5 January 2004
Are there any board games which are actually IMPROVED or AT ALL CHANGED – as opposed to momentarily coloured – by having their own classic scenarios recast to conform to some TV programme or other? My sister was given Simpsons Cluedo for xmas: the board and the pieces are nicely enough designed/made (Bart dressed as Professor Plum, Krusty as Reverend Green etc, and such weapons as “poisoned donut” and “nuclear rod”, and the rooms are the “Kwik-E-Mart” or “Mr Burns’s Office”) but actually, apart from none of us ever remembering who or what anything is, this adds nothing at all…
(Well, we did discover that Becky has nurtured Uri Geller-like abilities since last time we played, probably in the 80s: the first game she guessed the contents of the envelope exactly correctly on her first go; the third game ditto; there was no fourth game, only sulks and tantrums)
pˆnk s lord sükrÃ¥t cunctør in TMFD • 2 Comments
CATATONIA
Picture if you will the dying throes of Britpop (the dying bit is unfortunately a metaphor here). The kids, slowly turning off their Oases and Blurs with the feeling the had been robbed, which they had. What did indie music have to throw up? The only vomit left were rubbish Welsh bands. Elsewhere I have dealt with simpleton whimsy mongers the Super Furry Animals and Gorky’s Zygotic Manky. But what of that screeching noise that came from the valleys. A band who reached the top, and imploded within two years. A band named after the state listening to a record by them would leave you in. Why yes, I mean Catatonia.
There was no real surprise when hard drinking party girl Cerys Matthews went nuts. It was the hard drinking bit that did it. Nevertheless the fact that they ever had a chance to write any music in between more pints was the big surprise. It was clear why the songs were no good, they did not spend that much time between pints after all. But they did not need to. The human version of the screech owl mangled the words she sung so much that it did not matter what the words were or even if they rhymed. Consider this lyric from the Tonia’s answer to Star Trekkin’ – Mulder And Scully:
Things are getting strange I’m starting to worry
This could be a case for Mulder And Scully.
I assume that Catatonia had plenty of versions of this song primed depending on what the TV favourite was at the time. If they reformed (please no) I am sure their comeback single would be:
Things are getting strange I’m starting to worry
This could be a case for Rosemary And Thyme.
Or if they traveled back in time to the mid-eighties I daresay they would come up with:
Things are getting strange I’m starting to worry
This could be a case for Cagney And Lacey.
Which actually almost does rhyme, not that you would be able to tell with Matthews’ pronunciation. Of course Mulder and Scully was not their only hit. Lost Cat, a tragic tale of the cat whose voice Matthews stole also troubled the charts before the band split up. Just after Cerys declared that every morning she wakes up she thanks God she is Welsh. Probably why she’s fucked off to live in America then.
Tanya Headon in I Hate Music • 1 Comment
I wrote a short plot treatment for a film course I did about seven years ago called Penis Envy. The premise was two conjoined twins joined at the penis. Finally in adulthood the pair get separated, with the proviso that one of the pair gets all the penis, the other one is left with a tiny stub. I bring this up to illustrate that Stuck On You, the new Farrelly Brothers movie ‘ all things considered – is in rather good taste. Also to explain why I am a little bit disappointed with how tame it is.
Given the premise is a shaky as the misadventures of two Siamese twins in Hollywood, it is remarkable how little imagination the set pieces have. Indeed the comic high-points stretch pretty much to covering how conjoined twins might play sport. Ice hockey, American football, golf and the all-American sport of bar room brawling are happily covered. And a very chaste sex scene. The problem is that in it being a love-in for the state of brotherhood there is next to no tension. Out twins love each other, and are both pretty good guys. The stupidity or shyness which have characterised the best of the Farrelly’s comic creations are just not here. This limits the comic situations as there appear unwilling to ever put the twins into any kind of moral, physical or spiritual danger.
