Should you be heading off to the sun anytime soon, or are simply beached like a whale on your couch at home for a week or so, might I recommend the works of Glen David Gold to help you pass the time? I first discovered him a couple of years ago – you'll doubtless have seen his Carter Beats the Devil around and about. If a masterfully staged romantic epic taking in turn-of-the-century magic shows and a whole trunk full of diverting sub-plots is your bag, I heartily urge you to buy a copy forthwith. (Eerily, as I was typing the words 'Glen David Gold' just then, someone else working in the same office said the name out loud. Magic, or coincidence? I know what Glen would say.)
The good news is, when you've finished Carter Beats the Devil, you've got the follow-up to read: Sunnyside, which is about early Hollywood, the Great War, Charlie Chaplin and so, so much more. Unreservedly recommended by your humble blogger.
Why do I think GDG is so good? Well, nothing too out of the ordinary, really: rigorous historical research, an eye for nuance, a sly sense of humour, and good old-fashioned gift for knocking out a well-turned plot that drives you on to finish just one more chapter before lights out.
He's also particularly good at floating suggestive possibilities around – hinting that an outrageous event actually did happen (which, come to think of it, is what magic is all about, isn't it?) and then leaving it up to you to decide whether it's historical fact or not. Such a tease.
Wednesday, 28 July 2010
Thursday, 31 December 2009
Seeya later, 2009!
Now, I don't know about you, but 2009 has been rather a remarkable year for me, all things told. When it kicked off, I really didn't know where I stood with life. Out of nowhere, I went from being a freelance editor and occasional musician to a patient on a cancer ward.
The word 'surreal' doesn't begin to describe my feelings about that development, friends. Each day becomes drastically simplified, revolving around mealtimes, treatments and visits from friends and family. I would lie in bed, looking out over the rooftops of west London, and begin to envy all those people out there who were walking around the streets below me, having coffee in cafés, shopping – doing all the gloriously ordinary stuff that we do when we're well. When the radiotherapy started, I was able to be a day patient, and a new rhythm of life took over – the trip by train and tube over to Charing Cross Hospital, covered up in woolly hat and big sunglasses, as the treatment played merry hell with my face. Then a few weeks of no treatment at all, before the Big 'O'. No, not Roy Orbison, but my operation on May 5th, which left me with a swollen head (really, not metaphorically), aggressively split vision and more staples than Rymans. It took me a while to get over that, let me tell you.
But the human body is a remarkable thing, isn't it? Gradually, my health has started to inch back, restoring my energy, hair (patchily), sense of humour and an appetite for the future. Somewhere along the line, though, events have stopped me from paying due attention to this blog, which I began one sleepless early morning back in March.
I hope to be a better blogger next year. In fact, I hope for a lot of things for next year, including marriage, seeing more of my friends, having barrel-loads more laughs, getting excited about new music – and playing more music myself – swimming… oh, you know, all the colourful stuff that makes life worth living.
That's it, really. I just thought you ought to know. Let me close now by wishing you all very happy New Year, and thanking you again for your support this year. It's meant such a lot to me and Ms Banfi.
Onwards and upwards.
Rob x
The word 'surreal' doesn't begin to describe my feelings about that development, friends. Each day becomes drastically simplified, revolving around mealtimes, treatments and visits from friends and family. I would lie in bed, looking out over the rooftops of west London, and begin to envy all those people out there who were walking around the streets below me, having coffee in cafés, shopping – doing all the gloriously ordinary stuff that we do when we're well. When the radiotherapy started, I was able to be a day patient, and a new rhythm of life took over – the trip by train and tube over to Charing Cross Hospital, covered up in woolly hat and big sunglasses, as the treatment played merry hell with my face. Then a few weeks of no treatment at all, before the Big 'O'. No, not Roy Orbison, but my operation on May 5th, which left me with a swollen head (really, not metaphorically), aggressively split vision and more staples than Rymans. It took me a while to get over that, let me tell you.
