| Author | Message | ||
     Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 9825 Registered: 05-2005 |
Shocking, but not surprising. Super-spreading Trump rallies led to more than 700 COVID-19 deaths, study estimates https://www.latimes.com/science/story/20 20-10-31/super-spreading-trump-rallies-l ed-to-more-than-700-covid-19-deaths-stud y | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4498 Registered: 03-2005 |
A timely piece in The Quietus about gentrification of the music scene. EDM, house music and techno are not my thing but the cooptation by concentrated wealth is just as relevant across the rest of the music world and the artistic world in general. https://thequietus.com/articles/28302-ho usekeeping-faces-review Hugh discovered an artist collaborative label in Buenos Aires called LAPTRA. We've been exploring their artists, most of whom are proving to be quite interesting. Their releases have run the gamut from the large audience appeal of El Mato a un Policia Motorizado to the obscure whimsy of 107 Faunos and the askew latin/indigenous folk of Shaman Herrera. El Mato a un Policia Motorizado: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jq57zqfq F6s 107 Faunos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwAgtbJD N54 Shaman Herrera: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NmAjUJL ibQ Melbourne has had a similarly collaborative scene for years, with people like painter/musician Mia Schoen and various members of Ocean Party popping up in all sorts of parallel projects. In fact, all by themselves the Ocean Party constituted a collaborative with five different songwriters including the drummer! In Spain, Pamplona seems to host yet another smaller but similarly interdependent scene. Necessity is the mother of invention and, of course, where there is no necessity there is no invention. Whenever the big money shows up, count on the invention leeching away. My bet is on these collaborative music scenes. People of very limited economic means will pool (and pull) together their resources and do that thing that's kept me going for all of my adult life: create something fresh. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 9837 Registered: 05-2005 |
Thanks for the link to that excellent article, Randy. It made my blood boil. I knew I was going to hate that group as soon as I saw their stupid, twatty beards. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 9842 Registered: 05-2005 |
Biden flips Arizona. Biden flips Wisconsin. Biden flips Michigan. These are some of the sweetest words I've ever read. If they are followed by Biden wins Nevada, that will brighten up a terrible year. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 9843 Registered: 05-2005 |
Once Again, the American People Have Misunderstood My Election Entrail-Reading Methodology https://slate.com/culture/2020/11/electi on-2020-haruspex-model-sheep-entrails-de formed-fetuses-biden-trump-florida-democ racy-in-action.html?sid=5388d195dd52b858 1b001459&utm_medium=email&utm_source=new sletter&utm_content=TheSlatest&utm_campa ign=traffic This is the best article I've read about the election so far. And the funniest thing I've read in ages. | ||
| Andrew Kerr Member Username: Andrew_k Post Number: 1383 Registered: 04-2005 |
I would strongly recommend "Mayflies" by Andrew O'Hagen. I read it over 4 days whilst on holiday. Not a cheery read maybe (I wept copiously), but a beautifully written account of friendship. And of a weekend in Manchester in 1986 seeing The Fall, New Order and The Smiths. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4501 Registered: 03-2005 |
"Really, it was impossible not to watch the president’s rosebud anus mouth puckering up and screaming at some rally, and not ask one another: “I wonder if the children would enjoy Rosemary’s Baby?" This isn't one of Marina Hyde's best columns but that passage gave me a laugh. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre e/2020/nov/06/president-donald-trump-tem per-tantrum-meltdown Andrew, a tender but perhaps bittersweet account of lifetime friendship that switches on the waterworks sounds like it might be a perfect balm after reading "The Street" by Ann Petry with its gut wrenching dissection of oppression sickness. And I still have her other novel, "The Narrows" to read. | ||
| Fred Tadrowski Member Username: Ftadrowski Post Number: 125 Registered: 03-2015 |
Andrew, I am in the middle of "Mayflies" and I am loving it so far. I was not born into a Scottish working class family, but I am only two years older than the author and grew up listening to The Fall, New Order and The Smiths and I am really identifying with the characters. | ||
| Andrew Kerr Member Username: Andrew_k Post Number: 1384 Registered: 04-2005 |
Fred, Ah great to hear ! I was worried that the general « Scottishness » might put off some readers. Even if I come from a decidedly middle-class background I grew up in a suburb of Glasgow and I met a lot of people from very different backgrounds during my years at uni in the city. I’m 7 years older than than O’Hagen but so much rang true in terms of friendships and relationships. I’ve read a couple of interviews with the author, in which he says that a very large part of the story is true. I just wonder why he felt the need to change the names of the central characters then ? | ||
| Fred Tadrowski Member Username: Ftadrowski Post Number: 126 Registered: 03-2015 |
My favorite passage was as follows: "He put a record on the turntable and the glow from the candle lit a pot of ferns on the windowsill. There was a whole lot of Artex on the ceiling, a few bottles of Pils on the table, and a girl rolling a joint on a Go-Betweens LP as somebody told their life story. Frank brought a camp stove to illuminate all the nonsense with its blue flame." | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 9853 Registered: 05-2005 |
Some good advice for Biden here https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre e/2020/nov/07/trump-defeat-election | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 9856 Registered: 05-2005 |
This is hilarious https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020 /nov/08/the-other-four-seasons-trump-tea m-holds-press-conference-at-suburban-gar den-centre | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4506 Registered: 03-2005 |
Stuart, I'm responding to your comment in the "Song of the Day" thread since this really belongs in the "Whatcha Reading" thread. I never got into thrillers. I don't have anything against them; I just never went there. My genre of choice has long been mystery novels. But as it happens I do have a vintage hardcover copy of "O.H.M.S.S." by Fleming that a friend sent me some years back because of its reference to Bond driving a Lancia. I confess I didn't read it. It's certainly a bite-size book that I can read as a breather in between one of the more demanding books I have lined up. I have found it valuable to oscillate between heavy and light reading. At the moment I am in the light read phase. I'm reading "Single to Morden" by Spike Evans. It's a humorous romp through the part of London served by the Northern Line, as a lovesick small town Yorkshire man tries to locate his former girlfriend who abandoned him and the small town for the capital, armed only with the information that she'd taken a flat convenient to some unknown stop on the Northern Line. I'm a quarter of the way into it right now. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1822 Registered: 10-2006 |
