recent doings
To the Rio for Man on Wire, a documentary about some French bloke who spent the 70s erecting tightropes across famous buildings with no prior permisssion or anything, and then walking and dancing and on them and all that until the police turned up and stopped him. He stopped after his greatest achievement, which was sneaking up the twin towers in New York and then walking between them. A good story spun out by his friends and helpers describing the months of preparation and the tension of finally doing it. He seemed like a really horrible human being actually, although it was all presented in an objective way. It was only let down by a clichéd soundtrack; Nyman's Cock & Bull Story theme pops up a lot, and when he's on the wire, lots and lots of Erik Satie and 'Albatross' by Fleetwood Mac.
Then to the Southbank for The Threepenny Ring Cycle, an outdoor performance by a manic French theatre troupe. It's a new spin on the Reduced Shakespeare thing where they're playing all sixteen hours of Wagner's Ring, condensed into 90 minutes and, genially, incorporating Yiddish folk styles. Opera would be so much more accessible if, after every aria, a French bloke sneaked up behind and whispered what exactly was going on in relation to the plot. It's the best of both worlds as you get all that beautiful music in format that's actually digestible in our google-over-books, no attention-span age. It may feel naughty but it's such a relief when, after the Rhinemaidens have sung an introductory three-minute tune, the bold teutonic narrator announces "Forty-five minutes have passed". I still have no idea what happens at the end of Gotterdammerung, something about the creation of Heaven and Earth? They made us all follow Siegfried's funeral march outside the big tent, then brought the big tent down and all lay under the canvas kicking to make it look like a raging sea. They provide non-stop action, whilst all simultaneously playing trombones and zithers and the like. Quite a feat!
Last weekend we went to Shoreditch Park, which was the starting point of the 'Tour de Hackney', a 15-mile cycle route that went from Shoreditch through Victoria Park, up to the Olympics building site, then back through the Lea River and London Fields. Except that there was very ambivalent signage somewhere around Walthamstow Marshes, and we probably did about 20 miles. There was a bit of a festival at the start site and a 'bike doctor' who told us our bikes were fucked. Kate's already bought a new one, I'm going to wait until my chain snaps halfway across London Bridge and I get killed under a 149 bus. For me the highlight of the route was Albion Square, which is off that really barren, bleak stretch of Kingsland Road between Dalston and Hoxton. You would never guess that you're a few feet away from the most marvellous, elegant townhouses-round-garden square you could imagine. I had just cycled 20 miles and I might have been hallucinating, but it was as attractive as anywhere in Belgravia.
That evening I headed to a bar in Borough for the only UK screening of a recent documentary film about Cathal Coughlan, introduced by the great man. Some great archive footage, not all of which I'd seen before. I never thought of 'Loftholdingswood' as one of their angrier moments but Cathal looks angrier and more menacing on Microdisney's Whistletest rendition of that than in anything else I've seen. Large parts of the film consisted of CC at a piano, fending off A. Muller's Aussie drawl.
AM: Do yoo feel honted by yoor faylyar to gain mainstream acceptance?
CC: In the 90s, I used to walk around Dulwich village, and I saw these... I think they were Afro-Carribean, and I think they were transvestites, but it was hard to tell because they were covered from head to toe in panstick... and just walking around Dulwich in the very thick fog, wearing a pink miniskirt, looking really lost.
[Pause. AM looks at his list of questions.]
AM: Yes.
There are good bits of Cathal walking round his neighbourhood, apparently Wapping, and revisiting Cork from the back of a taxi. "We are now entering 'Grand Parade'... why it's called that I can't begin to imagine... look, they've planted trees down the pavements so people can come and promenade on a Sunday afternoon..." He looks as horrified as Gulliver does when he realises the yahoos are humans and it's the best bit of the film. They try very hard to explain his last album 'Foburg' but twas all Greek to me. It's about Walter Benjamin and flaneurs who resisted office jobs so they could spend all day windowshopping in Parisian arcades and how they're trying to market the old mental hospital in Cork as a stately home and... I haven't a clue, but I like the songs very much.
Last week, a day up in Cambridge to meet the NME. This year's student guide is going to have 20 bands in 20 towns acting as 'tour guides' to the scene of that town. Andrew rarely socialises nowadays and I left Cambridge over 6 years ago. Absurdly, we were picked to be the Cambridge tour guides. The plan was to meet in Andrew's local but it was shut all afternoon. There was another pub six doors down.
"Well, what about that one?"
"The Jubilee? That could be interesting. Last time we went there it was Saturday night and we were the only people there. Afterwards we were all touching solid objetcs to make sure we were still alive. It was that sort of place."
The place was like a youth club in Millisle, or perhaps a working men's club in 50s Poland; or if there'd been a communal hall in the Father Ted holiday episode... Two pool tables dominated the bare room. A jukebox played entire Tracy Chapman albums and very little else. A barman who went out to the shed and came back with one individual icecube when I asked for ice in my (£1.60) whisky. The NME were three hours late so we played a lot of pool and drank a lot of whisky and basked in the weirdness of it.
It started raining very heavily while we were showing them around. When the rain was at its heaviest we were sent to pose for photos in the Diana memorial garden. This thing will probably hit the shelves in about a month; if nothing else, it should be mildly amusing to see TVG doing the most banal thing any band could possibly do.
