Top 20 Rockumentaries

 

I am a sucker for a rockumentary. In fact, my idea of good comfort TV is a rockumentary or a programme about art or an artist. I am fascinated by other people's creative process. I find it really inspiring. I don't even have to like the band - a good rockumentary is compulsive viewing whether you like the music or not. Here are my top 20 rockumentaries - in no particular order. I would highly recommend all of these. (If you have a rockumentary you highly recommend do comment below.)

1) Meeting People is Easy. (A film by Grant Gee about Radiohead)

2) Talihina Sky. The Story of the Kings of Leon.

3) Joe Strummer The Future is Unwritten 

4) Long Train Running - The Tragically Hip

5) Metallica: Some Kind of Monster

6) One More Time With Feeling (Nick Cave)

7) 20,000 Days On Earth (Nick Cave)

8) Dig! (Dandy Warhols/Brian Jonestown Massacre)

9) The White Stripe Under Great Whit Norther Lights

10) loudQUIETloud: A film about the Pixies

11) Beware of Mr. Baker (Ginger Baker)

12) CSNY/Deja Vu 

13) Pearl Jam Twenty

14) Glastonbury

15) Heima (Sigur Ros)

16) Big Easy Express (Mumford and Sons/Edward Sharp and the Magnetic Zeros/Old Crow Medicine Show)

17) Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (David Bowie)

18) Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage

19) If I Leave Here Tomorrow: a film about Lynyrd Skynyrd

20) Red Hot Chili Peppers: Funky Monks

Minimalism Project - Free All Angels by Ash

A couple of years ago I started attempting to review all the albums that I owned. I got about four or five in and lost momentum. This year I intend to listen to every CD I own - and if I don't love it I will get rid of it. (read more about my minimalism project here) I am going to do mini reviews of the albums as I go.


Free All Angels - Ash (2001)

This is an album I bought three or four years ago in a sale and for some reason it never even made it out of its cellophane wrapper. Ash very much evoke the early 2000's for me - they have a very particular pop-punkish style that is very much of that time. Ash remind me a of quite a few other - some of their tracks are definitely almost pop-punk but others are more influenced by bands like The Happy Mondays and Oasis. I am surprised at just how many tracks are familiar - my top track, and probably their best known from this album, is Shining Light. Ash was one of those bands that were featured quite a lot on the soundtrack of Teachers - a TV programme that was really popular in the early 2000's and listening to this CD really made me want to rewatch it. Maybe it will be revived on Netflix eventually.

I thought this was a CD that was headed straight for the go pile but am finding it surprisingly enjoyable. Apparently this was in Q magazines top fifty albums of 2001. A keeper for now.

Minimalism Project - Hello Love by The Be Good Tanyas

A couple of years ago I started attempting to review all the albums that I owned. I got about four or five in and lost momentum. This year I intend to listen to every CD I own - and if I don't love it I will get rid of it. (read more about my minimalism project here) I am going to do mini reviews of the albums as I go.

Hello Love by The Be Good Tanyas (2006)

I was introduced to The Be Good Tanyas and Frazey Ford by the sister of my ex partner. Frazey has a unique singing style which is not everyone's cup of tea, but I really like it. She almost slurs her words at times and it is sometimes hard to make out the lyrics. This could be in part due to her accent but might also be a country/folk style choice.

Probably the most famous track on this album is A Thousand Tiny Pieces but there are a host of great songs on here - including a rather lovely folky cover of Prince's When Doves Cry. I was interested to read on Wikipedia that members of The Old Crow Medicine show are guest players on the album. I have been a fan of Old Crow saw the film Big Easy Express.

This album was a bargain - I picked it up for a pound in a charity shop recently. A pound well spent. Definitely a keeper.

The minimalism Project - The Unknown Soldier by Roy Harper

A couple of years ago I started attempting to review all the albums that I owned. I got about four or five in and lost momentum. Now I am proposing a different approach. This year I intend to listen to every CD I own - and if I don't love it I will get rid of it. (read more about my minimalism project here) I am going to do mini reviews of the albums as I go.


