England/Scotland 2001: Snippets From Halfway

So much to write about, so little time trespassing in a Durham university computer room to write it…

I could write about Luke’s infrequent and reluctant observances of personal hygiene, or his frequent and enthusiastic attempts at cornball humour. There’s also his Sainsbury’s fetish.

I could write about our strange and irrational fascination with going to John O’Groats, despite knowing almost nothing about what is there, simply because we like the name. There’s the saga of the canned curry and accompanying naan. There’s the ongoing religious warfare. There’s our complete inability, even now, to bother making any plans whatsoever about Scotland.

I could go into daffodil ruminations – we pass fields upon fields of them in the bus (we’re National Expressing around), and the novelty of that strident yellow in the placidity of the English countryside still hasn’t worn off yet – but why are they there, and who plants them? Answers on a disgustingly touristy Sherwood Forest postcard…

I should definitely mention lovely friends who have borne our idiosyncratic impositions with patience and generosity. Kaif and Paul in Cambridge, Terence in Nottingham, Natalie in York and Jed in Durham: thank you, thank you, thank you. Apart from being wonderful, you’ve also saved us a lot of money, and that fact in particular really does make me love you more.

Cambridge

Combine gorgeous weather, unbelievably hospitable friends and a willingness to look touristy without feeling self-conscious, and you get a great first day of a holiday.

Lunch was by the river, on Trinity College members’ only grass courtesy of Kaifeng and Vikram. Relieved at avoiding the plebs, we of course engaged in highly cultured ruminations such as how birds reproduce. (eg. Luke, scrutinizing passing ducks, “But I don’t see anything sticking out anywhere!”).

Punting followed, unsurprisingly, with the punt starting in the capable hands of Kaifeng, then passing into the considerably less skilled but enthusiastic grasp of Luke (this part is mostly a blur, but I seem to remember a lot of “BRACE! BRACE!”) and finally getting into my admittedly least competent custodianship. Getting us moving was okay. I could do that. It was just maintaining any one direction that didn’t involve the banks, other boats or going backwards that was the problem.

Kaifeng then left for Brighton with some friends, leaving us his keys with the naive and oft-regretted instructions to “make ourselves at home”, and we biked with Paul to Grantchester, where we sat in deckchairs among flowering trees at The Orchard and had tea and scones and clotted cream and jam, and a theological debate.

I was charmed, not just by the immediate appeal of the place but also by its past as a haven for the Grantchester Group (Rupert Brooke, E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, Bertrand Russell, Augustus John, Maynard Keynes, Ludwig Wittgenstein). We went into the dinky little Rupert Brooke museum, and I felt a sudden affection for Bloomsbury, home to me in London these past two years, and home to the Bloomsbury Group (Virginia Woolf and Keynes were members of this too) eighty or so years ago. Most of the time, the area’s past as a place where great minds lived and worked is somewhat less on my mind than the fact that I’m half an hour late for an hour-long lecture, and I sprint around, oblivious.

But sometimes, it hits me. Charles Darwin lived down the road from where I live now, Keynes nearby at Gordon Square, George Bernard Shaw, fleetingly, at Fitzroy Square. When I try to list things I came here for, this is one of them, as remote and superficial and meaningless as the connection may be..

Off To North England and Scotland

I’ve popped in to say that I’m going on a merrie exploringge trippe around ye olde England and ye…er…bonnie Scotland with Luke tomorrow, and so updates may or may not happen for the next week. We’re sponging off friends in Cambridge, Nottingham, York and Durham, so Internet access should be easily available there, but once we hit Scotland it’ll have to be cybercafes, which we may or may not go to. There will, however, be many hours spent on National Express coaches, during which I’ll have plenty of time to scribble things down as I tend to enjoy doing on long rides, so perhaps some of that will make an appearance here when we get back.

We get back to London on the second or thirdish, I think. We only planned all of this yesterday, so we have no idea what we’re doing in Scotland or where we’re staying. What fun. :)

Meanwhile, tonight is a poetry reading at my hall, which should be interesting at the very least. I’m reading this, because I think it reads well and is easy to listen to, and because most of the poetry I’ve written myself recently is either too poor or too private to share. Got to run back for it now – I anticipate Artem the mad Russian reading William McGonagall, and I don’t want to miss it.

