The Book Tower

It’s possible that I’m the first person ever to announce that Christmas is a good time for simple data tables. But they come in very useful, especially when you’re thinking about the music you’ve listened to in the last year. Here’s my table, which is taken from my iTunes Top 25 playlist:

Two of my purchases from early in 2008 dominate my playlist. Duffy and the Last Shadow Puppets both released excellent albums, although Duffy was also a favourite of my daughter’s which is part of the reason for its high positioning. There was a time when Mercy and only Mercy echoed around our house. The Age of the Understatement proves Alex Turner (usual Arctic Monkeys frontman) an increasingly gifted songwriter. The Last Shadow Puppets put the familiar tinkle of the Monkeys on hold, and deliver a more retrospective sound that recalls the era of The Walker Brothers. It’s not just trying to recreate the 60s though, this album is as good as some of the best releases from that decade.

A more mainstream favourite of mine was Coldplay’s Viva la Vida, although if you want a real slice of moodiness I would prescribe The Seldom Seen Kid by Elbow, which quite rightly won the Mercury Music Prize this year. It’s good to have one great discovery per year. Editors were my great discovery of 2007. In 2008 I discovered Elbow. A band that’s also confidently crept into the mainstream are The Killers, and I think that Day and Age, their third album, is their best to date. It’s very commercial, but they manage to pull it off and there are any number of tracks there ready to follow up the excellent single Human. Another choice from the year is We Started Nothing by The Ting Tings, who fall just outside my top 25 plays, as do Snow Patrol with A Hundred Million Suns.

For something more obscure The Fireman appear in the table with the song Sing the Changes. It’s from the excellent album Electric Arguments. This is the third Fireman album and their first in over a decade, but one half of The Fireman has been around for a lot longer than that. This is a collection of some of Paul McCartney’s best songs in over thirty years. Trust me. Buy it and see.

My iTunes table also features Paul Weller and Graham Coxon with a song from last year. Weller released 22 Dreams in 2008 which was one of his better solo efforts in recent years. Alas nothing new from Coxon recently, although we have the Blur reunion to look forward to in 2009…

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I must be firm.

The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral by M.R. James is possibly my favourite ghost story. It was televised by the BBC in 1971 and starred Robert Hardy and the James regular Clive Swift. Unlike other BBC adaptations for television and radio over the decades, this version changed very little from the original, which takes an ostensibly dull premise – a man looking through a collection of documents to piece together the death of an archdeacon – and turns it into something rather chilling.

The best James stories share an array of interchangeable themes. One is theft and subsequent haunting. In both A Warning to the Curious and The Treasure of Abbott Thomas, greed or curiosity compels somebody to take something of either monetery or intellectual value. Fear of supernatural punishment leads them to attempt to return it. With usually disastrous results, especially in the BBC adaptations. The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral follows a similar thread, with a guilty victim increasingly troubled; although in this case he has orchestrated the death of another to further his own career. The supernatural has a hand in his own inevitable end.

My fertile imagination has left both the original James text and the BBC adaptation (truncated to The Stalls of Barchester) also interchangeable. They are complementary in providing the correct dose of ghostly satisfaction; the dark staircase, the black cat, the whispering voice:

The whispering in my house was more persistent tonight. I seemed not to be rid of it in my room. I have not noticed this before. A nervous man, which I am not, and hope I am not becoming, would have been much annoyed, if not alarmed, by it. The cat was on the stairs tonight. I think it sits there always. There is no kitchen cat.

The ghost stories of M.R.James are like a generous glass of mulled wine. Warming, but with an additional ingredient of spice to jolt you slightly. It’s important to remember that many of these stories were read aloud to students, and the subject matter of often over zealous antiquarians could be read as a warning not to take one’s studies too seriously. At least not at Christmas.

The Stalls of Barchester was first shown on Christmas Eve 1971. And so on the same day in 2008 I wish you all a very Merry Christmas…

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Every Christmas we try to seek out a memorable theatre trip. For the second year running, the award goes to the Tobacco Factory in Bristol. Last year they staged a superb production of Alice Through the Looking Glass. This year they turned their attention to A Christmas Carol.

The Tobacco Factory has a small central stage area, flanked on all sides by the audience. Performances are not exactly interactive, although the actors are nevertheless aware of the close proximity of viewers surrounding them. This intimacy suits Dickens’ classic very well.

Andy Burden’s adaptation stars the excellent Chris Bianchi as Scrooge. Also worth mentioning is Felix Hayes, doubling up in a number of roles although most memorably as The Ghost of Christmas Now. Perhaps a role that Brian Blessed was born to play, although Hayes is suitably larger than life (or death) and booming magnificently. This version takes a few liberties with the text. There’s references to Bristol and to Brunel, and Burden, although perhaps wisely, omits the ignorance and want episode. It doesn’t descend into pantomime but it is heavy on humour, with Bianchi garbed in his nightcap and being dragged around the stage on a huge bed by the spectres of Christmas Eve. Even Jacob Marley’s appearance is played mostly for laughs. But when the scares do come, such as the visitation of the silent Ghost of Christmas to Come – dark hooded and stealthily setting out the graves for Scrooge’s final resting place – they’re handled superbly.

Importantly, Dickens’ enduring message isn’t spoilt at all, perhaps even spreading to the very young members of the audience. An excellent festive feast. A Christmas Carol runs until January 18th.

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