the life of a 13 year old boy. It’s set in a small, narrow village in South Worcestershire that the narrative only leaves twice. It’s 1982, in the cold war, and the year of the Falklands war.

Source: The Agony Column Book Reviews.

Knowing that Mitchell is from my neck of the woods, and knowing that neck just as well as he, I’d suggest that Black Swan Green is the name of the village in which Jason Taylor lives, and that the real-life precedent for that village is Hanley Swan. I’m going to have to wait until April to find out if I’m right.

13/12/2005 Film

HD!

No, this is not a reference to the modernist poet. It’s an expression of excitement because my Final Cut upgrade arrived today. I’m ready to roll with editing, now all I need is some footage.

Also, I now have the funds I need to set the Varsity documentary in motion. It’s a tiny budget, but just about workable.

11/12/2005 Film

Big Mac

A mysterious box arrived in our apartment yesterday. The contents of the box made it possible to bring you this daft little film, (14.5mb). If you click on the link and just see a big blue Q and nothing seems to be happening, don’t worry. The movie just takes a while to download.

Technically, I think Courtney’s parents are the executive producers for the movie, as they provided the editing station. Thanks, in-laws!

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29/11/2005 Film

Enter the Niche

Early last week Jeff emerged from his editing cave shouting “final cut” and waving a shiny plastic disc. He gave it to Carl’s web oompa-loompas, who ran off to their chocolate factory to internet the nuts off it. Now, squished down to a tenth of its original size, and available for viewing on your common-or-garden computer screen is the Camp Niche web movie.

16/11/2005 Davis, Food

Butt-Naked Chef

I don’t know exactly how this came to be, but I remember a degree of nagging and flattery emanating from Courtney, and a degree of arm-twisting from Julie at the Co-op. The upshot is that on February 16th 2006 I will be teaching a course on how to make Cornish Pasties and Chicken Tikka Masala. Here’s my class description:

How to Eat with a Stiff Upper Lip

British cuisine is underrated! Join Liam Creighton to learn to cook two perennially popular winter warmers. From England’s rural past, the Cornish Pasty, and from multicultural modern Britain, Chicken Tikka Masala, the nation’s favourite dish. This class features meat, but is totally free from jellied eels, pickled eggs and black pudding. Vegetarian versions of both recipes will be demonstrated.

I hope no-one I know turns up. That would be really embarrassing.

16/11/2005 Davis, Film

Varsity Documentary

I’ve started pre-production on the Varsity documentary. Hopefully everything will be in place for a shoot on the second weekend of December. I’ll post more news as and when it happens.

The New(ish) Jaga Jazzist album is wonderful. Courtney and I are looking into buying an iMac for me to edit on. If and when it happens it will look like this. That is all.

16/11/2005 Film

Proof of Pudding

My first shoot with my new camera seems to have been a success. Jeff and I went to Milbrae (near San Francisco airport) to shoot a bit of documentary-style video of a seminar. I wasn’t pleased with the first day’s shooting, but I showed a measurable improvement on the second day. It was the first time I’ve shot without total control of what’s happening in front of the camera. I kept wanting to ask people “OK, one more try, please.”

Jeff has been editing the footage, and has a rough cut ready to show me tomorrow. I’ll post a link to the finished video as soon as it’s up on the Niche Media website.

26/10/2005 Davis, Film

Art House

Last night, after months of wrangling, dithering, and what appears to be attempted sabotage, the city council finally approved my boss’ plan to reopen the Varsity cinema in Davis as an art house cinema.

Built in the 1950s, it had all the trappings of a small movie palace, including murals and a proscenium. It’s been hacked about since then. In the 70s it was divided into two screens, then in the early 90s the council acquired it and turned it into a very dull theatre space. The murals disappeared, the seating capacity was halved, and the exterior was painted grey and white.

Cinema Treasures documents the history, whilst the Davis Wiki details what the place has been used for in the past couple of years.

All being well, over the next few months I will make a documentary about the history of the building to be shown on the night of the grand re-opening.

26/09/2005 Film

Coming Soon

Canon XL2 DVcam

Sometime in the next 3-7 days I will be the excited and slightly nervous owner of a brand new Canon XL-2.

Damn! I’d better start thinking of something to shoot!

26/08/2005 Culture

Geology Fun

The Cerne Abbas Giant viewed from above.

Watching the Open University with Courtney late last night was the first time I’ve ever heard anyone exclaim “Ooh! Geology! Fun!” without a hint of irony.

But she was right; it was fun. The programme explored the origins of chalk carvings, including the Uffington horse, the Long Man of Wilmington and my favourite, the Cerne Abbas Giant.

It turns out that the giant isn’t the bronze-age fertility god that many thought him to be. He owes his creation to more recent history – the English civil war, in fact. Oliver Cromwell’s supporters often called him “the English Hercules,” and at Higham castle there is a statue depicting Cromwell in the classical Herculean form, bearing a club and completely nude, except for an improbable piece of robe fluttering around his delicates.