Today, on a whim I bought something called a PlayStation2 and a copy of FIFA '08. When Darren Bent scored his first goal, Dimitar Berbatov knelt in front of him and mimicked scrubbing his boots, then leaned over to kiss the toe that had scored a devastating toe-poke past Schunthorpe Utd. How I laughed.
Then to the Southbank for The Threepenny Ring Cycle, an outdoor performance by a manic French theatre troupe. It's a new spin on the Reduced Shakespeare thing where they're playing all sixteen hours of Wagner's Ring, condensed into 90 minutes and, genially, incorporating Yiddish folk styles. Opera would be so much more accessible if, after every aria, a French bloke sneaked up behind and whispered what exactly was going on in relation to the plot. It's the best of both worlds as you get all that beautiful music in format that's actually digestible in our google-over-books, no attention-span age. It may feel naughty but it's such a relief when, after the Rhinemaidens have sung an introductory three-minute tune, the bold teutonic narrator announces "Forty-five minutes have passed". I still have no idea what happens at the end of Gotterdammerung, something about the creation of Heaven and Earth? They made us all follow Siegfried's funeral march outside the big tent, then brought the big tent down and all lay under the canvas kicking to make it look like a raging sea. They provide non-stop action, whilst all simultaneously playing trombones and zithers and the like. Quite a feat!
Last weekend we went to Shoreditch Park, which was the starting point of the 'Tour de Hackney', a 15-mile cycle route that went from Shoreditch through Victoria Park, up to the Olympics building site, then back through the Lea River and London Fields. Except that there was very ambivalent signage somewhere around Walthamstow Marshes, and we probably did about 20 miles. There was a bit of a festival at the start site and a 'bike doctor' who told us our bikes were fucked. Kate's already bought a new one, I'm going to wait until my chain snaps halfway across London Bridge and I get killed under a 149 bus. For me the highlight of the route was Albion Square, which is off that really barren, bleak stretch of Kingsland Road between Dalston and Hoxton. You would never guess that you're a few feet away from the most marvellous, elegant townhouses-round-garden square you could imagine. I had just cycled 20 miles and I might have been hallucinating, but it was as attractive as anywhere in Belgravia.
That evening I headed to a bar in Borough for the only UK screening of a recent documentary film about Cathal Coughlan, introduced by the great man. Some great archive footage, not all of which I'd seen before. I never thought of 'Loftholdingswood' as one of their angrier moments but Cathal looks angrier and more menacing on Microdisney's Whistletest rendition of that than in anything else I've seen. Large parts of the film consisted of CC at a piano, fending off A. Muller's Aussie drawl.
AM: Do yoo feel honted by yoor faylyar to gain mainstream acceptance?
CC: In the 90s, I used to walk around Dulwich village, and I saw these... I think they were Afro-Carribean, and I think they were transvestites, but it was hard to tell because they were covered from head to toe in panstick... and just walking around Dulwich in the very thick fog, wearing a pink miniskirt, looking really lost.
[Pause. AM looks at his list of questions.]
AM: Yes.
There are good bits of Cathal walking round his neighbourhood, apparently Wapping, and revisiting Cork from the back of a taxi. "We are now entering 'Grand Parade'... why it's called that I can't begin to imagine... look, they've planted trees down the pavements so people can come and promenade on a Sunday afternoon..." He looks as horrified as Gulliver does when he realises the yahoos are humans and it's the best bit of the film. They try very hard to explain his last album 'Foburg' but twas all Greek to me. It's about Walter Benjamin and flaneurs who resisted office jobs so they could spend all day windowshopping in Parisian arcades and how they're trying to market the old mental hospital in Cork as a stately home and... I haven't a clue, but I like the songs very much.
Last week, a day up in Cambridge to meet the NME. This year's student guide is going to have 20 bands in 20 towns acting as 'tour guides' to the scene of that town. Andrew rarely socialises nowadays and I left Cambridge over 6 years ago. Absurdly, we were picked to be the Cambridge tour guides. The plan was to meet in Andrew's local but it was shut all afternoon. There was another pub six doors down.
"Well, what about that one?"
"The Jubilee? That could be interesting. Last time we went there it was Saturday night and we were the only people there. Afterwards we were all touching solid objetcs to make sure we were still alive. It was that sort of place."
The place was like a youth club in Millisle, or perhaps a working men's club in 50s Poland; or if there'd been a communal hall in the Father Ted holiday episode... Two pool tables dominated the bare room. A jukebox played entire Tracy Chapman albums and very little else. A barman who went out to the shed and came back with one individual icecube when I asked for ice in my (£1.60) whisky. The NME were three hours late so we played a lot of pool and drank a lot of whisky and basked in the weirdness of it.
It started raining very heavily while we were showing them around. When the rain was at its heaviest we were sent to pose for photos in the Diana memorial garden. This thing will probably hit the shelves in about a month; if nothing else, it should be mildly amusing to see TVG doing the most banal thing any band could possibly do.
Today, on a whim I bought something called a PlayStation2 and a copy of FIFA '08. When Darren Bent scored his first goal, Dimitar Berbatov knelt in front of him and mimicked scrubbing his boots, then leaned over to kiss the toe that had scored a devastating toe-poke past Schunthorpe Utd. How I laughed.