I've done a bit of lovesick rambling up and down the Jubilee Line, I might try that! The brio was going out of Fleming's pen by the time he got to OHMSS, but the first seven, up to Goldfinger, all get the mix just right. So what do you mean by mystery? Anything from Christie to Chandler? | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 9860 Registered: 05-2005 |
I spent two hours waiting for my brother at Morden one day in 1990, so I’m all too familiar with that station. I may have to get that book. I still haven’t forgiven my brother for leaving me stranded for two hours in those pre-mobile days. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 9861 Registered: 05-2005 |
Stuart, you can read it free here https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/53 4755 | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4507 Registered: 03-2005 |
Ok, I realize that I left myself open to misinterpretation up there. By "my genre of choice" I did NOT mean that I primarily read mystery novels. What I meant was that when I read what are considered "genre" books (Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Mystery, Thriller, Vampire) it will normally be mystery books that I choose. (Though I did go through a sci-fi phase about 20 years ago.) My primary fiction choice by a long shot is, I dunno, classic literary fiction? So the mysteries I've read are old standbys like A. Conan Doyle or Wilkie Collins or Erle Stanley Gardner, or randomly chosen newer authors like Boris Akunin or Barbara Neely. There's not a lot of system to what I choose. Pádraig, since the protagonist starts at the top of one of the branches of the line (Edgware), I'm guessing you'll read for a long time before you get to Morden. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 9862 Registered: 05-2005 |
I’m reading it and I’m liking it. Some laugh out loud moments. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1823 Registered: 10-2006 |
Fear not, Mr Adams, your past reading notes have made it clear that you do not pass the bulk of your time with your nose in a Mickey Spillane paperback. I just wondered what type, when you indulged, you liked - you know, classic, hard-boiled, Nordic, Gothic etc etc. I thought, living where you do, you might read Ross McDonald occasionally, whose nomadic Lew Archer drives ceaselessly around 50s and 60s LA. McDonald does not have Chandler's wit, but he does have his own dark, compassionate lyricism as well as a nifty way with a complex murder. If you've never read the Galton Case, it's worth a look! | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 9865 Registered: 05-2005 |
Pompeo makes baseless claims about ‘smooth transition to second Trump administration’ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020 /nov/10/mike-pompeo-second-trump-adminis tration-trump-biden The perfidy of these people knows no bounds. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1829 Registered: 10-2006 |
Information about the new lockdown Dom A work, described as "not a new album" but "a new disque". Entitled Vie etrange. I can't find a way to buy it yet in physical form | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1830 Registered: 10-2006 |
I found it at Fnac, I think. Pretty sure anyway. We'll see in a week or so. I liked the confirmation message thanking me for my "very good choice"! I suppose they do that for any old sh**, or do they have a quality algorithm imbedded? | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1831 Registered: 10-2006 |
From Le Soir: “This new album from the Nantes guy is as special as the year we just went through, imposing on us a "strange life" that is far from over. It includes all four tracks from the EP Le silence ou tout comme released in July, Marc Seberg's cover L’éclaircie as well as five completely unreleased tracks. But it is indeed an album, a great record even, by the cohesion of this minimalist sound - mostly electronic - which brings Dominique back to his beginnings. A stripping that we find even in his way of singing, a sweetness that at times reminds us of Christophe (the title track even speaks of “blue words”). Time is suspended here. From his place of confinement, Dominique looks at the sun, the lights, through the window and always brings us these dazzles, this luminosity, this depth and these atmospheres with endless horizons ...” | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4509 Registered: 03-2005 |
Marina Hyde's newest column, concerning Mr. Cummings' exit stage left. For a Californian this is a deep dive into British politics and cultural references but following the links is rewarded nearly every time. (Exceptions: I know who are the Isis Beatles and I know what Palo Alto is.). Perhaps obvious and old-hat to UK residents, but for this transatlantic reader surely the links for "Mirror's chicken suit" and "three baked potatoes" provide the most reward. Do not have any food or drink too close at hand. But if all of these are not already obvious you owe it to yourself to read Marina's column and click each of her links. Just make sure to delete the cookies from your internet history afterwards. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre e/2020/nov/13/dominic-cummings-barnard-c astle-brexit The New York Times really should poach her. They need new talent. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 9897 Registered: 05-2005 |
Trump and his supporters’ delusions just keep on keeping on https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020 /nov/14/donald-trump-motorcade-washingto n-march-protest-golf | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 9902 Registered: 05-2005 |
An interesting article about the perils of anthologising music from 100 years ago in the age of Black Lives Matter. https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-ar ts/music/story/2020-10-19/harry-smith-b- sides-anthology-racist-content | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 9905 Registered: 05-2005 |
Frank Bruni in the New York Times on the first daughter and her consort. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/16/opini on/jared-ivanka-trump.html?campaign_id=2 &emc=edit_th_20201117&instance_id=24175& nl=todaysheadlines®i_id=33795071&segm ent_id=44667&user_id=cbe1711fb1a9b330cf9 b74a05c3e7b1b | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 9916 Registered: 05-2005 |
Highlights Of Obama’s New Memoir https://www.theonion.com/highlights-of-o bama-s-new-memoir-1845706169 | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 9918 Registered: 05-2005 |
A fine review of the new box set of Joni Mitchell's first recordings. https://insidestory.org.au/sorrows-of-yo ung-joni/ | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 9920 Registered: 05-2005 |
Obama memoir: What he really thought of Putin and other leaders. This is very interesting. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada -55009571 | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 9925 Registered: 05-2005 |