The Unknown Soldier by Roy Harper (1980)


I knew this album was a keeper before I even listened to it. I have a rather large sentimental soft spot for Roy Harper, and for this album in particular - which was the soundtrack to a big part of my teens. I was introduced to Roy Harper (and this album) by a muso friend of mine called Alan who lived in the commune where later I would end up living myself for several years. Alan had a massive record collection and introduced me to some great albums including this one and My Life in The Bush of Ghosts by Brian Eno and David Byrne.


I remember that I had to order the LP specially from the local record shop (Jons) in my hometown and it took weeks to come. The album is quite different to many of Harper's earlier more folky LPs - being more soft rock in style. Harper has worked with a stellar array of musicians over the years and this album is no exception. Several of the songs are co-written by David Gilmour (of Pink Floyd) who also plays on the album, and Kate Bush provides some of the vocals on "You" (The Game Part II). I have to say that I don't love the album quite as much as I did aged 15 or 16, but I do really enjoy listening to it now and then. Some of the songs are quite haunting and of course for me there is a huge element of nostalgia in the listening. I think as an adult you can't help but be moved by music that had a major influence on your developing mind. This album also brings back memories of sitting in my bedroom listening to this with particular friends from my teens. I am not sure whether I converted anyone to being a Roy Harper fan, but I am certain I played this to anyone who visited me whether they liked it or not.

The Minimalism Project - The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan

A couple of years ago I started attempting to review all the albums that I owned. I got about four or five in and lost momentum. Now I am proposing a different approach. This year I intend to listen to every CD I own - and if I don't love it I will get rid of it. (read more about my minimalism project here) I am going to do mini reviews of the albums as I go.

The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963)

I am definitely a Bob Dylan fan - but I don't love his work universally. I am not enamoured of his early more folky stuff (even though I do like folk music), nor am a a massive fan of his much later work. If I had to pin down my favourite Bob Dylan years they probably range from 1970 to the mid nineteen eighties. Freewheelin... is very early Bob Dylan indeed, but still there are echoes of things to come - especially in tracks like Masters of War - a song aimed at the industry of war (and based on a folk song), which put me in mind (a little) of Hurricane from the album Desire. Hurricane is much more sophisticated in terms of arrangement and production but Dylan sings it in a similar way. What I found interesting was that some of the tracks on the album I know better as cover versions. In the 80s I had an album called It Ain't Me Babe, a compilation of Dylan covers by famous musicians, which included excellent versions of A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall and Girl of the North Country by Bryan Ferry and Rod Stewart respectively. These covers are so good that I find they have spoilt the original stripped down versions for me. I find them interesting but I don't love them in quite the same way. Maybe it's the nostalgia coloured glasses through which I view those covers - the early 80s were my formative years after all. Or maybe it's simply familiarity.  I just don't love this album in quite the same way. Maybe I only love Dylan's more fully developed work. There are moments I really enjoyed here - Don't Think Twice, It's Aright and Corrina, Corrina for instance. I am not convinced that this album is a keeper for me though - I am going to put it to one side and listen to it again before I decide.

Minimalism Project - The Very Best of Elvis Costello

A couple of years ago I started attempting (on this very blog) to review all the albums that I owned. I got about four or five in and lost momentum. Now I am proposing a different approach. This year I intend to listen to every CD I own - and if I don't love it I will get rid of it. (read more about my minimalism project here) I am going to do mini reviews of the albums as I go.

The Very Best of Elvis Costello  (2004)

It has to be said I don't love greatest hits compilations. You can have much of a good thing and listening to hit after hit can be tiring. That said I do own some greatest hits compilations and this is one of them. I wasn't a huge Elvis Costello fan when I was younger and the records of his I did own were singles so I didn't really know where to begin with is albums. I remember when I bought this double album - it was about 12 years ago. We had been to a garden party out in the wilds of Norfolk and at some point Elvis Costello was played and I found (to my surprise) that I was really enjoying it. Later that week I duly went out and bought The Very Best of... But I have to confess it's not something I play very often. I listened to CD 1 today and did enjoy it to begin with - but there is just too much of it. Each CD (there are two) has twenty plus tracks. If you listened to the whole thing it would be like listening to four albums back to back - only the most die hard fans would want to do that. I can do it with Bowie (heck I can listen to ten Bowie albums back to back) - but each Bowie album is pretty unique and, I have to say, Elvis Costello becomes a little samey after a while. There are some very good tracks on here though, and CD 1 has quite a few of the early new wave hits - Accidents Will Happen (which I still have on vinyl), Radio, Radio, Pump it Up etc. But it also has a smattering of his more corny sentimental tracks that I was never particularly keen on - For the Roses and She for example. At some point I will give CD 2 a listen - but not today.

