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.

Converted

Never thought that I'd find myself saying this but Arcade Fire have really grown on me after seeing them live. It's the kind of music that gets inside your head and you just can't get it out. Consequently I have finally succumbed to buying a couple of their albums and they are very good. In fact I have a veritable feast of listening to and downloading music this week - which in some ways makes up for the fact that since the end of term I seem to have completely lost the ability to write anything coherent or meaningful.

Current playlist includes:
Arcade Fire - No Cars Go
Placebo - Without You I'm Nothing
Muse - Bliss
Kasabian - Shoot the Runner
Gotan Project - Vuelvo Al Sur
White Stripes - Fell in Love With a Girl
White Stripes - Seven Nation Army
Killers - When You Were Young
Jarvis Cocker - i Will Kill Again
Arcade Fire - Rebellion

Latitude

It's a long time since have appreciated a bath so much as I did last night when we arrived back from Latitude Festival. Although I enjoyed the festival immensely it has to be said that the facilities were abysmal - especially in comparison to WOMAD. The showers broke on Saturday morning and were still out of action on Sunday.

That said the music was great, the weather held out, the location is beautiful and the poetry was excellent.

Highlights for me were Damien Rice on Friday evening, the brilliant and funny Simon Armitage in the poetry tent, the hugely entertaining Jarvis Cocker and The Gotan Project. I was sadly unmoved by The Good, The Bad and The Queen, I can appreciate that they are good musicians but the music always leaves me feeling a bit flat. Best outfit prize in my opinion should be awared to the lead singer of CSS for her metallic pink jumpsuit.

I was especially impressed by the stand-up poetry tent, which made the festival for me - nice to see poetry getting more exposure.

Compared to WOMAD though, there were a few areas that we found lacking - WOMAD has more of everything - stalls, food and one thing we really appreciated was chill out areas - bars and cafes that had areas where you could just hang out for a bit and get your breath back. We eneded up going to bed not long after midnight at Latitude but if there had been places where we could just chill for a bit we might have got a second wind and stayed up a lot longer. (spoken like a true oldie).

Strangely I didn't meet many people I knew - even though its only 40 miles from Norwich - there were only one or two familiar faces - and a couple of people that looked like people I used to know, but I was too embaressed to go and say hello in case they weren't!

Bargains and Favourites

I found myself in HMV yesterday looking for birthday presents. Didn't find a present but somehow ended up spending twenty quid in the sale - not sure how that happened. I console myself with the fact that one of the CDs was a complete bargain - Appetite for Destrution by Guns n Roses for three pounds! (yes I know it's cheesy but there are a few good tracks on there and I'm not proud!). The other CD was the latest Killers album which is very good. I can also console myself that the two DVDs were cheap too - five and three pounds which is as much as you might pay to rent a film and we can always sell them on or give them to the charity shop later.

N and I watched "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" last night, which I thoroughly enjoyed on a second viewing and N enjoyed it too - it's intesesting to see what 14 year olds like. He asked me last night to name my favourite film of all time. A hard task - there are so many. If I was really pushed I might say High Fidelity. I tried to narrow it down to a top ten and even found that difficult. Here they are in no particular order:

High Fidelity

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Garden State

Two Lane Blacktop

Labyrinth

Children of Men

This is England

Donnie Darko

Quadrophenia

The Three Colours Trilogy

Lord of the Rings

The Breakfast Club

Falling in Love

Yes I know that's more than ten! and then of course there are the music films:

Rude Boy

The Song Remains the Same

The Wall

Westway to the World

Funky Monks

Seven Ages of Rock

This picture kind of sums up how I feel today - a bit ragged round the edges - all over the place and nowhere at all!

I very much enjoyed the final episode of Seven Ages of Rock on BBC1 last night, although I can't believe that they covered Brit Pop without showing any music by Pulp, who were huge for a while back in the nineties and who easily outstripped Blur and Oasis in talent and originality in my opinion.

I could kick myself for missing last weeks episde though.....