Shakespeare’s sister was really old

January 26th, 2011

My long-standing hair dresser has a new apprentice. Young, blonde and shameless, a recent five-minutes at the sink in her hair-washing company did not help with my inevitable post-birthday misery:

Her (bopping around, waving the shampoo bottle over my head): ‘Do you like Girls Aloud? This song is so great… (starts singing) Jump, Jump for my love…Jump in…‘

Me (cautiously): ‘Er, they’re ok… they have some good tunes.’

Her (finally getting around to introducing the shampoo to my hair): ‘Yeah, some of these old groups have really good songs, don’t they?’

Me (nostalgically): ‘Yes, I used to like The Pointer Sisters. We had to do aerobics to this song at school…’

Her (baffled, stops massaging my head and waves her soapy fingers distractingly over my face): ‘Who??’

Me (equally baffled): ‘The Pointer Sisters, the 70s/80s girl group. This is a cover of their song ‘Jump’, isn’t it?’

Her (still in soapy suspended animation): ‘This is a cover from the 80s?!’

Me (bemused and wishing she’d just get on with it): ‘Yes, I’m sure it is. From around 1984.’

Her (enthusiastically dousing me in luke-warm water): ‘Wow, I like old music. All my friends think I’m weird though – but I say you can listen to anything you like, even old stuff. You know another really old band I like? Shakespeare’s Sister!’

(Well, I wasn’t expecting that)

Her (continuing along merrily with the conditioner now): ‘They must be from your time… Hey, you look like them! Just like them!!’

(No, I bloody well don’t)

Her (taking the idea and running with it): ‘Yes! Yes, you do! You look like Shakespeare’s Sister! Some of those really old bands are good aren’t they? You’re vintage, y’ know…!’

Me (thinking): ‘You’re definitely not getting a tip.’

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Funereal fun

January 23rd, 2011

Despite Christmas being ‘a season of joy’ my family were in morbid mood over December. The hot topic of conversation was what music people wanted played at their funeral. We like to plan ahead you see.

Grandma: some obtuse serenade I can’t remember the name of (that’s Mums job)
Mum: Ravel’s ‘Bolero’ (we know, she’s been reminding us of this for 20 years at least)
Dad: doesn’t care, he’ll be dead (I’m threatening him with something I like then. Possibly this.)
Mr C: ‘The Blue Room’ by The Orb (lets hope he’s joking)

And me? Well, I’m leaning towards ‘Theme from A Summer Place’ by Percy Faith at the moment. However, that could all change by tomorrow obviously.

So how’s your funeral music planning going?*

* Anyone who offers up ‘Stairway to Heaven’ will be duly ignored.

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Things I learned over Christmas

January 17th, 2011

Well, I’m back. And already I’m in the thick of it, swamped with work and extra-curricular activities, with the holiday already feeling like an age ago.  However, several points still loom large in my mind:

  1. Tokyo makes me feel like I’m from a country of criminals. OK, putting aside the fact that this is to some extent true, I left feeling somewhat ashamed by the culture I live in. Example 1: people use the luggage racks on the Tokyo Underground for putting their brief cases, bags and handbags on. Example 2: people leave their bikes unchained in the streets. Would you ever do either in Britain or Australia? No, because they would be nicked. Clearly, the good citizens of Tokyo do not assume that everyone else in their city is a miserable conniving thief until proven otherwise.
  2. The Australian language gets worse with every visit. Australia has long had a propensity for super-sized swearing, slang and casualised language but well, there is nothing like being away to realise just how ubiquitous it is. I mean I grew up with buying chockies from the servo and plonk from the bottle-o in the arvo, but in recent years I’ve noticed words like ‘ambo’, ‘journo’ , ‘pollie’ and ‘firey’ creeping into previously formal news programmes. I estimate that within just 50 years Australians won’t be able to understand any word unless it ends in ‘o’ or ‘ie’.
  3. Monthly music magazines are like National Geographics. i.e. widely available, much hoarded and rarely re-read. Upon arriving at my parents place, they pointed out – for the 2000th time – that I still have a box or two of my magazine collection occupying a corner of their garage. This time, however, instead of defending their emotional importance, historical worth and potential resale value in 100 years time, I chucked half them out.  I have finally realised that I do not need a collection of Q and Mojo magazines from the 90s – not when they are freely available on ebay anyway for bugger all money. I am still not parting with the NMEs though.
  4. Paul Kelly really is pretty good. Australian singer-songwriter Paul Kelly is little known outside Australia. In fact, up until relatively recently he seemed to be little known within Australia unless you were of a certain age and musical disposition. But suddenly he seems to have become a national treasure of some kind and even my Grandmother has heard of him. How did this happen? Anyway, this is one of our favourites:

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So long, farewell

December 3rd, 2010

Oh, I’ve been meaning to write about so many subjects for so long (sample failed thoughts include the joys of Frasier reruns, the end to The Word caricature covers (ha!), the non-thrill of the Royal wedding, the impressive lying ability of some of my work colleagues, the winter-warming delights of Benedictine etc. etc.) but many good intentions, too much work and stress, and several aborted blog posts later, time has finally run away from me.