There are enough good tracks on here to make it a keeper I think.

Minimalism Project - Black Tie, White Noise by David Bowie

A couple of years ago I started attempting to review all the albums that I owned. I got about four or five in and lost momentum. Now I am proposing a different approach. This year I intend to listen to every CD I own - and if I don't love it I will get rid of it. (read more about my minimalism project here) I am going to do mini reviews of the albums as I go.

Black Tie, White Noise - David Bowie (1993)

Anyone who knows me well will know that I am a massive Bowie fan. Black Tie, White Noise is probably one of my least played Bowie albums, despite the fact that it contains some tracks that are on my Bowie playlist on my i-pod - Jump They Say for example. Listening to it this evening I have realised that I have been doing it a grave disservice - it really does deserve to be played much, much more. After a slightly discordant, almost entirely instrumental opening track Black Tie, White Noise gets right down to business. The album has a more emotional feel to it than most of his previous work (perhaps not surprising given that some of the tracks were written for his wedding to Iman). The influence of producer Nile Rodgers is very evident on some of the tracks such as Miracle Goodnight - whose stripped back sound is a little reminiscent of Chic, and Looking For Lester - a disoey number with piano not unlike that of Lady Grinning Soul. My personal favourite track is Jump They Say - which alludes to Bowie's stepbrother Terry who committed suicide. Apparently the cover of Cream's I Feel Free is also in honour of Terry - although I have to say that this track was the low point of the album for me - I much prefer Bowie's own work to his attempts at covers (with the exception of Jaques Brel's My Death and In the Port of Amsterdam). There is also a bonus CD of remixed tracks, however I will not be reviewing that here - I am not a massive fan of re-mixes.

Definitely a CD to add to the keep pile.

Minimalism Project - Blondie Parallel LInes

A couple of years ago I started attempting to review all the albums that I owned. I got about four or five in and lost momentum. Now I am proposing a different approach. This year I intend to listen to every CD I own - and if I don't love it I will get rid of it. (read more about my minimalism project here) I am going to do mini reviews of the albums as I go.

CD 2

Parallel Lines by Blondie (1978)

This is another album that I once owned on vinyl and it has always been my favourite Blondie album (although I do retain a certain fondness for their second album Plastic Letters, which I may have once had on tape but never actually owned). The Internet tells me that Parallel Lines that was much more commercial than their previous two. It certainly contains a few hits - Hanging on the Telephone, Picture This, Sunday Girl and the disco driven Heart of Glass all feature on this album, which pretty much guaranteed it would be a big commercial success. These are not my favourite tracks on the CD though - I tend to prefer their less poppy tracks. My particular favourites are 11:59 (the only track on the album written by keyboard player Jimmy Destri), Will Anything Happen and Fade Away and Radiate. There's a definite pop-punk feel to this album and it seems obvious to me that it influenced some of the later pop-punk bands like The All American Rejects and Green Day. I can see why the album was number 1 - I don't listen to it often now - but I definitely still enjoy it when I do. 

Keep.