Poem: Persimmons (Li-Young Lee)

In summer, when supermarket fruit sections here finally come alive with ruddy strawberry red and the succulence of peaches, and everything looks vibrant and celebratory instead of apologetic, it’s a great time to read Persimmons, although I can’t actually think of a bad time to read anything written by Li-Young Lee. Who is, by the way, one of the writers on my wishlist. :P

Yo La Tengo!

It’s wonderful having friends you can impose on. :)

I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One is finally on its way from Django, after months of unsuccessful attempts to snap it up before other people every time a second-hand copy became available. Many thanks to Russ, whose credit card and good nature came in very handy when I realized I hadn’t paid my credit card bill for a while, and couldn’t use it.

Email Moments

Recent email moments that made me smile:

I wrote:
“you know, panic is so much more than how they define it in the dictionaries…”

Edlyn replies, and is so right:
“absolutely. The dictionary never mentions the pseudo-nirvana we attain, you know, that stage where you’re past panic, past caring, and with the impenetrable impassive calm of a Buddha, enter the exam hall.”

* * *

Fay sends quotes from Samuel L Jackson movies:
“Yessir Miss Daisy, I be honking.” – Mitch, The Long Kiss Goodnight

Charly: I’m leaving the country, Mitch. I need a fake passport and I need money, lots of it.
Mitch: Well why didn’t you say so? Hold on a minute while I pull that outta my ass.
– The Long Kiss Goodnight

Ordell: Look, I hate to be the kinda nigga does a nigga a favor, then, BAM!, hits a nigga up for a favor in return. But I’m afraid I gotta be that kinda nigga.
Beaumont: What?
Ordell: I need a favor.
– Jackie Brown

* * *

John analyses Flash Gordon:
“Flash Gordon: fantastic campy kitsch post-Star Wars 30s serial update starring two complete planks of wood supported by knowing performances from everyone else. How they get away with the kinky ideas in a childrens film is beyond me. Two examples:

1. The heroine (Dale) is held in some sort of orgasmic trance by Evil Emperor Ming’s power ring. She seems rather (ahem) excited by it.

Klytus (Ming’s loyal No. 2) to Ming: ‘Never have I seen such a response…She even rivals your daughter’.

What ?!

2. Ming’s (incestously) foxy daughter Aura brings hero Flash back from the dead and proceeds to secrete him on the planet of her lover Prince Barin (played by Bond-to-be Timothy Dalton). Barin ain’t too happy about it either. Seeing Flash with Aura he spits:

“I knew you were up to something though I confess I hadn’t thought of necrophilia”

Beats The Phantom Menace everytime.”

The Odelay! Phenomenon

It’s when you love an album on first listening, and consequently play it to bits over the next couple of days or weeks. A few months or years later, you inexplicably feel little or no inclination to listen to it any more, even though you still think it’s a great album. (No prizes for guessing which album tops my list of albums relegated to the bottom of the playlist barrel due to this annoying phenomenon.)

And right now, I’m really worried that Hefner’s The Fidelity Wars might meet a similar fate, because it arrived last Thursday, and I think I’ve just been loving it too much since then.

Is this a strange thing to worry about, or does this happen to anyone else?

One of these days I’ll write about the wonderful converse Loveless phenomenon, although I stupidly left that album in Singapore and haven’t listened to it since last summer.

More random and reasonably shallow music ramblimgs:

I was going to write a little more about the Lift To Experience/Calexico/Stephen Malkmus gig I went to last week, but John Peel beat me to it. It’s a good thing he only put the Calexico and Malkmus sets up for full listening, because Lift To Experience weren’t great to listen to live, and would probably sound even worse over Real Audio.

Last week, while trying to restrain myself from either falling asleep or rushing up on stage and strangling the lead singer of Broadcast, I started wondering if it might have been a better idea to go see Sparklehorse, who were at the Borderline the same night, although this was technically an exercise in futility since their show sold out long before I knew about it. After reading this review, I have no regrets, although it would have been nice to have been able to go to both.