If you fancy spending an hour and a half in the company of the amiable and rather convincing pairing of Greg Kinnear and Matt Damon then Stuck On You is a pleasant enough way of doing it. But do not expect either to be outraged or particularly amused. For that we might just have to wait for Penis Envy. Or not.
Pete Baran in Do You See • No Comments
It is a good job thirteen is called thirteen. Because without that title you could happily assume that the protagonist are actually supposed to be fifteen or older. The age of the leads is one of the key points, thirteen is teenage but we think of delinquency really kicking in just before adulthood. Not so, this period can last for years.
Kids going off the rails is not an uncommon theme in the cinema, but this version of the tale is notable for its even handedness. There are all sorts of aspects in the set-up which could be called forth as causes for the degeneracy. The mother’s (under control) alcoholism, the absent father, poverty and of course the apparently evil influence Evie. But the film does not want to settle for any or even all of these. Instead it almost shrugs it shoulders and says teenagers are strange beasts, do not even try to understand them. And whilst it ends at rock bottom it does leave the viewer with a small amount of hope.
A film with an excruciating, stay away topic (who wants to see ninety minutes of adolescence gone bad) ends up being riveting and surprisingly amusing. Fear the teenager. But see her.
Pete Baran in Do You See • No Comments
Wow – there is an unlikely celebrity pairing. Mind you I have seen Seinfeld and it was unclear he would ever get hitched to anyone. He eats stuff out of the bin after all. As long as it isn’t touching anything else.
Any potential connection with eating something out of the bin and marrying Britney Jean Spears is wholly coincidental and was not meant as a sly satirical joke.
Pete Baran in FT /New York London Paris Munich • No Comments
Sculpting Sand: Dry In The Hand, Like Putty In The Water. Now I am not sure of the chemical construction of said toy sculpting sand, but I do know that the claim to be like putty in the water is hyperbolic to say the least. Unless your use of putty is to make squiggly worms, there is absolutely nothing puttylike about it. It is of course totally reusable, all you have to do is sieve it out of the water. Which requires not so much a sieve as filter paper. Of course if you were foolish enough to try more than one colour at once then you’ll get a brownish muck like substance back. Admittedly it is dry in the hand, but that is barely a compensation.
With the four dynamic colours I have created in a glass what can only be described as a day glo vomitous mess. It will remain on the kitchen window sill as a talking point until we stop talking about it, or the water goes stagnant. At which point I may release what was called Magic Sand in the eighties into the wild to see if it can fend for itself, or if it will be the final nail in the coffin of the ecosystem. Waterproof sand, whoever heard of such nonsense.
Pete Baran in Proven By Science • No Comments
Kinflicks – Lisa Alther
The best book I read over Christmas was this feminist coming of age novel from the mid-seventies. Telling the tale of the sexual misadventures of the lead Ginny Babcock the book could be seen as coming from the Erica Jong stable. But to run the biographical comic storyline in parallel with rather a dark narrative about the death of Ginny’s mother gives the book much more resonance.
Twenty eight years old, the book already belongs strongly to another age, and the generation divide between Ginny and her mother (feminist / pre-feminist) seems almost twee. The effect of this becoming a period drama invests much more interest in those surroundings, a view of the Vietnam war on the home front for instance, and free-love. What is much more interesting however is how almost dislikable the lead becomes by the end of the book. The early trysts with the quarterback, the town rough element and later lesbianism are amusingly painted and smack of a woman still trying to define her own way in the world. By the time she is married with a child her unhappiness, no matter how well portrayed, becomes petulance. How much of this judgement is due to having grown up in a more conservative age interested me, though it is clear that Alther expects this reaction. Though she may expect it from the older, not the younger, generation. But when morbidity creeps in near the end it is clear that the conclusion of feminism’s promises of having the choice to be anything also entails the choice to be nothing.
