And in case you thought I was making it up, here is
Incident On 57th Street, in a recent piano solo version.
Showing posts with label anniversaries. Show all posts
Showing posts with label anniversaries. Show all posts
Wednesday, 16 September 2009
Friday, 11 September 2009
Wild Billy's Circus Story
The machinist climbs his ferris wheel like a brave,Wild Billy's Circus Story is the fourth track on The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle, Bruce Springsteen's second album. Released thirty-six years ago today, just eight months after his astonishing debut, it's still one of his best albums: it has the madcap zest of Asbury Park, but more discipline; more poetry.
And the fire-eater's lying in a pool of sweat, victim of the heatwave,
Behind the tent, the hired hand tightens his legs
on the sword-swallower's blade —
Circus town's on the shortwave.
Well the runway lies ahead like a great false dawn,
Fat Lady, Big Mama, Miss Bimbo sits in her chair and yawns,
And the Man-Beast lies in his cage, sniffing popcorn,
As the midget licks his fingers, and suffers Missy Bimbo's scorn —
And circus town's been born.
Oh and a press roll drummer goes ballerina to and fro,
Cartwheeling up on that tightrope,
With a cannon-blast, lightning-flash,
Moving fast through the tent, Mars-bent,
He's going to miss his fall —
Oh God save the human cannonball!
And the Flying Zambinis watch Marguarita do her neck-twist,
And the ringmaster gets the crowd to count along:
Ninety-five, ninety-six, ninety-seven ...
A ragged suitcase in his hand,
he steals silently away from the circus-ground,
And the highway is haunted by the carnival sounds:
They dance like a great greasepaint ghost on the wind ...
A man in baggy pants, a lonely face, a crazy grin,
Running home to some small Ohio town:
Jesus send some good women to save all your clowns ...
And the circus-boy dances like a monkey on barbed wire,
As the barker romances with a junkie, she's got a flat tire,
And the elephants dance real funky,
and the band plays like a jungle fire —
Circus town's on the live wire —
And the Strong Man Samson lifts the midget little Tiny Tim
way up on his shoulders — way up! —
And carries him home down the midway:
Past the kids,
Past the sailors,
To his dimly lit trailer;
And the ferris wheel turns and turns like it ain't ever going to stop,
And the circus-boss leans over and whispers in the little boy's ear,
“Hey son, you want to try the Big Top?
All aboard! Nebraska's our next stop.”
It's not a record afraid of juxtaposing different moods. The exultation of E Street Shuffle leads right into Sandy, an elegiac farewell to life in his home town; the sublime rock of Kitty's Back cedes to the sympathetic freak-show of Circus Story. The second side opens with the nonpareil Incident on 57th Street — an opera of a story told with equal parts joy and ache — and gives over to the celebration of Rosalita. And then the dreaminess of New York City Serenade at the end.
I wrote that there's not a single dull song on Asbury Park: there's not a single song on E Street that's not brilliant, perfect of its kind, with gorgeously written lyrics and music crafted to its mood. When Springsteen released it, he was not quite twenty-four years old. When I discovered it in my suburban teens, courtesy of one of my English teachers, it broke on me like a wave, and while the lives in these songs could not be more different from mine, I've been riding that wave ever since, and probably always will.
[Wild Billy's Circus Story is on YouTube in the album recording, a live version from 1974 (with some great old stills from the road), and a 1990 acoustic version, amongst others.]
Monday, 22 June 2009
On the many different ways of being nice
Sympathy is Crowe's great gift, but it's a kind of weakness as well. He has rightly been criticised for the lack of darkness in his films, and there's clearly no question of them holding up a mirror to all of life. Yet with Lloyd, at least, there's an element of mystery: we have no idea of his relationship with his (absent) parents; his aimlessness hints at trouble ahead. And there's something between confusion and anger that underlies his riffs in conversation, which Crowe and Cusack are wise enough to merely suggest—it's never discussed. It would also seem to undergird his awe of Diane, who is more at peace with herself. When the couple split Lloyd is all at sea, swinging between shattered grief and self-conscious poses of defiance. Whereas Diane, while miserable, still has her prospects and her father ... or so she thinks.This from my 2002 review of Say Anything ..., which I have rescued from its web oblivion and posted at Bruce's Reviews for the 19th anniversary of the film's release.