Lord Denzil Holles, a fierce opponent of Cromwell, is thought to have commissioned the Cerne Abbas Giant for satirical purposes. If this is the case, the Giant’s impressively erect phallus can be seen to mock Cromwell’s lust for power and his Puritan prudishness.

Certainly this isn’t the story that new-agers want to hear. One especially dippy website, which claims that a well just below the giant “has a wonderful feminine energy that balances the power of the male god on the hill above,” and makes no mention of the more recent theory. However, even without the scientific evidence which dates the carving to the seventeenth century, I would argue that the lines and form of the Giant are a significant clue.

The Uffington White Horse, viewed from above.

The Uffington Horse, a genuine bronze age artefact, is a very abstract form. The giant bears no stylistic resemblance to the horse, looking rather like a cartoon. Political cartooning was already a common form in seventeenth century Britain. It seems clear to me that even if he has outlived his intended purpose, the club-wielding giant lives on as a symbol of bawdy satire. And as a pattern on biscuits.

30/07/2005 Food

Lemonsucker Proxy

Paul Newman's bouncing head

People in the UK may know Paul Newman from his roles in movies such as Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Cool Hand Luke, or perhaps from seeing his face on bottles of salad dressing in Waitrose. Over in the US, Paul Newman is far better known. You can see his face on boxes of cookies, bags of popcorn and bottles of pasta sauce. As we’ve already seen, some US food companies put bible verses on their packaging. Thankfully, Paul Newman’s food packaging gibberish is as good as the next man’s. This is from the carton of Newman’s Own lemonade:

LEGEND: The marathon in Africa… I’m halfway out and barely chugging. Mountain coming! Liquid needed! What’s around? Water’s bitter! Beer’s flat! Gator, blah blah!… Fading fast. Then a vision-sweet Joanna!-Tempting me with pale gold nectar… Lemon is it? Yes, by golly! Lemonade? No, Lemon aid!… Power added! Asphalt churning!… Cruising home to victory! Hail Joanna! Filched the nectar (shameless hustler)-in the market-Newman’s Own.

However, whilst he donates all his after-tax profits to charity, and the products are made from organic ingredients, it’s not specified which charities are the beneficiaries, and almost all the products include the ubiquitous and fattening high fructose corn syrup. “Gator, blah blah,” indeed.

23/07/2005 Food

Jesus Freak Burger Bar

There’s a point in The Big Lebowski where the Dude, played by Jeff Bridges, finds his car has been stolen. The police retrieve the vehicle; it’s in a bad state, but at least the joyrider didn’t steal his Credence Clearwater Revival tapes. The dude later discovers a crumpled page of homework down the back of the driver’s seat. His friend Walter locates the owner of the homework. The kid lives just down the road from an In-N-Out Burger.

The first time I watched The Big Lebowski, I thought the name of the burger chain was just a humourous invention of the Coen brothers, but it’s not. In-N-Out Burger is a popular burger chain in California, Arizona and Nevada. The comical name aside, what’s interesting about In-N-Out Burger is that their food packaging carries bible references.

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22/07/2005 Books, Film

You Can Take Your Teenage Wizard…

Roger Livesey as a perplexed Colonel Blimp in the steamroom.

…and stuff him where the sun don’t shine. Courtney has finally driven me mad with her Harry Potter fetish. I don’t think she’s uttered a single sentence in the last week that hasn’t started with “Dumbledore,” “Snape,” or “Rowling.” I swear I will destroy any copy of the book I see, other than Courtney’s prized UK edition which arrived in the mail today. If I destroy that, she destroys me.

As an antidote, I was very glad to read J.G.Ballard’s article in the Guardian about Michael Powell. What’s especially amusing is that the article was written to promote a season of Powell’s movies at the National Film Theatre, an institution that Ballard blew up in his 2003 novel Millennium People.

During my degree I saw a perfectly preserved print of Powell & Pressburger’s wartime movie The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. It was the first time I’d seen an early colour movie in the same quality that it would have originally been shown. Even better, Blimp was shot in colour at a time when colour film stock was strictly rationed. The immediacy of the movie was striking. Suddenly 2002 and 1943 were not so far apart as I had previously thought.

07/07/2005 Culture, Music

Accentuate the Positive

Big Chill soon! Many of the acts I want to see normally draw blanks with everyone, and not just Courtney. So, in preparation for the festivities, here’s my list of must-sees and reasons for seeing.

1) The Fatback Band
The only reason these rhythm and blues masters are on my radar is for their groovy tune “Bus Stop.” It’s not even mentioned on the Big Chill website, so I can only assume the tunes that are must be even better. They’ve done everything from r’n’b to soul to disco to hip-hop, and are guaranteed to be as polished as brand new bling. They’ve been sampled to death, too, so there’s a good chance we’ll all know bits of their set. My early favourite for most danceable grooves of the weekend.

