Scotsman in exile in Essex using quiet time to ramble about what I'm reading, what music I'm listening to and anything else that I feel the need to offload about!
……….. I jest not! They really are called ‘Nightbeds!’. There was an article in NME a couple of weeks ago about terrible band names – many of whom are on my shelves – take the bow of name shame ‘Toad and the Wet Sprocket’, ‘Hootie and the Blowfish’ and ‘Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong!’ among many others.
Night beds didn’t get a listing on the NME roll call of awful names – but they could easily have done! And yet, like some sort of Einsteinian law there’s clearly a relationship between bad band names and the music! ( In Joe Lean’s case the music was a sign of the bad music to come! ). The scientific law for Night beds must be that the sheer naff ness of the band name is in direct inverse proportion to the wonderfulness of their music – for it’s great!
I first heard of them only a few days ago. My partner casually mentioned them. ‘Have you heard of a band called Nightbeds? I heard a song of there’s on the radio and I think you’d like it!’. After a predictable exchange along the lines of “Nightbeds?” “Nightbeds” “Nightbeds?!!!!!!!!” “Yes-Nightbeds!” “Night – beds????????!!!!!!!!” “YES! NIGHT-BLOODY-BEDS!”, I loaded up Spotify and sure as fate up they came! I feel instantly in love with their stuff and I’ve been playing it non- stop ever since!
I have to hand it to my girl – she knows what I like. While i love indie and my favourite station is BBC Radio 6, I listen to old fart radio in the car on the way to and from the station ( mostly Today on Radio 4 but occasionally I live it up a little with Radio 3!). My girl is much more likely to be listening to Absolute, or XfM ( she listens a lot to Heart and Smooth as well but we’ll gloss over that aberration quickly!) – she’s put me in to several great bands – but I think Night beds might be the crowning glory of her music tips!!!!!
The guy behind Nightbeds is Winston Yellens a young bloke from Nashville. Their album is due out here in the UK on Feb 5th though there are EPs out that will give you a flavour of their exquisite floating melodies and his great voice! And if you want a comparison then I’ll go back to my partner – she’s not only got a great ear for my taste but she can link them up. She commented that she thought I’d like it because it sounds like Bon Iver! And I love Bon Iver. And she’s right. And if you want further proof that she’s write in her tip and in her Bon Iver comparison, have a look at these reviews from BBC Music and The Guardian!
………. I hope you noticed the nice mix in the titles for this post – the classic false modesty from the comedian Jack Benny followed by my own unlimited arrogance and vanity in announcing “my book of the year awards!!!!”
In a way though starting this post with Jack Benny is rather appropriate – his first words on Ed Sullivan’s radio show in the US in the early thirties was supposed to have been “This is Jack Benny talking. There will now be a short pause while you sit at home thinking - ‘who cares?!”.
It just fits perfectly for:-
“This is my Book Of The Year Awards” post and there will now be a gap of at least two lines…
……….while you have a chance to think – who the hell cares!!!!!
But if you reached this line you must be intrigued, so stick with it till the end – you won’t be disappointed!
Well…..actually….. you might be disappointed at the end, but I’ll leave a couple more empty lines so I can think “So you’re disappointed! What the hell do I care?!”
And so my awards! I’ve read a lot of good books this year, heard some great music, seen some great gigs – and eaten some lovely pies! So here are my awards for 2012!
1. TV Programme Location of the Year
Memories – like the Corridors of My Mind!
The award goes to BBC’s “Waterloo Road” which is now filmed at “Greenock Academy”, my old school in Scotland. It allows me to indulge in spotting familiar walls, corridors and pupil toilets – which instead of impressing my daughter actually bores her rigid!
If you can get over the fact that they moved the school from England to Scotland and took all the kids with them into a sort of cult-cum-boarding unit, then the best of all is that while the BBC have tarted the building up for the fictional school, the quality of the teaching in the fictional school looks just as shite as I remember it being in the real school!!!
2. Book Week Of The Year
Much as I enjoyed the Muriel Spark Reading Week, the award for me goes to the Beryl Bainbridge Reading Week, which Annabel’s House of Books hosted back in June of this year. I’d not read any of Beryl Bainbridge’s stuff before-hand – I loved it – quirky and sharp and just wonderful. It turned me from a Beryl-virgin to a Beryl-lover almost overnight!
3. The ‘Well Bugger Me I Didn’t Know That!’ Award for 2012
Thanks to book blogs I read quite a bit about the centenary of Scott’s ill-fated expedition to the South Pole in 1912. And through that I discovered that Birdie Bowers, who accompanied Captain Scott and was one of those who died alongside him at the end, originally came from my home town of Greenock in Scotland. We seem to make little of the connection which is odd to say the least as Greenock isn’t exactly bustling with well known explorers, actors, sportsmen, politicians or well known anythings! Anyway it led me to read a bit about his life – truly amazing man!
4. Best Bit Of Poetry Learned Off By Heart This Year Award
I’ve loved several new collections this year but my favourite was Seamus Heaney’s “Human Chain!”. And from the poem ‘Route 101′ I loved learning the following lines (and love boring people to death reciting them!)