For I am off on a deliciously long holiday tomorrow and, assuming the weather approves and lets us actually leave the country, a month in Japan and Australia is beckoning. It hasn’t been the best of years for me, and for some of you too I suspect, so I feel as though I’m well deserving of a relaxing break. Heck, we’re all deserving of one!

So Merry Christmas/Winterthing/Winterval/Festivus to you all and see you on the other side. Here’s to 2011. Chin chin.

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The not getting of wisdom

November 23rd, 2010

Following a recent trip away with an old friend to the tourist trap town of Bath, I have been reading a short book about Roman Britain. The average life expectancy during this time it tells me, was 37.

Apart from the mild shock of realising that if I was living around 150AD I’d be at pensionable age, it got me wondering what society would actually be like if it was run by people in their 20s and 30s – which effectively it would have been back then.

There would be a positive side of course – lots of fresh, new ideas with people more open to risk taking and change -  but really, the idea fills me with horror. I’d like to think that with age comes wisdom (I’m patiently waiting for it to hit me at some point), experience and a more thoughtful, less black & white approach to life. Theoretically, older people should have a longer-term and just more sensible view of things.

Or perhaps not. These fledgling thoughts were easily dashed this morning by a quick listen to Radio 4 and a flick through the papers. North Korea,  a country ostensibly run by a dead person (Kim Il-Sung) and a 70 year old (Kim Jong Il) is threatening South Korea and therefore my holiday to the region next week. Old age = wisdom? Pah!

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Song of the Week: The Homecoming Queen’s got a Gun

November 4th, 2010

The Homecoming Queen’s got a Gun
Julie Brown

One of the miracles of the modern age is being able to track down dimly remembered novelty tunes on Youtube – like this one by Julie Brown.

Written way back in the 80s when school shootings were merely fantasised about rather than actually undertaken, ’The Homecoming Queen’s got a Gun’ parodies the 80s Valley Girl life that I was only familiar with through trash teen novels and Frank Zappa songs. Still, the song and its accompanying video captured my imagination and despite not hearing it in years until this week, I’ve never forgotten winning couplets like:

God, my best friend’s on a shooting spree
Stop it, Debbie, you’re embarrassing me

and

Debbie’s really having a blast
She’s wasting half of the class

Ah, they don’t write parody songs like they used to. And what’s Weird Al Jankovic up to these days…

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The ultimate question

November 3rd, 2010

Keen to broaden my knowledge of classical music beyond ‘populist muck’ opera and ’tiresome’ minimalism, I have been taking an evening class on ‘music appreciation’ on and off throughout the past year. Because it’s been by and large, a nice group of people involved, on more than one occasion we have found ourselves down the pub after.

So what’s the most obvious conversation subject in such a situation? Music. Fine with me.  And what’s the question that’s inevitably going to be asked at some point? What’s the question that I, as both a lifelong music fan and a dedicated Radio 4 listener, should have well and truly prepared for?

Yes, it’s ‘What are your desert island discs?’

The answers flowed forth with certainty from everyone else around the table: ‘Mahler’s 7th’, ‘White Man in Hammersmith Palais’, ‘Beethoven’s Piano Concerto no. 4′, ‘Miserere mei, Deus’, ‘Good Vibrations’, etc. etc. But not from me – for I was embarrassingly unprepared,  dumb struck by choice, overwhelmed by having to nail my colours to the mast with only eight songs.

Eight songs! I could think of dozens of songs I love and couldn’t live without. ‘Be ruthless’ I was told sternly.

Hmmm, ‘Wuthering Heights’, ‘Hot Burrito No. 2′ by the Flying Burrito Brothers, Philip Glass’ String Quartet No. 5, John Coltrane’s version of ’My Favourite Things’, Benny Goodman’s ‘Sing, Sing, Sing’, ‘More Love’ by Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, The Go-Betweens ‘Streets of Your Town’,  ‘Eleanor’ by The Turtles, Acts I and II from La Boheme… all of West Side Story… and Forever Changes… and I still haven’t included anything by George Gershwin… or The Beatles…

So dear reader, could you have faired any better? Have you prepared for the moment when you are asked the ultimate question?