I haven’t heard the new Radiohead song enough times to have an opinion worth sharing yet, but NYLPM, as usual, does.

REM’s new song has firmly established itself in my head, although I haven’t actually decided how much I like it yet. The verses are reasonably nondescript, and I can’t remember what they sound like at all, but the chorus is scrumptious.

Gibber gibber Yo La Tengo gibber gibber

Note to self: Never forget the night of 10 April, because it’s the night you went to indie rock heaven.

Before I get to the part where I start gibbering and spluttering, I should begin by doing what I can manage coherently.

Right, so the Yo La Tengo (gibber, splutter) gig was last night. The supporting acts were Sue Garner & Rick Brown and Broadcast. I’ll start with them.

I’d never heard of Sue Garner & Rick Brown before, but was very pleasantly surprised. Imagine Sarah McLachlan’s voice singing with Ani DiFranco’s attitude accompanied by Sonic Youth remixed by Tortoise. Kinda like that. I’m definitely going to look around for their album.

Broadcast, which I had heard of, were extremely disappointing. In terms of presentation they were far slicker than Sue Garner & Rick Brown, but their music paled in comparison. Maybe I’m just a nitpicky classical musician, but when the melody line is the same as the bass line and all other accompanying lines, the song sounds boring. I only realized last night how right that particular rule of SATB (soprano alto tenor bass) music theory was – about avoiding a situation where the different elements of harmony carry the same tune such that you’re basically hearing the same tune simultaneously over a couple of octaves.

Quite often, they’d be constructing this interesting soundscape, and then their lead singer would start singing, and I’d get pissed off. For one thing, the melody was usually boring, as I’ve said. Another thing was that her voice reminded me of the Corrs, which meant it blended so effortlessly into the background that I forgot I’d ever heard it. And then almost all the songs seemed to involve her singing “Aaaaaaaaaaaah” and swaying from side to side and then going “Lalalalalalala etc.” I can’t really describe it in writing, but it really was immensely irritating. Which is a pity, because other than her singing, and the melody she was singing, the rest of their music was reasonably interesting, especially towards the end of their set where they started going a bit wild with squealing feedback and dissonance and thunderous drums.

And now we come to Yo La Tengo. Oh. My. God. I’ll just abandon all pretence of being cool and cynical and laid back now, and say that it was one of the most amazing gigs I’ve ever been to, probably second only to Sonic Youth, and second only because Sonic Youth are very slightly more charismatic as performers.

Yo La Tengo: Thank you. Thank you for alternately rawking and whispering your way through the show, and being equally compelling for each. Thank you for taking Blue Line Swinger and making it into an expandable universe both screaming and serene even better than you did on the record – it must have been at least 15 minutes long but I was entranced. Thank you for effortlessly switching instruments and kicking ass with whatever you picked up. Thank you especially Georgia (BRILLIANT drumming) for doing that while looking sweet and dumpy and motherly and nothing like the rock star you are – and forgive me if I ever meet you in a small-town supermarket and don’t recognize you while we both stock up on drain cleaner or something equally domestic. Thank you for responding to our clapping, stomping and screaming by coming back out twice to play encores.

Thank you for your beautiful noise.

Roadside Haul

I will never walk past roadside CD stalls in disdain again. The Goodge Street one I mentioned a few days ago now has a devoted rummager. For the princely sum of £18, I now own:

  • A Grand Love Story (Kid Loco, £5)
  • Code 4109 (DJ Krush, £5)
  • Field Studies (Quasi, £4)
  • Breath From Another (Esthero, £4)

They were closing up, so all I had time to do was find the ones I’d seen the other day. There remain lots of tacky plastic baskets of uncategorized CDs marked “Pop Rock CDs £5 & Under!” for nosing through, and I can’t wait.

So You Wanna Fake Being An Indie Rock Expert is hilarious (and sometimes informative, blush) reading. (Thanks Jerm!)

I admit to owning and enjoying Sarah McLachlan albums, but this Onion article about Lilith Fair is a must-read, even if you’re not terribly interested in synchronized ovulation.

“I’ve never been around so many people who share my interest in women’s issues and social justice,” Jewel said. “It makes me want to ride my horse bareback through a forest stream.”