White Stripes – Under Great White Northern Lights. Bagpipes? So begins the show – ‘Let’s Shake Hands’. There’s a case to be made for Jack White producing the greatest series of geetar riffs since Jimmy Page – but I’m not necessarily going to make it. I get bored skipping through this album...is that my problem, or theirs?
What’s my problem with singing? I enjoy music without vocals so much more. Like techno, or any other music which mostly lacks vocals. All that jazz. And ‘ambient’, even, although I dislike the term. The only singing I can enjoy are those doing justice to the Great American Songbook, and Bowie at his best...Bryan Ferry at Roxy Music’s best...and Iggy...and all that great soul music...and classic reggae, rock steady...so I do like singing...but can’t think of one contemporary vocalist that I enjoy, which simply reflects my distaste for modern....what shall I call it? Rock? Indie? And any other genre involving singers today. Perhaps I’m spoilt by Aretha, Frank, JB (if we can call what he does ‘singing’). The peculiarities of personal taste...
Audion – Vegetables. The way this starts is fantastic, but it soon settles down into the familiar techno beat, yet Matthew Dear does embellish it with out-of–this-world sounds....so whilst the rhythm remains consistently metronomic, as the genre demands, the bubble and squeak, the klick and klang, warbling and wonkiness of machinery makes for an interesting listening experience...and to finish off, a mutated voice describes somebody cutting themselves, the juice from the pepper staining her, she washes her finger under the sink. This is the best thing I’ve heard all day. And what a day it’s been...of meanderings, adrift...unable to settle, to concentrate, so to bask in the sun whilst eating pizza, and read, and sleep, and wonder what the hell I’m doing, doing nothing...
FILM >
The Big Heat. Debby Marsh sits in Sergeant Bannion’s hotel room with blinds drawn, head down, face bandaged where it was splashed with scolding hot coffee thrown by her mobster boyfriend, Vince Stone. Debby would wind up dead. Bannion attracts death in his defiance of corruption. Nothing is really solved or resolved...
Alien. The Nostromo is the leading character? It’s endless tunnels/shafts/corridors...it’s presence? Some of the crew smoke cigarettes...as if that would be allowed in the future.‘Here, kitty...’ – why are they so concerned about finding that damned cat? (I have grown to dislike cats since seeing feathers scattered across our lawn...and having to fill plastic bags full of their shit, picked up from the garden. As I told someone the other day, Bill's 'The Cat Inside' is one book of his that I will never read.)
Alfie. The degree of chauvinism displayed by Alfie would be unbearable if you could not laugh at it. What’s it all about? A man who, on the one hand, tells women they should do what they like, whilst on the other, keeps some of them as virtual slaves. He’s refers to at least one as ‘it’. But then, there is that Sonny Rollins soundtrack...and I could say that I do still think it's a good film, iconic, of course, but...has it aged well? How would Alfie age? Alfie updated might be an interesting project. Caine is still alive, after all...to see him single in the 21st century, using Viagra...the oldest swinger in town standing at a bar in a club...complaining about the music...about everything, as it seems we all do, the older we get...the more out of step with the Now we become...
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