Stile Antico

The son of an old therapy related pal of B's was one of the singers in this antique enterprise. He stood centre stage, bearded and Christlike in the newly restored All Saints church, and to push the relgious metaphor over the edge, the group gathered around him all sang like angels. As was fitting in this setting we sat on distractingly uncomfortable wooden pews, but I was able to shut my eyes and drift off into the lovely, impossibly intricate, vocal harmonies. I've always loved vocal harmony, though in very different genres, but the stark northern tones of The Watersons, or the sunny Californian harmonies of the BeachBoys are just different tones on the same aural canvas. It wasn't too hard to shake off the religious overtones, as all of the songs were in latin, and I comfortingly convinced myself that while the original composers may have believed they were creating something which glorified God, in fact it is the human voice itself which approaches divinity by way of these beautiful hymns and prayers.

Miracle @ Barbican

I'm never sure that the Barbican is really the right place to see live music. I have a preference for sweaty basement clubs, with flooded toilets and surly bar staff. There's also a lost opportunity about the whole Barbican village thing, there is a disturbing Ballardian reality lurking somewhere between the concrete walkways, but it just won't be teased out, so it just ends up a polite middle class urban suburb, if you can have such a thing. However 'Ys' performed live with the LSO needed the gravitas of a venue like this, as it really is a major work methinks.

Alasdair Roberts provided pleasant support, but his stooped, skinny frame struggled to fill the huge space, and his pleasantly plucked tragic ballad updates need a bit of a re-vamp.

The Newsom band consisted of JN herself astride her imperious harp, (the main column of the beast looked like it could have been holding up the Parthenon) a percussionist/backing vocalist and a multi-(stringed)-instrumentalist, and the massed ranks of the London Symphony Orchestra. On 'Only Skin' miserabilist supreme Bill 'Smog' Callahan provided some lacklustre backing vocals, but he seemed rather over-awed by the scale and ambition of the event and his contribution was rather sheepish. This was an audaciously mounted concert, and could have proved hugely, pretentiously, over-egged, but was in fact superbly triumphant. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up so many times I was getting follicle ache. The songs with the orchestra and the mini-band seemed impossibly full and rich and beautiful. And then she did 'Sawdust & Diamonds' with just the harp, and it was even better, meltingly delicious. It's hard these days for someone to come up with something daringly new and inventive, that doesn't refer back to a million different strands of rock's rich tapestry, or that isn't festooned in knowing ironic ephemeral tinsel, and when something 'new' does happen it's so easy to be sniffy and suspicious of the artists intentions. But this is 'The Rite of Spring' or 'Ulysses' or 'Citizen Kane' it is cannonic and significant but without trying to be, it is just a heartfelt creative expression and as such, in these ultra-cynical times, is little short of miraculous.

Chandos Winter Wonderland

A sudden cold snap, open the curtains in the morning and voila:



Is that Alan Parsons pottering about in the shed?

Babel

Three interwoven stories highlight the randomness of tragedy, and the unlimited range of coincidence. It's all quite bleak really, but the performances are excellent and the sense of place beautifully evoked for Tokyo, Morocco and Mexico respectively. It's range is maybe too broad, allowing all kinds of messages to be read into it, certainly gun culture comes off badly, as does US political intervention and spin. Kids seem to be one of the central sources of the adults tragic downfalls, and yet Inarritu has dedicated this film to his three children who provide him with "light amidst all the darkness." Maybe the film itself could have done with a bit more light.

Maus Tails

Adam bought me this for Xmas, what a nice lad. I've always been a bit put off by any artistic work that takes as its source the Holocaust. This however is refreshingly different and dispenses with the mawkish Spielbergification of the Final Solution that I was worried about. The drawings are extremely simple, but effective, and the use of different animals to represent the different races is inspired. Doesn't present a very positive image of cats though.

Family Twig #4

Here's the answer to last years question about which Chat story has a family connection:



The connection being that Michael (Mickey) Attwooll is my cousin, he built the fitted wardrobes in my parents bedroom in Crosskeys, which are probably still there.