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Thanks to Totoro

October 29th, 2010

Some time ago (ok, about 20 years ago), I was an exchange student in Japan. One of the many gifts I received on my visit was a cute, stuffed, smiling green creature called Totoro.* At the time I was only dimly aware what this Totoro was. My host sister had told me that he was the star of some anime film for kids called My Neighbour Totoro which had come out a year or two before – but since it wasn’t available in English, I filed this piece of trivia away alongside various other useless facts. Like you do.

Despite the lack of background information, I always liked my Totoro. He accompanied me to university, sat quietly in the background in various shared houses and is now residing with me in our place in London. Totoro was always been an unknown, but familiar part of the furniture.

Until one day I saw that the man behind the still unseen My Neighbour Totoro had made a film called Spirited Away. So I made a point of seeing it – because that’s all it takes to pique my curiosity and get me to the cinema.

And thank heavens I did because it was love at first sight. Spirited Away’s exotic other-worldliness and quite frankly bizarre storyline (young girl is forced to work in a Japanese bathhouse, whose main clientele happens to be spirits,  in order to save her parents who have turned into pigs) appealed immensely. The artwork in the film was also quite frankly, beautiful – painterly and detailed, like nothing else I’d seen in an animation since early Disney.

I’ve been addicted to the work of the director of those two films, Hayao Miyazaki, and his production company Studio Ghibli ever since. Ok, they have their ups and downs like anyone else but everything they release is, without doubt, interesting – and considerably better than most of the dross that passes for ‘filmed entertainment’ these days. I own much of the studio’s output on DVD and even though the films are aimed at people… well, 25 years younger than I am**, I’m not ashamed to say that I still find them enchanting.

So bearing all this in mind, you will understand how ecstatic I was to get tickets to the Ghibli Museum in Tokyo this week. The studio really want to make you work for a visit to the Museum – you need to apply at least a month in advance, supply them with various unnecessary details and then once your allocated day arrives, you have to catch a suburban train 25 minutes into the commuter land of Tokyo and trek for another 20 minutes to the museum. Only then is the lifesize model of the My Neighbour Totoro CatBus and the giant robot soldier from Laputa yours.

And as Nu Shooz once sang, ‘I can’t wait!’. Roll on December.

 

 

* This was an entirely acceptable gift to give a 16 year old in Japan.
** And if you’re reading this and happen to have any children under 10 who’ve not yet experiencd Studio Ghibli make them, make them now!

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It does what it says on the tin

October 21st, 2010

I have been trying to write this post for the past week, but keep getting hampered by vitriol.  As it still seems to be winning, I’ll keep this short and to the point. If you are based in or around London, then try and go to True Stories Told Live – for it is great.

As a long time listener to The Moth podcast (‘true stories told live on stage – without notes!’), I was delighted that London’s equivalent was exactly as I expected when I finally ventured there last week.

People (in this case a broadcaster, an author, a musician, an actress and a school head master aka Trevor Dann, Meg Rosoff, Boo Hewerdine, Maggie Steed and Paul Moriarty) simply sharing stories live on a stage, alone with a mic, and indeed, without any notes.  It was touching, amusing, sad, strange, emotional, moving, enthralling and funny. And all upstairs for free in a poxy Islington pub.

Go now.

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Caricature you

October 18th, 2010

How do you feel about caricatures? I have been asking folk this very question for the past week – for work research purposes rather than for ‘fun’, you understand. The responses have been clearly divided. Essentially, people either love them or hate them. There is no in-between.

I can understand this. I hate them myself.

I subscribe to two magazines – The Word and New Humanist. As many of you will know, both of these magazines have unashamedly thrown themselves into the world of caricatured covers. Boy, do I hate them. I hate them so much that I have to keep both magazines face down when I’m not reading them – just so to reduce the risk of me flipping and ripping the offending cover art. Thank heavens I don’t judge magazines by their covers otherwise I would have banished both from the house in a fit of fury.

Yes, I know caricature has a long and illustrious history of satire and political comment. And I know that it’s a real talent and skill, but there’s just something… irksome about them. How does drawing someone with a big head and questionably proportioned features suddenly make an artwork more intrinsically amusing and/or interesting? It certainly doesn’t make it more aesthetically pleasing.

So as far as I can help it, we won’t be having any caricatures in my workplace thank you. Would you have them in yours?*

* David Hepworth, Mark Ellen and Casper Melville need not reply.

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