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A few weeks back I wrote about a Ray Bradbury story I read which made me feel terribly sad that in the intervening years we haven't made more progress into space. Bradbury himself just restated much the same thoughts, which is nice - but then, by a freakish transformation which would not be out of place in his own books, turned into a silly old fool. "We have too many cellphones. We've got too many Internets. We have got to get rid of those machines. We have too many machines now." Oh dear.
I've been listening a lot lately to the Spoiler Alert! EP, the work of masked musicians who quite coincidentally resemble Eddie Argos and Keith TOTP. Now, as a rule I don't like songs which simply restate the plot of a book or film, because it tends to feel clodhoppingly Literary and a bit sixth form (hence 'The Seventh Seal' being a major reason why I think Scott 4 is the worst Scott Walker solo album called Scott). But possibly because of the sheer lunacy of this project - trying to fit decades of convoluted, multiple-writer backstory into one pop song, Spoiler Alert! works. In particular, the song about Booster Gold brings out an aspect of the comic which I'd never really considered - the extra layer of secret identity implicit in a hero who has to carry on acting like a berk around other heroes, while covertly saving all of space and time behind the scenes. And, it's a lovely song. Whether it will have any appeal whatsoever to the distressingly large proportion of people with no idea who Booster Gold is, I could not say.
Otherwise: I've seen the artist formerly known as
verlaine, back from the frozen North for a quick visit; I've been up Primrose Hill for the first time this year, which proceeded to do a fairly good impression of said frozen North; and I've finally seen the British Library's maps exhibition, which is gorgeous but has the problem of all themed or single-artist exhibitions - after three or four rooms of beautiful, enormous old maps, whatever wonders are in the next room can't help but feel, quite unjustly, like more of the same.
I've been listening a lot lately to the Spoiler Alert! EP, the work of masked musicians who quite coincidentally resemble Eddie Argos and Keith TOTP. Now, as a rule I don't like songs which simply restate the plot of a book or film, because it tends to feel clodhoppingly Literary and a bit sixth form (hence 'The Seventh Seal' being a major reason why I think Scott 4 is the worst Scott Walker solo album called Scott). But possibly because of the sheer lunacy of this project - trying to fit decades of convoluted, multiple-writer backstory into one pop song, Spoiler Alert! works. In particular, the song about Booster Gold brings out an aspect of the comic which I'd never really considered - the extra layer of secret identity implicit in a hero who has to carry on acting like a berk around other heroes, while covertly saving all of space and time behind the scenes. And, it's a lovely song. Whether it will have any appeal whatsoever to the distressingly large proportion of people with no idea who Booster Gold is, I could not say.
Otherwise: I've seen the artist formerly known as
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