Now this one does remind me of several things (of varying degrees of geopolitical significance) …
The events of September 11. This album was actually released on September 11 2001 in the USA, though a few days earlier in the UK.
My last few months of living in London. We moved to Harborough in February 2002. Having made the decision to leave, of course, London (particularly at Christmas) immediately took on a magical quality. The lyric “all my bridges burned” seemed apposite at the time.
A plague of mice of almost biblical proportions in the London flat. I woke up one evening on the sofa to hear the rustling of silver paper, caused by what looked like Angelina Ballerina (who was big in our household at the time) and her chums eating all the chocolate decorations off the Christmas tree.
So, a slightly surreal period for me and this album seemed to reflect that.
Heaven knows what’s going on in this video (which I’d never seen before). Award yourself an extra mince pie though if you can identify the painting our heroes are looking at towards the beginning of the clip. I can’t (Poussin possibly?).
So, coming in at number 3, we have Vashti Bunyan with a selection from her 2005 album, Lookaftering. La Bunyan’s story was one of the most encouraging of the decade. She originally studied briefly at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, before being taken up by Andrew Loog Oldham and making a cameo appearance in the film Tonite Let’s All Make Love in London. Not having had a great deal of success as a singer, she decided to travel – in a horse-drawn gypsy caravan (how else?) - to a commune on the Isle of Skye, established by the singer Donovan. By the time she arrived the commune had got bored and dissipated, but – on the way – she had managed to write the songs that later became her first album Just Another Diamond Day. When released, this disappeared without trace. VB then moved to a remote spot in Ireland and spent the next thirty years tending animals and bringing up her children, unaware that, in the meantime, her long-forgotten album had been rediscovered by the likes of Devendra Banhart (a Rum Cove, but also a Good Egg).
Anyway, to cut a long story short, she was enabled to record a second album, Lookaftering, released in 2005, which included contributions from various other Good Eggs such as Robert Kirby (q.v.), Joanna Newsom (soon to be q.v.) and the composer Max Richter. Included on it was the following – Here Before. The number of good songs written about the artist’s own children is minute – I can think of Tim Buckley’s Dream Letter, Peter Hammill’s Sleep Now, and not a great many others, but I think this one succeeds. Having a child very rarely feels like this, but occasionally it does …
(The hare reappears here, by the way, in no more animated form)
And so the excitement mounts – or not – as the countdown continues. More accordions on this one too.
I suppose it says something about how I have gradually come adrift from the mainstream of British culture over the past decade that I think I’d struggle to think of more than about ten pop albums released in that period that I actually like more than a little, and even among those I find it hard to remember which year they were released in, or to connect them with anything other than themselves. By contrast, I could probably identify the year, at least, of any chart single released in the ’seventies and remember what I was doing at the time I first heard it. Part of the problem may be that, since moving to Harborough (in 2002) I chiefly listen to music when I’M ON THE TRAIN !!!, so what these songs remind me of is generally, I fear, being … on a train.
This song, and video will, I’m afraid, have to remain self-explanatory, as I’m not sure that I have a reasonable explanation for either. I do remember, though, that I bought it – in an independent record shop (now presumably deceased) – on an exploratory day trip to Loughborough soon after it was released in 2005 (and, in fact, listened to it ON THE TRAIN!!! on the way home).
This song is called Laika. The original Laika (literally Barker) was the unfortunate dog who was launched into space – never to return (as they well knew) - by the Soviets in 1959. At least she made it onto a Romanian stamp -
So, we approach the end of the year and not only that but – arguably – the end of the decade. This always gives proper journalists and disc jockeys the chance to fill their columns and programmes by making lists of their favourite this that and the other things of the past decade and I thought I’d join in. So here, between now and the New Year (circumstance and urgency of Daughter’s need to use the computer to communicate permitting), are songs from my five favourite LPs of the decade.
At number five …
Beirut: Sunday Smile from The Flying Club Cup
Sounds as though it was recorded in France in the 1920s, but no. “Beirut” is a young North American lad called Zach, and very talented too, in my view. This video is an extract from Ferdinand Leger’s Ballet Mechanique.