“In a stained front-buttoned shopcoat / Sere brown piped with crimson / Out of the Classics bay into an aisle / Smelling of dry rot and disinfectant / She emerges, absorbed in her coin count / Eyes front, right hand at work / In the slack marsupial vent / Of her change – pocket, thinking what to charge / For a used copy of Aeneid VI. / Dustbreath bestirred in the cubicle mouth / I inhaled as she slid my purchase / Into a deckle edged brown paper bag”
5. The “Terrific” Award (for books that aren’t my book of the year but came bloody close and so deserve again the accolade of my favourite word!)
Song of Achilles by Madeleine Miller and The Museum Of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk were both
A Thousand Autumns Of Jacob De Zoet by David Mitchell and A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry were both
Nocturnes by Kazuo Ishiguro and 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami (Books One, Two and Three) were all
HHhH by Laurent Binet and If This Is A Man by Primo Levi were both
Heartburn by Norah Ephron and The Art Of Fielding by Chad Harbach were both
6. The “I’m Really Sorry But I Thought This Was Bloody Awful” Book Of The Year Award
Jennifer Egan’s “A Visit From The Goon Squad”. I just didn’t get it! I guess I’m not clever enough. Sorry Jen!
7. The ‘I Love Guy Garvey Of Elbow More Than Anyone Else Does’ Award
With apologies to my mate Steve Smith in Thailand, who fancies himself as a big Elbow fan but can’t be taken seriously as he chose to desert Guy and go live the life of Riley on the beaches of Thailand teaching people to dive (get a proper job you old fart!) and with my apologies to Guy Garvey’s girlfriend, the writer Emma Unsworth, the award for the person who loves Guy Garvey more than anyone else does, goes to – ME!
8. The Album Of The Year
Dead easy – the beautiful, wonderful, gorgeous “Mid Air” by Paul Buchanan – have a quick listen!
9. Gig Of The Year
This is harder – I’ve seen Elbow a couple of times this year but I have to say we were absolutely awe-struck by the magnificent Bruce Springsteen at the Isle of Wight festival – we watched it knee deep in mud and didn’t give a shit! Truly wonderful!
10. Dive Of The Year
This is a special category for my partner, my daughter and her family who are all Liverpool fans. The award goes to the Olympic medal-winning last gasp effort from Tom Daley!
But for the runner-up you can choose any of half a dozen or more spectacular dives from that muppet Luiz Suarez!
11. Pie Of The Year
There’s nothing to beat Marks and Spencers! They have the gorgeous Twiggy in their ads, the fabulous sound of Dervla Kirwen doing the voiceover for the food commercials and their pies are great. This year my favourite was the individual Steak and Cornish IPA Ale pies – so fantastic if you gave me a choice between Twiggy, Dervla or the pie, it would be the pie every time!!!!!!!!!!!!!
12. Shite Gig But Chilli Con Carne Of The Year Award
We were unfortunate enough to see Coldplay at the Emirates earlier in the year – bloody awful! I should have known. I saw Coldplay when they were starting out, just after the Yellow album was released – they were at a lovely intimate venue at Brixton Academy – and yet they were bloody awful then as well! However we left the gig early and discovered the Chilli of The Year, washed down with Guinness, at a lovely little pub in Finsbury Park!
13. Comeback Of The Year
This is a close run thing between two of my favourite men of books – the mercurial genius that is Roy Race, scourge of every team on the planet in his role as Roy Of The Rovers – and the mercurial genius that is Detective Inspector John Rebus, scourge of every criminal and low-life in Edinburgh and it’s environs in Iain Rankin’s novels- and as a Glaswegian it’s my job to say disparaging things about the good folk of Edinburgh! But since I thought Iain Rankin’s ‘Standing In Another Man’s Grave’ was brilliant, the winner for me is John Rebus! Plus as he has won it allows me to have a couple of pints and a couple of whiskies to honour his achievement! If Roy Of The Rovers had won I’d have been forced to go down the park, beat all the kids at “3 and you’re in!” and then do at least 100 on keepie-uppie – and I’m much more of a five beers than a five-a-side man these days!
14. And finally, my Book Of The Year
I’ve read so many that have been terrific but one just noses ahead – not by much, but by enough to be the read of the year for me – the beautiful story of Jack and Mabel in The Snow Girl by Eowyn Ivey.
Now I’d said earlier in the year that I would choose a book of the year – and in my own version of the Costa Prize, that I’d buy the winning author a coffee. And I’d like to be true to my word – so if Eowyn Ivey ever reads this and fancies collecting this illustrious prize, I’ll meet her any week day by the Cafe Nero coffee stall in Victoria Station – I’m in the queue most mornings around half past seven – the lattes are on me Eowyn!
And having started with the acerbic wit of Jack Benny on awards, I’d like to end with the acerbic wit of my partner. On the day that the New Year Honours were announced she initially amazed me by saying she’d love to be nominated for an award – and when I expressed astonishment as this didn’t fit with her strong principles and said “Really???????????????????” she replied – “Yeah! So I could then tell them to stick their award up their arse!!!!!!” – That’s my girl!
So if Eowyn Ivey tells me where to put my offer of a free latte as my Book Of The Year, I’ll understand completely!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
………..These are just random thoughts, photos and links to other blogs and sites about the Isle Of Wight Festival 2012
1. “I Make My Generals Out Of Mud!”……………….
……….So said Napoleon! Well, he’d have found plenty of raw material to work with at the IOW this year. Below are some of our photos. If you want to see more there are several on the great Every Record Tells A Story blog.
