Marc Nash's Blog, page 21
August 21, 2016
The Olympian Spirit Moneygoround
If you're British, you're almost certain to have rapturously enjoyed the Olympic jamboree and Britain's record medal haul. When international tournaments go well for Britain, we bask in success and indulge in flag-waving nationalism. So we crow about how our tiny island race of some 65 million people defeated the 1 billion plus population of China in the medal table. So did the 350 million population of the USA and India, which also has a 1 billion + population, notched no gold medals at all and a paltry 2 in total.
What this chest-thumping whooping fails to reveal is that if you averaged the amount of financial investment in elite sports performance by the government across each head of population, then it should be no surprise that Great Britain out-performed China and that India barely registered at all at the Olympics. GB spends heavily on sports, ever since our humiliation in the 1990s when we secured a solitary single gold and then Prime Minister John Major committed to a programme of investment, buttressed by National Lottery money, to ensure the country never felt so humiliated again. In 2012 of course we had the extra expense of staging the Olympics and Paralympics in London, whose costs went way over budget because incompetent politicians had missed basic factors like including Value Added Tax and which as a Londoner, I knew we were going to have to end up paying the shortfall out of our pockets. And yes, the shebang was a great success and showed London off to its best side, but still not worth the money in my opinion. If you wanted any evidence, look no further than the white elephant of the Olympic Stadium itself, not offering any imagined heritage to future generations of Olympic sportsmen and women, but sold off for a song on a peppercorn to a professional Premiership football club earning multi-millions in its own right as a member of the most successful sporting franchise outside of the USA and incidentally to a club owned by two ex-pornographers.
As our gold medal success has been plastered across the front page of all our newspapers and dominated television news programmes even though the BBC has been broadcasting the events wall to wall so there is no escaping it as news anyway, the social commentators tell us it isn't just about patriotism. They claim that after the bruising Brexit campaign that has split the country right down the middle, the Olympic success has healed and united the nation and brought us all back together as one. If that was one of the purposes of all that investment, how is it any different to when Iron Curtain countries used to invest heavily in their sport to flim-flam their citizens who were going without and for propaganda purposes? The only difference I can see is that our government aren't pumping our hammer-throwers full of growth hormone and our gymnasts full of growth-retardant hormone as a matter of course.
So to me all this rapture over success misses the point. While there are never any guarantees in the outcome of sporting contests, we pretty much bought our success. While our defeated opponents in the cycling Velodrome carp and whine about it being an unfair playing field in track cycling because of the investment, the technological advantages and the sheer professionalism of GB cycling, they do have a point. Golf and tennis are in the Olympics, possibly the two most well-paid individual sports and a million miles away from the amateur Olympian spirit of yore. Yes the world has moved on, but in the GB hockey team, some of the players are going to return to play professional hockey with their club teams in Holland and Germany, while another is going back to her accountancy studies, so while some of the amateur spirit lives on, it really is professionalism that equates to success. And while we're talking about GB hockey success, I have never seen a British team so white and blonde haired as that. That suggests to me a problem of access and a lack of diversity and critically a lack of heritage as was promised by us hosting the 2012 Games. Maybe their ultimate success this time round will open up their sport to all comers, but I doubt it.
And just to put the tin lid on money's centrality to the modern day Olympics, Brazil was the first country in Latin America to host the event, yet it is so financially straitened, it is now saying that it can't afford to run a full Paralympic Games. Stadiums were half-empty because its citizens couldn't afford the prices and yes while they may have no tradition in Greco-Roman Wrestling, neither does Britain but our greater income levels meant we could still afford to pack out the event in London 2012.
Today as our newspapers go wild with their wraparound photo spreads of our triumphant heroes, on those same front pages they carry stories of our National health Service having to cut back on operations it can offer in the winter through its perennial funding crisis and there is a story about schoolgirls' stress levels being through the roof, so not much evidence there of any heritage from sporting success.
August 16, 2016
Accentuate The Positive - Flash Fiction
He received a smack across his chops. A sonorous slap acutely stinging his kisser. Imprinting a scarlet macula upon his crimson labia. Her immaculate acrimony no longer shellacked behind a pacific patina of civility. An accumulated tumulus of bruisable wisecracks, now she had come back with an unacceptable contusion of her own. His lack of accolades for her literary accomplishments had snapped her self-accord. Acted as an accelerant to her lashing out. Ransacking her own pitch-black love sump, she offered him an ice-pack to which he circumspectly acceded. The hack’s grammatical prose may not have been accurate, but her uppercut was.
August 7, 2016
Jive Mind - Flash Fiction
At last the pattern analysis had come back from those stoners operating the lighting rig. Under the guise of a strobelight, his little gizmo had captured the brainwaves of the orgiastic on the dancefloor below at their peak euphoria levels. Now the bastard offspring of Paul Morley and Trevor Horn could set to work on creating the irresistible song for the whole Western world to shake its booty to. He would have the whole hemisphere marching to his beat. He fed their results into a copy of Herdware TM (pirated from the military) to filter outliers. He uploaded the brain signals and set the sampler to record their firings and beefed up their amplification. Then he set in motion the software to key for the brain’s receptor chemical bindings. When he had a fistful of these, he fed them into Protean Tools’ tempo translator to turn them into programmed beats and mixed them into the brain firing soundscape. Twin pronged Physical and chemical sonic assault, there could be no immunity against that. He did a sub-bass check, after the last incident when an unforeseen resonance had caused the reverberation of people’s skeletons until they shattered and felled them in droves across dancefloors. Fortunately on that occasion he had released it from the underground so that it could not be tracked back to him. He was tempted to dub a ‘kerching’ FX into the final grooves but desisted. All he needed was a title now. He settled on “Jive Mind”.