Haitian Daughter

A couple of years ago in lieu of giving people crap they didn't want for Xmas I started to sponsor a child in Haiti. Her name is Evanie and she's 5. A couple of times a year I get a scribbly picture from her, and a vague update from the local Action Aid rep. Todays drawing is a little er... peculiar to say the least.



I must get around to sending her a postcard.

Sevens Full Of Queens

Better game than last time, won a few decent hands, and was £15 up when we sat down for the final half an hours play. Unfortunately I agreed to put the blinds up to 50p/£1 which soon ate away most of my meagre winnings. However the real turning point may have been a hand earlier in the evening:
I just got too excited when I saw my full house come up on the turn, Sanjay bet 50p and I raised it to £10 which caused him to fold. If I'd slow played it, and called his bet, then when he hit his (lower) full house on the river, I could have won a huge pot. Another example of how it often seems to be that there's one hand that can send you home a winner or a loser.

Family Twig #3

Back: Kath, Evelyn, Nancy, Mavis Front: Rose, Lillian, Rose Snr, Albert (circa 1970)

Another month another funeral, this one seemed even more routine and formulaic than the last. The vicar seemed barely able to go through the motions. The reception was once again held in the bowls club, though at least there was some relevance, as Kath's partner in later life, Ben, was a keen member, and she used to help out behind the bar. Ben came onto the scene after her husband Ron had died, though they never married. The photo above would have been taken around about the time my folks and Kath and Ron and their son Alan went on holiday to The Mumbles, just past Swansea. We stayed in a caravan, and must have enjoyed it as we went back the next year as well. This would have been the summers of '72 / '73. This was the start of a close friendship between Alan and myself, which these days is only renewed at funerals it seems. Though I did say this time that I'd definately be able to pop back and see him more often now the scrap-heap awaits. He seems rather directionless at the moment, but then he's always had a propensity for stasis. Following these holidays I used to spend a lot of time with Kath and the constantly joking, and wheezing, Ron. Alan and I would lock ourselves away and discuss the meaning of life, while listening to the LP's of his older brother (Dai).


Dai was a student/drop-out at the time, no doubt he owned a great coat to accompany this rag-bag of prog nonsense. He was a bit of a hero, because he'd packed in his course to go and sell deck chairs on a beach somewhere. He had no time for us little tykes though. This selection of far out sounds totally transformed my musical landscape, calling into question my unfailing loyalty to the Glam cause, and eventually leading to my casting Slade/T.Rex/Sweet et al aside, and pretending I'd never really liked them anyway. Thankfully this was over-turned by a new pop friendly regime at the end of the decade, ushered in by the all encompassing arrival of post-punk (though it wasn't called post-punk then, attaching labels to things was far too rockist). Around that time Alan moved into the flat I was living in, in Cardiff, not a popular move with Kath, who saw me as being a bad influence and leading her boy astray. When I moved to London he went back home, and settled into a long career at the post office, until one day an altercation with his boss resulted in a punch in the face for the boss and a P45 for Al. In recent years he's been a full time carer for his mum, which was at least a useful way to spend his time, but I guess we will now both have to face up to the New Era that awaits. Oddly enough Dai is about to give up his fifteen year pub tenancy and do something else instead, so he is also on the cusp, maybe it's the Year of the Cusp?

Home On The Range

Read a scathing one star review in the Grauniad the morning before seeing this at the Curzon Soho, and feared the worst. However it was absolutely charming. Not one of the great cinematic works, but a warmly successful revisiting of Altmans ensemble pieces. A bit like a bite-size version of Nashville, all of the actors make it look superbly effortless, and even Kevin Kline's Clouseau-esque slapstick 40's private eye didn't jar too much. Not like Steven Fry's unbearable wackiness in Gosford Park, though it was a toned down echo of it. Indeed there were many echoes of Altman's past, his fragile state while filming, and his imminent demise all the way through, which made it hard not to be moved.

