Cocktails and Records

Some time ago I developed an unnatural interest in those vacuous celebrities of the 1920s known as the Bright Young People. I watched documentaries about professionally posh prats like Brian Howard and Nancy Mitford, poured over their portraits by Cecil Beaton, read Evelyn Waugh’s mirth-making Vile Bodies again and revelled in the salacious details of Circus Parties* and Bath and Bottle Parties** in DJ Taylor’s book, Bright Young People.

All that remained was to see Terence Rattigan’s ‘lost’ play about the period called After the Dance.

Happily it’s now showing at the National Theatre.

So I took myself along to see it.

After the Dance is very good (and not just because it stars the lovely Benedict Cumberbatch). A sharp, witty look at inter-generational conflict, it also examines what happens when people try to hang on to their youth for too long. It’s not pretty.

But the most impressive / horrific (I can’t quite make up my mind) thing about it is the drinking. The play starts with most of the main characters being hung-over and continues with them enjoying post-breakfast drinks, pre-lunch drinks, afternoon drinks and well, any-other-time drinks. They are never away from the drinks cabinet and the cocktail shaker. This is the kind of lifestyle you can only maintain if you have a butler named Williams, shamelessly use the words ‘drinky-poo’ and your sole occupation is drunkenly dictating a pointless biography of ‘King Bomba of Naples’ to the hired help at 5am in the morning. Still, I’m kind of jealous.

The sad practicalities of life demand that I limit myself to a tiresomely small number of cocktails each week. I’m pleased to say, however, that I have managed to locate a new favourite recently. It is called the ‘Fiesta’. They probably didn’t drink it in the 20s but hey, its the closest I’ll get to Bright Young Person style exuberance these days.

Fiesta
- dash lime juice
- dash grenadine
- 3/4 oz Noilly Prat
- 3/4 oz Calvados
- 3/4 oz white rum

Stir over ice cubes and strain into chilled cocktail glasses.

* Come dressed as a trapeze artist or lion tamer
** at St George’s Swimming Baths, Buckingham Palace Road. Guests were required to wear at Bathing Suit and bring a towel and a Bottle. It was simply divine.

It’s been an odd weekend. It started off badly when our lovely neighbours decided to ‘prune’ the tree in their garden – how I love the sound of chainsaws at 8am on a Sunday morning – and descended into just plain weirdness when Mr C. announced that he was going to do some pruning of his own.

‘I have too may records’ he said surveying his not insubstantial collection, ‘I don’t listen to some of them very much and well, I don’t really need to keep them all do I?’
‘No… ‘ I responded, swallowing my disbelief, ‘but are you absolutely sure about this?’
‘Yes, there are too many’ he said determinedly ‘I need to purge.’

I am sorry to say that I just snickered unsupportively at this point and went off to read the paper.

Several hours of struggling later, he had triumphantly managed to reduce the vinyl load on the shelves by around oooh… eight LPs.

Not that I have any right to be sarcastic. He did much better than I ever could. The last time I attempted a purge was just before I freighted my vinyl over here from Australia. Once it arrived after several long months on the boat I realised I’d made a terrible mistake and had to go out and buy them all again.

And as we discussed, post failed purge, it doesn’t matter if you don’t listen to all of your records all of the time. It’s just comforting to know that they’re there. Even the ones by James Last.

A useless fact you may not know about me is that I go to the cinema a lot, probably about once a fortnight on average. I’ve been maintaining this habit now for a good 15 years.

Up until this weekend, I had only managed to see one 3D film during that time – a reissue of the particularly lame 3D version of Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder in about 1996. The glasses were of the cellophane-taped-to-a-bit-of-cardboard type, the film itself was dull and the 3D effects (other than a lunging pair of scissors) were a complete non-event. 3D didn’t add anything whatsoever to the impact or enjoyment of the film.

Is that all there is I thought, deciding then and there that 3D was definitely nothing more than a clever marketing fad aimed at getting people away from their 50s tellies. And no wonder it didn’t last - no one would put up with this level of pointless spectacle for long, and particularly not if wearing stupid, uncomfortable glasses remained part of the deal.

So it was with this memory in mind that I went to see Alice in Wonderland in 3D on the weekend. I was partly lured by my fondness for the tiresomely inconsistent  Tim Burton and 35 years of having to put up with ‘witty’ references to the book, but really I needed to put my past behind me and see the revival for myself. New 3D had to be better than 50s-style 3D.

And the verdict? Well, the the film itself was dull and the 3D effects (other than a lunging cat) were a complete non-event.* 3D didn’t add anything whatsoever to the impact or enjoyment of the film. It is still nothing more than a clever marketing fad, this time aimed at combating piracy and illegal downloads.