Good piece on 40 years of Dischord https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/n ov/20/40-years-of-dischord-records | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 9927 Registered: 05-2005 |
UK vinyl sales heading for best year in three decades https://www.theguardian.com/business/202 0/nov/21/uk-vinyl-sales-gigs-covid-recor d | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 9932 Registered: 05-2005 |
The dangers of the unmuted mute button https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2020 /nov/21/lukas-gage-zoom-audition-apartme nt-director | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1836 Registered: 10-2006 |
It’s Sunday morning, the sun’s out, coffee smell smears the air, the radio music has been fantastic, and looking forward to a very strange subdued un-Italian Christmas, why not a go-to list of heartening personal comfort stuff to read? 1) The Code of the Woosters – PG Wodehouse A never existing idyll of gentle humour in perfectly moulded prose. Escapism at its purest. 2) The Three Musketeers – Alexander Dumas Riproaring, swashbuckling riot with moments of wit and lust. New American translation in beautiful chunky retro style volumes out now that tries to catch the original Dumas style, stifled apparently (but perhaps not that much) by original 19th century translations. 3) Early autumn – Robert B Parker Parker’s impossibly saintly muscle-stacked private eye rescues a sullen teen from his unbearable parents and puts him through a character-building training process. Plus gunplay and jokes. 4) William the Fourth – Richmal Crompton Another never existing idyll of between the wars English village childhood rumbustiousness with its marvellously mud-covered, Jumble-accompanied hero. 5) Flashman – George Macdonald Fraser Brilliant revisionist history as Dumas-fan Fraser’s cowardly hero accidently gets involved in just about every imperial massacre going throughout the Victorian era. Collapses under its own weight later in the series but the first few are wonderful. 6) Casino Royale – Ian Fleming Bond saunters casually into post-war culture, finds a name for his new martini, saturates ration-card Britain with high-end champagne and exploding Bulgarians. Snobbish, sadistic and the first of a magnificent gallery of physically off-kilter villains. 7) Collected poems – Norman MacCaig Mentioned MacCaig’s name casually once in a music comment on youtube and was happily surprised when some American bloke thanked me effusively for pointing him in the direction of this marvellous poet he’d never heard of before. Like walking around Scotland with the most intelligent, lyrical, witty chap you could ever hope to meet. A girlfriend of mine met him once and was charmed to the heavens over several glasses of whisky by the old rascal. 8) Kidnapped – Robert Louis Stevenson More gallivanting around Scotland and come to think of it rather similar to the Parker book mentioned above, as a young lad is tutored in the ways of the world by a swaggery lethal father figure. Like MacCaig, the next best thing to being there. One of the best final lines in literature. 9) City Boy – Herman Wouk Haven’t read this again for ages, but it’s about time I did. Still in print, I’m glad to see. Nick on Amazon gets the gist: “serio-comic story set in the late 20s, first in the Bronx and then in a summer camp for Jewish kids… wonderful adventures and heartrending moments galore but above all very, very funny, spot on with juvenile bullying, frayed friendships and fledgling romance. Herman Wouk started out as a gag-writer.” I didn’t know that. 10) My life and other animals – Gerald Durrell Another idyll, this time one that actually did exist, as the author grows up on between the wars Corfu with his very funny family, including soon to be famous brother, and surrounded by the messily robust Greek wildlife that will turn him into a renowned naturalist. Sadly vulgarised by the recent TV version, but still a sun-blessed comic masterpiece. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4512 Registered: 03-2005 |
Taking notes, Stuart. I've read the Wodehouse, Dumas (old translation of course) and Stevenson but none of the others. Aside from the breezy cod Wodehouse "Single to Morden" my recent reading has been pretty heavy. Right now I'm in the first tenth of the second volume of Robert Skidelsky's biography of John Maynard Keynes, so it'll be a while before I try one of these suggestions. I'm thinking perhaps the Durrell or Crompton. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1837 Registered: 10-2006 |
There's a huge component of nostalgia involved in the William books for me, of course, Randy, which used to be classic British kids' reading, who knows if they still are, although they were actually written originally for a women's magazine rather than for children themselves, I think. But I still enjoy rereading them. ("But that's because you're fairly infantile," my wife pointed out helpfully.) | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4513 Registered: 03-2005 |
Your disclaimer noted, Stuart. But I think a dive into some classic British kids' reading favored by a literary academic is a good idea anyway. I also plan to try a Ross McDonald or two because, yes, it can be fun to read something set in my own environment. Forty-two years spent in Los Angeles builds a deeper layer of memories than I recognize, as I discovered while watching "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood." | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 9937 Registered: 05-2005 |
Workbook by Walter Biggins and Daniel Couch. Part of the 33 1/3 series, about Bob Mould's solo debut. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1838 Registered: 10-2006 |
So what's the Keynes book like, Randy? I know very little about him except his adjective, his involvement with Bloomsbury and the post WWl peace conference. Do you need a good working knowledge of economics to enjoy the book, or does it enlighten you to the subject as you go along? I imagine him as a key 20th century figure, but was that at a theoretical academic level or did he have hands-on government experience too? | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 9945 Registered: 05-2005 |
I’m reading about a Ł10,000 music box set. Interesting article, though far too long. https://www.superdeluxeedition.com/news/ steven-wilson-to-release-an-ultra-deluxe -box-set-limited-to-one-unit/ | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4516 Registered: 03-2005 |