2. They’re Bouncy, Bouncy, Bouncy, Bouncy, Fun, Fun, Fun, Fun, Fun, But By Far The Most Wonderful Thing About Feeder ………..
Here are Feeder, who were first up on the Main Stage on the Friday, playing “Buck Rogers”. Altogether now – “He’s got a brand new car, looks like a Jaguar, it’s got leather seats, it’s got a CD PLAYER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
3. If You Want To Get Ahead In Life, Get A Hat……………………
…………The second best hat of the weekend was worn by Springsteen (you can see it over at Every Record Tells a Story!). He got a young woman up to dance during his set and she was wearing one of these woolen pig tail and ear muff inclusive hats – which ended up on him. However, my beautiful partner never does anything without a touch of style and class and, even though I’m just a little biased, I thought she wore the best hat of the weekend! So, here she is in full “bring on the mud and the sunshine” garb for Sunday – with suitably stylish hat accessory of course!!! (Note how the pharmacy has been put in a metal container – festival goers get their priorities right – even if nothing else survives the weather, we can’t survive without somewhere to buy Nurofen or Resolve for the morning after!!!)
4. An Unexpected Little Gem, Stumbled Upon By Accident!
The surprise find of the festival for us was Charley Macaulay. We came across them in the Hipshaker tent – we’d only gone in there for a beer but became intrigued by the number of musicians setting up – we checked the schedule to find the name Charley Macaulay and we decided to stay and have a look – and we were so glad we did. Charley Macaulay has a truly brilliant voice and one of those intriguing mixes of real stage presence mixed with a gentle manner – almost shy! But boy can she sing! She was backed up by an absolutely brilliant 8 piece band, including what we thought was a brilliant rhythm section – the three guys on drums, percussion and bass can really play – but to be fair everyone else in the band was just as talented. Since coming back we’ve checked them out on MySpace and the internet. I thoroughly recommend having a listen if you get the chance. We even bought their CD EP which was getting sold at the gig (by Charley’s mum if I remember correctly!) – and we bought it on the strength of the music and not because we’d had a few scoops (at that point we were still sober!)
If you’d like to check out the music of Charley Macaulay for yourself, there are previews of a number of her tracks on MySpace.
You can also find more info about her and her music at Charley Macaulay’s site, including dates when you might be able to see her and her band live if you are interested. We’ve noticed they are due to play at the Troubador in London on July 18th and if we can make it, we’ll go along.
5. The Boss
I’ve already written about Bruce Springsteen’s set. It was brilliant. He was voted the best act at the festival on NME and I’m not in the least surprised! (I was more surprised to see Elbow 6th in that poll – they were an easy second to me!) We weren’t too far from the front of Springsteen but our iPhone photos aren’t the best as you can see. However there are great pictures of his set on everyrecordtellsastory – well worth a look – including Springsteen dancing in that hat!
6. Napoleon May Well Make His Generals Out Of Mud – But Wellington Comes To The Rescue Every Time!!!
The epic proportions of the mud made this one of those festivals where the wellies aren’t just the fashion accessories of the young and stylish – it was the only way of avoiding contracting something like swamp fever or trenchfoot!!!!! Nevertheless there were huge variations in how we measure up when we are all in wellies – it seems to me it’s a real testimony of the stylish if they can look good in wellies. I’ll spare you any views of my own wellies – suffice to say my £12 specials from Asda aren’t likely to get me on the cover of any magazines sometime soon. And though I am of course again biased, I thought the most stylish wellies of the weekend were my beautiful partners’ Ted Baker wellies!
7.In Spite Of What You All Think You Know About Anatomy, There’s Actually Only One Elbow!!!!
My love and enjoyment of all things Elbow is well documented throughout my blog – and their set at the IOW confirmed that they are as good as I thought they were!
I was surprised in talking to people at the festival and around the island that few have heard of Elbow – I would have expected that years ago when I was watching them in barely filled small places like Scala at Kings Cross in London. However these days, Guy Garvey has a show on Radio 6, their music is used on virtually every sport montage on TV and I’m pretty sure it was also used during some of the image montages on TV about the Royal Jubilee celebrations! But it would seem they still have some way to go in search of world domination! But I don’t care! They have domination over the music in our house!
Their set at IOW was absolutely brilliant. We loved every song, every chat Guy Garvey had with the crowd and every note. Here are our photos of Sir Guy of Garvey and a little sample of how good they were at IOW!
8. And Finally……….The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Of The Isle Of Wight Festival
I’ll start with the bad bits so I can finish on the good – because in spite of the odd, not-so-good bits, it was a brilliant weekend!
The Ugly
The smell! The loos at festivals are never exactly palatial and the IOW was no different! You kind of expect the smell to pervade around those areas but at the IOW I think the general swamp conditions meant most of the site stunk pretty badly! But it was survivable thanks to these good people!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The Bad
The hassles as a result of the weather were in some ways beyond the control of the people organising the festival so I don’t think they are at fault for the mud and at least some of the ensuing chaos. However there were other things that weren’t that well organised. The bus shuttle from Newport to the site at Seaclose Park was a walk of around ten minutes – it was a bus ride of 25 minutes because of detours around closed roads! Bloody irritating.
Similarly the chaos of getting the specially laid on buses from the site to other parts of the IOW at night time was pretty horrendous – we heard stories of people waiting till 3 and 4 in the morning! And last niggle, The Garden Stage had a dance music tent directly opposite blaring out heavy bass tracks while we were trying to listen to singer songwriters like Matt Cardle – The Christians actually commented on it during their set and they really did have a point. Needs sorting for next year!
