The Book Tower

Inspired by Chartroose, an alphabatical trawl through my favourite music. When considering this exercise I first thought about consulting my vinyl collection. Ah… my poor vinyl collection, yellowing sleeves squeezed together and gathering dust in the corner of the spare room. But I just didn’t have the courage to face those long neglected records. So instead, I turned to my iTunes library, with a flippant if it’s not on there, it’s not a favourite approach.

However. My iTunes collection was a touch uninspiring. And as I’ve written about it quite a lot recently, I was faced with no option other than guiltily climbing the stairs to face the music…

Here goes then. Artists beginning with…

A

The Associates enjoyed some success in the early 80s. Despite being touted as the band to be scaling great musical heights unfortunately this never happened, and they faded into obscurity. A shame, but I think this clip of them performing 18 Carat Love Affair reveals their couldn’t-care-less attitude towards that serious thing called the music business. They had quite a lot of charm, perhaps not needed for success in a climate where the Durans and Spandaus triumphed.

Alas, they threw all their money away on chocolate and never had another hit after this.

B

I wanted to avoid The Beatles in this listing but it’s difficult to find anything else warranting a “B”, even my obscure Easy Listening album Beatles Bach and Bacharach Go Bossa has a Fab Four connection. So here’s my Beatly anecdote, a transcript of my short meeting and exchange with Paul McCartney as I remember it:

the scene is just before a recording of Top of the Pops

Me: could you sign this please?

McCartney: sure

he begins to sign his name but has difficulty because the ink has run dry. He turns to somebody in the shadows and asks to borrow their pen. He signs the autograph and hands it back to me along with my faulty pen.

Me: thanks. Sorry about that

McCartney: it always happens

Now I suppose that was something of a wasted opportunity, and I could have quizzed him about his days in Hamburg, the cruel side of John Lennon or even the hidden meanings behind the songs on The White Album, but hasn’t he had all that a million times before? And when you come face to face with a surviving Beatle you do just tend to crumble a little.

For an alternative “B” how about an artist that isn’t, unlike most of my choices, actually alternative. John Barry is famous for co-writing the best of the Bond themes but also wrote countless other music for movies and tv including The Ipcress File, Born Free and The Quiller Memorandum. In many ways Barry appeared to effortlessly create the soundtrack to an entire era.

Somehow Persuaders episodes never lived up to their great opening titles and music.

C

Back to my more recent collection for this one from Graham Coxon. I kept changing the clip below in a bid to sell Mr Coxon to the uninitiated, showing him in the best possible light, but he probably wouldn’t thank me for such a marketing scam. So here he is in all his nerdy glory.

The real brains behind Blur, and no mistake.

D

Today I rediscovered New Boots and Panties by Ian Dury and the Blockheads in my vinyl collection. I was lucky to see the late Mr Dury twice in concert, once at the Brixton Academy in 1990 and then again a couple of years later supporting Madness and Morrissey at the notorious Finsbury Park concert. Here’s a clip from the very odd Revolver, introduced by Peter Cook:

The Lionel Bart of the 70s!

E

In the early 1980s Ian McCulloch earned himself the nickname Mac the mouth. The music papers loved any band frontman who spoke an endless stream of bollocks, and the lead singer of Echo and the Bunnymen fitted the bill perfectly. He was eventually surpassed by Morrissey, who spoke an equal amount of, although a different kind of, bollocks.

F

During my delve I uncovered a couple of records by the Cocteau Twins. I remembered this Cocteau Twins/Felt collaboration Primitive Painters which I found on YouTube. I’m listening to Felt right now and they’re great. Sadly forgotten.

Look at that hat!

More episodes of this series will follow, but I’m waiting for Chartroose to take the lead. Keep watching though, as I have a really good Z!

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Roberto Bolano died in 2004. As I sink further and further into his intriguing last novel 2666 I realise more and more what a loss this is. Bolano’s dying wish was for this huge and sprawling work to be published in five seperate instalments in as many years. His decision was never honoured and the novel is now available in full as the 900 page masterpiece it is shaping up to be. Whilst I can understand Bolano’s intention, I am glad I have the whole work in my grasp. And I say shaping up because I am only halfway through the book.

2666 is a difficult book. Its length, its voice and its intention. At times I am unclear, at others there’s a breakthrough and I begin to understand. Bolano’s view of the world is so unique that it’s often very difficult to keep in step with him. Reading 2666 is often like examining the world, as we all do, up close. Like Bolano, we need to take a step or two back in order to take in the whole view. And sometimes it’s hard to remove the blinkers.