I can't really answer your main question yet, Stuart. I took an economics class from a crusty no-nonsense old-school Irish professor when I was a snotty undergrad. I'm hoping that will get me through the bits about economics. I've already read a volume of Keynes' biographical essays about other economists and I more or less survived that. But right now I am at the point where Keynes is becoming involved with his future wife Lydia Lopokova, and is slowly rehabilitating his relationship with the British government after having pretty much publicly declared Lloyd George a dishonest scoundrel, Woodrow Wilson an weak-willed boob and Clemenceau a self-interested short-sighter. Keynes started out a student of mathematics with a great interest in philosophy. It was the marriage of those two disciplines that led him to economics. In the early part of this volume I slogged my way through 30 pages or so of discussion about the philosophical basis for Keynes' theory of probability that went completely over my head. Either that or it was claptrap; I couldn't tell which. I never took a course in philosophy so I had no intellectual framework to draw upon. I consider this is a warning that the upcoming economic discussions will be a bit challenging for the lay reader. What I find most compelling about these books--I've already read the first volume--are the parallels between the early part of the 20th Century and the early part of this one. The pre-WWI world was a surprisingly cosmopolitan one, even for Americans. Keynes did have hands-on government experience, though I'm not up to the most important point where that happens. But at this point (1925) he'd already worked for the Treasury, had been involved in the negotiations for leading up to the Treaty of Versailles and was being called upon to assist the country--Lloyd George in fact!--in efforts to renegotiate the financial aspects of the Treaty which, of course, were proving every bit as destructive as Keynes had so publicly warned in 1919 (in "The Economic Consequences of the Peace"). Keynes played a major role in managing the U.K.'s inevitable transition from primary international financial center and the associated transition of the pound from international reserve currency. His academic career gradually became a sideline. Aside from the historic content I am intrigued by this man's dual nature, the cerebral and artistic strains, the Bloomsbury and the Whitehall. And Skidelsky satisfies the reader's prurient tendencies with anecdotes about Keynes' Bloomsbury friends' attempts to cope with his new romantic interest. These libertine bohemians could be rather inflexible and virtually always self-serving. | ||
| Burgers Member Username: Burgers Post Number: 171 Registered: 05-2005 |
Steven Wilson’s answer to the first question begins “So...”. At that point I wrote him off. Is this plague of people beginning answers with “so...” rife in Australia and the USA too? I’m not having a go at the other S Wilson who was at least asking a question. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 9965 Registered: 05-2005 |
The 108 page book that came with a compilation by the Dutch Tonefloat label. A great insight into a label that takes design as seriously as the music it releases. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 9979 Registered: 05-2005 |
Nick Cave accuses BBC of 'mutilating' Fairytale of New York https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/d ec/01/nick-cave-accuses-bbc-of-mutilatin g-fairytale-of-new-york I agree with him. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 9980 Registered: 05-2005 |
A powerful article by Suzanne Moore https://unherd.com/2020/11/why-i-had-to- leave-the-guardian/ | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1846 Registered: 10-2006 |
The nearest thing I usually get to seasonal spirituality is rereading Eliot's Four Quartets. Always jolly. "Let me disclose the gifts reserved for age To set a crown upon your lifetime's effort. First, the cold friction of expiring sense Without enchantment, offering no promise But bitter tastelessness of shadow fruit As body and soul begin to fall asunder. Second, the conscious impotence of rage At human folly, and the laceration Of laughter at what ceases to amuse. And last, the rending pain of re-enactment Of all that you have done, and been; the shame Of motives late revealed, and the awareness Of things ill done and done to others' harm Which once you took for exercise of virtue. Then fools' approval stings, and honour stains. From wrong to wrong the exasperated spirit Proceeds, unless restored by that refining fire Where you must move in measure, like a dancer." | ||
| Andrew Kerr Member Username: Andrew_k Post Number: 1390 Registered: 04-2005 |
Pádraig, Cheers for that link. The Guardian is in serious danger of disappearing up its own arse at the moment and Suzanne's story is a clear example of the power of the so called 'cancel culture'. See the BBC and "Fairytale of New York" too. Utterly ludicrous. And we used to laugh at America's school system for censoring "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn". And at the USSR for removing people from photos as they had fallen from political favour. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 9985 Registered: 05-2005 |
Andrew, I looked at the list of who signed that anti-Suzanne Moore letter. I know several of them. Some of those who signed it surprised me, most did not. | ||
| Rob Brookman Member Username: Rob_b Post Number: 2021 Registered: 08-2006 |
Reading Obama's memoir, "A Promised Land." What a natural, graceful writer he is. And what a cool, complicated he story he tells. I can't put it down. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4520 Registered: 03-2005 |
I didn't realize Suzanne had left the Guardian, Pádraig. I do remember the silly controversy regarding Rowling. To me it seemed an artificial issue raised by people uninterested in authentic issues. The loss of capacity for nuance is depressing, but maybe it's a misapprehension on my part that there's been a loss. Maybe it never existed. Suzanne's perspective on life experience as a woman is important and necessary. Well, I think so anyway. I'm just a gay guy; without her and other women willing to report on their lives I'm left with no clue. Rob, I've been paying for a bit of shallow materialistic stubbornness about Obama's books. I'm convinced that Easton Press will eventually put out a full set of his books in fancy piss-elegant leather bindings. Since childhood I've loved books of that sort and looked forward to reaching adulthood so that I could acquire some. My thought is that he might be our Churchill in terms of a written legacy. I've held off reading any of his volumes waiting for this. Any further reports from you will be welcome. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 9986 Registered: 05-2005 |
Randy, I only found out yesterday that she’d resigned. I had no idea about that letter before either. It’s astonishing. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 9990 Registered: 05-2005 |
A lovely story about a 30-something scientist discovering a picture of him from when he was eight has been a meme for years. https://slate.com/culture/2020/12/grayso n-meme-man-discovers-meme.html?sid=5388d 195dd52b8581b001459&utm_medium=email&utm _source=newsletter&utm_content=TheSlates t&utm_campaign=traffic | ||
| Andrew Kerr Member Username: Andrew_k Post Number: 1392 Registered: 04-2005 |