But the human body is a remarkable thing, isn't it? Gradually, my health has started to inch back, restoring my energy, hair (patchily), sense of humour and an appetite for the future. Somewhere along the line, though, events have stopped me from paying due attention to this blog, which I began one sleepless early morning back in March.
I hope to be a better blogger next year. In fact, I hope for a lot of things for next year, including marriage, seeing more of my friends, having barrel-loads more laughs, getting excited about new music – and playing more music myself – swimming… oh, you know, all the colourful stuff that makes life worth living.
That's it, really. I just thought you ought to know. Let me close now by wishing you all very happy New Year, and thanking you again for your support this year. It's meant such a lot to me and Ms Banfi.
Onwards and upwards.
Rob x
Thursday, 26 March 2009
The Delights of Doo Wop
I've just been listening again to some Fifties Doo Wop (courtesy of my friend Stephen, who has provided me with a goldmine of musical treats over the years) and was reminded of how wonderful so much of that music is.
Like most of you young things out there, I was Born Too Late to have enjoyed these tunes first time around, but there's a kind of timeless innocence about them that never fails to move me. They all map the ecstasies and agonies of teenage love. I love the harmonies, even when they don't always quite come off (in fact, sometimes because they don't quite come off). But what particularly draws me is the sheer joy that leaps out of so many of these songs. Some of them sound like they're being performed by a group of young kids who probably perfected their act singing on street corners, and who had probably never been in a recording studio before. For me, there's a real sense of liberation to these performances: the songs seem to leap out of the singers' mouths, as if this is their one chance to shine.
You may well know some of the acts, the ones who had hits, such as Dion ('A Teenager In Love') and The Platters ('The Great Pretender'). But there are lesser-known beauties by groups (often with bird-related names, trivia fans) such as The Orioles (the original 'Crying In The Chapel'), The Flamingos ('I Only Have Eyes For You'), The Cadillacs ('Speedoo'. Great title!), The Capris ('Morse Code Of Love'. Another one!) and The Excellents – The Excellents, mark you! ('Coney Island Baby'). How could you not want to hear a song by groups with names such as Little Anthony & The Imperials, The Quotations, Randy & The Rainbows or Johnny Maestro & The Brooklyn Bridge?
Dip in, go on. It's for anyone who's ever been a teenager.
Like most of you young things out there, I was Born Too Late to have enjoyed these tunes first time around, but there's a kind of timeless innocence about them that never fails to move me. They all map the ecstasies and agonies of teenage love. I love the harmonies, even when they don't always quite come off (in fact, sometimes because they don't quite come off). But what particularly draws me is the sheer joy that leaps out of so many of these songs. Some of them sound like they're being performed by a group of young kids who probably perfected their act singing on street corners, and who had probably never been in a recording studio before. For me, there's a real sense of liberation to these performances: the songs seem to leap out of the singers' mouths, as if this is their one chance to shine.
You may well know some of the acts, the ones who had hits, such as Dion ('A Teenager In Love') and The Platters ('The Great Pretender'). But there are lesser-known beauties by groups (often with bird-related names, trivia fans) such as The Orioles (the original 'Crying In The Chapel'), The Flamingos ('I Only Have Eyes For You'), The Cadillacs ('Speedoo'. Great title!), The Capris ('Morse Code Of Love'. Another one!) and The Excellents – The Excellents, mark you! ('Coney Island Baby'). How could you not want to hear a song by groups with names such as Little Anthony & The Imperials, The Quotations, Randy & The Rainbows or Johnny Maestro & The Brooklyn Bridge?
Dip in, go on. It's for anyone who's ever been a teenager.
Monday, 16 March 2009
Book corner (1): The Plot Against America
Just finished reading The Plot Against America, by Philip Roth. And blimey, fellow bookworms, it's a right riveting read.
The premise on which the whole dark narrative revolves is that instead of Roosevelt taking America into World War II when he did, the aviator Charles Lindbergh enters politics, takes over the presidency and keeps the country out of the war – while subtly pushing anti-Semitic acts through Congress and openly condoning the actions of Hitler's Nazis. (Lindbergh, like Henry Ford, did hold anti-Semitic views and regularly expressed them. There's a handy postscript to the book that features potted biographies of the major figures involved that helps the reader to distinguish the fact from the fiction.)