August 3, 2016
Dear Teen Me
A few years ago I was invited by the fabulous "Dear Teen Me" website to pen a letter from my contemporary self, addressing the teenage me. Sadly the website no longer functions, but I'm reproducing that letter I Wrote for the site.
Dear Marc from author Marc Nash
Seeing as like the primitive tribesman you have a dislike of having your soul captured by a camera, tracking this shot down from your Gap year back in 1982 was something of a coup. Fortunately even though you have no pictures of your youth, your mother clung on to the few photographic morsels you granted her. This is you sat at the top of a cathedral either in Paris or Italy in the days you used to travel. And yes you are wearing a music T-Shirt, that of Joy Division a band who were to play a very important part in your life, not least because one of your first plays was about them and the fact that their lead singer committed suicide. But here at age eighteen, the sun is shining, you’re underneath the sky on top of the world where anything is possible ... and you’re wearing summery black!
*
1977 aged thirteen and the year of family parties sitting in marquees in back gardens talking about punk rock. Well Marc, you never did master the paltry four strings of a bass guitar and fulfill your dream of being in a band, but you did make it into the arts. You didn’t write any lyrics, but you did still compose words in the form of stage plays and novels. Even though you have still never read a classic novel other than the handful you studied at school. At the age of fourteen, it was a recommendation from one of your cool older cousins to listen to The Cure’s song “Killing An Arab” and then read Albert Camus’ novel “The Outsider” that kindled your love of modern novels, while still burning the fires for music from which you have never looked back.
Teenage years were when you finally turned your head away from the childish world centred around the home and started to think about the wider world. You discovered politics through a concern with the nuclear arms race and mutually assured destruction. That fusion of the political and the fear of death has never left you and permeates all your writing as you now approach the age of 50. Cleaning the blood up off the floor of a parent after a serious suicide attempt in your last year of teenagehood probably saw to that. Though a terrifying and brutal initiation into other people’s misery, it has set you up for not shying away from tackling dark subjects in your writing and probing the extremes of human behaviour. When you wrote about suicide bombers in “Not In My Name”, you could balance the ‘bomber’ aspect with the ‘suicide’ part like few others possibly could.
There were wars a plenty around the world while you were a teenager. On your doorstep there were the charmingly euphemistically named “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland. There was the ongoing conflict in the Middle East which was of grave concern to your family, but which you couldn’t engage with as you held an opposite point of view from them. In your Gap year Britain sailed an army halfway around the world to bafflingly fight over some barely inhabited islands against the Argentinians. That was when you realised you had a love-hate relationship with your own country, another theme you would go on to write about extensively, particularly in your debut novel “A,B&E”. Interestingly you chose to write that from the point of view of exile from Britain, even though after extensive Gap year travel as a teenager, you resolutely decided to stay in London and set your face against further travel. These days you don’t have holidays, you only write in your time off. You travel extensively in your imagination.
Yet it was a another conflict about which little was reported because journalists couldn’t gain access to the closed country, which really caught your attention, perhaps because you could not confront these other wars which were supposed to prompt your allegiances more directly. And that was the rule of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and the subsequent horrors of the Killing Fields and the disastrous famine. That warzone resonated more than any other with you, but you could never find the words to express such a scale of depravity and horror. It would take you 30 years until you were finally able to write a story about it. Before then you had written on Northern Ireland and the Middle East, intricate, complex works making no judgements of the various parties involved. But your story on Cambodia pulled no punches in delivering its searing condemnation of the cult of death.
And where did this passion for writing and particular the novel develop from? Well you got into Britain’s supposed best university to further you hunger for knowledge, But your were appalled by the closed and prejudiced minds of many of your fellow students. You were also disillusioned with your History course as you felt the teachers were not really interested in teaching, only in pursuing their own research. You were on the point of walking out, when a new student theatre stage space was opened and you decided to try your hand at writing stage plays. Even then with no experience, instinctively and temperamentally you opted for some radical staging and the whole play was performed behind a wire mesh fence separating the cast from the audience. And because you had difficulty casting it, you decided to back up your words by stepping in and performing yourself. You even learned to smoke for the part and scaled the fence to confront the audience at the play’s ending. From that short 20 minute piece, you then went up to the Edinburgh fringe Festival with two new plays, which in retrospect was complete madness, but you had no fear. You were hooked by creative writing back and you also completed your degree, as playwriting kept you in college.
You knew an office job wasn’t for you, so playwriting seemed like a good way to avoid that, which of course it wasn’t as there was no money to be made. After four years you secured a job in an independent record store to pay the bills, but the number work there left the word side of your brain free to continue writing in the evenings. You kept pushing the boundaries in what you did, moving away from dialogue and more towards movement and dance. The dancers looked at you like you were mad, what need did they have of the written and spoken word? It was only cut short when your beloved twin boys arrived and you became the main carer for them. No more hanging out networking in theatre bars for you, with bottle feeds and dirty diapers to see to at the double.
So you turned to writing novels through the night, interrupted only by feeds and changes. The books you liked to read weren’t really out there in the market, so you set out to write them. Stories that pushed the narrative form into new places, books of ideas and a rigorous pursuit and examination of language. And once self-published, you started giving live readings, the closest to the dream of performing live in a band. And you put on a show live. You inhabited the characters, you dialogued with the audience through the way you staged your readings.
So it wasn’t quite how you imagined it might turn out, but looking back a lot of the seeds were in place in the teen you. Here’s to our salute of the old age us, pen in arthritic hand still writing and challenging the status quo.