Just read an interview with Julien Temple about his documentary about Shane MacGowan. He is asked about the censorship of "Fairytale of New York" and after making a joke about how it was him behind it to get some publicity as the film comes out, he says "And it’s a difficult one, isn’t it? I’m against censorship of most kinds, but I’m very aware that people’s rights and sexual identity shouldn’t be trampled on or abused." https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/no v/29/julien-temple-crock-of-gold-shane-m acgowan-documentary-interview Sit in the fence, why don't you Julien ? As MacGowan has explained it is a argument between 2 fictional characters in a song, and that is the type of language that they would use. The moment you start removing or changing words in a case like this I have no idea where it would stop. In the end I feel that it our intelligence that is being insulted. This approach treats us like children. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 9993 Registered: 05-2005 |
Well said, Andrew. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4522 Registered: 03-2005 |
What I've noticed is that the most ham fisted attempts to correct perceived slights of minorities come from folks who are not members of the impacted minority. They project an imagined sensitivity on the subject minority population that is an exaggeration. The word "faggot" is used in the song exactly as Andrew says. Yes, I could say that its use in that fashion reinforces and perpetuates an unexamined assumption that being a "faggot" is a terrible thing and thus a suitable epithet. But the song is of its time and importantly it's a depiction of two debased characters. Most of us will see it that way. Those who don't are either too young to understand yet, or they're indulging in camouflaged retaliation for past offenses they suffered. Neither of those conditions merits erasure as an accommodation. Upthread Andrew briefly mentioned the popular political denunciation of "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." This is one of my personal favorite novels from childhood. It probably had a greater impact upon me than anything else I read before the age of 18. Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain was the country's greatest social critic at the time and his books must be read in that light or else you're missing their point entirely. The milieu in which the characters lived used the "n" word indiscriminately. Slavery was still a fact of life during the story's time. A book that did not feature these ugly truths simply would not have been a book about that place and that time. If it's painful to read that's because the place and time is painful to examine. The absolute last thing we ever want to do is erase the record of painful times. The advent of eBooks made me double down on collecting the physical ones, often in older editions. A digital book is so easy to alter; the physical one is the testament. If I've said this before I apologize for the repetition: about 25 years ago I bought a book entitled "Without Sanctuary." It's a collection of contemporary news reports and photographs of lynchings in the U.S. during the 20th Century, accompanied by a historical essay. It's a horrifying document of something that must never be forgotten, a record of hideous real events that must be preserved. Looking back at our four most recent years it's easy to see that these painful truths in our legacy can potentially be erased and there are always people determined to do so. Their efforts must not succeed. | ||
| Andrew Kerr Member Username: Andrew_k Post Number: 1393 Registered: 04-2005 |
Beautifully put and very perceptive Randy. I have a memory as a youngster of leafing through an Alistair Cooke book and coming across a photo of a lynching from the 1930s in a southern state. I still recall the absolute obscenity of that image. The families with children, and everyone smiling for the camera whilst behind them there are the 2 bodies hanging from the tree. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4524 Registered: 03-2005 |
Andrew, photos like you describe leave us no chance to deny the universal human potential for savagery. The dissocation of those crowds is astonishing. And humbling. Stuart, I can now answer your question. I am a little over halfway through Skidelsky's second volume of the John Maynard Keynes biography. I'm at a phase where Skidelsky is explaining Keynes' theories as of the beginning of the Great Depression. I am struggling. No matter how many times I re-read sentences, much of the text is simply whizzing right by me like bullets on a battlefield. I assume most of the fault lies with my own lack of education in the field but I think it's probably also fair to state that Skidelsky doesn't excel at explaining economic concepts to dummies. This part of the book is hard going. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1851 Registered: 10-2006 |
I studied Economic History for a very brief period, when a pleasant chap used to toddle into the lecture room, perch on the corner of the desk and murmur at us for an hour, then toddle off again. I never understood anything he told us, the little I could catch. I also wondered why high school teachers have to actually learn something about how to teach whereas academics are simply presumed to be able to communicate their brilliance with no coaching at all. You could see some of them had worked on it a bit, but that others weren’t really that bothered if we got it or not. I certainly never got Economic History. As for biographies, I did manage to read one on Wittgenstein, a fascinating man. I didn’t skip the philosophical pages, I read them through, read them through again, grunted softly, and hoped we’d soon get back to his shed building activities on a Norwegian fjord. There were, I realised, certain areas my mind was not built to travel to, far too many possibly. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1855 Registered: 10-2006 |
Chuckling over Graham Nash’s comments on Neil Young in this month’s Uncut, “it was incredibly important for me to hear what he thought about me and Joni”, “he’s such a great songwriter and I am so pleased and fortunate to be his friend,”, “when he asked me for some handwritten lyrics back, which I’d had valued at $800,000, I gave them to him with good heart, because if he wanted his stuff back, he could have it”… the message being, perhaps, that he really, really cannot stand the guy and, man, did he want to hang on to those lyrics. | ||
| David Unregistered guest |
Hadnt seen your post before Randy on Shane M and Huck Finn. Very well put as ever - its wrong to rewrite history and pretend that the world has ever been a just and fair place for all. its a million miles from that now and yet better than it was in many ways. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1864 Registered: 10-2006 |
W. B. Yeats, A Life I: The Apprentice Mage 1865-1914 - Roy Foster Was there never any intention on Robert F’s part to do the other Crazy Jane songs too? Just a one off? It worked very well, anyway. This, meanwhile, is one of those engrossing slab-thick biogs, part one, that makes reading just pure pleasure, covering not only WBY’s evolution as a poet but also huge swathes of vital Irish and British history, and finishing on the verge of WW1, so with the Easter Uprising, marriage, and a lot of his greatest poetry still to come. It’s the kind of book that makes me think people once had a lot more energy to burn, or perhaps I’m just a lazy sob, but there is a dynamic relentlessness to Yeats’s activity that leaves you breathless, his journalism, his involvement with Irish theatre, his reading tours, his investigations into the spirit world, his letters and networking and constant hithering and thithering. Foster covers it all marvellously, with style and wit. I have no interest at all in séances and ghosts and what have you but the case is made for how all this daft stuff feeds into enriching and nourishing the astonishing verse. Maybe Robert’s mooching around Brisbane with nothing to focus on, someone should nudge a copy of Words for Music Perhaps and Other Poems under his elbow. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4542 Registered: 03-2005 |
