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The Duke of Horse's wife and daughters
Oct. 18th, 2010 02:17 pmI've now read a second of the 33 1/3 books, charming pocket-sized guides to classic albums. The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society wasn't quite as good as the excellent one on the Afghan Whigs' Gentlemen, in part simply because it was covering more well-trodden territory, and without the same access to the prime mover, necessitating a certain amount of speculation and Kremlinology. Similarly, as much as I love the albums in question I don't feel any real need to read the entries on Unknown Pleasures, or The Velvet Underground & Nico. But some of the others which deviate a little more from the Mojo-style canon look like they could be fascinating - The Magnetic Fields, Nas, DJ Shadow, Belle & Sebastian. And a forthcoming volume promises to look at Nine Inch Nails' Pretty Hate Machine. Now that, I suspect, will be a good read.
Had a mini-adventure around the City yesterday, following Surround Me: A Song Cycle for the City of London by Susan Philipsz. One location was broken, another was full of inept skaters, but the other four were magical; madrigals and rounds sung as if by the stones of deserted yards. Plus, of course, the City at weekends can be quite uncanny anyway, scattered with public art and deserted shops; it's all a little post-apocalyptic, and when you find St Dunstan's, the ruined chapel turned idyllic grove, it moves from the merely eerie to the positively mythic.
One puzzle of which I was reminded when we finally found a pub that was, albeit briefly, open - why do places which stock Grey Goose vodka always have it turned on the shelf such that it reads Grey Goo? Not appetising.
As the nights get darker, the TV schedules get fuller. Last week brought the return of The Sarah Jane Adentures and Hung, the start of Mark Gatiss' BBC4 history of horror, and the very promising-sounding 12th century epic Pillars of the Earth. Which, alas, turned out to be utter crap. The wreck of the White Ship with Henry I's only son aboard was a good place to start - but the quality of the CGI would have shamed Knightmare. They then managed to fit a startling number of historical inaccuracies into about a minute:
1) The ship hit a rock and sank. Those aboard were almost all pissed, but there was no fire.
2) There was a survivor, a Rouen butcher named Berold.
3) Matilda was not an adorable poppet playing at Henry's feet when the news arrived. She was 18 and had been in Germany for years what with being married to the Holy Roman Emperor.
I mean, they might as well have had the messenger arrive on a Segway. The suggestion of a conspiracy I could forgive as an invention for dramatic purposes - Stephen did get off the ship before it sailed, which looks suspicious, though even I don't think he sabotaged the ship because he was a sh1t, but he wasn't that sort of sh1t. And then the dialogue was all so bloody instrumental, inhuman...even with Rufus Sewell, Ian McShane in sinister mode, Donald Sutherland and Van Gogh from Doctor Who, I didn't make it to the first ad break. What a waste.
Had a mini-adventure around the City yesterday, following Surround Me: A Song Cycle for the City of London by Susan Philipsz. One location was broken, another was full of inept skaters, but the other four were magical; madrigals and rounds sung as if by the stones of deserted yards. Plus, of course, the City at weekends can be quite uncanny anyway, scattered with public art and deserted shops; it's all a little post-apocalyptic, and when you find St Dunstan's, the ruined chapel turned idyllic grove, it moves from the merely eerie to the positively mythic.
One puzzle of which I was reminded when we finally found a pub that was, albeit briefly, open - why do places which stock Grey Goose vodka always have it turned on the shelf such that it reads Grey Goo? Not appetising.
As the nights get darker, the TV schedules get fuller. Last week brought the return of The Sarah Jane Adentures and Hung, the start of Mark Gatiss' BBC4 history of horror, and the very promising-sounding 12th century epic Pillars of the Earth. Which, alas, turned out to be utter crap. The wreck of the White Ship with Henry I's only son aboard was a good place to start - but the quality of the CGI would have shamed Knightmare. They then managed to fit a startling number of historical inaccuracies into about a minute:
1) The ship hit a rock and sank. Those aboard were almost all pissed, but there was no fire.
2) There was a survivor, a Rouen butcher named Berold.
3) Matilda was not an adorable poppet playing at Henry's feet when the news arrived. She was 18 and had been in Germany for years what with being married to the Holy Roman Emperor.
I mean, they might as well have had the messenger arrive on a Segway. The suggestion of a conspiracy I could forgive as an invention for dramatic purposes - Stephen did get off the ship before it sailed, which looks suspicious, though even I don't think he sabotaged the ship because he was a sh1t, but he wasn't that sort of sh1t. And then the dialogue was all so bloody instrumental, inhuman...even with Rufus Sewell, Ian McShane in sinister mode, Donald Sutherland and Van Gogh from Doctor Who, I didn't make it to the first ad break. What a waste.