“He may be the least cynical director working in Hollywood today,” wrote A.O. Scott in his review of the 2000 film Almost Famous. “What other filmmaker is as devoted to the nuances of decency or as fascinated by the subtle and complicated ways people can be nice to one another?” In a brilliant piece of sympathetic criticism, he put his finger on the limitations of Almost Famous while at the same time being fully, gratefully alive to that film's wonderful strengths.
Scott's concerns were prescient, as Crowe seems to have badly lost his way as a director since then. In revisiting Say Anything ..., surely the best teen romance of its age, I'd like to express the hope that Crowe can find a new way forward.
Sunday, 31 May 2009
Come down, O Love Divine
Come down, O Love Divine,
Seek thou this soul of mine,
And visit it with thine own ardour glowing.
O Comforter, draw near,
Within my heart appear,
And kindle it, thy holy flame bestowing.
As Luke tells the story, the Spirit of God fell on Jesus' disciples on the day of Pentecost in Jerusalem, and they went out praising God in many languages, drawing a large, curious, and somewhat sceptical crowd. Peter announced that this was nothing other than the promised renewal of the nation: that Jesus, handed over to the Romans for execution but vindicated by God --- raised from death --- had now been “exalted to the right hand of God” and had commissioned them to be his witnesses. He called on those in the crowd to repent, and to be baptized into Jesus' name for the forgiveness of their sins. Three thousand people were initiated in this way; that day is traditionally understood as the beginning of the church, and has been celebrated ever since.
Lest this all be thought somewhat in-house, Peter's other great task (again, as Luke has it) was to reach beyond the Jewish community and --- in the face of his own customs and purity concerns --- to open the Christian fellowship to people from other nations. The struggle to understand what true unity of differing people meant, and exactly what God's agenda was in the matter, was a huge one for that generation, and the bulk of the occasional letters that comprise the New Testament (together with the Gospels, Acts, and Revelation) engage with the issue in some degree. The particular expression is bound up with concerns of that time and place, and the people involved, but in more abstract terms the questions are perennial: how are background, identity, and behaviour related; what are our obligations; what do we make of human difference?
The basic Christian answer is that one should be baptised into the name of Jesus Christ: but what then follows? The knotted complexity of parts of the New Testament shows that the answers may not be simple, let alone obvious. A classic example from another age is the abolition movement at the end of the eighteenth century: the realisation that slavery had to be renounced --- already implicitly understood in the first century --- tore up lives and institutions and economies over decades. We say we “change our minds” but the process of changing one's mind is messy, and by no means merely mental. Our society makes “Amazing Grace” a song of sentiment, but it was the sentiment of a man converted slowly --- slowly, in fits and starts --- from traffic in human lives.
The favourite Pentecost hymn in my tradition is Come down, O Love Divine by Bianco da Siena (d:1434), as translated by Richard F. Littledale in the 1860s, and most famously set to Ralph Vaughn Williams' tune Down Ampney. The hymn is of a more mystical bent, its perspective that of the inner life before God, compared to what one might call the community focus of the New Testament writers. Of course, the two are related, as the “Amazing Grace” example also shows. But the relationship is not simple.
(It's easy to find cheesy versions of the tune and the hymn on the web, and hard to find good ones. An embellished but dignified rendition is free as an MP3 from Selah Publishing.)
O let it freely burn,
'Til earthly passions turn
To dust and ashes in its heat consuming;
And let thy glorious light
Shine ever on my sight,
And clothe me round, the while my path illuming.
Let holy charity
Mine outward vesture be,
And lowliness become mine inner clothing.
True lowliness of heart
Which takes the humbler part
And o'er its own shortcomings weeps with loathing.
And so the yearning strong
With which the soul will long
Shall far outpass the power of human telling;
For none can guess its grace,
'Til he become the place
Wherein the Holy Spirit makes His dwelling.
Seek thou this soul of mine,
And visit it with thine own ardour glowing.
O Comforter, draw near,
Within my heart appear,
And kindle it, thy holy flame bestowing.