2) Roisin Murphy
Also known as the voice of Moloko. She’s probably getting a lot more exposure back home than here, so apologies if everyone’s excited about seeing her. What’s even more exciting, for me at least, is that Matthew Herbert is producing her new stuff. The Matthew Herbert big band was my highlight of 2003’s Chill, and his Bodily Functions album is one of my favourite albums. She played Glasto, and the bit of her gig I saw online was great. As well as being pleasing to the ear, she’s easy on the eye. Mmm. Redheads.

3) Kate Rusby
Over the last couple of years I’ve started to really appreciate English folk music, and during that time I’ve consistently heard good things Kate Rusby, but somehow I’ve not heard any of her stuff. Everyone who tells me about her says how great she is live, and what a good voice she has. I hope she’s got a nice chill afternoon slot. Perferably just before the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain. I’m really looking forward to hearing the recommendations justified.

4) A Certain Ratio
The punk-funk sound seems to be re-emerging with bands like !!!, and even Franz Ferdinand, but it was A Certain Ratio who first made it popular in the late seventies/early eighties. I heard their stuff on a reissue when visiting Courtney in Norwich in 2002, and it stuck in my head. Danceable and spiky, they should be worth watching. I just hope they’re not a washout like the under-rehearsed Durutti Column were last year.

5) Horace Andy
A legendary roots reggae singer, he’s best known to my generation for his work with Massive Attack. Can’t wait.

It’ll be interesting to see St. Etienne, the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain will be good fun once more, and Nouvelle Vague promise to be entertaining. Their version of Love Will Tear Us Apart is great. Even better, whilst surfing today in preparation to blog, I came across Yat Kha’s cover of the same song. Yat Kha are a group of Tuvan throat singers. Yes, throat singers. I almost went to see them in Canterbury, and now I wish I had.

Love Will Tear Us Apart – Albert Kuvezin & Yat-Kha

Go one, have a listen. We all need something to smile about today.

02/06/2005 Food

Gourmet my Arse!

The word "gourmet" is over-used in the USA. Constant application to items such as burgers, jerky and cat food have stretched the word out, made it frayed and baggy, worn holes in the knees and rendered it useless for carrying meaning.

Today laughing chance brought me stumbling across a section of the salon.com website known as the Surreal Gourmet. A chap called Bob Blumer advocates recipes in which a familiar ingredient is cooked in an unfamiliar appliance and vice versa. Did you know you can poach salmon in a dishwasher?

At first I thought "how ingenious," but in the last few minutes it’s occured to me that it’s as "ingenious" as it is "gourmet". True ingenuity is not using a non-essential electrical appliance to amuse dinner party guests, it’s plastering a dead hedgehog in mud and roasting it in a bonfire, gypsy style. That, and making water flow uphill using a corkscrew tube.

01/06/2005 Music

Oscillate Artfully

Wow, has so much time already passed since I promised to write more blog posts? Time flies when you’re having visitors. In fact, I’ve over a month’s worth of thought backlog to transcribe and edit into legible form.

About a month ago, James and I were merrily meandering down Haight Street when we came upon what is probably the best record shop in the world. The experience of walking into Amoeba records for the first time is roughly similar to going downstairs in Blackwells in Oxford. You see the lines of shelves running away and converging on the distant horizon and your mind somersaults to think that there’s so much good stuff out there. There can’t be enough hours in a human life to listen to all the CDs in Amoeba, but if the staff would have let me sleep there I’d have been tempted to try.

Cover of Stereolab's

I was good; I limited myself to one purchase – and what a purchase! I shelled out eighteen clams for a little cardboard box titled Oscillons from the Anti-Sun. Said box contains three CDs of tracks from Stereolab’s elusive EPs, a DVD of promo videos and live performances, and little CD sleeve sized stickers of their EP covers. All excellent, but most importantly it has the song Fluorescences, which I heard once in 1996 on Mark Radcliffe’s Radio 1 graveyard slot and have wanted ever since. It’s just as good as I remember.

A lot of the early Stereolab stuff I haven’t heard before. Listening to Jenny Ondioline I realised that, odd as it may sound, there are aesthetic similarities between Stereolab and Wilco, especially when you compare the groop’s early stuff to material from Wilco’s latest, A Ghost is Born. There are moments where both bands will build up a tapestry of noise, a repetitive riff, a synthy drone and mechanical percussion, and then they’ll break through this with a pretty melody sung by a modest voice.

And what’s an oscillon? It’s a recent (1996) discovery in the field of physics. Here’s a video of an oscillon in action. Essentially they are surprisingly constant patterns formed by vibrating particles, of great significance to those who study chaos theory.

And who are Stereolab? They’re an oddly retro-futuristic band who often stuff a gamut of musical styles into three-part pop songs. Half of the band are from London, the other half from Paris, and I’m a sucker for their singer, Laetitia Sadier. Imagine Juliette Binoche playing a cooly detatched pop singer and you’re almost there.