Minimalism and Abba the Album

Last night I watched a film called Minimalism: A documentary About the Important Things. The film left me with a feeling that some de-cluttering might be in order, but more importantly it highlighted how we (humans) have come to associate getting stuff with the potential to be happy. I am not a materialist by any means: I don't buy new clothes every season; I don't crave mobile phone upgrades and the latest gadgets; I am not into cars, boats, motorbikes, ponies or any other form of transport; I don't have the money to go to many gigs or go on fancy holidays. However, I am into books, music, and film and so is my son, consequently we have stacks of books all over the house and several shelves full of CDs, and two shelves overflowing with arty films. I often blame the fact that I am a creative writing teacher for the fact that my book collection is so big, and it's true, I have sometimes had to re-buy a book I had previously got rid of because I need it for a class or book-group. I have also tried to curb the numbers a bit. We are always taking books and other items to the charity shop, but more keep coming. The truth is that I love literature and I am addicted to reading and buying books. I can't just pass up a book I haven't read by one of favourite authors because I already have a massive to-read pile. And the trouble with poetry books is that they have short print runs, they often aren't available in the local library (or if they are they get remaindered fairly quickly through lack of borrowing) - so unless the poet is with one of the big five poetry publishers it may be that a book you got rid of two years ago and suddenly need is not available or has become ridiculously expensive. But I suppose the bottom line is that I have come to believe that buying books, CDs and films will somehow contribute to my overall happiness - true on some levels perhaps - but the clutter definitely has a detrimental effect on it.

A couple of years ago I started attempting (on this very blog) to review all the albums that I owned. I got about four or five in and lost momentum. Now I am proposing a different approach. This year I intend to listen to every CD I own - and if I don't love it I will get rid of it. If I have time I will try and talk about it here. I have been considering how to do this carefully - I could start at A and work my way through to Z - but that seems a little boring. I would be on As forever, and would sometimes be listening to one album after another by the same artist. The same would be the case if I worked my way backwards from Z to A. I finally plumped on working along the rows listening to the bottom CD from each stack and then the second etc and keeping going until I have listened to them all.

The first album on my first stack of CDs is Abba the Album (UK release1978). This is an album I used to have on vinyl. I remember I liked the cover because it was unusually stark (coloured drawings on a plain white background) for the time - although now it reminds me a little of the drawing that Joni Mitchell did for the cover of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young's So Far (see below)- and I am pretty sure that the Abba cover was inspired by that. The album is the soundtrack to the film Abba the Movie, a film I remember going to see with my mum at Thetford Palace. I liked the film so much I went back to see it again on my own. I was a massive Abba fan after seeing them win the Eurovision Song Contest in 1974 - I was 8 (I was up because I was ill). They were the beginning of my love affair with music (unless you count a minor flirtation with Slade and Bobby Vee when I was 5). The first album of theirs I really loved was Arrival, but I won't talk about that here as it was not the first CD on the pile.

Abba the Album is an odd mixture. Some of the tracks are verging on the kind of thing you would expect to hear in musical theatre - tracks like I Wonder would not be out of place in Evita, and indeed this track and the ones either side of it are subtitled "three scenes from a mini musical." Listening to them now I am not surprised that a musical film and a Broadway show have been made out of them. I think these were the tracks I liked least when I was 12. The tracks I liked best at that time were the ones they played on the radio - the hits - Take a Chance on Me and The Name of the Game, but I also loved some of the more melancholy tracks like Move On and One Man, One Woman. 

I actually really enjoyed revisiting this album, and not just because of the feeling of nostalgia it inevitably brings for the child I was - on the verge of my teens and just really waking up to my own musical taste (my parents were NOT Abba fans). Within a year or two I had graduated to listening to bands like The Clash. The thing about Abba is that however you feel about them, their music has stood the test of time - whereas some of the other late seventies, early eighties music definitely hasn't. I was able to listen to the whole album without wanting to fast forward or turn it off. It has a feel good quality and I don't even mind the lyrics, in fact I found myself thinking that if we all imagined were eagles then perhaps the world would be a better, kinder place. Maybe this is nursery level stuff in terms of technicality and innovation - but an enjoyable listen none the less. One for the keep pile.

10 films that have left an indelible mark

Thunderheart - more violent than I normally like but such a great film. Shows a side of America rarely seen in film, great landscape and a man character struggling to come to terms with his identity.

Children of Men - based on a short story by P.D. James. Some great acting but all the more disturbing in that it is so believable - especially in the context of the refugee crisis.

Hi Fidelity - probably in my top 3 films of all time. Faced with a relationship crisis the main character decides to re organise his record collection autobiographically - brilliant. Great sound track too - when I saw this at the cinema I was the last person to leave as I had to stay until the Stevie Wonder track had finished (I believe when I fall in love) it sounded amazing on the big speakers.