As Luke tells the story, the Spirit of God fell on Jesus' disciples on the day of Pentecost in Jerusalem, and they went out praising God in many languages, drawing a large, curious, and somewhat sceptical crowd. Peter announced that this was nothing other than the promised renewal of the nation: that Jesus, handed over to the Romans for execution but vindicated by God --- raised from death --- had now been “exalted to the right hand of God” and had commissioned them to be his witnesses. He called on those in the crowd to repent, and to be baptized into Jesus' name for the forgiveness of their sins. Three thousand people were initiated in this way; that day is traditionally understood as the beginning of the church, and has been celebrated ever since.
Lest this all be thought somewhat in-house, Peter's other great task (again, as Luke has it) was to reach beyond the Jewish community and --- in the face of his own customs and purity concerns --- to open the Christian fellowship to people from other nations. The struggle to understand what true unity of differing people meant, and exactly what God's agenda was in the matter, was a huge one for that generation, and the bulk of the occasional letters that comprise the New Testament (together with the Gospels, Acts, and Revelation) engage with the issue in some degree. The particular expression is bound up with concerns of that time and place, and the people involved, but in more abstract terms the questions are perennial: how are background, identity, and behaviour related; what are our obligations; what do we make of human difference?
The basic Christian answer is that one should be baptised into the name of Jesus Christ: but what then follows? The knotted complexity of parts of the New Testament shows that the answers may not be simple, let alone obvious. A classic example from another age is the abolition movement at the end of the eighteenth century: the realisation that slavery had to be renounced --- already implicitly understood in the first century --- tore up lives and institutions and economies over decades. We say we “change our minds” but the process of changing one's mind is messy, and by no means merely mental. Our society makes “Amazing Grace” a song of sentiment, but it was the sentiment of a man converted slowly --- slowly, in fits and starts --- from traffic in human lives.
The favourite Pentecost hymn in my tradition is Come down, O Love Divine by Bianco da Siena (d:1434), as translated by Richard F. Littledale in the 1860s, and most famously set to Ralph Vaughn Williams' tune Down Ampney. The hymn is of a more mystical bent, its perspective that of the inner life before God, compared to what one might call the community focus of the New Testament writers. Of course, the two are related, as the “Amazing Grace” example also shows. But the relationship is not simple.
(It's easy to find cheesy versions of the tune and the hymn on the web, and hard to find good ones. An embellished but dignified rendition is free as an MP3 from Selah Publishing.)
O let it freely burn,
'Til earthly passions turn
To dust and ashes in its heat consuming;
And let thy glorious light
Shine ever on my sight,
And clothe me round, the while my path illuming.
Let holy charity
Mine outward vesture be,
And lowliness become mine inner clothing.
True lowliness of heart
Which takes the humbler part
And o'er its own shortcomings weeps with loathing.
And so the yearning strong
With which the soul will long
Shall far outpass the power of human telling;
For none can guess its grace,
'Til he become the place
Wherein the Holy Spirit makes His dwelling.
Friday, 17 April 2009
Two years on
This blog is now two years old, and (I hope) active again after a quiet month.
Well-trafficked posts from the last year, in contrast to the laundry list from the first year, have been completely dominated by the ethics of Joss Whedon:
Mal's speech, or, On not making a better world (1) (2008/09/08)
Simon's speech (2008/05/30)
Top five fantasy battle-cries (2008/09/19)
Updike on neutrinos (2009/01/29)
It was a pleasure to bring a few new readers to Updike's neutrino poem.
Well-trafficked posts from the last year, in contrast to the laundry list from the first year, have been completely dominated by the ethics of Joss Whedon:
Mal's speech, or, On not making a better world (1) (2008/09/08)
Simon's speech (2008/05/30)
Top five fantasy battle-cries (2008/09/19)
Updike on neutrinos (2009/01/29)
It was a pleasure to bring a few new readers to Updike's neutrino poem.
Thursday, 12 February 2009
Happy Birthday, Uncle Charles
Charles Robert Darwin (1809—1882), gentleman amateur, med-school dropout, ground-breaking geologist, youthful traveller, lifelong naturalist; devoted husband, father, and homebody; authority on barnacles and worms; theorist on coral reefs, and both natural selection and sexual selection in evolution—a man both of and before his time—was born 200 years ago today.