There was a discussion afterwards by film critic, David Thompson and director Mick Figgis (Leaving Las Vegas) which was very interesting, but they needed someone to reign them in and get them to focus a little.

Here Come The Waves

Brilliantly realised adaptation of The novel by Virginia Woolf at The Cottesloe. Like a pre-war modernist This Life, the thoughts and impressions of a group of characters are brought to life by the busiest cast in showbiz. Several hundred props are used to create visuals and sound effects to illustrate the often impenetrably confusing text. The end result is as impressionistic as Woolf's woolly words, but somehow less precious and effete.

Eye Heart Ennui

New York Groove

We Are The Dead

Despite a glowing recommendation I was reluctant to see this, don't really like Clive Owen or PD James, and this was a Harry Potter director after all! Julianne Moore was probably the deciding factor, especially as she needed a chance to redeem herself after her lucklastre board treading of earlier in the week. She was very good, but it was the cinematography and production design that were the real stars. The gritty matter of fact violence was totally convincing. The filthy London streets actually reminded me of the London as it was when I first visited in the late seventies, litter everywhere, abandonded houses and wasteland, rain and grime and desperation. Maybe a key trigger for dystopian visions is a twisted nostalgia for a gloomy past.

Double Whammy At The Whitney

Two fabulous exhibitions at The Whitney for the price of one (even got my student discount). The Picasso exhibition presented an excellent chronological view of his influence on American artists. In the period before the first world war, when communication between the US and Europe would have been ponderously slow there was room for an almost daily update of who was painting what, who had seen what, and what effect that viewing had. In this age of instant communication the notion of tracking ideas across the world is impossibly complex, but here was a clear and fascinating linear artistic evolution. It was amazing to see such wholesale lifting of Picasso's ideas and styles, as his cubist and classicist periods were reproduced with remarkable verisimilitude.. Even Jackson Pollock was shown to be influenced by Pablo, there were some fabulous Pollocks on display. The only stuff I didn't really like were the Lichtenstein pop art copies from the sixties, and Jasper Johns more recent Picasso-esque daubs which just displayed a lazy lack of ideas rather than inspiration.

I still don't understand why I didn't go and see the Edward Hopper retrospective at the Tate Modern last year. I told myself that I knew the paintings pretty well, and his brushwork was merely proficient, and a close up view wasn't really necessary. What a sap, but then again maybe I knew this show was waiting in NY, especially extended just for me. The Whitney is the repository for the majority of the Hopper estates considerable archive, which allowed them to present a series of his most important works, with the provisional sketches and watercolours that display their evolution. Wim Wenders over the top commentary on the audio guide for Nighthawks was rather comical, but the painting itself is stunning. Remarkable that an image that is so familiar from reproductions is still so potent. Another favourite was New York Movie:

The usherette just looks so lonely and vulnerable and sad she could break your heart. This painting is from 1939, and I didn't realise that he carried on producing quality work into the 1960's. The later work doesn't look dated though, it's as if all of the paintings take place in some timeless, mythical, alienated America. Interesting that Hopper spent quite a while in Paris at the time that Picasso was gaining his reputation, and yet he fails completely to be influenced by the new European strains of modernism and keeps determinedly pursuing his bleak vision of lonely America.

The Hour Draws Nighy

The Vertical Hour is supposedly a reference to the period immediately after a physical trauma when medical intervention can prove most beneficial. However I haven't been able to find any reference to this on line, so maybe he just made it up? I can't see how this fits into the play itself either. One of the defining incidents relates to an accident that Bill Nighy's character had some years before; his lover was killed, when a car he was driving was involved in an accident. It is this event which finally ended his marriage, and caused him to give up his senior surgeons post and become a country GP, but how any 'immediate intervention' relates to this accident is somewhat obscure. Nighy is absolutely superb, totally in command, able to exercise his immaculate comic timing on the best lines in the play. He also convincingly conveys anger and disgust when reciting the litany of US deficiencies in their handling of the Iraq war. It is the war that is the central theme of the play, but somehow gets hidden away for most of the time, as though Hare is determined not to go for out and out polemic, and tries (and indeed succeeds) to create a believable dysfunctional family dynamic to weave around the political arguments between Nighy and Julianne Moore's war correspondent turned academic Iraq apologist.

