Month: June 2012

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Recently Read (Prose)

Books read in the last couple of weeks:

The Psychopath Test – Jon Ronson
Alpha – Greg Rucka
Feel: Robbie Williams – Chris Heath
Fables: Peter & Max – Bill Willingham (re-reading, for last week’s Fairy Tales piece for Time Entertainment)
Star Trek: New Frontier #6 The Quiet Place – Peter David
Star Trek: Titan #1: Taking Wing – Andy Mangels and Michael A. Martin

Admit it: You thought I was joking about the Star Trek books, right…? Definitely not; I can make it through one of those (one of the regular ones, at least) in a couple of nights, post-work/pre-sleep, and they definitely work in the enjoyable-enough-to-keep-reading-dumb-enough-to-decompress-the-brain scheme of things. And, thanks to the local library, I can speed through as many as I want without it costing me anything. Success!

The Ronson one was enjoyable, but ultimately disappointing; it felt like a series of shaggy dog stories as opposed to something more coherent, but I loved the Rucka book – Really, really good thrilling writing. A bit looser than his Kodiak and Queen and Country novels, but not necessarily worse for that. The Chris Heath book was… I don’t know. I feel really ambivalent about it, to be honest; it was very readable, sure, but I felt like I was being conned the entire time. For a book so lauded by British journalists and profile-writers, it felt very much like something that wanted me to buy more Robbie Williams records than anything else. In that respect, it pretty much worked; I didn’t buy any Williams, but I did get his In and Out of Consciousness: Greatest Hits 1990-2010 from the library, and have been surprised by how much of it I enjoyed, even the songs I’d never heard before (Pretty much everything after I left the UK).

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366 Songs 126: Say You’ll Be There

It’s genuinely hard to overestimate just how weirdly, surprisingly important the Spice Girls were back in 1996. Not only were they a genuine pop phenomenon™, but they were somehow beloved by those closest to me, too. We liked the songs in an unironic way, we liked the branding of “characters,” we talked about which ones we fancied.

Looking back, that seems kind of ridiculous and embarrassing. Apart from the bit about liking their songs unironically: “Say You’ll Be There” is still a great pop song, all squelches and singalong choruses offering a spectcularly desexualized worldview even as two of the band wear latex outfits. Everything’s forgiven once that harmonica hits, though…

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And In The End

But this is, for me, also about the adjustment away from the weekly and daily deadlines I’ve been on for the last twenty years.  Now I actually have a little bit of time to do something other than write scripts.  Not that’s made me a better blogger, oddly enough — I was more productive on warrenellis.com when I was writing eight things at once than I am now.  Funny how that’s worked out.  Presumbly a result of a mind being overclocked in pursuit of getting all the words out now now now now.

That’s Warren Ellis, from his latest MACHINE VISION (It’s all in caps, apparently) email newsletter, quoted because… Well, because it’s a Friday afternoon and it’s been a long week (I didn’t have the holiday Monday that regular folk did; freelancer, you see), and because I am all too familiar with the mindset of getting all the words out now now now now. It’s something I’ve been struggling with, recently, the problem of (a) meeting deadlines, (b) writing a lot of stuff without it all becoming mush – I’ve really had problems with that this week, and feel like I screwed up at least a couple of times – and most importantly for me, (c) stopping afterwards. What I’ve found myself doing is being trapped in this loop of just feeling constant… anxiety isn’t the right word, but as if my brain is a train that refuses to stop, even though I want to get off. It takes too long to calm down, which is a problem.

Weirdly enough, I’ve discovered that Star Trek novels work; they do something that somebody smart enough to know these things once told me: They give your brain enough to distract it, but not enough to actually tax it, so you get to decelerate and, if you’re lucky, stop every now and again.

Plus, now I can tell you all about the Thallonian Empire and what happened to the crew of Deep Space 9 after the series finished, which is something.