Three Colours Blue - my favourite of the three colours films. Has a special poignancy as I first saw it a couple of years after my first partner was killed in a car accident (the main characters son and husband are killed in an accident). I really identified with her desire to just leave and start over where no one knew her. The music is haunting and the film is beautifully shot. I always wanted a blue glass mobile like the one she has but never found one.

The Consequences of Love (Le conseguenze dell'amore). An Italian thriller with one of my favourite soundtracks. An unlikely romance between a weird middle-aged guy living in a hotel and a waitress. The film is quite weird and involves the Mafia and drugs. The soundtrack does sudden switches from almost complete silence to beautiful melancholic music to loud thumping dance tracks. Needless to say things don't end well for the central character. Brilliant and compelling.

Manufactured Landscapes - a beautiful and disturbing documentary following photographer Edward Burtynsky as he photographs landscapes that have been irrevocably changed by human activity. One of the most memorable scenes is near the beginning when they are filming inside a Chinese factory - that just goes on and on and on. The scale is mind boggling. The Chinese scenes are the most memorable for the sheer scale of the devastation (and how beautiful it sometimes is in its ugliness. A city demolished to make way for a giant reservoir where the residents are forced to take it apart by hand sticks in my mind. As does the description of how the earth rocked on its axis when it was filled. Terrifying.

Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus - 2003 documentary film of Jim White's musical exploration of the American deep south, looking at where Christianity and music overlap. Beautifully shot and with an amazing soundtrack - the shots of the handsome Family singing on the verandah of a wooden shack on a Louisiana swamp stayed with me for weeks. Amazing!

The Breakfast Club - you can tell by this choice that I came of age in the 1980s. A bit dated now but still a great coming of age story which also has a great soundtrack. Five archetypal teenagers (the swot, the jock, the popular girl, the rebel, the shy weird girl) find themselves in Saturday detention together and unite against the teacher discovering that they may have different backgrounds but aren't so different after all. There are some moving scenes where they share secrets and some funny really funny bits too. Feel good nostalgia.

The Lives of Others - great German film from 2006 set in East Berlin. A Stasi agent who monitors conversations gets obsessed with the life of a theatre director and his partner. The film brilliantly portrays the paranoia and back stabbing behaviour that goes on living under such a repressive regime - the fact that you never know who you can trust and that sometimes help comes from unlikely places.

Truly, Madly, Deeply - Alan Rickman and Juliette Stevenson star in this romantic film about a cello player who dies and comes back to haunt his distraught fiancee (bringing with him a bunch of famous ghosts to watch videos). Poignant, moving and with a soundtrack featuring some great cello music as well as Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan.

Honourable mentions: The Conversation, West Side Story, Star Trek - First Contact, Falling in Love, Donnie Darko, Quadrophenia, Alice's Restaurant, Withnail and I, The Future is Unwritten, The Goob, Boyhood.

Records/CDs revisted - The Pleasure Principle by Gary Numan

What's weird about listening to The Pleasure Principle now is how many other songs by other artists that it reminds me of  - the reason being that it has been sampled so much for records that have gone on to become famous in their own right - "Where's your Head At?" by Basement Jaxx for example. The sad thing for me is that the samples have now become so synonymous with the songs that they have been used in that you almost expect that song to start playing rather than the Numan track. I say a shame because The Pleasure Principle is for me one of Numan's finest moments and it is still a great listen 25 years after it's release.

For me this album also brings a great sense of nostalgia. I bought this on vinyl as a teenager (I was 13 or 14) and I listened to it a lot. You could say that it was the precursor to my love of Bowie. Not much of a leap of imagination there - it is obvious when you view those early Gary Numan videos that Bowie had a massive influence on him - especially on his look and stage style. But the sound that Numan creates whether or not it is Bowie/Kraaftwerk influenced is clearly all his own. It is almost too easy to forget that those sounds that we have all become so familiar with had never really been heard before when Numan emerged in 1978. They were new and exciting, and unlike anything else in the charts at the time - a natural progression perhaps from Roxy Music, Brian Eno etc.   And as is the way with most innovative artists the music press gave hime short shrift - he was labelled as boring and robotic. It is only now that Numan is beginning to get any acknowledgement for his contribution to changing the face of music.