Love and respect
marc x
Dear Marc from author Marc Nash
Seeing as like the primitive tribesman you have a dislike of having your soul captured by a camera, tracking this shot down from your Gap year back in 1982 was something of a coup. Fortunately even though you have no pictures of your youth, your mother clung on to the few photographic morsels you granted her. This is you sat at the top of a cathedral either in Paris or Italy in the days you used to travel. And yes you are wearing a music T-Shirt, that of Joy Division a band who were to play a very important part in your life, not least because one of your first plays was about them and the fact that their lead singer committed suicide. But here at age eighteen, the sun is shining, you’re underneath the sky on top of the world where anything is possible ... and you’re wearing summery black!
*
1977 aged thirteen and the year of family parties sitting in marquees in back gardens talking about punk rock. Well Marc, you never did master the paltry four strings of a bass guitar and fulfill your dream of being in a band, but you did make it into the arts. You didn’t write any lyrics, but you did still compose words in the form of stage plays and novels. Even though you have still never read a classic novel other than the handful you studied at school. At the age of fourteen, it was a recommendation from one of your cool older cousins to listen to The Cure’s song “Killing An Arab” and then read Albert Camus’ novel “The Outsider” that kindled your love of modern novels, while still burning the fires for music from which you have never looked back.
Teenage years were when you finally turned your head away from the childish world centred around the home and started to think about the wider world. You discovered politics through a concern with the nuclear arms race and mutually assured destruction. That fusion of the political and the fear of death has never left you and permeates all your writing as you now approach the age of 50. Cleaning the blood up off the floor of a parent after a serious suicide attempt in your last year of teenagehood probably saw to that. Though a terrifying and brutal initiation into other people’s misery, it has set you up for not shying away from tackling dark subjects in your writing and probing the extremes of human behaviour. When you wrote about suicide bombers in “Not In My Name”, you could balance the ‘bomber’ aspect with the ‘suicide’ part like few others possibly could.
There were wars a plenty around the world while you were a teenager. On your doorstep there were the charmingly euphemistically named “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland. There was the ongoing conflict in the Middle East which was of grave concern to your family, but which you couldn’t engage with as you held an opposite point of view from them. In your Gap year Britain sailed an army halfway around the world to bafflingly fight over some barely inhabited islands against the Argentinians. That was when you realised you had a love-hate relationship with your own country, another theme you would go on to write about extensively, particularly in your debut novel “A,B&E”. Interestingly you chose to write that from the point of view of exile from Britain, even though after extensive Gap year travel as a teenager, you resolutely decided to stay in London and set your face against further travel. These days you don’t have holidays, you only write in your time off. You travel extensively in your imagination.
Yet it was a another conflict about which little was reported because journalists couldn’t gain access to the closed country, which really caught your attention, perhaps because you could not confront these other wars which were supposed to prompt your allegiances more directly. And that was the rule of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and the subsequent horrors of the Killing Fields and the disastrous famine. That warzone resonated more than any other with you, but you could never find the words to express such a scale of depravity and horror. It would take you 30 years until you were finally able to write a story about it. Before then you had written on Northern Ireland and the Middle East, intricate, complex works making no judgements of the various parties involved. But your story on Cambodia pulled no punches in delivering its searing condemnation of the cult of death.
And where did this passion for writing and particular the novel develop from? Well you got into Britain’s supposed best university to further you hunger for knowledge, But your were appalled by the closed and prejudiced minds of many of your fellow students. You were also disillusioned with your History course as you felt the teachers were not really interested in teaching, only in pursuing their own research. You were on the point of walking out, when a new student theatre stage space was opened and you decided to try your hand at writing stage plays. Even then with no experience, instinctively and temperamentally you opted for some radical staging and the whole play was performed behind a wire mesh fence separating the cast from the audience. And because you had difficulty casting it, you decided to back up your words by stepping in and performing yourself. You even learned to smoke for the part and scaled the fence to confront the audience at the play’s ending. From that short 20 minute piece, you then went up to the Edinburgh fringe Festival with two new plays, which in retrospect was complete madness, but you had no fear. You were hooked by creative writing back and you also completed your degree, as playwriting kept you in college.
You knew an office job wasn’t for you, so playwriting seemed like a good way to avoid that, which of course it wasn’t as there was no money to be made. After four years you secured a job in an independent record store to pay the bills, but the number work there left the word side of your brain free to continue writing in the evenings. You kept pushing the boundaries in what you did, moving away from dialogue and more towards movement and dance. The dancers looked at you like you were mad, what need did they have of the written and spoken word? It was only cut short when your beloved twin boys arrived and you became the main carer for them. No more hanging out networking in theatre bars for you, with bottle feeds and dirty diapers to see to at the double.
So you turned to writing novels through the night, interrupted only by feeds and changes. The books you liked to read weren’t really out there in the market, so you set out to write them. Stories that pushed the narrative form into new places, books of ideas and a rigorous pursuit and examination of language. And once self-published, you started giving live readings, the closest to the dream of performing live in a band. And you put on a show live. You inhabited the characters, you dialogued with the audience through the way you staged your readings.
So it wasn’t quite how you imagined it might turn out, but looking back a lot of the seeds were in place in the teen you. Here’s to our salute of the old age us, pen in arthritic hand still writing and challenging the status quo.