The Good
In spite of the niggles there was so much that was good about this festival. However I’ve written elsewhere about the great music and the terrific atmosphere among those at the festival. So here I’ll finish with a thank you to the lovely people of the Isle Of Wight who made us feel so welcome! From people in the pubs in Shanklin, to people forced to wait in long queues for service buses with all of us for buses that they catch every day, to people in shops, to the lovely waitress at Morgans in Shanklin where we had dinner one night, to the really nice Italian who served us fabulous tea and scones in the Village Teashop in Shanklin, to the taxi drivers, to the people who ran the great Ferndale Hotel in Shanklin where we were lucky enough to get a late cancellation, which led to a lovely bed every night and warm showers followed by a great breakfast every morning!!! Everybody was kind, patient, engaged in conversation with us, talked about the festival, went out of their way to help us and generally accepted with humour and good grace legions of the great unwashed shedding dried mud and smelling not at our best all over their shops and pavements and buses and cafes for three days!!!
The festival was great in its own right but the people we met on the IOW made it a little extra special. We will definitely be back again next year – even if the mud is back too!
……….I’ve discovered that Harry Potter and Bruce Springsteen have a lot in common, even if only from my personal perspective. In both cases I didn’t get what all the fuss was about initially and I came to really appreciate Harry and Bruce later than most other people did! I didn’t get into the Harry Potter books till after Deathly Hallows was published- but once I started I thought the books were fantastic and I read them one after the other. Originally when I’d heard stories of people queuing all night to get the first read of say The Half Blood Prince and even flying to the US to get a copy ahead of the British publication, I thought it was all over the top and hysterical. Yet coming to the books late I stayed up all night to start Half Blood Prince the second I read the last page of Prisoner. So I was a “Johnny Come Lately!” to Harry Potter but once I started I was hooked.
Springsteen is exactly the same. Over the years I’ve passed on countless opportunities because it just all seemed a bit hysterical and over the top. My reasoning was “He can’t be THAT good”. I was wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, and then a little more wrong. Bruce Springsteen live really is THAT good.
At the festival itself, the early indications of just how keen some fans are to see Springsteen was evident in the number of Americans we met. Sure they all made positive noises about looking forward to seeing Tom Petty or Pearl Jam – but it was Springsteen they’d come to see and they were fulsome in their support of him. We met lovely people from Miami, Seattle, New Jersey, Minneapolis, Washington, Chicago and they all said more or less the same thing when I told them I’d never seen Springsteen before – “It’s unique. You’ll love it!”. On the bus on the way in on Sunday an English guy was explaining that he was looking forward to seeing Springsteen for the fourth time – that week!!!! He’d been in Madrid the previous weekend, then Sunderland and then Manchester during the week. His mantra was the same as everybody else – you’re about to see something truly special.
By the time the E Street Band started, the combination of the hype from everyone else, the great sets before Springsteen by both The Vaccines and Noel Gallagher and the fact that I’d partaken of a beer or 5 meant I was ready to have a great time – but even that doesn’t explain just how good he was.
So what’s so special. Firstly he played for 2 hours and 50 mins and it felt like the blink of an eye. The energy and pace combined with his showmanship are simply awesome. A guy of 23 with this drive would be something special – in a man of 63 it’s of almost superhuman proportions. He’s all over the stage, he’s at the front up close with fans then he’s jumping like a good un’ alongside Nils Lofgren or Little Steven. His mastery of the crowd was, well, masterful. But above all the music is just fantastic. It wasn’t until I experienced it that I realised how much great music he’s made over the years. And he ends it with a greatest hits medley I guess – which ordinarily I’d not be keen on, but here, with these songs and this atmosphere, to do anything other than finish with hit after hit would have done him, his band, and the crowd a disservice.
It was spectacular. I’ve never sung as much at a gig, I’ve never cheered as much, I’ve never danced as much and I’ve never enjoyed live music as much as I did on Sunday night.
It was a privilege to see him and to have been there. It wouldn’t be fair to the festival to say he made it because it was a brilliant weekend. But if the Isle Of Wight Festival was a glorious cake, Springsteen was the top three layers, the icing and the cherry all by himself!
I’m destined to be a Springsteen – bore now – telling anybody who’ll listen, or more likely who can’t escape easily, just how wonderful it was.
To those who might read this and have seen him before – you’ll know exactly how I feel. For those who might read this and have never seen him, do it if you ever get the chance – trust an old sceptic – in the words of those mud-encrusted, Isle of Wight Americans “It’s unique. You’ll love it!”!!!!!
……….The conundrum of Day 3 was that while the mud was a thousand times worse, I ended up sunburnt! Ah the joys of the British Summer! As Bruce Springsteen said himself during his set “This is Summer? Jesus Christ!!!!”.
Torrential rain overnight had finished the site off completely! The mud was back to the stuff of legend – it wasn’t perhaps quite on the scale of Glastonbury mud baths of late 1990′s or the epic mud of 2007 at Glastonbury. But I’ve got a feeling it will be in the pantheon of glorious swamps we’ve lived in for most of us who were there. It was on the way to becoming a “badge of honour” by Saturday – the mud of Sunday guaranteed it’s “I was there at the Isle Of Wight in 2012 – you know the Year Of The Mud!” status forevermore!