Some articles in celebration:
In the London Review of Books, a heartbreaking poem by Ruth Padel, ‘The Sea Will Do Us All Good’ (subscription only, alas)
In the New York Times Science pages:
Darwin, Ahead of His Time, Is Still Influential
Darwinism Must Die So That Evolution May Live
Genes Offer New Clues in Old Debate on Species’ Origins
Crunching the Data for the Tree of Life
Seeing the Risks of Humanity’s Hand in Species Evolution
Darwin the Comedian
and an interactive feature: On Darwin’s ‘On the Origin of Species’
(Last year Olivia Judson ran a small series along similar lines, for the sesquicentenary of the announcement of natural selection: Darwinmania!, An Original Confession, and Let’s Get Rid of Darwinism.)
As the most provocative of those essays argues, Darwin is not evolution, and evolution is not Darwin. (We should also be careful to give Wallace his due.) In the limits of a few words, I tried to be precise about him: Darwin did not give us evolution, but he did give us natural selection and sexual selection—he gave us mechanisms for the process; and he gave us evidence. In any organised enquiry, evidence has to count for something. And in the natural sciences, mechanism counts for a lot.
His legacy is so distorted by the still-ongoing struggle of our culture to assimilate evolution: it's important to note that the concept not only predates Darwin, but also predates its own scientific respectability; and that the objections mostly concern a cluster of ideas in ethics and political economy that have little to do with biology. Yet, as some of the above-listed authors complain, it has all become bundled together in a package called “Darwinism”. (The idea of Evolution, with its permanent capital letter, is not much better.) In modern times at least, this reaction runs smack into many scientists' reverence for Darwin himself, and so the drama becomes knotted and unending. I hate to think what Darwin, a reflective and sensitive man, would have made of it.
It may ultimately be a distraction in understanding biology, but scientists are people too, and the worship of Darwin is as much about character and values as about the content of the science. The Old Man was painstaking, patient, and empirical, placing evidence before theory; intellectually honest but hating to give offence, devoting his life to his work but devoted to a personal life beyond it: he is every scientist's sainted Uncle Charles, the standard we know we can't live up to. Newton and Maxwell are authorities we respect; Galileo and Einstein are prophets, champions, and men of genius; and in my field, at least, Feynman is revered as a clay-footed hero. But Darwin ... Darwin is loved. Loved by many scientists, myself most certainly included.
Happy birthday to you, sir.
Some articles in celebration:
In the London Review of Books, a heartbreaking poem by Ruth Padel, ‘The Sea Will Do Us All Good’ (subscription only, alas)
In the New York Times Science pages:
Darwin, Ahead of His Time, Is Still Influential
Darwinism Must Die So That Evolution May Live
Genes Offer New Clues in Old Debate on Species’ Origins
Crunching the Data for the Tree of Life
Seeing the Risks of Humanity’s Hand in Species Evolution
Darwin the Comedian
and an interactive feature: On Darwin’s ‘On the Origin of Species’
(Last year Olivia Judson ran a small series along similar lines, for the sesquicentenary of the announcement of natural selection: Darwinmania!, An Original Confession, and Let’s Get Rid of Darwinism.)
As the most provocative of those essays argues, Darwin is not evolution, and evolution is not Darwin. (We should also be careful to give Wallace his due.) In the limits of a few words, I tried to be precise about him: Darwin did not give us evolution, but he did give us natural selection and sexual selection—he gave us mechanisms for the process; and he gave us evidence. In any organised enquiry, evidence has to count for something. And in the natural sciences, mechanism counts for a lot.
His legacy is so distorted by the still-ongoing struggle of our culture to assimilate evolution: it's important to note that the concept not only predates Darwin, but also predates its own scientific respectability; and that the objections mostly concern a cluster of ideas in ethics and political economy that have little to do with biology. Yet, as some of the above-listed authors complain, it has all become bundled together in a package called “Darwinism”. (The idea of Evolution, with its permanent capital letter, is not much better.) In modern times at least, this reaction runs smack into many scientists' reverence for Darwin himself, and so the drama becomes knotted and unending. I hate to think what Darwin, a reflective and sensitive man, would have made of it.