The book is told from the point of view of a young narrator, named Philip Roth, who watches the effects of the Lindbergh presidency on his immediate world – family, friends, neighbourhood. His father, who wants to believe the best of America and Americans, finds his high hopes constantly undercut by the race of events around him; his mother is wiser to the pace of change and wants to take the family off to Canada. His brother is sent off to the country to work on a farm as part of a work programme called Just Folks, an experience that he loves, and which sets him against his parents, who feel the government is using such projects to divide one generation of Jewish families from another. Later in the novel events take a more sinister turn as Jews are officially 'encouraged' to move and take up jobs outside major cities. The nation simmers and tensions flame up.
This is an intense read, but then every now and then we need one of those in our lives, don't we? Philip Roth gives you a recognisable, historical USA, and then subtly, bit by bit, introduces one small nightmare after the other until it becomes something very different indeed. His depiction of the insidious, ongoing rise of fascism in his fictional America is all too believable – so often we don't realise the damage that's being done to a people, or a country, until it's way too late, do we? Things are always so much more clear-cut in retrospect.
But it's not just the political twists and turns that the author handles with aplomb. He paints the intricate workings of family life with wonderful sensitivity too – the love, the frustration, the raging disappointments. Throughout the novel, he shows how events in the greater world trickle down and have repercussions on individual lives and relationships.
If you're looking for a light read, perhaps look elsewhere. But if you're up for a meaty novel that makes you think, The Plot Against America deserves your attention.
The premise on which the whole dark narrative revolves is that instead of Roosevelt taking America into World War II when he did, the aviator Charles Lindbergh enters politics, takes over the presidency and keeps the country out of the war – while subtly pushing anti-Semitic acts through Congress and openly condoning the actions of Hitler's Nazis. (Lindbergh, like Henry Ford, did hold anti-Semitic views and regularly expressed them. There's a handy postscript to the book that features potted biographies of the major figures involved that helps the reader to distinguish the fact from the fiction.)
The book is told from the point of view of a young narrator, named Philip Roth, who watches the effects of the Lindbergh presidency on his immediate world – family, friends, neighbourhood. His father, who wants to believe the best of America and Americans, finds his high hopes constantly undercut by the race of events around him; his mother is wiser to the pace of change and wants to take the family off to Canada. His brother is sent off to the country to work on a farm as part of a work programme called Just Folks, an experience that he loves, and which sets him against his parents, who feel the government is using such projects to divide one generation of Jewish families from another. Later in the novel events take a more sinister turn as Jews are officially 'encouraged' to move and take up jobs outside major cities. The nation simmers and tensions flame up.
This is an intense read, but then every now and then we need one of those in our lives, don't we? Philip Roth gives you a recognisable, historical USA, and then subtly, bit by bit, introduces one small nightmare after the other until it becomes something very different indeed. His depiction of the insidious, ongoing rise of fascism in his fictional America is all too believable – so often we don't realise the damage that's being done to a people, or a country, until it's way too late, do we? Things are always so much more clear-cut in retrospect.
But it's not just the political twists and turns that the author handles with aplomb. He paints the intricate workings of family life with wonderful sensitivity too – the love, the frustration, the raging disappointments. Throughout the novel, he shows how events in the greater world trickle down and have repercussions on individual lives and relationships.
If you're looking for a light read, perhaps look elsewhere. But if you're up for a meaty novel that makes you think, The Plot Against America deserves your attention.
Saturday, 7 March 2009
Glam rock
Now I don't know about you, but when I was growing up in the Seventies my prime introduction to music was Top of the Pops. And in the halcyon days at the start of the decade, when you tuned in you stumbled across a whole heap of boys in glitter with raunchy guitars. And every song was a party song.