Love and respect
marc x
July 25, 2016
Signed, Sealed And Delivered - Flash Fiction
He’d been prompted to watch out for a sign. But where? Whither the co-ordinates? Was he supposed to roam outside or to remain embosomed in his room? The exegesis hadn’t been clear. Currently he was stationed in his room, scrutinising the everyday for deviation from the familiar. Was the sign to be something inherently meaningful, or something that only he could ascribe substance to? Would it be a material object, or something based in language. Be it script or runic? Did that perhaps make it more of a symbol than a sign?
He had never noticed that stain on the carpet before, but he couldn’t accept that ancient spilled coffee or the gravy that broiled his pre-cooked dinners, suddenly became presentimental. An accidental Rorschach pattern somehow transmuted into a figuration of his future, no he doubted that was the likely source. Carelessly slopped aliment was no waters of the Nile turning into blood and somewhat lacked the wondrousness of a burning bush.
He glanced up to the wall and the framed print suspended there. It had come with the rental, left by a previous tenant, or more likely to have been furnished by the landlord. An abstract piece of nothing, though right now its contours were welling and pulsing with significance. He had never previously paid it much mind. Of course the swirls themselves were not in motion, but he wondered if the picture itself had perhaps moved ever so slightly off its habitual axis. He approached it and gingerly rubbed his index finger along one plane of the frame. He examined the dust that coated the pad, like a police fingerprint record, a glyph in itself, but decided this was the wrong type of indicia. After all fingerprints themselves never changed over the course of one’s life. He was on the wrong track there, a hallmark was a permanent symbol not a momentously exigent one. He lifted the frame from its hook, examined the cork backing but found no message welted in there. He stared at the burnished rectangle patch of wall where the print had covered and preserved the paintwork. If it was a symbol it remained opaque to him. A blank TV screen with the set switched off.
Maybe that was it, the random permutation of TV programme thrown up at him when he first engaged its ignition. An advert for a product, a TV evangelist, the score of a soccer match or the stock exchange ticker tape scrolling a key coded set of numerals across the bottom of the screen, any one of those could hold the key. Hastily he replaced the picture's string over the hook and bounded over to spark the set into life. But a lame comedy series was what first met his eyes, not even one with a star who had subsequently been prosecuted for crimes enacted on the back of his celebrity. His digits played over the remote control, quickly rifling through the channels’ formulaic liturgical burnt offerings. He slitted his eyes narrower trying to detect any subliminals from the quick change from channel to channel but nothing was delivered up to him for revelation.
A fluttering wrenched his attention upward to the ceiling. A moth was battering at his Chinese lantern shade in its determination to burrow through the red hot light source within. The lantern barely rippled under its bantamweight thrust, but he did notice the shadow of both projected large on the ceiling. Blown up several times their actual size. And yet he himself cast no shadow in the room. Was that the sign? His own lack of a shadow, yet here was an insect larva feasibly from Satan’s own realm cast large in the artificial glow from hell’s fires? He tilted the paper shade to admit access for the moth to the bulb which it obligingly did so and perished with a pleasing sizzle against the scorching glass. He watched its Icarian descent to the floor whereupon it landed right in the middle of the carpet stain, just at the moment when the TV announced a newsflash and the picture on the wall slithered drunkenly to the diagonal on its axis. A multitude of signs, but which one was the true indicator?
He had never noticed that stain on the carpet before, but he couldn’t accept that ancient spilled coffee or the gravy that broiled his pre-cooked dinners, suddenly became presentimental. An accidental Rorschach pattern somehow transmuted into a figuration of his future, no he doubted that was the likely source. Carelessly slopped aliment was no waters of the Nile turning into blood and somewhat lacked the wondrousness of a burning bush.
He glanced up to the wall and the framed print suspended there. It had come with the rental, left by a previous tenant, or more likely to have been furnished by the landlord. An abstract piece of nothing, though right now its contours were welling and pulsing with significance. He had never previously paid it much mind. Of course the swirls themselves were not in motion, but he wondered if the picture itself had perhaps moved ever so slightly off its habitual axis. He approached it and gingerly rubbed his index finger along one plane of the frame. He examined the dust that coated the pad, like a police fingerprint record, a glyph in itself, but decided this was the wrong type of indicia. After all fingerprints themselves never changed over the course of one’s life. He was on the wrong track there, a hallmark was a permanent symbol not a momentously exigent one. He lifted the frame from its hook, examined the cork backing but found no message welted in there. He stared at the burnished rectangle patch of wall where the print had covered and preserved the paintwork. If it was a symbol it remained opaque to him. A blank TV screen with the set switched off.
Maybe that was it, the random permutation of TV programme thrown up at him when he first engaged its ignition. An advert for a product, a TV evangelist, the score of a soccer match or the stock exchange ticker tape scrolling a key coded set of numerals across the bottom of the screen, any one of those could hold the key. Hastily he replaced the picture's string over the hook and bounded over to spark the set into life. But a lame comedy series was what first met his eyes, not even one with a star who had subsequently been prosecuted for crimes enacted on the back of his celebrity. His digits played over the remote control, quickly rifling through the channels’ formulaic liturgical burnt offerings. He slitted his eyes narrower trying to detect any subliminals from the quick change from channel to channel but nothing was delivered up to him for revelation.
A fluttering wrenched his attention upward to the ceiling. A moth was battering at his Chinese lantern shade in its determination to burrow through the red hot light source within. The lantern barely rippled under its bantamweight thrust, but he did notice the shadow of both projected large on the ceiling. Blown up several times their actual size. And yet he himself cast no shadow in the room. Was that the sign? His own lack of a shadow, yet here was an insect larva feasibly from Satan’s own realm cast large in the artificial glow from hell’s fires? He tilted the paper shade to admit access for the moth to the bulb which it obligingly did so and perished with a pleasing sizzle against the scorching glass. He watched its Icarian descent to the floor whereupon it landed right in the middle of the carpet stain, just at the moment when the TV announced a newsflash and the picture on the wall slithered drunkenly to the diagonal on its axis. A multitude of signs, but which one was the true indicator?