Moore is disappointing, her voice lacks the range required for stage acting, and without the close ups, and audio boosting facilities of cinema lacks sufficient presence to match Nighy. The set is very simple, rough floor boards cover the stage and a large Oak tree in the background provides shade for a long dining table, and a motley assortment of chairs. It was remarkably evocative, and made me yearn to have a garden that could accommodate such a tree, and a desire to sit out under it on long summer nights and enjoy sumptuous many coursed feasts.Aaah! The play reminded my very much of Rock'n'Roll with it's interweaving of the personal and the political, and it's constant flow of ideas and observations, it's another play about 'everything', but the musical introductions to each scene (Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Nick Drake) seemed to echo R'n'R a little too closely.

At the end of the day Hare is obviously opposed to Iraq, but he doesn't seem to be able to say anything very clear about what the alternatives may have been, or what should be done now. Moore's final decision to quit academia and return to reporting in Iraq doesn't seem a to be a very clear statement about anything either, and adds to the general confusion.

Dreamtime #11

We had moved away from London, and I had to get the bus to work for the first time. I wasn't sure which bus I needed so I got on the first one that came along. I realised something was amiss as it was occupied by a youth football team. We drove to a disused quarry, which had a huge muddy lake in the middle of it. The coach retired to a wooden hut to get drunk and the players were given dry bread and cheese to eat. I sat on a raft in the middle of the lake, but it sank, the water wasn't deep so I walked out, and set off down a hill to find a way out. There was a small village just a few minutes away, with a train station. I asked some schoolboys on the platform what sort of destinations were available, they seemed puzzled by the question but eventually told me that you could go to France, and also to South Wales which was quite nice. I looked at the timetable, and after a string of place names I didn't recognise, the final destination was indeed FRANCE. This seemed useless to me, so I went back up to the quarry and shared the last piece of bread and cheese.

Dream Of Live

This was described by Patti as the 'stagglers night' of her three shows at The Bowery Ballroom, the others being her birthday (60 this year) and New Years Eve. In order to try and make this show a unique event in itself she'd decided to play all of 'Dream of Life', her 1988 comeback album, from start to finish. This live show format seems to be very much in vogue at the moment, Lou Reed having played 'Berlin' just a few weeks ago at St. Ann's Warehouse in NY, and I suspect I was the only one in attendance who had seen Patti playing 'Horses' at Meltdown last year. However this album wasn't critically well received, and apart from the anaemically anthemic 'People Have The Power' I was totally unfamiliar with it, so it was a fairly ordinary first half, with only the occasional decent sounding song, but at least the set was peppered with amusing and moving between song tales and anecdotes.

After the album she played 'Frederick' the single from 'Wave', dedicated to her late husband Fred 'Sonic' Smith of the MC5. There were a string of great cover versions, The Doors 'Soul Kitchen', Bo Diddley's 'Bo Diddley' which segued into James Brown's 'Living In America', and a final encore of 'Gimme Shelter' which was excellent. So not the greatest or most typical Patti performance, but definately a one off show that was good to have seen.


Spotted David Fricke from Rolling Stone standing moodily at the back. He wrote a rather more flattering review.

Chrysanthemum's The Word

The first of two films seen in New York over the Xmas period was the latest Zhang Yimou Chinese epic. Though stunningly beautiful to look at, the plot slipped about all over the place, and the characters were all totally unsympathetic. This made it difficult to engage emotionally so I just sat back and absorbed the sensual colour schemes in the grand palace and the balletic battle sequences. Some of the CGI was a bit ropey though, I think ropey reality would have been preferrable, but reality wasn't on the menu here.

Dreamtime #10

I was surprised to see a huge diamond ring embedded in the wall of a New York depertment store. I was puzzled that no one else seemed to notice it?