It may ultimately be a distraction in understanding biology, but scientists are people too, and the worship of Darwin is as much about character and values as about the content of the science. The Old Man was painstaking, patient, and empirical, placing evidence before theory; intellectually honest but hating to give offence, devoting his life to his work but devoted to a personal life beyond it: he is every scientist's sainted Uncle Charles, the standard we know we can't live up to. Newton and Maxwell are authorities we respect; Galileo and Einstein are prophets, champions, and men of genius; and in my field, at least, Feynman is revered as a clay-footed hero. But Darwin ... Darwin is loved. Loved by many scientists, myself most certainly included.
Happy birthday to you, sir.
Saturday, 31 January 2009
Baker Baker
A longsuffering Bösendorfer piano, a crazy redhead, and evocative lyrics; bells, icicles, and cornflakes; teenage hangups, grievances against religion, a bad seafood dinner, and Anastasia Romanova. What's not to like?
From many points of view, Tori Amos' Under the Pink is a total nightmare. But if approached in the spirit, that one should attend to an artist's work but never to what they say about it, the album has a lot to give. It's now fifteen years old, and to celebrate I'd like to reflect on my favourite among the songs: Baker Baker.
The conceit is mild enough, by Tori's standards: the song is addressed to the demiurge under the figure of a baker, baking a cake that stands for the events of the day. The protagonist has driven her man away by being unavailable, and in grief and regret she comes to the baker for news, for hope that the situation might change, to carry a message ... all the while knowing that it's probably too late.
That's more-or-less it. It's a piece of ordinary sadness and dawning self-awareness, set to a heartbreaking piano tune; the device of the baker is estranging and striking enough to give some perspective, but not so intrusive as to overwhelm the material. The baker makes emotional sense: one goes to friends for help in these situations, to cry on their shoulders or to ask for their advice or intervention, knowing that in a strict sense they may not actually be able to help. From this point of view, the song is a properly integrated fantasy, like early Buffy, or a peasant fairy tale.
This fit of idea and expression makes Baker, however slight, compare favourably with the album's more famous and showier songs: Icicle, which is beautiful until you work out what it's about, at which point it becomes creepy oversharing; the glorious but overplayed Cornflake Girl, perfectly good as a nonsense song, although there apparently are baroque, bizarre motivations for most of it; and Yes, Anastasia --- would its spookiness survive too close an inspection?
But enough of this: listen to the song. It's on YouTube in a (1996?) live performance, and a performance (with mini-interview) from 1994. Lyrics are here.
From many points of view, Tori Amos' Under the Pink is a total nightmare. But if approached in the spirit, that one should attend to an artist's work but never to what they say about it, the album has a lot to give. It's now fifteen years old, and to celebrate I'd like to reflect on my favourite among the songs: Baker Baker.
The conceit is mild enough, by Tori's standards: the song is addressed to the demiurge under the figure of a baker, baking a cake that stands for the events of the day. The protagonist has driven her man away by being unavailable, and in grief and regret she comes to the baker for news, for hope that the situation might change, to carry a message ... all the while knowing that it's probably too late.
That's more-or-less it. It's a piece of ordinary sadness and dawning self-awareness, set to a heartbreaking piano tune; the device of the baker is estranging and striking enough to give some perspective, but not so intrusive as to overwhelm the material. The baker makes emotional sense: one goes to friends for help in these situations, to cry on their shoulders or to ask for their advice or intervention, knowing that in a strict sense they may not actually be able to help. From this point of view, the song is a properly integrated fantasy, like early Buffy, or a peasant fairy tale.
This fit of idea and expression makes Baker, however slight, compare favourably with the album's more famous and showier songs: Icicle, which is beautiful until you work out what it's about, at which point it becomes creepy oversharing; the glorious but overplayed Cornflake Girl, perfectly good as a nonsense song, although there apparently are baroque, bizarre motivations for most of it; and Yes, Anastasia --- would its spookiness survive too close an inspection?