This is probably the kind of book that time may forget, stuck permanently to its time (as this Virago reissue may suggest). It would be a pity as it casts a satirical eye not that dissimilar to that of Catch-22′s to the female coming of age story. It even ends in the same sort of way, open yet satisfying. That said the title and the cover illustration of the Virago edition do the book no favours, and it is often down to tiny things like this which may seal the books position in posterity.
Pete Baran in The Brown Wedge • No Comments
Heroic multiple updates week. Lack of computer access means there are loads of things to talk about from the Christmas period coming down the pipe so regular updates all day for the next couple of days. Hopefully other Do You Seers will be interupting my monotony too.
So might as well start with a film that took me two months to finally get around to seeing, mainly because I knew I was going to appreciate it without really being overly excited by it. It is nice to have prejudices confirmed: Mystic River joins In The Cut as yet another example of what happens when the murder mystery is asked to serve a greater purpose as a message movie. At least here the actual murderer is a bit of a surprise (I only guessed ten minutes before the reveal). But yet again our prime suspect obviously did not do it, and here it is to make a somewhat unclear point about vengeance, child abuse and cod psychology. Clint directs with solid style, this is the archetypal ‘well made film’. The thrills are impeded by the need to explain its message, and the message is obscured by the mystery. And there is nothing mystic about the river.
Pete Baran in Do You See • No Comments
The only recent PSB tracks I really like are the ones which cast Neil Tennant as a spectre at the celebrity feast; too old, too wise, cursed to observe. ‘Flamboyant’ is one of these — a darker cousin to ‘Shameless’ with the greedy pop joy replaced by a pulsing electro undertow. It has something of the bitterness of ’99 B-Side ‘The Ghost Of Myself’, too — the late Pet Shop song I reckon, download it right now! Maybe it’s just Neil’s voice but there’s an enormous sadness behind so much of their music and it makes their unambiguous love songs hard to credit: ‘Flamboyant’ is so good because you’re never sure how the singer feels about his target: a friend? A lover? A mirror?
44. OUTKAST — ‘Ghetto Musick’
So many of my favourite tracks this year have buzzing or droning synths on but rarely as queasily or nastily as they’re used here. ‘Hey Ya!’ is a fine record but I knew Outkast could make good pop songs — I wasn’t prepared for them sounding this uneasy, though. At first it seemed a mess — my first few listens were just rubbernecking — until I heard it loud in a club and it worked. ‘Ghetto Musick’ crackles with stress that the sickly, insincere slow intervals never resolve: I’m not sure I could take a whole album of this but I might like it more than the two I got.
ALSO: ‘Hey Ya’; ‘The Rooster’; ‘Church’
43. LUMIDEE — ‘Never Leave You (Uh Oh)
I think I’ve nicked this idea from someone else but I like this so much because it sounds incredibly private, like a secret recording of a girl singing to herself. The Diwali underpin gives it a spacey, slightly off quality that suddenly reminds me of the DNA remix of ‘Tom’s Diner’. You’re laughing now so I’ll stop. PS Lumidee is hott too.
42. DEXY’S MIDNIGHT RUNNERS — ‘Manhood’
I’m not sure how odd or embarrassing this track sounds to somebody who isn’t at least a little bit in awe of Kevin Rowland. In the starkest terms it’s a string-laced Northern Soul stomper based around a call-and-response between Rowland (hardly singing) and his band. Except Rowland sounds like he’s reading his notes from a therapy session (‘I tried to love recently. I found I’m sick emotionally.’) even as the song rises to its many redemptive, grin-bringing peaks. But I hope it’s more than nostalgia or respect that makes me love the song. Rowland is 100% committed, as ever. I wonder if the reason I will follow him and not any of the other guys who mean it just as much is that Dexy’s have always worked on a principle that the most truthful singing has to be matched with the most joyful pop. I have no idea, really. But when the band sings ‘Are you always feeling guilty?’ and Kevin quickly just says ‘Yes.’ I tremble.