And then the sun appeared, and it stayed in the sky all day, having the dual effect of turning most of us pink and ratcheting up the stench of sweat and sewage!!!! But, regardless of all of that, Day 3 was fantastic – absolutely fantastic!!!!!
In reviewing the music for the day it seems ludicrous to even mention anyone else in the same post as Springsteen. So I’ll post a separate review because he deserves to have a post all to himself – but for now I’ll simply say he was absolutely MAGNIFICENT! I’ve honestly never seen anything that good!
Had he been all there was to see, he’d have been worth it on his own. But Day 3 was filled with lots of other great stuff.
We watched the previous X Factor winner Matt Cardle and I for one, take my hat off to the bloke. He could take easy money and sing Simon Cowell derived garbage in poxy, limp, cover versions. But he gets up there with his guitar, and plays and sings his own songs and when he does a cover, it’s different and original and well done. Matt Cardle can play and he’s a great singer – perhaps the only weakness in his set was his songs were all a little bit too angsty and introspective ( give away are song intros about difficult relationships and ex-girlfriends!). He’d benefit by taking a leaf out of his mate James Walsh’s book, who followed him on the Garden Stage. The ex- Starsailor frontman was great. His voice is super, the songs are strong, including the new numbers, and he was backed up by a good band. He also did the best cover of the weekend, a lovely tribute to recently deceased Levon Helm with his version of The Weight by The Band.
Other musical highlights included a very clever little Andrews Sisters- style group of three young women called The Three Bells. I think it’s great that young people decide on a musical style and individual approach to music in the way they want to make it.
The rest of our day was spent at the Main Stage partly to make sure we got somewhere near the front for Springsteen. We watched both The Vaccines and Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds and both were terrific. The Vaccines combine such energy with some great tunes and quirky lyrics. You can’t help but bounce up and down when they are on – not easy to keep up at my age but then the sun was starting to go down and I’d had a few scoops by then to keep me going!! I loved the High Flying Birds album, and it was great live. I guess the Noel or Liam debate is a kind of modern equivalent of the old ‘do you prefer Lennon or McCartney’ debate. I’m very much in the Noel camp – I think he’s a really really good songwriter and while he might not have that iconic rock voice of his brother, he’s still a damn good singer. Live, they’re great. The Oasis songs in the set were all ones I like and the atmosphere on the anthemic sing-along stuff was just brilliant.
And so the festival closed and the sun set, to Bruce. Wearily we trudged back to Newport, abandoning the chaos of the bus system at the site itself. We waited hours for a taxi, with hundreds of others, and though we were all knackered, dirty, dishevelled and covered head to foot in dry mud, the atmosphere from the festival carried on – we even had the archetypal chirpy Aussie in the taxi queue orchestrating If You’re Happy And You Know It Clap Your Hands! Don’t get me wrong – none of us could be arsed to join in, but we appreciated her efforts all the same!
Day 4 brought reminiscing, packing, scones, the beach, and a day without wellies! Heaven!
……..There may have been some kind of optical illusion happening yesterday but there seemed to be slightly less mud at the festival! At least it had dried out in places and in the other places it had slid back to cloying ankle- deep on the whole!
The music headline stuff yesterday wasn’t my kind of thing – Biffy Clyro are a bit too hit and miss for me and Pearl Jam are just one of those bands I don’t get! However, though the headline acts weren’t my cup of tea, there were musical highlights.
We loved The Christians, given a terrible mid-afternoon slot on the Garden Stage but they were really entertaining. That also applied to Madness. Apart from an embarrassing sideshow Beastie Boys tribute number!!( men in their 50′s can’t stand in fields shouting “You’ve got to fight, for your right, to party!”). On the whole though they were great fun and there was a good atmosphere.
Best though was a cracking little singer called Charley MacAulay. We saw her in the Hipshaker arena, following on from a fabulous DJ playing Northern Soul. Charley MacAulay has a fantastic voice, soulful and strong and she has around her a brilliant 8 piece band who were really terrific. Finding gems like this is one of the best bits of a festival and I reckon Charley MacAulay is one of the best we’ve ever discovered!
The other great thing about IOW Festival is the fabulous atmosphere and the welcome we’ve found from the people who live and work on the island. One surprise for us has been how many visitors come for the festival from the USA. Most of them are here for Springsteen – and why wouldn’t they. We’ve met people from Miami, Minneapolis, New Jersey, Chicago and Seattle. And all of them seem to be enjoying the festival, the music and like us, all comment on how welcoming the Isle Of Wight people have been.
Today more rain, more mud, but more music and at the end of it all, Bruce Springsteen!!!! Can’t wait. So on with the wellies again and here we go for Day 3!
……….The first day of the festival typified what I think we call the indomitable spirit of music fans going to outdoor gigs in the UK!!!!
The problems at the start of the festival were well documented on the national news – flooded car parks, tractors dragging cars out of quagmires, people sleeping in cars, the islands traffic so gridlocked that at one point the traffic jam went all the way back to the ferry terminal, leaving one ferry stranded in the Solent in a Force 7 gale!!!! But eventually, the stages opened – and we had a great time!
The mud is everywhere of course – in the good bits it’s ankle deep, in the bad bits it’s calf deep and in the really bad bits – you don’t want to know!!! But bizarrely it doesn’t bother you after 5 mins – you just get on with wallowing in it, wading through it and even sinking in it!