July 21, 2016
The Architect's Labour Of Love - Friday Flash
The theodolite of his eye took in the topography of her body there on the flat plane of the bed. Her trefoil hair across the pillow, the arris of her arm bent at the elbow as her hand buttressed her head, the twin pale marble rotundas offsetting the tympanum of her navel. Yet for all her natural fluting, the architect decided that she was unworked bossage awaiting his moulded entablature. He calipered his fingers through her hair to carve the tresses into volutes. He cinched her negligé and converted her from hypaethral back into cleithral. He gently tugged her lids to render her eyes into lunettes. He clamped his compassed digits inside her mouth to make a mascaron of her face. As he did so her hand reflexively curled into a fist, bunching some of the bed sheet as she did so. He smoothly unclasped her fingers and distended them one by one to form a loggia giving on to the white linen beneath. He lay down beside her and measured her in toises. Sitting back up plumbline straight, he reckoned that the golden mean in her case was incommodious. He placed a cushion beneath her lower back to sculpt a ribbed vault. The quoins of her pelvic bones were perfectly pronounced to his mind. Then he levered up her legs at the knees to distyle as a portico the entrance beyond. He took out a razor and cleared a pediment above her basal aedicule. That chresmographion from which she would cede her oracle. He began teasing out her ball flower with the pads of his fingers until it was pilastered. In response to his touch she arched her whole body but the proportions were unsightly and he pronounced her gargoyle and gothic rather than of classical order and rusticated himself from the bed.
Trefoil
Tympanum
Bossage
Lunette
Mascarons
Loggia
Ribbed Vault
Quoins
Distyle (the columns)
Aedicule
Pilaster
Ball flower
July 18, 2016
Ghost Music
To mark the release of the new Ghostbusters movie I thought I'd compile a music video playlist of ghost songs. Now I am not one who believes in the paranormal or the supernatural, but funnily enough I do believe in the possible existence of what might be termed as ghosts; when a person dies in sudden, stressful circumstances, it is possible they leave a searing energy trace and that is what we pick up and regard as a ghostly presence. Having said that, I'm not that interested so as to go on a ghost hunt or anything like that. I'll just stick to my own ghost sonatas presented her. Enjoy!
1) "Ghost In My House" - R.Dean Taylor
I know nothing about R.Dean Taylor and only came to this song when the Fall covered it, but since I've got a Fall ghost song later I thought I'd check out the original. The ghost of a relationship, yeah that works for me.
2) "The Ghost Of Tom Joad" - Bruce Springsteen
Marc, I'm beginning to worry about you. All your life you've fulminated about Bruce Springsteen. Ever since you grew up in Wembley and came home past the stadium where Bruce was playing a week of concerts to 80,000 folk and you were appalled (and let's be honest sniggering too) at so many British souls wearing a 'Born in the USA' t-shirt. And yes you know Bruce meant the song ironically, not as a patriot rally call at all but a searing indictment of the American Dream, but still all those Brits in stars and stripes left a distaste that has stayed with you. But now Bruce makes his second appearance in one of these playlists. Are you mellowing with age? Has your music tastes changed. Has Britian formally become the 51st State of America (see Chilcot Report)...? No, I still hate him, but well, just, you know... Besides my kids did Steinbeck for their GCSE English Lit and I didn't object to that for being 'American'... Cognitive dissonance I guess.
3) Her Ghost In The Fog" - Cradle Of Filth
It also has to be said this is the first time Heavy Mentallists Cradle Of Filth have appeared in one of these playlists. This ghost theme seems to have got you spooked...
4) "The Ghost With A Hammer In His Hand" - Tools You Can Trust
Ah now that's better, one of my actual you know like favourites... 319 views, 2 comments, 1 of them mine, the other from the singer's son, what the hell is going on here? There is no justice.... Actually Tools You Can Trust were always an odd blend of industrial noise percussion and bass, with surf guitar as here. I liked them though. Sniff.
5) "Ghost On The Highway" - Gun Club
A lover is killed and the ghost wanders the highways and byways of the US. Great swamp rock blues from the Gun Club as is to be expected.
6) "Ghosts Of Ladbroke Grove" - Killing Joke
I have a soft spot for Ladbroke Grove having lived there for a few years and worked there for 15 years. The original Killing Joke song was nothing special, but this dub version is outstanding and has some of the heaviest dub bass you'll ever here. The sentiment is correct I think, in that the area was the run down part of the Royal Borough Of Kensington & Chelsea and lots of creative art and music emerged from it as it played host to a lot of squats which also doubled up for rehearsal and performance spaces as they were free. The Clash and Hawkwind both came from the area. Punk could legitimately be said to have been started there as punk and reggae influenced on another through being in close physical proximity. Dubstep, a uniquely London music genre also had a strong footing in this part of West London. But now the London property boom being what it is, there are no more squats and houses and flats probably go for a million pounds or so (forgive me I haven't checked the property papers, it's all too galling) and the area trades off its artistic past with very little new work being produced. Sad really.
7) "Ghost Town" - The Specials
Now this really does sound ethereal and ectoplasmic and yet it was absolutely rooted in the reality of 1980s post-riot Britain. Ghosts are about presence, something that just won't fade away and die but clings on for dear life, well death maybe. But a ghost town of course is the exact opposite of that, a total absence and this song captures the sensation so wonderfully.