The first section of the novel is called The Part About the Critics. Three academics from different corners of Europe become obsessed with an obscure writer called Archimboldi. Think of a German J.D. Salinger, but slightly more reclusive. During their travels between conferences they become friends and meet a third, female, Archimboldi enthusiast. Two of them embark on affairs with her, which strangely intersect, whilst her relationship with the third, who is disabled, also begins to deepen. Along the way they decamp to a fictional Mexican city called Santa Teresa, where a series of brutal and unsolved murders are taking place. So far the murders are merely on the periphery of the plot, and Bolano is keener to focus on dreams and the dark corners of the world.

The Part About Amalfitano is the second and more difficult section, which concerns a poet, his daughter and his estranged wife. It is mostly set in Santa Teresa, and Amalfitano has previously made an appearance with the academics in the first section. Again, the murder story has a brief mention. The Amalfitano section is confusing and obscure – this is a character who decides, in a moment of inspired obscurity, to hang a geometry book on his washing line. I can only presume it is setting the scene for later chapters, and Amalfitano’s daughter, Rosa, eventually does makes an appearance in the third section. The Part About Fate begins as a much more accessible chapter. Oscar Fate is a journalist sent along to cover a boxing match, who is drawn into the edges of the murder story and the seedy streets and lives of Santa Teresa. Each of Bolano’s characters, like the reader, is drawn into the black hole of his chosen setting.

2666 is a book that’s taken the wind out of me lately. I’ve been overworked and run down, so it’s possibly a foolish choice in my reading matter. Then again, Bolano is a writer who steps right in front of you and prods you in the chest with a demanding look in his eye. Never one to just let the mediocre wash over me, I accept the challenge.

What am I on about? More importantly, what is he on about? Stay tuned until I read some more…

Comments [4]

Next to The Weakest Link, Who Wants to be a Millionaire is probably the most recognisable of game shows, although I’d never have put money on using the familiarity of either of them for the basis of a film. Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire cleverly weaves a story into the Who Wants to be a Millionaire format and shifts the setting to India. Here a teenager from the slums of Mumbai takes part in the game show, proceeds to the highest level of the contest and is arrested under suspicion of cheating. During interrogation we learn how he knew all of the answers, which unfolds as the result of a combination of personal tragedy and sheer luck.

Slumdog Millionaire has received some criticism for an unrealistic depiction of Indian poverty, and the film certainly contains many of Danny Boyle’s mannerisms. He’s a brilliant visual director but is sometimes lazy with characterisation, and his adrenalin fuelled style of direction can often be tiring. He isn’t a naturalistic film maker, and if his portrait of India is wrong, I wouldn’t think it was any more wrong than the world of Edinburgh drug addicts he presented in Trainspotting. For me, his most convincing film to date is 28 Days Later, a zombie movie.

Nevertheless, Danny Boyle is a director who knows how to engage his audience, possibly more than any other to emerge from the British Isles in the last twenty years. Slumdog Millionaire is being hailed as the feelgood movie of the decade, an oft used tagline that does for once ring true. And Boyle manages to add a little more substance to his feelgood factor, this film is at times uncomfortable and gruesome. Realistic or not, it does show a horrible world from which the audience desperately want its hero to escape from. And this is what makes good cinema.

It’s difficult to give away any more a plot than I have already without spoiling the film. In custody, Jamal (Dev Patel) is roughed up by the police but does not confess himself to be a cheat. Having calmed down a little, the sweaty cops play a video of the Millionaire show, setting up the flow of the film which switches between the settings of interrogation room, last night’s quiz show and Jamal’s life. Jamal, his brother Salim and their friend Latika are each played by three different actors as they whizz through childhood to early adulthood. It’s a device that works well visually, although apart from Patel as Jamil I found there was little time to really get to grips with any of them beyond broad sketches. Indeed, the best actor in the film is Anil Kapoor as the smarmy game show host Prem Kumar, a nasty glint in his eye behind the affable exterior, much more Anne Robinson that Chris Tarrant.

Boyle plays with the Millionaire format very well, the ask the audience and the 50/50 choices played as skilfully as they should be in the game itself; we await the phone a friend segment hoping that it will form a memorable part of the climax to the story – Doyle doesn’t disappoint. Whilst reaction to the fairytale ending may be divided (depending on your definition of feelgood) I found the stories behind the Q and As of the game show clever and absorbing, and the scene in the washroom with Jamal and Kumar so simply effective it’s become one of my favourite scenes in recent cinema. Although not perhaps the ten out of ten I’d been led to believe, Slumdog Millionaire is certainly a good nine. And that’s my final answer.

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