But enough of this: listen to the song. It's on YouTube in a (1996?) live performance, and a performance (with mini-interview) from 1994. Lyrics are here.
Friday, 25 April 2008
MacArthur's Park is melting in the dark ...
... all the sweet green icing flowing down ---
Someone left the cake out in the rain ---
I don't think that I can take it,
Because it took so long to bake it,
And I'll never have that recipe agaaaaaaain ....
[ahem]
Yes, I know it should be MacArthur Park, but who am I to argue with the original Richard Harris recording? All seven-and-a-half minutes of it?
The song is forty years old this month*. It is cheeseball, overblown, sentimental, and preposterous: and still, there's a part of me that loves it. Harris was not exactly the best singer in the world, but he was an excellent performer, and this recording is a great performance. If the song is an epic: go epic.
UPDATE (28th May): It appears that Chris Noth, a.k.a. Big a.k.a. Mike Logan, is a big fan of Harris' recording.
* [I've had trouble establishing a date for the album, A Tramp Shining, looking around in the web. April 1968 is the best I've managed, based on this website on the Dunhill label.]
Someone left the cake out in the rain ---
I don't think that I can take it,
Because it took so long to bake it,
And I'll never have that recipe agaaaaaaain ....
[ahem]
Yes, I know it should be MacArthur Park, but who am I to argue with the original Richard Harris recording? All seven-and-a-half minutes of it?
The song is forty years old this month*. It is cheeseball, overblown, sentimental, and preposterous: and still, there's a part of me that loves it. Harris was not exactly the best singer in the world, but he was an excellent performer, and this recording is a great performance. If the song is an epic: go epic.
UPDATE (28th May): It appears that Chris Noth, a.k.a. Big a.k.a. Mike Logan, is a big fan of Harris' recording.
* [I've had trouble establishing a date for the album, A Tramp Shining, looking around in the web. April 1968 is the best I've managed, based on this website on the Dunhill label.]
Wednesday, 16 April 2008
One year on
This blog is a year old: I wish the occasion were a happier one. By the way of a good-news story, though, let me point you to an effort to remember students and faculty through relief work in poor parts of Virginia.
The following posts have been popular:
All together now! (30-Jul-07)
Blinded by the light (05-Jan-08)
Easter for grownups (27-Mar-08)
The end of the affair (01-Jul-07)
Four reactions to an apology (17-Feb-08)
A German beer trail (22-May-07)
Kermode on Vermes on the Resurrection (23-Mar-08)
The love that dare not speak its name (25-Jun-07)
Midgley on rights and social ethics (14-Sep-07)
Miserere mei, Deus (18-Nov-07)
Of giants and crockery (17-Oct-07)
Perks? (19-Apr-07)
Pheasant Plucking (24-Jun-07)
She is a very bad girl (12-Jul-07)
sushi and sashimi (23-Dec-07)
Talk is cheap (24-Oct-07)
Tambourines and elephants (16-Dec-07)
Tangled up in (quantum) blue (05-Oct-07)
Let me also put in a shameless plug for Silver on the Tree (30-Mar-08) and Europa Rising (08-May-07)
The following posts have been popular:
All together now! (30-Jul-07)Blinded by the light (05-Jan-08)
Easter for grownups (27-Mar-08)
The end of the affair (01-Jul-07)
Four reactions to an apology (17-Feb-08)
A German beer trail (22-May-07)
Kermode on Vermes on the Resurrection (23-Mar-08)
The love that dare not speak its name (25-Jun-07)
Midgley on rights and social ethics (14-Sep-07)
Miserere mei, Deus (18-Nov-07)
Of giants and crockery (17-Oct-07)
Perks? (19-Apr-07)
Pheasant Plucking (24-Jun-07)
She is a very bad girl (12-Jul-07)
sushi and sashimi (23-Dec-07)
Talk is cheap (24-Oct-07)
Tambourines and elephants (16-Dec-07)
Tangled up in (quantum) blue (05-Oct-07)
Let me also put in a shameless plug for Silver on the Tree (30-Mar-08) and Europa Rising (08-May-07)
Thursday, 10 January 2008
Give the man his due
Olivia Judson (a.k.a. Dr Tatiana) blogs on the NYT side concerning Alfred Russel Wallace, evolution's Other Guy. It was his birthday on January 8th (OK, so I missed it), and in five months it will be a hundred-and-fifty years since his letter to Charles Darwin that, by showing that someone else was onto the idea, prompted him to publish The origin of species by means of natural selection.