So again, I’m going to write off a whole technological development based on viewing one film. Am I being hasty though? Have any of you actually seen a good 3D film?

*The glasses have improved a bit however – you can’t accidentally rip them, but they are filthy. I spent the trailer-time pedantically cleaning the lens with my own lens cleaner and still couldn’t manage to remove the distracting smears.

When we run events at work we always have a pile of evaluation forms available at the end should anyone like to a. sign up to the mailing list b. tell us how great we or, most commonly, c. complain.

How I wish I had an evaluation form on Saturday night – although, admittedly, it was partly my fault. We went to the wrong gig you see. We had tickets to see Matthew Shipp, jazz pianist extraordinaire (you can hear him here on an ancient Song of the Week). We’ve seen him before and he was very good, very good indeed. But it transpires that that was Matthew Shipp solo.

Unbeknown to us, Mr Shipp had a guest on Saturday night,  J. Spaceman – a.k.a Jason Pierce of Spiritualized and Spaceman3 fame – and instead of the anticipated jazz piano gig we got an experimental jam for organ, guitar and effects pedals based on two chords, one tempo, no tune and 45 spirit sapping minutes.

If I was being kind, I would say that this was a ingenious combining of free jazz and minimalism to create a mesmerising and mind-bending piece of work. But I’m not. It was the tiresome result of what happens when a jazz musician wants to join Jesus & Mary Chain and a rock musician thinks that he is John Adams. It was the kind of boring, self-indulgent ramble where all attempts at musical sophistication are washed away under a sea of drone and audience yawns.

Thankfully two other musicians joined the pair for a second 45-minute piece and rescued us with some drums and additional chords. Audience appreciation of this sudden injection of colour was expressed by the almost instant cessation of texting and whispering. People even stopped checking their watches and turned their heads towards the stage.

Now, I know that I came expecting something different and a good music snob would accuse me of being a philistine, but god I was bored during that first half. I even had to resort to counting all the trendy Fleet Foxes style beards in the room (14).

So what’s the most boring gig you’ve ever been to and how long have you lasted?

If you spend your evenings in front of the TV engaged in excessive hand wringing over the current state of ‘popular entertainment’, then I’d like to cheerfully and annoyingly remind you that it was ever thus.

Yesterday I was at the British Library enjoying the 19th century’s version of mass novelty entertainment thanks to Professor Heard’s Peerless Magic Lantern Show. There, in the dowdy atmosphere-less BL conference centre, Professor Heard enthralled us with some of the most popular (and beautifully hand-painted) magic lantern slides of the day:

1. skulls and phantoms blinking their eyes and grinning menacingly
2. a tree taking revenge on its role as firewood by coming alive and attacking a human with an axe
3. a monkey throwing a live cat onto a fire
4. a boy starving to death whilst his sister dies of cold
5. a series of drunks falling to their death
6. some particularly gruesome, blood spurting battle scenes
7. a man lying in bed, amusingly eating a succession of rats

Of course, there were other lantern slides and shows – fables, bible stories, morality plays, nice scenery from around the world and the like – but who wants to see those when you can watch someone eating vermin…

So in stark contrast to the miserable woman in the supermarket was the lovely David Sedaris who we went to see at the BBC Radio Theatre this afternoon.

I’ve heard writer and essayist David Sedaris quite a few times on the This American Life podcast so I was hoping for more of the same – autobiographical stories that ramble along somewhere between pathos,  observational comedy and pure self-deprecation.

And so it was.

But what really made the afternoon was Sedaris’ obvious and genuine delight in reading to a live audience. Happiness oozed from the man, positively bouncing off his shoes and radiating around the room, and when we all applauded and whooped (does anyone actually whoop on anything other than Radio 4 comedy shows?) his bashful grin was just plain charming.

At the end he thanked us all very much coming, said he was so pleased to see us, signed some books and drifted out of the theatre with the kind of goodwill that someone like say, the ant eating fools on I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here, can only ever dream of.

His show, Meet David Sedaris, will be on Radio 4 next April.

Steve Reich / Pat Metheny
Electric Counterpoint

So after dining with June Brown/Dot Cotton we went over to the Royal Festival Hall for a dose of hypnotic, shimmering and mind bending genius from composer/musician Steve Reich with Bang on a Can and the London Sinfonietta.

Considering that Steve Reich was responsible for one of the best gigs I have ever been to in my life at the Barbican a few years back, I approached with some trepidation – would he deliver? Could he possibly be as good as last time? Could he heck. The man is a legend.