My personal favourites on the album are Complex, Metal and Cars and I love the cover art too. If I have one beef - it is that they always add extra tracks to the CD versions of albums that have previously been released on vinyl. I suppose it is added value - but i like to hear the album exactly as it was - unadulterated - nothing added, nothing taken away.

Recors/CDs revisited - Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros - Global A Go-Go

This is the first album reviewed (so far) that I didn't own on vinyl first. I came to Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros late - only really discovering them after Joe Strummer died - I had had a bit of a hiatus from discovering much new music for a few years for some reason. I was gutted to have discovered them posthumously as it meant that I would never have the opportunity of seeing them live, and I had already missed out on seeing The Clash.

Global A Go-Go is by far and away my favourite Mescaleros album. It kicks off with the brilliant and very catchy Johnny Appleseed, and then morphs into the funky Cool 'n' Out where jaunty dance rhythms jostle along with rock guitar - and somehow the whole thing works. Cool 'n' Out is followed by the title track which has a world feel to the music as well as the lyrics and has a deceptively simple melody running through it which I love and always find myself humming hours later. The next track Bhindi Bhagee is probably my favourite on the album - it is has the kind of African influenced guitar riff that reminds me of bands like King Sunny Ade and his African Beats and Taxi Pata Pata that I listened to a lot in the 1980s. As well as being incredibly catchy and making you want to get up and dance, this song has great lyrics - someone in the street asks Joe where buy that great British delicacy mushy peas, but Joe is stumped - he can tell him where to get all kinds of food from all over the world - but not mushy peas. Then he tells the stranger that he is in a band - and the stranger asks him what kind of band it is:

"It's um, um, well, it's kinda like

You know, it's got a bit of, um, you know."
Ragga, Bhangra, two-step Tanga
Mini-cab radio, music on the go
Um, surfbeat, backbeat, frontbeat, backseat
There's a bunch of players and they're really letting go
We got, Brit pop, hip hop, rockabilly, Lindy hop
Gaelic heavy metal fans fighting in the road
Ah, Sunday boozers for chewing gum users
They got a crazy D.J. and she's really letting go..."

There are some more mellow tracks on the album as well - like Gamma Ray, Mondo Bongo, and Bummed Out City. The album ends on a long and rather haunting version of the Irish patriotic folk song Minstrel Boy. This is an album that really shows Strummer's eclectic and wide ranging world music influences and (especially lyrically) his love affair with America and American culture. Joe Strummer is a talent sorely missed - and if you don't know the Mescaleros please look them up - it's well worth the effort. You can read a 2001 review of the album from Rolling Stone here.

Records (CDs) Re-visited 2 - Geffery Morgan by UB40

There was a time in the far distant past when UB40 were a pretty cool band. They got themselves off the 1980's dole queue by writing about it in songs. They were a mixed race band (still rare back then!). They were a reggae band with a white singer whose dad had been big in the folk scene. They wanted to change the world and we believed in them.

I was a massive UB40 fan in the early to mid 1980s. My friend Clare and I hitchhiked down to London to see them play at Wembley Arena - they were great. They had none of the pomp that many bands went in for at the time. They played on a bare stage - I don't even remember a backdrop, although there may have been one. It was all about the music. Their sound was big and they were a big band. They filled the stage and had everyone up on their feet dancing. That was The Rat in Me Kitchen tour - Rat in Me Kitchen was the last UB40 album I bought - they were starting to get a bit silly.

Geffery Morgan was one of my favourite UB40 albums and it was one I bought brand new.  It was their fifth album and was released in 1984. It has some great tracks - including Riddle Me, As always You Were Wrong Again and If It Happens Again - which was apparently written in response to Margaret Thatcher's election victory in 1983. There are some other great tracks in there too and I love the way some of the tracks seem to morph into one another. UB40 are one of those bands whose early albums (along with bands like The Specials, The Beat and The Fun Boy Three) really epitomise the dire political state of the country at the time.

Records (CDs) Re-visited 2 - Remain in Light by the Talking Heads

I bought this album on vinyl when I was around 15 I think. It was released in 1980, so I guess I bought it the next year. I remember that I bought it from Rumbelows in Thetford, which was largely an electrical appliance shop that, for some reason, also sold albums. I played this album incessantly after I bought it, but for some reason didn't purchase another Talking Heads album until a few years later - and that was Stop Making Sense.

