Poem: Not A Wonderful World
Louis Armstrong invented jazz, worked
with sweat and grit and soul to make the
sound we love and need – was later asked
how everything was going, and replied,
“White folks are still in the lead”.
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Poem: Be Like The Drummer For The Renderers
be patient, but urgent
be thoughtful, be kind
be the kind of change
that comes with the
wind, that turns noise
into sound, music into art,
art into new music built
from the bones found out
on dirt roads that never
quite take you all the way
to the barn. Be that person,
for each and then every song.
Be strong with soft hands,
open heart and searching
mind. Always be that kind.
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Sinead O’Connor Singing Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered – That Is What Did It
I mean, I was a fan already, I loved those first two records, the big hits and the lesser-known album cuts. It all felt so different.
I remember watching a late-night TV concert. Mesmerised by what I could only then see and hear as a kind of very special madness. It was thrilling. It was almost scary how good she was. Read More
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Poem: The Chase
chase the ghosts of songs
down
halls, across roads
and in through
tunnels – take the shortcut
that makes it longer, let
the ghost grow stronger…you’ll
need that energy to pin it down
for the vital few moments
of when you
get to call it ‘mine’ – and then
it’s gone, and when you’re lost
again that’s when you’ll know
you tried your best to truly
find something
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Top Gun – Maverick: Film
Top Gun: Maverick
Director: Joseph Kosinski
Skydance Media / Jerry Bruckheimer Films / Paramount Pictures
I grew up with Top Gun – I remember seeing it at the cinema, later I inherited the RayBans (from my older brother) and the soundtrack was everywhere, one of a handful of mid/late-80s soundtrack albums that really had a huge impact on my listening – not so much on my taste as on the overall experience of taking in an album; particularly a soundtrack album. Read More
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Stevie’s Wonder Years
“Stevie Wonder is a musical genius” – when Eddie Murphy said that I finally had the confirmation. I’d grown up with Stevie Wonder’s music and loved what I knew at that time. But also, when Murphy said it (as part of his influential Delirious) Stevie wasn’t making the greatest music. It was all radio pap, pop songs for movies and cliché-ridden duets. Delirious taught me about so many things and sent me back to the comedy of Richard Pryor. But it also got me going through the ‘classic’ Stevie Wonder years.
I’ve written about this before. And so has just about any music writer. But across the first half of the 1970s nobody was better than Stevie Wonder. Read More
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Poem: I Hear That Train A-Comin’
the constant clacking
of the keyboard thwacking
a train in the distance, my
thoughts freighted right
back to me, no one is
waiting at the station
just as well, because this
train never arrives
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Ricky Gervais: SuperNature
Ricky Gervais: SuperNature
Director: Ricky Gervais
Netflix
I haven’t found Ricky Gervais funny for a lot longer than I ever found him funny, something I explored when I made the wrong move of watching season three of After Life (I had mostly enjoyed the first two seasons, the first especially). Read More
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Poem: It’s Never Or Now
an old song plays backwards
in the bar, the footage of you
entering is reversed.
Elvis Presley sings for the
lonely but only one person
ever happened to notice that
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Apparently The 30 Best Horror Films Of All Time
The list is just a meme, shared recently when it was Friday the 13th, hence that film title is highlighted. But I looked through the list and realised quickly I had seen 29 of the 30. This, according to one million votes, was the list of the Best Horror Movies of All Time. And I had seen all of them apart from one.
Me being me, I was straight down the road to friendly Aro Video – use it or we’ll lose it – to rent the title that I had previously ignored. Read More
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Poem: There’s Only One Thing Better…
the mandarins were in the
fridge (where I wanted them)
I took them and put them
in a bowl (to gather the skins)
there is a sugar rush that comes
from eating mandarins (but my dad
doesn’t believe that fruit has
sugar, or else his doctor-friend
would have mentioned it one
night, over tennis…surely…)
Now. Where was I? Oh yes…
Mandarins…(mmmmmmmm)
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R.I.P. Vangelis
Evángelos Odysséas Papathanassíou – better known to the music world as Vangelis –has died. He was 79. People know Vangelis as a soundtrack composer. And he reached influential heights in that department, but he was a pop star, a prog-rock legend, a shapeshifting jazz-fusion experimenter, synthesiser pioneer and so much more.
I probably first knew Vangelis – like a lot of people (my generation) because of the monumental music that frames the key sequences of Chariots of Fire; I grew up with that score, loved it, loathed it, now love it all over again. That was the early 1980s. The following year, Vangelis created the soundtrack to Blade Runner – as crucial as the film itself. Maybe more so. It is such a legendary and influential piece of work. So, after that, I started listening to his albums and finding him unfairly dismissed as easy listening. Read More