Recently, a book presentation I was helping someone out with led me back to check out some early T.Rex and Roxy Music material, and blew me away anew. True, some of this might be rosy-tinted nostalgia for childhood, but dammit for me there's something really magnetic about good glam. It's catchy. The guitars buzz like angry hornets, but they're somehow not macho and overbearing. And, of course, it's got camp to spare. Remember 'This Town Ain't Big Enough For The Both Of Us' by Sparks? How bonkers is that track? It's veers wildly and joyously between raucous rock and opera and it's guaranteed to make you smile. You can see why Morrissey took to glam like an ugly duckling to water, and why he revered Marc Bolan and Sparks so.
Me, I'm off to slap on a bit of eyeliner and curl a feather boa round my neck. Meantime, may I leave you with my Glam Top Ten of the moment, in no particular order? And if some of these oldies are new to you, why not give ’em a little temporary place in your life?
1. This Town Ain't Big Enough For The Both Of Us – Sparks
2. 20th Century Boy – T.Rex
3. Ballroom Blitz – The Sweet
4. Mother of Pearl – Roxy Music
5. Cosmic Dancer – T.Rex
6. Rock On – David Essex
7. Suffragette City – David Bowie
8. All the Young Dudes – Mott the Hoople
9. Mama Weer All Crazee Now – Slade
10. All I Want Is You – Roxy Music
Recently, a book presentation I was helping someone out with led me back to check out some early T.Rex and Roxy Music material, and blew me away anew. True, some of this might be rosy-tinted nostalgia for childhood, but dammit for me there's something really magnetic about good glam. It's catchy. The guitars buzz like angry hornets, but they're somehow not macho and overbearing. And, of course, it's got camp to spare. Remember 'This Town Ain't Big Enough For The Both Of Us' by Sparks? How bonkers is that track? It's veers wildly and joyously between raucous rock and opera and it's guaranteed to make you smile. You can see why Morrissey took to glam like an ugly duckling to water, and why he revered Marc Bolan and Sparks so.
Me, I'm off to slap on a bit of eyeliner and curl a feather boa round my neck. Meantime, may I leave you with my Glam Top Ten of the moment, in no particular order? And if some of these oldies are new to you, why not give ’em a little temporary place in your life?
1. This Town Ain't Big Enough For The Both Of Us – Sparks
2. 20th Century Boy – T.Rex
3. Ballroom Blitz – The Sweet
4. Mother of Pearl – Roxy Music
5. Cosmic Dancer – T.Rex
6. Rock On – David Essex
7. Suffragette City – David Bowie
8. All the Young Dudes – Mott the Hoople
9. Mama Weer All Crazee Now – Slade
10. All I Want Is You – Roxy Music
Thursday, 5 March 2009
The upside to a crisis
Friends, believe it or not there are advantages to being stricken with the Big C.
After being diagnosed with an – check this – Undifferentiated Nasopharangel Carcinoma – on December 18 last year (and I think we can safely call that the worst day of my life), I went through a remorseless wringer of emotions. Shock, fear, abject desolation, the works. In truth, though, they all passed through me that first night, when I was surrounded by dear friends and the woman I love and cried like a baby. The thought of losing them, and all those other good people who make my life what it is, and that all the possibilities for my future might remain just pipe dreams, was something I didn't have the wit or vocabulary to take in.
But after that, things began to take a very different turn. None of us can ultimately dictate the course of his or her life, of course, but I do stubbornly believe that the mind can work miracles sometimes – often in the face of incontrovertible evidence. So, pretty much the next day, I simply decided that I was going to get through this crisis after all – because I absolutely have to have those years ahead to do all the things I need to do. I need to marry Andrea (that woman I love), I need to have children and see them grow. I need to make something solid of whatever talents I've been given. And that's going to take time. So I've got to make it through this crisis. QED.
Difficult to avoid cliché in this area, but I can honestly say that I genuinely appreciate the value of the weeks I've spent since that dark December day. You can't help but feel more warmly towards life when it's abruptly been put in jeopardy. Sojourns in hospital and daily trips as a radiotherapy outpatient have given me the chance to start reading again, and now I find I'm racing through books like there's no tomorrow. So richly rewarding to have the time to concentrate on a book and truly lose yourself in it! (Or take your time really getting to know some music. Or simply staring at a view, taking it all in.) I confess, I'd forgotten quite how good that kind of deep engagement with something feels.