The three best bits for us yesterday were Example, Tom Petty and Elbow.
The surprise was Example. I’d not heard much of him before but I thought he was great. He worked the crowd brilliantly and the atmosphere was so energetic and almost frenetic! It’s amazing how much fun you can have jumping up and down in the mud with tens of thousands of others!
Tom Petty was the headline on the Main Stage last night. He was very good, the sound was great and it was particularly good to notice that after some of the stuff we saw here for the Diamond Jubilee, here was an older rock star whose voice had survived really well!
But of course the highlight was Elbow. We wormed and ducked and weaved to about 5-6 rows from the front – so not only did we hear it brilliantly, we saw it up close, which is always best! The set was great and the music was as I’d expect from the best band in the world. Bloody magnificent! We think Sir Guy of Garvey is STILL the greatest thing since sliced bread!
Fortunately for us we are doing the festival the more luxurious way! We’re staying in the lovely Fernbank Hotel in Shanklin – it was a bit of a trek back from the site but worth it for a comfy bed, clean sheets and a shower this morning! What an old git I’ve become!
Anyway – on with the wellies for Day Two!!!!!
……….I got this odd, fanciful notion years ago when I read something similar in Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity. In the book they had a discussion about the idea of vetting potential girlfriends through a questionnaire focused mainly on their record collections – it was a very funny dig in the ribs for musical snobbery which, I’m ashamed to say, I’ve indulged in myself in the past. I mean there’s no way that a man who loves Ryan Adams and The Cardinals could go on a date, never mind spend their life, with a woman who enjoys listening to Gloria Gaynor screeching about survival!!! (This is as you might imagine a far from random example – my love for all things Ryan Adams can only speak its name when she who loves Gloria Gaynor is not at home!)
Anyway I’ve often wondered if my record collections and book collections are well matched – or if they signify some deep-rooted, sub-conscious, split personality on my part! One of the ways I’ve reassured myself on their compatibility over the years has been the frequent references to music I’ve got on my shelves, in either books I’ve read, or in comments by authors I like. I’ll give you an example. I know from listening to Radio 6 and from his Twitter feed that Ian Rankin likes Teenage Fanclub. So in my mind I then perform the following psychological equation:-
I Think Ian Rankin Is Great + Ian Rankin Thinks Teenage Fanclub Are Great + I Think Teenage Fanclub Are Great = My Book and Record Collections Must Be Compatible!
Obviously, authors use musical tastes and preferences as part of the development of characters in their books and from these I make connections like the one above! In addition there are books, like High Fidelity, or Salman Rushdie’s “the ground beneath her feet” with popular / indie music as the setting or context for their novels. Since I loved both of those books and they focus on much of the kind of music I like, it is of course further evidence of the compatibility of my music and book collections! (Of course when evidence occurs to the contrary – such as some of the country music that DI Thorne likes in the Mark Billingham crime novels – well……I ignore that!)
However as I was listening to the radio this morning I heard Lloyd Cole and The Commotions singing “Rattlesnakes”, with it’s name-check for Simone de Beauvoir in the lyrics, and it suddenly struck me that while I can think of several references to music in my books, the number of references to books in my music are few and far between. So I tried to compile a list and this is what I came up with!
First up is that Lloyd Cole song ‘Rattlesnakes’, which has the wonderful lines “She looks like Eve Marie Saint in On The Waterfront, She reads Simone de Beauvoir in her American circumstance!” Secondly, The Police song “Don’t Stand So Close To Me” makes a reference to Lolita with the line “just like in that old book by Nabokov!
Next up is a Green Day track called “Who Wrote Holden Caulfield?” (Personally my sharp intellectual guess is that Billie Joe Armstrong already knows the literal answer to this question!). Most influentially of all for me, the genius that is Ryan Adams wrote a song called “Sylvia Plath”. I love it ( in fact I may have written this post just so I can encourage anybody who reads this to listen to the song!). It goes:-
I wish I had a Sylvia Plath Busted tooth and a smile And cigarette ashes in her drink The kind that goes out and then sleeps for a week The kind that goes out on her To give me a reason, for well, I dunno
And maybe she’d take me to France Or maybe to Spain and she’d ask me to dance In a mansion on the top of a hill She’d ash on the carpets And slip me a pill Then she’d get pretty loaded on gin And maybe she’d give me a bath How I wish I had a Sylvia Plath
Beyond those it starts to get a bit tenuous I think. I know the Beatles made a reference to Edgar Allan Poe in I Am The Walrus and I know that while the lyrics to Aqualung’s “Strange and Beautiful” don’t specifically mention Shakespeare, the song is based on the story of A Midsummer Nights Dream – at least I’ve always thought it was! Even more tenuously, I’ve got a Sheryl Crow album in which one of the songs makes a reference to Aldous Huxley, but as I have never read anything by Huxley and as I hardly ever play the album this isn’t one that’s big with me!)
And, for a final two suggestions, both linked to classics, I’ll first offer Kate Bush going all “out on the wild, windy moors” with Wuthering Heights and lastly the lyrics to Don’t Tell Me To Do The Maths by Los Campesinos refers to Jane Eyre – but not perhaps in the way I’d like. They wail out “ We know that we could sell your magazines, if only you would give your life to literature just
DON’T READ JANE EYRE!!!”