“Pull yourself together man, I thought this was meant to be a Leicestershire cricket blog” – The Plain People of Leicestershire …
Well, I’m sorry. There isn’t any cricket on at the moment, so I’m afraid you’ll just have to put up with this sort of thing for the time being.
Thinking of the death of King George V (and who isn’t at this time of year?), it was, of course commemorated in verse by John Betjeman, like so -
DEATH OF KING GEORGE V
“New King arrives in his capital by air” – Daily Newspaper
Spirit of well-shot woodcock, partridge, snipe
Flutter and bear him up the Norfolk sky:
In that red house in a red mahogany book-case
The stamp collection waits with mounts long dry.
The big blue eyes are shut which saw wrong clothing
And favourite fields and coverts from a horse;
Old men in country houses hear clocks ticking
Over thick carpets with a deadened force;
Old men who never cheated, never doubted,
Communicated monthly, sit and stare
At the new suburb stretched beyond the runway
Where a young man lands hatless from the air.
I always used to think that “communicated monthly” meant that the old men in country houses only spoke once a month, or perhaps wrote letters to each other monthly. In fact, I believe, it means that they took communion once a month as opposed to taking it more frequently, which they would have seen as a Romish practice.
Now that the Christmas turkey has all gone, “well-shot woodcock, partridge, snipe” do sound very tempting …
A woodcock
and its natural enemy, in his youth (dreaming of game) …
I thought anyone who happened to miss this afternoon’s Christmas message by Her Majesty the Queen might enjoy the following: King George V’s message to the Empire, originally heard at Christmas 1935.
The poor old boy didn’t have very long to go when he recorded this (he died on January 20th 1936) and was only able to get through it with a bit of help (cocaine) from his rather sinister doctor, who eventually finished him off in the night, according to legend, so that his death would make that morning’s edition of the Times newspaper.
Some of this does sound remarkably contemporary -
“May the spirit of goodwill and mutual helpfulness grow and spread so that it will bring not only the blessing of peace, but a solution of the economic problems which still beset us”.
I do think it’s a great mistake to try to be too original at Christmas. “I know, let’s do something totally different this year” is not a sentiment that finds any echo in this human bosom. So you may well be planning to listen in today to the service of Nine Lessons and Carols from King’s College Cambridge (3 o’clock on the Home Service).
This is a quite recently established tradition. As Wikipedia explains -
“The format was based on an Order drawn up by Edward White Benson, later Archbishop of Canterbury but at that time Bishop of Truro, in Cornwall, for use on Christmas Eve (24 December) 1880. Tradition says that he organized a 10 pm service on Christmas Eve in a temporary wooden shed serving as his cathedral and that a key purpose of the service was to keep men out of pubs on Christmas Eve.”
So it was not, in that respect, a howling success. The format was, however, adapted by Eric Milner-White, the Dean of King’s College, “whose experience as an army chaplain had led him to believe that more imaginative worship was needed by the Church of England“ (sound familiar?) and the first service was held on Christmas Eve in 1918.
“The service was first broadcast by the British Broadcasting Corporation in 1928 and, except for 1930, has been broadcast every year since, even throughout World War II despite the stained glass having been removed from the Chapel and the lack of heating. For security reasons, the name “King’s” was not mentioned during wartime broadcasts.”
This was apparently enough to throw the Boche off the scent, as not once during the War was the service interrupted by bombing, although it is possible that some of the less architecturally significant colleges might have taken a bit of a pounding.
Of course today, in the age of choice and Youtube (where last year’s NLC is available in bite-sized chunks), it isn’t necessary to follow the order of service in the form laid down by Edward Benson White (I mean he’s – like – dead, so what does he know?). If you happened to be short of time (and who isn’t at this time of year?) you might only have time for- say - three lessons and carols. Well – you goddit! You might prefer to replace one of the carols with – say – Mr. Harry Secombe’s rendition of When a Child is Born. It’s your choice. Perhaps you’d like to run the whole thing backwards? No problem.