8) "Spectre Vs Rector" - The Fall
As unlistenable as presumably a full-blown exorcism might sound. Actually the Fall have a brilliant song about ghostly sensations in old buildings, but as it's called "City Hobgoblins" I didn't think I could include it in a playlist devoted to ghosts. I don't want the paranormal genre fiction police on my back for such a crime...
9) "Ghost Ride" - Suicide
In what has been a dreadful few months for rock and roll in terms of deaths (has the relatively recent art form suddenly reached an age where its key players are of such an age that they do all die off?), this weekend we learned of another fatality. Alan Vega rest in peace. A singer and his compadre at a keyboard, flying right in the teeth of punk and new wave, these guys were truly pioneers.
10) "Ghosts" - The Jam
Paul Weller's lyrical prowess to the fore here. Still backing singers and a horn section, we fans knew it was the beginning of the end for this particular power trio.
11) "The Ghost In You" - Psychedelic Furs
I was never a great fan of the Furs, though I did like "Pretty In Pink", but then that did have more of edge than this saccharine number.
12) "Ghost on The Dancefloor" - Blink 182
I never understood why people regard Blink 182 as punk. They are rockers no less than Bruce Springsteen or US. They probably do Pete Townsend arm revolutions but as I'm not a fan I haven't any video evidence to back that up.
13) "Cherché La Ghost" - Ghostface Killah
When you're a rap singer and your name is Ghostface Killah, chances are at some point you'll be doing a song tooting your own horn and name-checking yourself. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you-
14) "Ghost of A Chance" - Rush
I used to quite like a couple of Rush's early albums, but then I discovered they were heavily influenced by the writings of Ayn Rand (there's even a track called "Anthem"). Then I didn't like them any more. Still don't. But I see from videos like this that they certainly didn't get any better musically or lyrically even when they abandoned their Rand fixation.
15) "Little Ghost" - "White Stripes / "Casper The Friendly Ghost" - Daniel Johnston
Prefer Daniel Johnston's for twee mania music but there you go. Daniel Johnston however isn't playing at it
1) "Ghost In My House" - R.Dean Taylor
I know nothing about R.Dean Taylor and only came to this song when the Fall covered it, but since I've got a Fall ghost song later I thought I'd check out the original. The ghost of a relationship, yeah that works for me.
2) "The Ghost Of Tom Joad" - Bruce Springsteen
Marc, I'm beginning to worry about you. All your life you've fulminated about Bruce Springsteen. Ever since you grew up in Wembley and came home past the stadium where Bruce was playing a week of concerts to 80,000 folk and you were appalled (and let's be honest sniggering too) at so many British souls wearing a 'Born in the USA' t-shirt. And yes you know Bruce meant the song ironically, not as a patriot rally call at all but a searing indictment of the American Dream, but still all those Brits in stars and stripes left a distaste that has stayed with you. But now Bruce makes his second appearance in one of these playlists. Are you mellowing with age? Has your music tastes changed. Has Britian formally become the 51st State of America (see Chilcot Report)...? No, I still hate him, but well, just, you know... Besides my kids did Steinbeck for their GCSE English Lit and I didn't object to that for being 'American'... Cognitive dissonance I guess.
3) Her Ghost In The Fog" - Cradle Of Filth
It also has to be said this is the first time Heavy Mentallists Cradle Of Filth have appeared in one of these playlists. This ghost theme seems to have got you spooked...
4) "The Ghost With A Hammer In His Hand" - Tools You Can Trust
Ah now that's better, one of my actual you know like favourites... 319 views, 2 comments, 1 of them mine, the other from the singer's son, what the hell is going on here? There is no justice.... Actually Tools You Can Trust were always an odd blend of industrial noise percussion and bass, with surf guitar as here. I liked them though. Sniff.
5) "Ghost On The Highway" - Gun Club
A lover is killed and the ghost wanders the highways and byways of the US. Great swamp rock blues from the Gun Club as is to be expected.
6) "Ghosts Of Ladbroke Grove" - Killing Joke
I have a soft spot for Ladbroke Grove having lived there for a few years and worked there for 15 years. The original Killing Joke song was nothing special, but this dub version is outstanding and has some of the heaviest dub bass you'll ever here. The sentiment is correct I think, in that the area was the run down part of the Royal Borough Of Kensington & Chelsea and lots of creative art and music emerged from it as it played host to a lot of squats which also doubled up for rehearsal and performance spaces as they were free. The Clash and Hawkwind both came from the area. Punk could legitimately be said to have been started there as punk and reggae influenced on another through being in close physical proximity. Dubstep, a uniquely London music genre also had a strong footing in this part of West London. But now the London property boom being what it is, there are no more squats and houses and flats probably go for a million pounds or so (forgive me I haven't checked the property papers, it's all too galling) and the area trades off its artistic past with very little new work being produced. Sad really.
7) "Ghost Town" - The Specials
Now this really does sound ethereal and ectoplasmic and yet it was absolutely rooted in the reality of 1980s post-riot Britain. Ghosts are about presence, something that just won't fade away and die but clings on for dear life, well death maybe. But a ghost town of course is the exact opposite of that, a total absence and this song captures the sensation so wonderfully.
8) "Spectre Vs Rector" - The Fall
As unlistenable as presumably a full-blown exorcism might sound. Actually the Fall have a brilliant song about ghostly sensations in old buildings, but as it's called "City Hobgoblins" I didn't think I could include it in a playlist devoted to ghosts. I don't want the paranormal genre fiction police on my back for such a crime...