Second in time and in profundity to the sainted Charles, Wallace has missed out both on being a scientific pin-up and on being the scapegoat for a million social and conceptual ills. (Heads up, people: "it" is not Charles Darwin's fault. Or Alfred Russel Wallace's. Or the fault of biology. If you want someone to blame for whatever dreadful thing you think has been unleashed, you might more accurately try Herbert Spencer.) Of course, I should not wish the latter fate on anyone's memory. But as for Wallace's scientific standing: this is a man who, whatever his other weaknesses, independently hit upon the idea of evolution by natural selection, one of the great concepts of any age, and the key in the lock of natural history. Let's give him his due.
Second in time and in profundity to the sainted Charles, Wallace has missed out both on being a scientific pin-up and on being the scapegoat for a million social and conceptual ills. (Heads up, people: "it" is not Charles Darwin's fault. Or Alfred Russel Wallace's. Or the fault of biology. If you want someone to blame for whatever dreadful thing you think has been unleashed, you might more accurately try Herbert Spencer.) Of course, I should not wish the latter fate on anyone's memory. But as for Wallace's scientific standing: this is a man who, whatever his other weaknesses, independently hit upon the idea of evolution by natural selection, one of the great concepts of any age, and the key in the lock of natural history. Let's give him his due.
Saturday, 5 January 2008
Blinded by the light
It's thirty-five years since the release of Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., Bruce Springsteen's first album and an eternal member of my top-ten-disc list: an album I could not bear to part with.
Let's begin at the beginning, with Blinded by the light, which you may know from the Manfred Mann's Earth Band version of 1976. Mann is bright, full, polished, and somewhat over-processed; Springsteen's original version is a rangy, burstingly articulate shaggy-dog revelation of a song, overstuffed with internal-rhyming lyrics but somehow still loose and jangly. The other album highlight is Lost in the flood, a lush triptych of apocalyptic stories that proceed from dream-horrors to the truly terrifying: the casual cruelty and indifference of ordinary people. At the other end of the scale, I have a personal fondness for the quietest and least typical entry, The Angel, which is merely a poem set to sad music. (But what a poem!) There is not a dull song on the album, although there are some strange ones, and in all of them surprises of music, of image, or of sheer poetic beauty.
Greetings is one of those first-published-works with a coltish energy, what Lester Bangs described (in his Rolling Stone review) as "reveling in the joy of utter crass showoff talent run amuck and totally out of control". Springsteen's next album, a bare eight months later, has a similar zest but more polish, and was a bit more popular; his 1975 album, Born to Run, set the world on fire. And for the wider public, "Bruce Springsteen" pretty much begins in 1975, the song Rosalita excepted. But for those who have ears to hear, all of the talent and poetry and promise and joy is there in January '73, together with that utter-crass-showoff edge that the mature albums --- for all their wonders --- don't quite recapture.
Like others of my generation I got interested in Springsteen because of the Born in the USA tour: it was one of my English teachers, possibly the only person at my high school who shared the interest, who put me on to the early albums. My schoolfriends listened in incomprehension as I obsessed and enthused about the poetry and the energy of this work, and it wasn't until years later that I discovered I shared the love with critics, fans worldwide, and the entire state of New Jersey. But since the knowledge isn't general, the least I can do on this anniversary is to pass on the good news. If you haven't heard Greetings: you must. And Mr Buchan --- if you're out there --- thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Let's begin at the beginning, with Blinded by the light, which you may know from the Manfred Mann's Earth Band version of 1976. Mann is bright, full, polished, and somewhat over-processed; Springsteen's original version is a rangy, burstingly articulate shaggy-dog revelation of a song, overstuffed with internal-rhyming lyrics but somehow still loose and jangly. The other album highlight is Lost in the flood, a lush triptych of apocalyptic stories that proceed from dream-horrors to the truly terrifying: the casual cruelty and indifference of ordinary people. At the other end of the scale, I have a personal fondness for the quietest and least typical entry, The Angel, which is merely a poem set to sad music. (But what a poem!) There is not a dull song on the album, although there are some strange ones, and in all of them surprises of music, of image, or of sheer poetic beauty.