Maybe the reason we've heard of the likes of Yeats is because of all that crazy energy, Stuart. You make the Foster book sound tempting. For my part, I've just started "The House in Clewe Street" by Mary Lavin. The particular copy I'm reading is a neat artifact; it was printed in the U.K. in 1945 to the "Book Production War Economy Standard." I have to be careful with the pages which are indeed rather fragile. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1867 Registered: 10-2006 |
I see, too, that Lavin was "mentored" by an old friend of Yeats's, Lord Dunsany, author of at least one book I found unreadable when I was looking around for post-Tolkien/Moorcock fantasy stuff in my youth. What attracted you to Clewe Street, Randy? | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4544 Registered: 03-2005 |
Well, Stuart, my choices always have an element of the random. I had to do a google search to refresh my recollection for the answer to your question. I knew that I'd picked up Mary Lavin in the same article that made me aware of Ann Petry. They come from a piece I read in the New York Times last summer about African-American writer Edward P. Jones. I'd never read anything by Jones. The Times' writer's focus was on Jones weaving stories out of the daily lives of Washington D.C. residents. Among other stories by Jones, the Times writer described one in which a bookworm high school student is smitten by Ann Petry's "The Street" and Mary Lavin's "Tales From Bective Bridge." The Times writer interpreted these as hints to Jones' own influences. Well, I'd never heard of Petry and only vaguely heard of Lavin. I figured an Irish female writer name-checked by an African American male writer inside one of his stories must be worth a look. So as a result of reading this one article in the NYT I ended up getting a copy of Petry"s "The Street" (coupled with "The Narrows" which I think is generally regarded as her best book), a copy of Jones' story collection "All Aunt Hagar's Children" and Lavin's "The House in Clewe Street." I couldn't resist the vintage wartime edition I found on ebay and since I'd never read any Mary Lavin I figured I'd settle for that at first rather than insisting upon "Tales from Bective Bridge." Being a slow reader who swings back and forth between fiction and nonfiction and often pops in something by impulse such as a recent romp through "Pride and Prejudice," I'm only getting to the Lavin now. The Jones story collection is still on a very alluring "to be read" stack as well, along with Colson Whitehead's "The Nickle Boys"--and I can't tell you where I got the idea for that one. I finished "The Street" months ago and "The Narrows" a week or two ago. And, yes, I do favor "The Narrows." The characters are more closely observed. Having been so obsessed with my Spanish and South American music discoveries, but importantly having also undergone a bit of surgery to remove a skin cancer growth from my neck via a surprisingly lengthy incision, making it temporarily less feasible to read in my favorite position dating from childhood--stretched out on the bed on my righthand side--I'm getting a slow start on the Lavin but it's already clear that I'll be enjoying her leisurely prose that surely must have been anachronistic by 1945. Here is an excerpt of a particularly vain character's thoughts about aging: "She fancied then, with a stab of pain, that she saw the end of that pleasant time, when her children seemed to be reaching ever upwards out of childhood, straining to attain a harmonious likeness to their parents, and when every year that came carried parents and children forward together, towards the prime and fullness of life. She fancied she saw the end of that time, and that she and her little girls had come to the forking of the roads, when the years, although they would come as rapidly as ever, would henceforth carry them in different directions: the children still going forward towards the bright prime of beauty, but the parents, having overpassed their prime, would have to venture ahead alone, upon a dark and downward road." | ||
| Rob Brookman Member Username: Rob_b Post Number: 2024 Registered: 08-2006 |
Bill Buford - "Dirt" I'm a pretty serious home cook and this tale of New Yorker writer Buford uprooting his family to Lyon so he could learn the bona fides of French cooking is a ton of fun. What a thing to do in your 50s, decamping to be a kitchen hand. It's long but it's a rollicking ride. Buford is a character. | ||
| Simon Withers Member Username: Sfwithers Post Number: 659 Registered: 08-2005 |
Re-reading Roseanna, the first novel in the excellent Beck series of Swedish crime novels by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö. I might read all 10 in order. Hope everybody's okay out there in Go-Betweens world. All's fine with me (apart from the UK's approach to the Coronavirus, which has been calamitous). After my redundancy last year I'm starting to do some freelance journalism (well, reviewing bikes) again and having spoken to my financial advisor (sheesh, how did I ever end up with a financial advisor? Makes me feel soooo old) I should be comfortable even on a modest income. And it WILL be a modest income! This is due to having paid off the mortgage, due to our age, rather than being wealthy. Oh, and my wife working! And it's a long time away, having been bumped back, but I'll be going to Robert's Oxford gig. Huzzah! | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1875 Registered: 10-2006 |
Reading the 10 Becks in order is a great idea, Simon. The writers have a lot of fun making use of all the various hallmarks of classic detective fiction, with a big tip of the woolly hat to Ed McBain, while leading you step by step into an increasingly darker vision of Swedish society. But there's wit too in the interplay between the characters and several ingenious plots. Excellent reading indeed. | ||
| Simon Withers Member Username: Sfwithers Post Number: 661 Registered: 08-2005 |
I'm on book number 4 now. I'm reading slower than usual, but I'm tired most days from cycling in freezing temperatures. (This is my living - having been made redundant last year from my job reviewing bikes for magazines, I'm now a freelance journalist reviewing bikes for the same magazine and another website.) | ||
| Andrew Kerr Member Username: Andrew_k Post Number: 1409 Registered: 04-2005 |