So as I’ve reached the point where I’m struggling so much to list references to literature in my record collection that I am reduced to quoting a song slating one of my favourite books I think it’s time to give in!
Though of course, if you can think of any other songs which make references to great books or authors, let me know! (And let me know if you like Ryan Adams! – I might use the weight of popular opinion to try to re-introduce him at home! Then again, on second thoughts…………………………..)
………..I’d originally planned to do this on Sunday mornings – alas following a great wedding we went to in Manchester at the weekend the alcohol flow of the Saturday meant that my Sunday started seriously under the affluence of said incohol and therefore all I wanted yesterday morning was Nurofen and darkness.
However, having come back last night, I’m now fully recovered and so this week, for this week only(unless alcohol gets in the way again, which is very likely) , my easy Sunday morning is actually a Monday!
So this morning with my partner at work and my daughter at school, it’s again a perfect time to visit the innumerable good blogs out there, most of which are about books, with the odd “mmmmmmmmmmmm I wonder what that’s like?” thrown in for good measure.
I usually like to listen to music while I’m reading or writing but on Sunday mornings (or Monday this week), I listen with my headphones to my iTunes library and I let my iTunes shuffle do the choosing for me.
As I read and wrote this morning, my iTunes shuffle served up the following musical breakfast (or perhaps dogs dinner as my family might call it!). If you read this I hope you find something you like or perhaps a prompt to dust off the cobwebs from some corner of your own music that you’ve not visited in a while!
The Music
1.On The Wing by Owl City (I love this album but I can only play it when I’m alone otherwise it gets shouted down as irritating electro-pop by my family – but if you like jolly, happy, tingly pop with the vocals oft-fed though vocoders then you might like this – reading that description back makes me think it might be a niche market!)
2. Satisfied by Hal (again all lovely harmonies and twanging country pedal guitars – some of the chorus sounds like lush West Coast US Beach Boys stuff before going into a kind of cacophony at the end – I love this album and the lyrics on this are good. I think they went into a bit of a fallow period after this album but I’m pretty sure Hal have made a follow-up lately and it got a decent review through Q – of course I may have imagined that last bit!)
3. Jocasta by Noah And The Whale (My family really dislike NATW – they call it music to get depressed to – but this is more upbeat – ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!)
4. In My Room by The Last Shadow Puppets (Least favourite track on the album – sorry Alex/Miles but this isn’t doing it for me – heave ho!)
5. Hurry Up And Wait (Live) by Stereophonics (Now this will do – although live I thought they were a bit flat – mind you it was in the bloody cavernous Millenium Stadium in Cardiff I saw them – think it needed a bigger and more outgoing personality than Kelly Jones to fill that great chasm)
6. Nothing In My Way by Keane (From the Iron Sea which I think is a bit underrated – think they have new album out today and it’s on the list!)
7. You’ll Never Walk Alone by Frank Sinatra (My partner and daughter are lifetime fully paid-up members of the Liverpool FC Club so they would have this! – as a Man U fan this is NOT FOR ME IN CAPITAL LETTERS! Heave ho!)
8. House Where We All Live by The Veils – (I got this years ago as a present through a friends recommendation. I’d never heard of the Veils at that point but I love this – very Gallic shrug and a bit of a ‘torch’ song!)
9. Birds Flew Backwards by Doves (Doves are one of my favourite bands but this is from Kingdom of Rust which is their most disappointing album for me – however good old iTunes has at least picked out one of the tracks on it that I really like!)
10. Sean by The Proclaimers (The lads from Leith!!!!! I love The Proclaimers. Went to see them in the tent at one of festivals few years ago – place was rammed full of sweaty exiled Jocks all screaming out every word – they are right up there for me with Sir Alex Ferguson, Glenmorangie, Irn Bru, Scottish Pies and Ian Rankin as truly great things to come out of Scotland!)
11. I Saw The Dead by Villagers (Great song, great singer, great band. Saw them support Elbow last year and thought they were fantastic)
12. Try And Love Again by The Eagles (What’s not to love about the Eagles! So it ages me! So I’m old – who cares!)
13. One Light In A Dark Valley by Harry Chapin (It comes from the wonderful Dance Band On The Titanic. I think he’s so under-rated – this is a blast from my hairy, hippy student days!)
14. Sonnet by The Verve (Another song I love musically and lyrically. Heard Richard Ashcroft being interviewed about Urban Hymns on Steve Lamacq’s show a couple of weeks ago – he sounded really proud of this song and the whole album and so he should be – great stuff!)
15. She Speaks by Paul Weller (I’ve gotten more and more into Paul Weller as the years go by – I tend to prefer the more recent stuff like this from the ‘Wake Up The Nation’ album. Mind you I still love singing along with Walls Come Tumbling Down or Headstart For Happiness as well!)
16. Green Gloves by The National. (The National are one of those bands who always seem to get great reviews but a slightly underwhelming response from music fans in the UK. Which is a shame if you ask me. I think they write great songs and this is one!)
17. Jack, You Dead by Joe Jackson (I bought this in the 80′s. Most of my mates at the time thought I’d finally lost the plot – but for a small group of us, the songs from Jumpin Jive became theme tunes to our drunken evenings, of which we had many! God knows how many times I’ve stumbled the streets of Glasgow bawling out “What’s The Use Of Getting Sober If You’re Gonna Get Drunk Again”!)
18. A Scanner Darkly by Primal Scream (Another of my favourite bands but I’m not blind to their inconsistency – occasionally they throw up a stinker – this is one of them!)