9) "Ghost Ride" - Suicide
In what has been a dreadful few months for rock and roll in terms of deaths (has the relatively recent art form suddenly reached an age where its key players are of such an age that they do all die off?), this weekend we learned of another fatality. Alan Vega rest in peace. A singer and his compadre at a keyboard, flying right in the teeth of punk and new wave, these guys were truly pioneers.
10) "Ghosts" - The Jam
Paul Weller's lyrical prowess to the fore here. Still backing singers and a horn section, we fans knew it was the beginning of the end for this particular power trio.
11) "The Ghost In You" - Psychedelic Furs
I was never a great fan of the Furs, though I did like "Pretty In Pink", but then that did have more of edge than this saccharine number.
12) "Ghost on The Dancefloor" - Blink 182
I never understood why people regard Blink 182 as punk. They are rockers no less than Bruce Springsteen or US. They probably do Pete Townsend arm revolutions but as I'm not a fan I haven't any video evidence to back that up.
13) "Cherché La Ghost" - Ghostface Killah
When you're a rap singer and your name is Ghostface Killah, chances are at some point you'll be doing a song tooting your own horn and name-checking yourself. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you-
14) "Ghost of A Chance" - Rush
I used to quite like a couple of Rush's early albums, but then I discovered they were heavily influenced by the writings of Ayn Rand (there's even a track called "Anthem"). Then I didn't like them any more. Still don't. But I see from videos like this that they certainly didn't get any better musically or lyrically even when they abandoned their Rand fixation.
15) "Little Ghost" - "White Stripes / "Casper The Friendly Ghost" - Daniel Johnston
Prefer Daniel Johnston's for twee mania music but there you go. Daniel Johnston however isn't playing at it
July 10, 2016
The River of Time
My rage burned outMy tears dried upMy hope subsidedMy despair played outMy enthusiasm frittered awayMy joy recededMy anxiety run throughMy forgiveness depletedMy tolerance erodedMy judgement dissipatedMy weariness exhaustedMy anticipation attentuatedMy passion desiccatedMy bitterness bluntedMy indifference evanescedMy hatred ebbedMy endurance decomposedMy disgust petered away My trust atrophiedMy surprise wanedMy shame worn out
My love kissed goodbye
My love kissed goodbye
July 7, 2016
Unholy Trinities - Friday Flash
him, herNina Pinta Santa Mariamirror signal manoeuvrejacket waistcoat trouserschest waist hipsguitar bass drumsthesis antithesis synthesisfish chips gravyfish chips mushy-peastick tack toeinch foot yardrock paper scissorsClotho Lachesis Atroposlarva pupa imagofather mother childfrankincense gold myrrhfaith hope charityDNA amino-acid proteinprotein vitamin carbohydratecereal toast eggsDoric Ionic Corinthian solid liquid gasknife fork spoonmorning noon nightliberty equality fraternity malleus incus stapesSatan, Beelzebub Molochtens hundreds thousandsthousands hundreds tensHomo Erectus Home Habilis Home Sapiensid ego superegobacon lettuce tomatoCharlotte Emily AnneEastern Central PacificRachkovsky Dzerzhinsky Beria husband wife mistressOkhrana, NKVD, KGBpounds shillings pencerobbery assault batterybirth marriage deathAbraham Isaac Jacobarrest trial sentence
July 6, 2016
Dance This Mess Around - Music playlist of songs with 'dance' in the title
Music is primarily about dancing right? The rhythms get us swaying our hips, nodding our heads, throwing some shapes. So here's a playlist of songs devoted to the concept of dance.
1) Pere Ubu - "The Modern Dance"
David Behemoth Thomas is an odd cove isn't he? As judged by his introduction to the live version here in the video. Still P.U. made some highly danceable if vaguely unsettling music.
2) Toyah - "Danced"
Toyah Wilcox, actress, singer, or with the right contacts both simultaneously. She landed a deuteragonist role in a TV detective series, playing a singer in a band, so got to eprform two of her songs in the show as part of the plot, including this catchy number.
3) B52s - "Dance This Mess Around"
If there was ever a dance party band it was the B52s. But there were occasions such as on this song & "Give Me Back My Man" when Cindy Wilson's vocals hinted at a greater despair behind the fun.
4) Killing Joke - "Wardance"
This is a great song but there are no decent versions of them doing it live, which suggests how much of the song was enhanced by the studio production. None of the energy and menace were ever quite there live.
5) Mos Def - "Pretty Dancer"
Seems appropriate as Mos wrote this song as a tribute to Muhammad Ali.
6) David Bowie - "John I'm Only Dancing"
Another superstar who we've just lost recently. David Bowie RIP
7) Sly & The Family Stone - "Dance To The Music"
Is there any song that screams more for you to just get up & dance to the music? I'm not sure there is. You can't have any troubles when this comes on the loudspeakers.
8) Arctic Monkeys "I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor"
Weren't the Arctic Monkeys a thing a few years ago? I never believed the hype, but then I was more likely to heed the words of Public Enemy...
9) John Spencer Blues Explosion - "Lap Dance"
The clue's in the band name, a sort of messed up acid blues-rock, with bass on full distortion, love it!
10) Prince - "Sexy Dancer"
I'm going to have to stop doing these charts as one's musical heroes are popping their clogs at an alarming rate. I guess it's a reflection of my age, growing up and being exposed first to music in the 1970s, but Prince really did go far too early.
11) Abba - "Dancing Queen"
I was never an Abba fan, always seeing them as the immovable obstacle to more interesting bands getting to the top of the pop charts. But now in my dotage I hope I have become a bit more gracious and even though their music still brings me out in hives, I can at least acknowledge their significance by conferring them a place in one of my playlists. Just don't expect me to dance along to it that's all.