Douglas Stuart's "Shuggie Bain" A very worthy winner of the Booker Prize last year. A terrible tale in so many ways, but with enough humour and joy to counteract the poverty and violence. Anyone else read it yet ? The scene where Eugene takes Agnes out to the golf club and pressures her into taking a glass of wine just made me so angry and depressed. I watched an interview with the author where there was a question about the "Scottishness" of the book and he said that he had a very sympathetic American editor who was quite happy with all the Glaswegian dialogue. "There's Google isn't there ?" Stuart seemed genuinely moved by the contact from people with environments very different from that of his book, saying that it was their story too. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4557 Registered: 03-2005 |
Andrew, that book is on my mental list. David Gagen posted about it, last summer I think. My first partner was a recovering alcoholic, so the book is sure to be right up my street. I'm always intrigued when Scots start worrying about something being too Scottish for the rest of us. At the very least it's a challenge to the rest of us. I remember Hugh once expressing concern about the Just Joans being too Scottish. Well yes, they have a lovely Scottish brogue in their pronunciation. In fairness to your concerns I passed my copy of David Malouf's "Johnno" to a friend who protested that he was struggling to read the very short 180 page book because of the Aussie slang. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4558 Registered: 03-2005 |
I just remembered the film "Trainspotting." Ok, point taken. | ||
| David Gagen Member Username: David_g Post Number: 476 Registered: 02-2007 |
Yeh, Randy, read it last year before it was shortlisted, and loved it. So many emotions bubble up when reading this story of the absolute love a boy has for his mother, despite the neglect and damage done my most of the adults in his life. There is anger and sadness, but lurking just under the surface is a story of love and even hope. The best book I read last year. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1891 Registered: 10-2006 |
An article on Peter Hamill's first covers album - "My last as a European singer" - featuring a bunch of Italian songs, which is nice to see - Fabrizio De André, Luigi Tenco, Piero Ciampi and, better known, the cover of Uno dei tanti that is every heartfelt belter's favourite, "I who have nothing". Be interesting to see how they turn out. Plus Mahler, Rogers & Hammerstein, and Piazolla! Rock on, PH! https://www.loudersound.com/news/peter-h ammill-announces-first-ever-covers-album | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 10014 Registered: 05-2005 |
An article on overrated bands. I disagree with some of it, but it’s still hilarious. https://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/arts -entertainment/daft-punk-and-five-other- bands-youve-been-repeatedly-told-you-lik e-20210223205601 | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4564 Registered: 03-2005 |
It IS funny, Pádraig. Personally I really love that first Velvets album but some of my love is probably contextual. In the midst of the super elaborate 8 and 16 track productions being pumped out by the mature rock music scene in the early 1970s--which is when I first heard the album--that dissonant, willfully anti-professional piece of performance art was the ultimate antidote to what seemed to me to be an increasingly flabby, professional, no-fun music scene. It was true punk. And while I definitely think more than four of the songs are good I am not going to argue with anybody who has no time for "The Black Angel's Death Song," "European Son" or "Run, Run, Run." That first Velvet Underground album made the idea of New York City sound very edgy and exciting. Lou Reed opened the door on its demimonde and told its stories. I can't think of anything since then that has done likewise for NYC, not Television (however much I really like them) nor Talking Heads nor New York Dolls. The real power of the first Velvets album is how many other bands it spawned all by itself. I do agree that the band never matched that achievement again but expecting that is like expecting the Sex Pistols to have come up with a worthy successor to "Never Mind the Bollocks." Personally I never was moved by Kraftwerk but then that wasn't its point was it? And I do think shades of Kraftwerk show up in a lot of later records that--for me--are much more engaging. Again, I'd argue that records that inspire other talented people are important records. Nirvana always seemed to me to be a desperate attempt by music journalists to find a new musical scene (and seam). To my ears it was just hard rock ever so minimally updated. But to be fair, hard rock has seldom been my thing. I heard a bit of Radiohead now and thing when other people tried to turn me onto them. I didn't object to anything I heard but I never felt the urge to hear it again. I've never heard Daft Punk. I didn't even know they're French! With my xenophilic tendencies I might have given them a try on that basis. Everything I ever read about Frank Ocean was NOT about the music. That's been a warning to me from the beginning of time that the subject artist is to be avoided. | ||
| David Unregistered guest |
Not sure I disagree with much of that. Some Radiohead is pretty good post bends. As a band by volume there's far more bad than good but on balance id give them a pass as some of the good is worth repeated listens. I'm past the iconoclast stage but rarely listen to any famous artists as it were. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1898 Registered: 10-2006 |
De l’aube a’ l’aube – various contributors The transcription of a ten-part radio programme dealing with the life of Alain Bashung, consisting of a kaleidoscope of voices from each phase: relatives, friends, collaborators, musicians, biographers and so on. Slow going for this language-challenged reader, but skimming off just enough detail to keep me engrossed. One thing is clear, that whereas our own guys here, Grant & Robert, could probably have flourished elsewhere in life, maybe as a film critic or lawyer, music was really Bashung’s only out. Not much of a student, destined for accounting school and a factory office, a future he dreaded, his origins as always are a black and white 60s film in itself, the solitary kid parcelled out to his grandparents in the Alsace borderlands, unable to speak to his parents on their occasional visits because his French is a local version they don’t understand, the house he grows up in one that had changed hands through the war like Hotel Sahara with, if I’ve got this right, a gramophone and a bunch of discs left by American soldiers, one room with barred windows used as a prison that becomes his practice place for music, a family violin on the wall this young interloper is not allowed to touch (it goes to his cousin in the end) so his visiting dad – not his real dad, an Algerian who he never saw – gifts him a harmonica that becomes his prized possession (“He slept with that mouth organ, played it all the time…”)… and so on, and so on. Love to see that film one day. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4574 Registered: 03-2005 |
That sounds super interesting Stuart. I always figured he had to be a bit of an outcast due to being half-Algerian and his flamboyant presentation in adulthood suggested this to me as well. I love the story about the violin; it reminds me of a certain piano in my parents' house. It's too bad people segregate themselves by language with music. There won't be very many anglophone readers interested in a bio of Bashung but I sure am. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 10035 Registered: 05-2005 |