The centrepiece of the gig was the 58 minute long ‘Music for 18 Musicians’, a pulsating experiment in phasing and rhythm. Fortunately for you, I don’t have 58 minutes of web space so I’m sharing instead one of my favourite shorter pieces by Steve Reich, ‘Electric Counterpoint’.

Steve Reich originally composed this piece for Pat Metheny in 1987 and the track is made up of 11 layered guitar parts and 2 bass (beat that 10cc). Guitarist Mark Stewart played ‘Electric Counterpoint’ on Saturday night and I cannot tell you just how good one man and 12 tracks on a hard drive can sound live.

I suspect that some readers may be put off by the thought of ‘contemporary classical’ but if you are in any way a fan of Brian Eno, Mike Oldfield, The Orb or any other ambient chancers, then you need to listen to this.

‘Electric Counterpoint’, 1st movement: Fast, Pat Metheny, 1987

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Near my work is an arcade containing a man selling autographs. I’ve never been in, I’m not particularly interested in buying the signatures of famous people I’ve never met. But I’ve often wondered who actually bothers going to the effort of getting those autographs in the first place. I now know. It’s probably someone similar to the woman who kindly provided my early Saturday evening entertainment last weekend.

Wanting to cram in some quick food before a concert, I dragged Mr C. to an old haunt in Covent Garden, a restaurant called Koha. Now despite its proximity to the stage doors of both the Wyndham and Noel Coward theatres, this dark bistro always struck me as a quiet, unassuming place conveniently tucked away down a back court far from the tourists. How naïve I was – not at 6.30pm on a Saturday night it isn’t. It is transformed; by day a restaurant on seedy back street stinking of piss, by early evening glamour central.

At least it is if you consider the cast of the play Calendar Girls glamorous.

For there, sitting on the other side of our table by the window was June Brown i.e. Dot-Cotton-from-EastEnders, chain smoking (just like she used to on the telly!) and enjoying a pre-Calendar Girls performance glass of wine with a friend.

As much as I tried not to stare at her impressive way with a cigarette, another woman of about my age was equally and less subtly interested. She was a fan. Obviously excited, with her eyes darting round, she leaned over their adjacent tables outside and attempted some polite conversation with the chain smoker extraordinaire. Unfortunately I couldn’t a hear a word of this exchange through the glass and was forced to return to studying the menu. Not for long though as the fan suddenly leaped from her seat, mid-conversation with June/Dot, grabbed a yellow booklet from her bag, and ran off down the ally chasing a distant figure.

The fan soon returned to her table, waving a newly signed Calendar Girls programme victoriously at her companion. This was to set the scene for the evening.

During the course of our meal, the fan dashed away from her strategically placed table and long-suffering friend at least half a dozen times. Through our window we could see her begging signatures from a range of middle-aged women and/or ex East Enders stars. Anita Dobson dutifully signed and Jack Ryder (remember him, Jamie Mitchell in Enders) happily grinned for a photograph. In fact, he posed for two because the first one didn’t come out and she had to go and find him again.

Now I’ve stood in book signing queues in my life and I’ve known people who’ve gone to fan conventions to hunt down autographs, but I’ve never thought about staking out the stage door to harass minor celebrities. I can’t help but wonder what her motivation was? Is this her usual Saturday night entertainment? Does she collect anyones autographs or does she just feel an affinity with this play? And do any of you have secret stalking tales to tell?

For want of something better to write about (what is it about blogging inspiration running dry in the summer?) here are some personal highlights from the past few days:

1. A lovely trip to Leigh-on-Sea and sunny Southend (as recommended by Mondo, Piley and years of listening to Ray Davies sing ‘Picture Book’). As the sun shone brightly, fish and chips were indulged in, second hand records flipped through, museums wandered around, piers admired, rounds of crazy golf lost and my Campers walked into the ground. Bliss.
2. Discovering the Charles Lamb in Islington. It is Grim Up In North London – but you can order a home-made Scotch egg to go with your pint which makes it all worth while.
3. Saint Etienne’s playlists on Spotify.
4. Mary Stuart Masterson in John Hughes’ Some Kind of Wonderful.
5. Oasis splitting up. To celebrate, I dragged out my copy of Definitely Maybe and was momentarily whisked back to the music hype of 1994. How can one band have lost it so much?
6. This t-shirt.
7. The look on the bar tenders face in the Dove as a bloke ordered a round comprising one pint of water, one pint of milk and a pint of ice. We went for the Brewers Gold instead.
8. One of our neighbours has taken up the tuba and has been reduced to practicing in the back garden. Actually, that’s not necessarily a good thing – have you ever heard solo tuba?