Remain in Light has remained my favourite Talking Heads album, and is one of those few albums that has a fresh sound even now, over 30 years since its release. It is clear listening to it that The Talking Heads have had a strong influence on many bands that came after them.  I remember how groundbreaking their sound was back in the 1980s. I am not knocking the 1980s - I own a great many albums from that era - but usually you can tell immediately they start which era they are from. They have that particular 1980s sound/flavour - mostly I think it is to do with the way synth is used, but it probably also has a lot to do with the way that they are produced. Remain in Light, for some reason, just does not have that immediately recognisable 1980s flavour. It has a full sound but everything about it - the vocals, the guitars, and everything else marks it out as different. It even has some rap and some spoken poetry! It is also one of the very few albums in my collection where I don't skip tracks - and those are few and far between these days!

As to favourite tracks I am hard pushed to choose a favourite - but if I had to I would go for The Great Curve (which has great backing vocals) closely followed by Once in a Lifetime.

Records (CDs) Re-visited 1 - Synchronicity by The Police

I have a sizeable CD collection and realise that  there are a quite a few of them that rarely get played, so I have decided that I am going to try and listen to one album per day and post about it .

Today's CD is Synchronicity by The Police. I actually wanted to listen to Outlandos D'amour but to my horror discovered that I don't have it on CD. This was the next best thing. There are some cracking tracks on here - although there are also a few that have been so overplayed that it is hard to listen to them any more - Every Breath You Take for example - a track that for some bizarre reason has become known as a love song and is a popular choice at weddings. I say bizarre because it is one of the most stalkerish songs I know.

My personal favourites on the album are Synchronicity (all three versions), walking in Your Footsteps and King of Pain (Sting always was melodramatic). The album was released in 1983 and was their final recording. I bought this album on vinyl when I lived in the commune - probably around 1985, so not when it first came out. Worth listening to for the Synchronicity tracks alone.

10 Guilty Pleasures

A friend challenged me to name my 10 Guilty Pleasures, and like her I am finding it hard to reach 10 - but here goes...in no particular order...

1) Crime novels - I was turned onto Rebus when we were studying genre fiction at art school. I am picky though - I like a crime novelist to be a decent writer too. I like writers like Henning Mankell, Ian Rankin, Kathy Reichs, and Tom Ben...

2) Star Trek - but not Captain shirt-off and your original Trekkies. No I am talking TNG. Yes I know it is cheesy, but there is something hugely comforting about the whole Next Generation universe - and it's not just Jean Luc Picard with his uber sexy voice.

3) Cheesy music - you know the kind of tracks that you don't want to your ipod to play when your poetry group is round. I am talking Abba, The Bee Gees, Adam and the Ants, James Blunt etc. and those tracks where you don't even know who the artist is like "Sleep all Day and Party All Night"...oh well it's out there now...

4) Crisps - chocolate is nice, but if it's in the house I do not feel compelled to eat it. Savoury snacks though, are anther matter - crisps, curry crackers, wasabi peanuts...keep them away from me!

5) Pot Noodle - I get the craving for one of these about twice a year - god knows why - they are full of crap - it must be nostalgia or something...or MSG. But when you get the craving only a Pot Noodle will do, and preferably spicy curry flavour.

6) 70s TV series - The Waltons - yes very cheesy I know but I grew up with it, and in what other TV series can you hear entire poems by people like Walt Whitman? I am sure The Waltons set me on the path to being a writer. Other 70s gems I love are The Wombles, Hector's House, Survivors (you gotta love the BBC), Citizen Smith, Butterflies, Starsky and Hutch, The Tomorrow People and of Doctor Who with Jon Pertwee as The Doctor. 

7) Kindle - I said I didn't want one - in fact I was vociferously anti. I was given one as a present and was almost instantly converted. I still buy and read books - and poetry doesn't really work on the kindle, but the kindle has given me a new lease of reading life. It is great for BIG books, it is great for going away, it means slightly less book clutter in my house, you can get lots of free classics, and, most importantly you can make the text bigger which means I can now read comfortably in the evening when my eyes are tired. 