Greetings is one of those first-published-works with a coltish energy, what Lester Bangs described (in his Rolling Stone review) as "reveling in the joy of utter crass showoff talent run amuck and totally out of control". Springsteen's next album, a bare eight months later, has a similar zest but more polish, and was a bit more popular; his 1975 album, Born to Run, set the world on fire. And for the wider public, "Bruce Springsteen" pretty much begins in 1975, the song Rosalita excepted. But for those who have ears to hear, all of the talent and poetry and promise and joy is there in January '73, together with that utter-crass-showoff edge that the mature albums --- for all their wonders --- don't quite recapture.
Like others of my generation I got interested in Springsteen because of the Born in the USA tour: it was one of my English teachers, possibly the only person at my high school who shared the interest, who put me on to the early albums. My schoolfriends listened in incomprehension as I obsessed and enthused about the poetry and the energy of this work, and it wasn't until years later that I discovered I shared the love with critics, fans worldwide, and the entire state of New Jersey. But since the knowledge isn't general, the least I can do on this anniversary is to pass on the good news. If you haven't heard Greetings: you must. And Mr Buchan --- if you're out there --- thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Thursday, 18 October 2007
The Anniversary Party
The independent film The Anniversary Party was released six years ago today (in Australia, anyway). The party of the title is to celebrate the sixth wedding anniversary of Joe, a rising author, and Sally, a (slightly older) film actress whose star is --- as they say --- beginning to fade. I guess you've already worked out that neither the party, nor the relationship, go especially smoothly.
Written and directed by the lead actors, the excellent (if unsmiling) Jennifer Jason Leigh and the all-too-appropriately named Alan Cumming, the film was shot in 19 days on digital video at a friend's house; the directors got their mates to play the other roles, with DIY makeup. It shows you what you can do with a little initiative, although it surely helps if the friend with the house is Sofia Coppola, and your mates include Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates (and their real-life kids), John C. Reilly, Jennifer Beals, Parker Posey, and Jane Adams. (I must re-watch it and see what the glorious Mary-Lynn Rajskub was doing back then, before 24.) They got Gwyneth Paltrow to play an emotive starlet who's actually a fair bit sharper than people suppose ... a lot of the roles sail similarly close to the wind.
It is rather well written and very well (and fearlessly) acted. But you maybe don't want to see it if you only recently reconciled with your spouse.
Written and directed by the lead actors, the excellent (if unsmiling) Jennifer Jason Leigh and the all-too-appropriately named Alan Cumming, the film was shot in 19 days on digital video at a friend's house; the directors got their mates to play the other roles, with DIY makeup. It shows you what you can do with a little initiative, although it surely helps if the friend with the house is Sofia Coppola, and your mates include Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates (and their real-life kids), John C. Reilly, Jennifer Beals, Parker Posey, and Jane Adams. (I must re-watch it and see what the glorious Mary-Lynn Rajskub was doing back then, before 24.) They got Gwyneth Paltrow to play an emotive starlet who's actually a fair bit sharper than people suppose ... a lot of the roles sail similarly close to the wind.
It is rather well written and very well (and fearlessly) acted. But you maybe don't want to see it if you only recently reconciled with your spouse.
Thursday, 4 October 2007
Fifty years ago today ...
... Sputnik went "beep, beep, beep", and the world changed.
It's Space Week from 4-10 October in celebration; there is probably a series of events on near you.
Normally, I only post on the planetary programme, but of course Sputnik was the public beginning of human effort in space, so it's only right to join in the party.
Happy birthday ...
UPDATE: There is an article in The Australian today on a push to establish an Australian space programme.
It's Space Week from 4-10 October in celebration; there is probably a series of events on near you.
Normally, I only post on the planetary programme, but of course Sputnik was the public beginning of human effort in space, so it's only right to join in the party.
Happy birthday ...
UPDATE: There is an article in The Australian today on a push to establish an Australian space programme.
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