41. MYA — ‘My Love Is Like…Wo’
For ages I thought this was some kind of kiss-off song because the only thing I could remember was the ‘My ass is like — wo / And you’re kissing it’ bit. Most of my liking for it is based on that, frankly, and the chorus still sounds ten times fiercer than the rather floaty verses, but as a gimmick, as a hook, as a bit of craft (that singover on the final chorus!) and as a piece of frill-free modern R&B this is impeccable.
Tom in FT /New York London Paris Munich • No Comments
As I write this I’ve been married two months to a woman I’ve been with for twelve years. There were times when I thought it was going nowhere, when I’d have put money against us ever reaching the altar (not that it was an altar: it was a table). She was ill; I was depressed; we argued; we were distant. I thought we might be keeping it going for the worst reasons — fear of the unknown, wanting to be ‘settled’. Then gradually I realised we’d been doing it for the best reasons. ‘I can’t explain it — I’m so into you now’.
‘Into You’ isn’t ‘our song’ — my wife wouldn’t especially like it, plus the Tamia bit is annoyingly supine — but Fabolous’ lyrics and the gently delighted way he delivers them touch something in me. And the groove is as tender and pretty as the song demands.
49. COLDPLAY — ‘Clocks (Royksopp Remix)’
Three or four encounters with ‘Clocks’ and it was obvious that Coldplay had written i) the song that people who hated Coldplay might like; ii) the ultimate Coldplay song; iii) the most remixable rock track in ages. The things the band do — pretty simplicity and diffused angst — they were doing well, and they’d also hit on an unusual, ear-grabbing rhythm bed of piano triplets and uptight motorik drums. It wasn’t exactly danceable but it could be. And soon enough it was.
I’ve picked the Royksopp mix here but it might as easily be the original (offspring of Joshua Tree and Play defies two wrongs/right maxim!) or the Frenchbloke version (nervy electro cheese). Royksopp wins simply because I’m less familiar with it and because I love all the springy noises he puts in.
48. RUPEE — ‘Tempted To Touch’
I kept expecting this to be a big ’03 crossover hit. No luck, though. ‘Maybe it’s just too cheap sounding,’ I thought, but then Kevin Lyttle went massive with ‘Turn Me On’, which is the same song but less propulsive and less wonderfully yearning. Rupee’s theme — he’s in a dance, he’s feeling the beat, and the women all look so good he wants to touch every one of them — is a winner, surely; the track is full of mouth-along lines to bring listeners closer on the floor; the beat is instant. So why isn’t it an anthem? Shows how much I know.
47. CHRISTINA AGUILERA — ‘Beautiful’
Christina’s writing teams have obviously realised that she is going to do that voice thing on every song she ever does, as much as she likes, because she is a diva and this is what divas do. So this album’s key tunes were all tracks written with that in mind: either the beat outguns the vocal fireworks (‘Fighter’, ‘Dirrty’) or the song tries to be big enough to actually need that extraordinary precision holler. ‘Beautiful’ is so vast it just about copes. We will be hearing ‘Beautiful’ done awfully at karaoke for the next thirty years so it’s probably best to do as I did and give up on disliking it pretty quickly. Submit, puny ants.
46. NATAHLEE — ‘Tickle Me Fancy’
I can’t exactly remember what Tracer Hand wrote in his NYLPM slating of Soca: it was one of those reviews where you have to nod glumly along with every point and then just end up blurting ‘B-b-but it’s still REALLY GREAT!’. Yes it’s tinny; yes it’s inane; yes it’s repetitive; it’s the most inauthentic-sounding authentic music on the planet and it makes the Caribbean sound like a lost province of Sweden and I still love almost every song I download. Until the next one comes along. One thing I love about Soca — Natahlee’s track is a great example — is how positive and bawdy it is; so many of the best tunes are women singing about how they like a drink, a dance and a shag. Maximum arse-shaking, minumum attitude. I like vicarious bad-boy stuff as much as the next blogger but it’s good to change the channel sometimes.
Tom in FT /New York London Paris Munich • No Comments
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