Don't Shop the Reaper

We went to Somerfield today and lo and behold what was the background music - "Don't Fear the Reaper" by Blue Oyster Cult. I couldn't believe it - I have blogged about this before - last time they were playing it in the department store Jarrolds. I find myself wondering what is it about this song that it has suddenly become so popular as backing music for shoppers. Blue Oyster Cult were never exactly mainstream and it's a song about death for chrissakes. Either someone hasn't listened to the lyrics properly or they are being ironic. I mean supermarkets do have something grim reaperish about them don't they. What next will we buying underwear accompanied by "Paranoid" by Black Sabbath or "The Lemon Song" by Led Zeppelin - "squeeze me baby, till the juice runs down my leg..."

Damien Nice

It's funny, a year ago I wasn't keen on Damien Rice - but he is one of those singers who has really grown on me. The more I listen to his albums, the more I like them. They are a powerful rollercoaster ride from heaven to hell and back again, oozing with sex, anger and sadness. He is like a modern day John Martyn, not just because of any similarity in guitar or vocal style - but because he is the only other singer whose work is so encompassing of both darkness and light.

Rice's music gets right inside of you, tearing apart your senses and putting them back together in new and unexpected ways. There are very few singer/songwriters that can make a woman want to have sex with them and bear their children - but Rice's music can have that effect on women of all ages - and that's before you've even seen him! It's all about the voice, the words, the emotion!

Recommended tracks:-

9 Crimes

Volcano

Blower's Daughter

Sleep Don't Weep

Canonball

Museum of Life

I have been very remiss about doing my blog of late. It seems that I find it difficult to function creatively without some kind of deadline to work to. You would think that freeed from the constraints of the busy term I would have oodles of time to blog away to my hearts content. But it just doesn't seem to work like that. One of the reasons I suspect is that I am more motivated when I am busy and another of course is that busy lives are more intersesting and therefore give a person more to blog about.

That said I have done some interesting things recently. Hunchermuncher and I went to a very odd arts event at Norwich arts centre a week or so ago called "Rub me up the Wrong Way" which was aninteresting mix of dance and performance artists culminating in Gwendoline Robin exploding as the human firework. Most of the performances were enjoyable except that of Hugh O'Donnell who crammed cheese sandwiches up his arse accompanied by a tape loop of the song "I don't know what to do with myself" and then barfed into a bucket. Maybe I am getting old but I JUST DON'T GET IT.

I did however GET Karton Bott's brilliant installation at Norwich Castle Museum. Bott has created an exhibition entitiled "Museum of Life" which I thought was brilliant. Bott has created two very different settings in which he has displayed some of his extensive collection of everyday objects. In the first room he has made a meandering path through the objects that are spred out on either side, and in the second the objects are displayed on towering floor to ceiling shelf units and in glass museum display cases. This is a fascinating exhibit and effects the viewer on many levels - the most obvious being that we identify with the objects themselves. My son and I found ourselves spotting things that were familiar - that we owned or had owned or were local. Then we were identifying cultural items and wondering which country things were from. In the second room Bott has grouped objects - foe example toys, photographic items, objects relating to the war.

This exhibition contains too many items for a viewer to possibly see and comprehend on one visit and I suspect that even if you visited ten times you would still spot artefacts that you hadn't noticed previously.