Driving Stevie Fracasso by Australian music journalist Barry Divola. The first few pages are available here https://www.betterreading.com.au/review/ a-life-changing-musical-adventure-read-a n-extract-from-driving-stevie-fracasso-b y-barry-divola/ Also, thank you to the members of this board, you know who you are, who have introduced me to the likes of Alain Bashung and Dominique A, two musicians I would never otherwise have come across. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1900 Registered: 10-2006 |
Yes, my own Gallic collection has gone from a few usual suspects (Brel, Gainsbourg, Birkin and Francoise H) to two good shelves of stuff I’d hate to be without, Bashung, DomA and Miossec above all. I failed to spark anyone’s interest in Hubert-Félix Thiéfaine, I think, though he’s done some magnificent things, this gloriously stately crescendo being one of my favourites. Hubert-Félix Thiéfaine - Petit matin 4.10 heure d'été https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjgPVfzM KQk | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1901 Registered: 10-2006 |
Back to reading: Geoffrey Holiday Hall - The end is known Weirdly never published in English since it first came out, this stunningly written short classic is easily available in Italian. My wife got hold of a fragrant 1951 American pocket edition for me, and a great read it is, with a mystery story the basis for a haunting tale of tormented obsession that shifts through a number of deftly drawn characters and varied settings, from small-town Montana to high-society NY to an Arctic circle WW2 airbase. Hall apparently wrote just one other book and then drank himself to death, but this scorching fable deserves to be in print forever. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4576 Registered: 03-2005 |
Stuart, that sounds almost like John Horne Burns! As Hemingway reportedly told it "[t]here was a fellow who wrote a fine book and then a stinking book about a prep school and then just blew himself up." Burns published a book about the Allied occupation in Italy and North Africa during WWII called "The Gallery." It was published in 1947 and was very well received in spite of its occasional homosexual content. He published a second novel about the thinly disguised prep school he had attended that was uniformly panned. He also wrote a third that Hemingway forgot which received mixed reviews. He was so efficient a tippler that he drank himself into a coma and died in Tuscany in 1953 at the age of 36. I haven't yet read "The Gallery" but it's on my mental list. I do love vintage editions. Your '51 copy sounds nice. The fact that it hasn't since been published in English is perfect. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1902 Registered: 10-2006 |
Darn it, Adams, just after reorganising my "to read" shelves and swearing to buy no more books until September at least. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 10043 Registered: 05-2005 |
A nice piece on The Bats. It doesn't mention Silverbeet though, which is odd to me. https://www.flyingnun.co.nz/blogs/featur es/the-bats-story?mc_cid=56fb2656df&mc_e id=76b3bc8695 | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4586 Registered: 03-2005 |
Pádraig, I read between the lines that they don't have fond feelings for it. They basically talk down "Fear of God," mention music industry pressures to spend needless money in the early '90s and then call "Couchmaster" (1995) a return to form. I certainly don't see "Silverbeet" as anything like the Chills' "Soft Bomb" which I know you like but I think was vastly over-dominated by the LA music people. But "Silverbeet" is another Bats album produced in the US by an American. "Couchmaster" was self-produced in NZ. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 10045 Registered: 05-2005 |
I love Silverbeet! In fact, I think it's my favourite Bats album. I like a bit of polish. You're probably right, but I recall Robert Scott (or maybe it was one of the others in the band) saying one time that Silverbeet was the closest they had come on record to how they sound live. Still, unpaid label debts, as with Soft Bomb, will no doubt colour your view on an album and a period. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 10049 Registered: 05-2005 |
Why bands are disappearing: 'Young people aren’t excited by them' https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/m ar/18/why-bands-are-disappearing-young-p eople-arent-excited-by-them | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4588 Registered: 03-2005 |
I saw that Pádraig. My impression is that music is less interesting to kids nowadays, full stop. The reason I've always liked bands much better than solo artists is because there are several different people bringing their ideas together. Even if only one member is the songwriter the other members will be throwing themselves into their particular roles in the group. That absolutely always sounds very different--and for me, more exciting--than arrangements done professionally by an arranger and session musicians, or arrangements assembled all alone by the singer/songwriter. And the non-writing members will usually have veto power over songs so their influence is reflected that way also. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 10050 Registered: 05-2005 |
I think you're right, Randy. Kids these days, with their video games and their Tik-Tok and Instagram. Harumph. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 10061 Registered: 05-2005 |
A long, and informative, interview with Cathal Coughlan https://writewyattuk.com/2021/02/08/upda ting-the-profile-the-cathal-coughlan-int erview/ | ||
| Mark Leydon Member Username: Mark_leydon Post Number: 357 Registered: 05-2005 |
Brilliant article by our very own Pádraig Collins in the Irish Times eviscerating Australia's bungled covid vaccine rollout. Well done Pádraig! https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/as ia-pacific/australia-makes-world-class-m ess-of-its-vaccine-rollout-1.4630872 | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 10152 Registered: 05-2005 |
Thanks, Mark. That's very nice of you to say. | ||
| Rob Brookman Member Username: Rob_b Post Number: 2033 Registered: 08-2006 |
It's a really good article. If I may say so, without embarrassing him, Padraig has a great eye for absurdity and also for the telling detail. This piece captures all those talents. | ||
| Simon Withers Member Username: Sfwithers Post Number: 687 Registered: 08-2005 |
Pádraig, haven't read your article yet (off to play footie [soccer] in a few mins) but it looks like our country ballsed-up dealing with Covid but has largely got the vaccine rollout working well (under the NHS, of course), while yours looks like it has done the opposite. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 10160 Registered: 05-2005 |
A great article on the Irish/English 80s band Stump's A Fierce Pancake album. https://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/ artsandculture/arid-40352558.html |