19. Cool Cool River by Paul Simon (Lovely rhythms on this as there is on everything on Rhythm Of The Saints – I’d get up and dance but my knees have gone – fortunately!)
And to finish…..
20. Jumpin Jive by Joe Jackson (My iTunes obviously realised how much I loved “Jack You Dead!” so it’s come back to Jumpin Jive album for the title track! It’s great and allows me to sing one of my favourite lyrics of all time ” the jim-jam-jump is the jumpin jive, makes you nine foot tall when you’re four foot five!” – if only it could for a short-arse like me!)
Blog Stuff
This morning I found a reference to a bookmark listing 50 books to read before you die on the Reading Matters blog. I’d already gone through the tome 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die which a friend bought for me last year, to see how many I had read!!! So, anal-retentive that I am, I went through the 50 books listed on the book mark to see how many I had read (I’d read 33 of them) and as I read the list, which was supposed to be a mix of classics by great writers, I was surprised to read that things like Mark Haddon’s “Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Nighttime” and Phillip Pulman’s “Dark Materials” trilogy had been included. They wouldn’t have struck me as classics in the same vein as some of the others (The Bible, Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’, works by Shakespeare and by Chaucer and a fair smattering of Austen’s and Bronte’s and Dickens etc). However even though I didn’t really get their fit to classics, I’d read them so happily included them in my tally of 33! 33 out of 50 – satisfied smirks all round then!!!!
……….One of the things I love most about my iPhone is the Shazam app! If you don’t know Shazam, it’s an app of genius which allows you to record a couple of seconds of a song that you hear and which you may not know. It then sends that off to be analysed and matched to their music database and what you get back within seconds is the information you want on what the track is, who it is by and what album it appears on. It’s one of the best apps I’ve got on my phone and I use it frequently when listening to the radio or simply out and about as it allows me to identify and list anything I hear that takes my fancy!
So – during April – I’d tagged quite a lot of songs – so rather than list all of them below, I’ve simply noted what I think are the best or most interesting of the songs I tagged using Shazam last month
1. All My Friends by LCD Soundsystem.
This is one of those things where I’d never buy an album by LCD Soundsystem and yet I frequently hear things I like, wonder ‘what’s that?’, tag it and discover its LCD Soundsystem again! The song came out a few years ago but I think it still sounds great!
2. Maps by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
The Yeah Yeah Yeahs are one of those bands that are a bit of a near miss for me. This song is on their debut album of a few years ago and I like the guitars and the vocal – on this Karen O sounds very Chrissie Hynde to me! But too much of their stuff doesn’t do it for me. I bought there 2009 album “It’s A Blitz on the strength of “Maps” and the fact that it had great reviews in places like Q and NME – but I was underwhelmed to say the least and have pretty much stayed away from them since. But “Maps” is great!
3. Us by Regina Spektor
Bit of a “torch” song but I loved it. Lovely tumbling, rolling but gentle piano backed up by beautiful string arrangement! She’s somebody I didn’t think I would like – I guess the curled lip image put me off before (how dozy is that?!) but this was good!
4. To Build A Home by The Cinematic Orchestra
This is a beautiful song. It’s got a bare melody picked out by a few piano chords and his slightly whispering and upper range vocal. Would fit perfectly on a Bon Iver album and that’s a great place to be in my book. If you watch Sky much, you’d probably recognise it as the background music in the advert for Sky Atlantic (the one with Dustin Hoffman!)
5. French Exit by The Antlers
This comes from their 2011 album “Burst Apart” which got pretty good reviews. I remember being tempted to buy it at the time but decided against it. But I like this even though it’s perhaps not normally my thing - the electronica/synth feel to it is strong but I liked the melody and the vocals!
6. Fade Into You by Mazzy Star
This track was released in 1993 so it’s not exactly recent. But Mazzy Star are one of those bands that I missed out on at the time and that I now often read cited as an influence by musicians I like today. As soon as I heard this on the radio I loved it!
7. How Long Have You Known? by Dive
This is wonderful. It opens with these swirling guitars and it maintains these all the way through with the almost chant-like chorus and verses over the top. The band is from Brooklyn I think and were formed by the guitarist from Beach Fossils. I’m a sucker for this almost all enveloping, comforting but essentially upbeat wall-of-guitars type sound so I thought this was just great! You can hear the whole thing on PrettyMuchAmazing
8. A Real Hero by College featuring Electric Youth
This is another track that I heard on an advert – this time the ad for Love Film. However before being used on that ad this track was also used on the soundtrack to the movie ‘Drive’ – I love it – very dreamy female vocal which is very-like Harriet Wheeler of The Sundays with music which wouldn’t be out-of-place from The XX – gorgeous!
9. Young Blood by The Naked And Famous
You might not now this by name but I’d reckon you’ll instantly recognise it on hearing it. The naked And Famous are from New Zealand and this song of theirs, from their debut album, was used in a recent advert for Canon cameras! It’s a brilliant song! It’s a joyous burst of rousing guitars, a thumping bass and equally joyous harmonies, overlaid by a kind of zither sound – which sounds awful but trust me it isn’t! It reminded me of El Presidente who were an indie band I liked but who, I think, sadly didn’t progress beyond their first album (my partner calls these albums bought by only me and their mums!)
I hope you find something there you like! Obviously I did!