8) odd and retro crockery - I have 70's vortex plates, a Rob Brandt Crushed Cup, and a siletti silver milk carton milk jug -  I love them.

9) My retro style turquoise trim phone - I love it -i t looks good, it feels good and actually it is much more comfortable to hold and talk on than the modern all in one jobbies.

10) 80's films - The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, desperately Seeking Susan...you know the kind of thing. Best watched on your own in your comfiest clothes and under a blanket.

Current Playlist in no particular order;

1. Don't Deny Your Heart - Hot Chip
2. The Time is Now - Moloko
3. Shadowplay - Joy Division
4. Under the Westway - Blur
5. Drive - Incubus
6. Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains) - Arcade Fire
7. Higher and Higher - The Blackout
8. What the Water Gave Me - Florence and the Machine
9. A&E - Goldfrapp
10. How We Operate - Gomez
11. I Feel Better - Hot Chip
12. She's Lost Control - Joy Division
13. P.E.T.R.O.L - Orbital
14. I'll Haunt You - Seth Lakeman
15. Chocolate - Snow Patrol
16. Graceland - Paul Simon
17. Thank You - Led Zeppelin
18. Life in a Northern Town - Dream Academy
19. Aint no Love in the Heart of the City - Whitesnake
20. It's No Good - Depeche Mode

Current reading

Right now I am reading a novel by Padrika tarrant called "The Knife Drawer."  Tarrant gave a reading from the novel at Cafe Writers in Norwich last year and it made me go out and buy the book. I won't give too much away about it here as I have been asked to write a review of it for Peony Moon, but I will say that it is dark, disturbing, riveting and quite unlike any other novel I have read - I would highly recommend it, you will never view mice or cutlery in quite the same way again.

Holiday Reads

Holidays are a good time for reading and so far this holiday I have read two novels and I am now half way through a third one. The first two were crime novels - Kathy Reichs and Ian Rankin - relatively easy reads. The book that I am reading now is the surprise hit though. It is called "The History of Love" and is by Nicole Krauss. It was a spur of the moment purchase at the local charity shop just a few days before we came away. I was desperate for books that I could take away and leave behind once I had finished. This is a book I might take home again though - it is an original story and beautifully written.  It is a joy when one comes across a treasure like this by chance. The story is too complicated to explain here and I wouldn´t do it justice as there are several plot threads and the story is complex but if you are interested then you can look inside here

A non-literary post about notebooks and writing

On hearing that the new copy of The Rialto would be hitting my doormat any day I now, I decided that maybe it was time I finished reading the last copy. I tend to dip in and out of journals and sometimes they end up sitting in a pile somewhere for a while before I read them properly. In his editorial introduction to Rialto 71 Michael Mackmin describes how he has piles of notebooks dotted around his house. Me too I was shouting (in my head of course!). 
I am a compulsive buyer and hoarder of notebooks - I have little heaps waiting to be used. I am fickle with them too - I don't just use one notebook at a time. I have one A4 on the go, which is where I try and write my morning pages and then I have two or three smaller ones of differing sizes that I take out with me. I go for nice covers these days (I'm sure notebooks were plainer when I was younger) - but I don't like them too pretty or girly or with things stuck on.  My current favourites have some kind of groovy retro owl print on their covers.  If there was ever some kind of disaster I would have enough notebooks to keep me going for ages; and there is no way they would get used as toilet paper either: take the novels first!  It strikes me as odd that they never have a character obsessively writing in a notebook in post-apocalyptic dramas like Survivors. I would be scribbling away in the corner every chance I got.  
I have always written - I wrote as a child, I obsessively wrote (bad) poetry through my teens, in my twenties I wrote a collection of short stories and more (bad) poetry. I have written on hillsides in Devon, in pubs and cafes, in other people's houses, in cars and on trains, in communes, in bed, in Scotland, Cornwall, Wales, Italy, France and Greece.  For me it hasn't been about the audience - although now I finally am getting one that's nice too - I would write whether I had one or not, hence all the notebooks, I am a writer through and through.http://www.therialto.co.uk/pages/