12) The Skids - "Scared To Dance"
The Skids were one of those bands whose individual parts amounted to more than the total. Fabulous guitarist, aesthetically pleasing lead singer and yet none of their songs were ever quite remarkable enough to my ear.
13) Ramones - "Blitzkrieg Bop"
Sad how classic pop/rock now gets recycled as music for adverts. This song now promotes a delivery system to rival UPS.
14) The Sweet - "Blitzkrieg Bop"
I have no idea how this song stuck in my psyche all these years for me to dredge up from my memory to end up in this chart. When I was pre-teen, this was the music that was around everywhere in daily life. Before ghetto blasters, walkmans and I-Pods, people used to listen to their transistor radios and so day and night this kind of stuff assaulted our earholes. Now you know just why punk rock had to emerge.
14) Martha And The Vandellas - "Dancing In the Street"
Phew, thank goodness for this. Restores one's faith in music, which is kind of Martha's point too
15) Genesis - "I Can't Dance"
Correct, you can't. When I was in the last years of my schooling, I travelled to school with a guy whose sister was being pursued by Phil Collins who was a total lech. See pop pickers, if you didn't make these people famous, they wouldn't get ideas above their true station.
16) Beenie Man - "Dancehall Queen"
Not to be confused with the similar sounding titled Abba song "Dancing Queen". definitely not to be confused musically... Horrible song, worse video
17) House Of Pain - "Jump Around"
Maybe not strictly a 'dance' song, but then it kind of is. Not Riverdance admittedly...
18) Leighton Buzzards - "Saturday Night Under The Plastic Palm Trees"
This was actually my tenderfoot experience on the dance floors of youth clubs
1) Pere Ubu - "The Modern Dance"
David Behemoth Thomas is an odd cove isn't he? As judged by his introduction to the live version here in the video. Still P.U. made some highly danceable if vaguely unsettling music.
2) Toyah - "Danced"
Toyah Wilcox, actress, singer, or with the right contacts both simultaneously. She landed a deuteragonist role in a TV detective series, playing a singer in a band, so got to eprform two of her songs in the show as part of the plot, including this catchy number.
3) B52s - "Dance This Mess Around"
If there was ever a dance party band it was the B52s. But there were occasions such as on this song & "Give Me Back My Man" when Cindy Wilson's vocals hinted at a greater despair behind the fun.
4) Killing Joke - "Wardance"
This is a great song but there are no decent versions of them doing it live, which suggests how much of the song was enhanced by the studio production. None of the energy and menace were ever quite there live.
5) Mos Def - "Pretty Dancer"
Seems appropriate as Mos wrote this song as a tribute to Muhammad Ali.
6) David Bowie - "John I'm Only Dancing"
Another superstar who we've just lost recently. David Bowie RIP
7) Sly & The Family Stone - "Dance To The Music"
Is there any song that screams more for you to just get up & dance to the music? I'm not sure there is. You can't have any troubles when this comes on the loudspeakers.
8) Arctic Monkeys "I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor"
Weren't the Arctic Monkeys a thing a few years ago? I never believed the hype, but then I was more likely to heed the words of Public Enemy...
9) John Spencer Blues Explosion - "Lap Dance"
The clue's in the band name, a sort of messed up acid blues-rock, with bass on full distortion, love it!
10) Prince - "Sexy Dancer"
I'm going to have to stop doing these charts as one's musical heroes are popping their clogs at an alarming rate. I guess it's a reflection of my age, growing up and being exposed first to music in the 1970s, but Prince really did go far too early.
11) Abba - "Dancing Queen"
I was never an Abba fan, always seeing them as the immovable obstacle to more interesting bands getting to the top of the pop charts. But now in my dotage I hope I have become a bit more gracious and even though their music still brings me out in hives, I can at least acknowledge their significance by conferring them a place in one of my playlists. Just don't expect me to dance along to it that's all.
12) The Skids - "Scared To Dance"
The Skids were one of those bands whose individual parts amounted to more than the total. Fabulous guitarist, aesthetically pleasing lead singer and yet none of their songs were ever quite remarkable enough to my ear.
13) Ramones - "Blitzkrieg Bop"
Sad how classic pop/rock now gets recycled as music for adverts. This song now promotes a delivery system to rival UPS.
14) The Sweet - "Blitzkrieg Bop"
I have no idea how this song stuck in my psyche all these years for me to dredge up from my memory to end up in this chart. When I was pre-teen, this was the music that was around everywhere in daily life. Before ghetto blasters, walkmans and I-Pods, people used to listen to their transistor radios and so day and night this kind of stuff assaulted our earholes. Now you know just why punk rock had to emerge.
14) Martha And The Vandellas - "Dancing In the Street"
Phew, thank goodness for this. Restores one's faith in music, which is kind of Martha's point too
15) Genesis - "I Can't Dance"
Correct, you can't. When I was in the last years of my schooling, I travelled to school with a guy whose sister was being pursued by Phil Collins who was a total lech. See pop pickers, if you didn't make these people famous, they wouldn't get ideas above their true station.
16) Beenie Man - "Dancehall Queen"
Not to be confused with the similar sounding titled Abba song "Dancing Queen". definitely not to be confused musically... Horrible song, worse video
17) House Of Pain - "Jump Around"
Maybe not strictly a 'dance' song, but then it kind of is. Not Riverdance admittedly...
18) Leighton Buzzards - "Saturday Night Under The Plastic Palm Trees"
This was actually my tenderfoot experience on the dance floors of youth clubs