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366 Songs 125: Kids

I read Feel, Chris Heath’s book about the weird and wonderful life of Robbie Williams (Note: It does seem weird, but not so wonderful, in the book), the other week, and as a result, I’ve been thinking about Williams’ music a lot recently. Williams is one of those acts that you kind of like, because you kind of like parts of his songs, even if the whole thing never quite sits right, but “Kids,” his duet with Kylie Minogue, has enough good bits to make it one of my favorite songs of his – Not least of which for the sarcasm and snark that comes with a chorus that sees such big-in-the-UK pop stars singing “And we’ll play it by numbers/Til something sticks/Don’t mind doing it for the kids.” That sly humor? Singalong choruses? That’s what I want from my pop music, thanks.

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366 Songs 124: The Book of Life

Somehow, I only found First Serve (Essentially a De La Soul album from earlier this year) this week, but this song has been on pretty much constant repeat since then. Seriously, even if you take off Kelvin Mercer and David Jude Jolicoeur trading lines and storytelling with ease as they do so, the music here is just great. First listen for me was the music, second was the lyric. Both times, I immediately hit repeat to try it again.

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366 Songs 123: Love Is The Key

Watching the “Volcano Girls” video, I found myself thinking of this song – or, rather, the chorus to this song – for reasons that I couldn’t quite place. After listening to all of “Love Is The Key” again, I’m no closer to knowing why I started thinking of it again, but at least I know why I was only thinking of the chorus: There is no other song. I mean, yes, there’re verses and a bridge (and a lovely organ line throughout the whole thing), but… Man. There’s no real song here, is there? This is a tune that’s all about swagger and bluff. I kind of love that it was a single in the UK, because it’s almost as if the Charlatans were asking that their name be proven apt.

And the less said about “Come and feed me/Come and feed me with your energy” as a lyric, the better.

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366 Songs 122: Seether

I adored this song, way back when; it was one of those one-hit wonders in the UK that you’d hear years afterwards in clubs and the reaction from everyone would be one of excitement and dancing and a weird “I remember when…!” despite the when being, at most, three or four years earlier. But it was wonderfully easy to sing along with (“Seee-thurrrrrrrrr!”), wonderfully easy to jump around to, and something that brought a smile no matter when you heard it.

Cut to last year, when I was saying something similar on Twitter, and Benjamin Birdie pointed out that there was, in fact, a sequel song by Veruca Salt. Considering the “Seether” reference is also a Beatles reference (It starts at 2:27), I couldn’t resist:

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366 Songs 121: Dinosaur Act

And while I’m talking about (a) nostalgia, (b) Matthew Sweet and (c) great opening tracks to albums, the quasi-glam stomp of “Dinosaur Act” was the song that almost made me learn to play the guitar, way back when, just because of all the feedback noodling in the background.

(And, again: Matthew Sweet loves his harmonies. Gotta appreciate that.)

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366 Songs 120: Divine Intervention

Matthew Sweet’s Girlfriend was a massively important album for me in… 1993, I think? When I started art school, anyway. I was just discovering bands like Big Star and the like, and “power pop” as a genre, and “Divine Intervention” – despite its religious theme (Hardly subtle: “Does He love us/Does He love us/Does He love us/Does He love us?” it goes at one point, “I look around/And all I see is destruction/Guess we’re counting on His/Divine intervention”) – blew my mind with its arrangement, as much as anything. The harmonies! The guitars! And, more than anything, that opening, which remains one of my favorite album openings ever (especially if listening on headphones, to get the full effect of the switch from right to left channels). This is just a great pop song, and was enough to convince me to follow Sweet’s music for at least two albums longer than I should’ve.

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366 Songs 119: Walk Like An Egyptian

The Bangles’ “Walk Like an Egyptian” is one of those songs you grow up with and never really think about; it’s catchy, it’s dumb and you sing along without giving it any real thought. But I’ll admit it: “All the school kids so sick of books/They like the punk and the metal bands” is oddly one of my favorite pop lyrics ever.

And another admission: I still have a massive crush on Susanna Hoffs in this video, especially between 2:45-2:55. Swoon.

Also, because it’s wonderful (and maybe my favorite version of the song), here’re the Puppini Sisters: