The Duke of Horse's wife and daughters

[alexsarll]

I'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.

Comments

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

And wasn't the Music from Big Pink one also a novella of some sort? By the chap behind the much-overrated Kill Your Friends? Or have I got two books of the same name mixed up?

I am reminded, now you mention it, that I have heard good things about the Celine Dion one before, but to be honest it does sound a little, well, Pitchfork. Still, maybe I'll give it a go somewhere down the line (see also John Darnielle's contribution, where I am far more interested in writer than subject).

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

it is a bit pitchfork, i've never managed to engage with it, i just get a bit ARGH ARGH IT'S ONLY POP MUSIC, STOP BEING A ROCKIST, EVEN THOUGH IT'S CELINE WHO I ALSO DISLIKE...

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

well he should just MAN UP and either:

a. not be a rockist in the first place
b. be a DAMN ROCKIST

i think my problem is he's so whiny about trying to not offend some sort of straw poptimist and ends up tying himself up in massive post-modernist knots to no great insight...

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

also, it is 2010, i am NOT arguing about rockism on the internet ;)

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Come on, we're running out of things to revive, it's either this or grunge...

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

i've been wearing lumberjack shirts for TWO YEARS already!!! ;)

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

GPWM

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I have had two experiences which made me give some limited consideration to Celine, but I don't know whether they'd make me more receptive to the book, or more prone to be annoyed by it:

- Interrailing, we stayed in a wonderful semi-ruined villa in Verona. Which always had the same tape playing at breakfast. It included a very soulful, and very good live version of Bowie's 'Changes', and a Celine Dion track. And one morning there was a girl sat there in floods of tears at the Celine. It hit me that, while I didn't much rate the song, this girl was getting from it something closer to what I get from my favourite music than I suspect the average fan of eg Sonic Youth or Fugazi is deriving from their choice of music.

- Pavlovian association, during the endless reign of 'My Heart Will Go On', between the video's visual of crying Kate Winslet during her hottest phase, and the song itself. I still maintain that, covered by Suede at the time, that song would have been excellent.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

OK, that does sound like a worthy cause. But my To Read list up there already has two 'rap' entries so I think I'm doing my bit...
(It amazes me that Americans can still be so very old-fashioned about hip hop, or pop for that matter - I've had some arguments with friends-of-friends on Facebook about eg Girls Aloud which have astonished me, as over here that sort of argument barely made it into the current century, or at least not unless you're talking to an older generation)

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

If it ever was the worst selling book, the Thompson volume is no longer!
(But it is only up to third from bottom, and I don't think you'll like who's taken last place)
http://33third.blogspot.com/2010/10/league-table-october-2010.html

[moleintheground.livejournal.com]

I've got the 69 Love Songs one if you want a borrow.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes please!

[stu-n.livejournal.com]

My favourite line from PIllars of the Earth was Henry I saying 'Mmmm! Lampreys! My favourite!'

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Oh, really? Thank you for confirming that I made the right decision; the dialogue was clumpingly obvious from the off, but I still wouldn't have expected it to get quite that bad.

[miss-newham.livejournal.com]

The 69 Love Songs book is great! The Celine Dion book is great! The Belle and Sebastian one is all right! The one by John Darnielle about Black Sabbath is REALLY great! That's all.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Why is the B&S one only all right? Were the band going through one of their reclusive phases when it was in preparation?

[miss-newham.livejournal.com]

It just doesn't really tell you anything about them that you don't already know, but it's a nice enough read.

[charleston.livejournal.com]

I really want them to do one about "So Red The Rose".

Maybe for NaNoWriMo I should write one about "Leisure Noise" and fulfil Cliff Jone's conspiracy theory that I was somehow sent by "them" as a spy. I didn't have much to do with it, btw, but I was around. Sort of. Most of the sessions I turned up to I was enticed out of the studio and to the local charity shops by competitive other member.

[charleston.livejournal.com]

Can't edit for typos but I know it's Jones not Jone.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Charley Stone, Agent of T.H.E.M.! This is an excellent idea. As is doing an Arcadia one although if they ever got anywhere near New Romanticism, I would expect it to be Dare or Lexicon of Love that got the treatment.

[puzzled-anwen.livejournal.com]

I see there's no Queen on that list. Pff. Of course, they'd probably pick the wrong one (the correct one is obviously Queen II) and that would be worse.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I thought the two named after Marx Brothers films were generally reckoned to be the classics? TBH, for all that I love them, I never thought of them as an albums band. Although since we're talking pomp rock, where the (ahem) Hell is Bat Out Of Hell?

[puzzled-anwen.livejournal.com]

I never even had Day at the Races, actually. Night at the Opera is vg, but Queen II is easily my favourite, and thus the most important. I rarely listen to albums all the way through, but Queen II (and sometimes Queen and occasionally Night at the Opera) is an exception.

[perfectlyvague.livejournal.com]

That walk we did - with added ominous Sarll shadowy presence:

[perfectlyvague.livejournal.com]

or just - you know - cut and paste this

http://www.flickr.com/photos/44713492@N05/sets/72157625193230570/show/

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I love that I now appear to be menacing a pier, instead of narrowly avoiding a pratfall.

[perfectlyvague.livejournal.com]

I know...it's such a fine line.