Being ill also means you are forced to take time off to recover, of course, and there's a lot to be said for that. I find I'm less prone to rushing jobs now, do things selectively, one at a time, and find them all the more satisfying as a result. In fact, it's made me wonder about the possibility of dropping down to four days' work a week when I'm recovered – just think what you could do with the extra time!
Is it possible to maintain that head-rush of enthusiasm when the threat of cancer is less immediate? Who's to say. In a few months – when my hair's grown back and my skin is back to normal and not shedding like snowflakes off a windy fir tree – there's always the danger I'll take good health for granted again. I don't know, though: this feels to me very much like I've been given a second chance, and I plan to make the very best use of it that I can.
After being diagnosed with an – check this – Undifferentiated Nasopharangel Carcinoma – on December 18 last year (and I think we can safely call that the worst day of my life), I went through a remorseless wringer of emotions. Shock, fear, abject desolation, the works. In truth, though, they all passed through me that first night, when I was surrounded by dear friends and the woman I love and cried like a baby. The thought of losing them, and all those other good people who make my life what it is, and that all the possibilities for my future might remain just pipe dreams, was something I didn't have the wit or vocabulary to take in.
But after that, things began to take a very different turn. None of us can ultimately dictate the course of his or her life, of course, but I do stubbornly believe that the mind can work miracles sometimes – often in the face of incontrovertible evidence. So, pretty much the next day, I simply decided that I was going to get through this crisis after all – because I absolutely have to have those years ahead to do all the things I need to do. I need to marry Andrea (that woman I love), I need to have children and see them grow. I need to make something solid of whatever talents I've been given. And that's going to take time. So I've got to make it through this crisis. QED.
Difficult to avoid cliché in this area, but I can honestly say that I genuinely appreciate the value of the weeks I've spent since that dark December day. You can't help but feel more warmly towards life when it's abruptly been put in jeopardy. Sojourns in hospital and daily trips as a radiotherapy outpatient have given me the chance to start reading again, and now I find I'm racing through books like there's no tomorrow. So richly rewarding to have the time to concentrate on a book and truly lose yourself in it! (Or take your time really getting to know some music. Or simply staring at a view, taking it all in.) I confess, I'd forgotten quite how good that kind of deep engagement with something feels.
Being ill also means you are forced to take time off to recover, of course, and there's a lot to be said for that. I find I'm less prone to rushing jobs now, do things selectively, one at a time, and find them all the more satisfying as a result. In fact, it's made me wonder about the possibility of dropping down to four days' work a week when I'm recovered – just think what you could do with the extra time!
Is it possible to maintain that head-rush of enthusiasm when the threat of cancer is less immediate? Who's to say. In a few months – when my hair's grown back and my skin is back to normal and not shedding like snowflakes off a windy fir tree – there's always the danger I'll take good health for granted again. I don't know, though: this feels to me very much like I've been given a second chance, and I plan to make the very best use of it that I can.
Wednesday, 4 March 2009
Blogging on
Hullo all
Ooh, the marvels of the 21st century, eh? Now, I'm a complete naif when it comes to blogging, but the rollercoaster ride my life has taken over the past few months has left me with a headful of thoughts and opinions – and it's got to the stage where I've just gotta get 'em down.
I'll be posting as regularly as possible – on matters personal, vital, and not-all-that-vital but hey! – and would love to hear any and all feedback from you. Don't be shy.
Cheerio for now
Rob
Ooh, the marvels of the 21st century, eh? Now, I'm a complete naif when it comes to blogging, but the rollercoaster ride my life has taken over the past few months has left me with a headful of thoughts and opinions – and it's got to the stage where I've just gotta get 'em down.
I'll be posting as regularly as possible – on matters personal, vital, and not-all-that-vital but hey! – and would love to hear any and all feedback from you. Don't be shy.
Cheerio for now
Rob
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