You might happen to be a member of a non-Christian faith-based community, in which case you might prefer to replace the lessons with readings from the Qu’ran, the Torah, The Road Less Travelledor any other text that strikes you as appropriate. Go for it!
Members of the secular community might prefer to replace the whole thing with such festive family favourites as readings from the works of Mr. Frankie Boyle and a concluding communal rendition of Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me to! (Come on, Grandma – join in with the chorus!).
Anyway, however you choose to celebrate Christmas, I wish you all the best for the festive season, but – if you do choose to begin it in a traditional way here is how Nine Lessons begins (this is actually from the TV version, which is recorded in about August – but it follows the same pattern) -
I’m really not sure what made me think of this, but I thought of it as I was trying to find an appropriate Christmas song to post on here, mainly, admittedly, because I’m too busy to write anything worth reading. It’s a Christmas song from 1981, and makes me wonder at quite how much I’ve changed since I was, I suppose, 20 going on on 21 and spent a lot of that Christmas holiday listening to it. What on earth must my poor parents have thought?
It’s by Cristina Monet, whose music had helped to soundtrack a fair bit of my student life. For those who don’t remember her, she was married to the Mothercare heir Michael Zilkha who had founded the ZE record label. She had recorded an album (for, oddly enough, the ZE label) which was produced and largely written by Augustus Darnell and a version of Lieber and Stoller’s “Is that all there is?” that was such a radical reinterpretation that its authors demanded it be withdrawn. This was her Christmas single for 1981, and was also included on “A Ze Christmas Album”, alongside such delights as “Christmas With Satan” by James White and the Blacks (or possibly James Chance and the Contortions – I can’t remember what they were calling themselves by that stage). This LP also contained “Christmas Rapping” by the Waitresses, and I think it’s quite encouraging that this charming and optimistic little song is the one that I hear over the Tannoy when I go into the Harborough branch of the Kristmas Kard Kabin (or whatever it’s called), rather than some of the more jaded and nihilistic offerings from that same LP.
I would once have asked what had happened to Cristina Monet, but thanks to the wonders of Google, I can easily find out. She retired from singing in 1984 and became a housewife in Texas. She was divorced from Michael Zilkha in 1990 and is now writing articles for various journals (including the TLS) under her full name of Cristina Monet-Palaci and living with a debilitating (ME-style) illness. Many of the online commentators make the point that it might have been better if Cristina, rather than Madonna – who must have been moving in similar circles at the time – had become the Intergalactic Megastar, and I don’t think I’d argue with that line of reasoning.
Anyway, here it is – “Things Fall Apart”. The visuals are rudimentary, I’m afraid.
So, probably not a good day for a pre-Christmas shopping trip to Belgium on Eurostar (in fact I think I was advising against this just the other day) …
Thinking of things no-one else likes but I do (see Glorious ‘39 – “I’d give it a wide berth if I were you – The Harborough Mail”) I am rather fond of the perfume adverts you get on the telly in the weeks leading up to Christmas. I do appreciate that they appear at this time of year to persuade people to buy as Christmas presents the overpriced but still affordable products that enable the major fashion houses to continue producing their otherwise completely unfeasible haute couture collections, but I still look forward to their annual appearance.
My favourite this Christmas is this one – for Chanel no. 5 (featuring Audrey Tautou):
She was wise, I feel, to choose the Orient Express to Istanbul rather than the Eurostar to St. Pancras, though – having said that -St. Pancras would have offered her faster connection times to Market Harborough, not to mention an excellent selection of quality pies and pastries, and two branches of W.H. Smith & Sons.
Odd how corridor trains were so conducive to romance, comedy and thrills – in the cinema at any rate – when the modern arrangement seems so prosaic. I think the last time I travelled in one was on a day trip from Haringey North to Southend in 1989 (not, I’m afraid, that I can remember any r, c or t occurring on that particular occasion).
