Thursday 30 September 2010

Has my book already been written?

When I started my first novel 18 months ago it didn't really occur to me that someone else might already have written it. To be honest it didn't really occur to me that I was actually going to finish it.

Now it's done (and lounging in a drawer awaiting one final check before going out to a list of agents) I'm starting research and planning for a second. Almost the first thought I had was 'is this an original idea?'. Almost immediately I discovered at least one book that has alarming parallels (judging from the blurb anyway - my copy should arrive from Amazon later today). Luckily the panic only lasted an hour or so - during which time the author of the book in question tweeted me to say 'feel the fear and do it anyway' after I'd told her I was worried she'd already written my book (she was the one who recommended hers, amongst many others, as being along similar lines).

Luckily the fear only lasted for an hour or so. I'm sure that whatever other people have written there will be more differences than similarities between our books.

What the past few days has highlighted though is just how fragile an idea is and what a nebulous thing a novel is in its early (and even middle) stages.

Tuesday 28 September 2010

Songs: Josh Ritter - Kathleen

Last week I went to the Barbican to see Josh Ritter and was, once again, blown away by the sheer exuberance and wonder of his live shows. I've never seen anyone command a room as strongly by sheer power of enthusiasm, other than Bruce Springsteen (and my chances of ever seeing him perform anywhere this small are nil).

Amongst the brilliance, the roller-coaster of moods and emotions and the sheer bloody brilliance of the night, one song stood out and made the hairs on the hairs on the back of my hairs stand up (I'm not THAT hairy, by the way) - Kathleen.

Any song starting with the line:

All the other girls here are stars-you are the Northern Lights

is going to get my attention and this did from the first time I heard it. There's something in the way Josh Ritter delivers a song that is simultaneously energised, relaxed, carefree, pumped and - above all - joyously, unashamedly hopeful. In an age when it's cool to be cool Josh Ritter embodies true cool - that is he's cool because he is himself and doesn't care whether that's fashionable or not (and by that I mean your facial hair, sir).

The true killer line in the song is:

I won't be your last dance, just your last good night.
Every heart is a package tangled up in knots someone else tied

Brilliant. There is nothing better in the entire history of music than this song.

A finished novel and an empty notebook

So, a few days ago I finished the novel I've been writing for the past 18 months. This is brilliant and scary in equal measures as now I have to send it off into the world and find out whether it's crap, brilliant or (more likely) any one of a million things in between. That's partly what it's about though, how we generally live in the between, so it makes sense.

On the very good advice of a mate (Phil Earle, whose brilliant debut novel Being Billyis published in January by Puffin) I'm sticking the manuscript of book #1 in a drawer for a couple of weeks and giving it a final read before it goes out. Seeing as the Frankfurt Book Fair is almost upon us there's a fair chance nobody would read it til the end of October anyway.

In the meantime I've bought a new notebook (just a cheap Ryman's thing, I think the quality of my writing would be likely to be inversely proportional to the fanciness of any notebook I was to buy) and am cracking on with the research and note taking for book #2.

I'll fill you in on any feedback I get once it's out there.

Thursday 23 September 2010

#18 Juan Diego Florez - The Tenor


The Tenor
I used to belong to one of those CD clubs where you start by getting half a dozen things you want really cheap and end up paying £14 each for a load of things you don't want just because you're too lazy to go to the post office or too disorganised to return the slip that says 'no thanks'.

This was one of the discs I didn't order but arrived anyway - luckily I liked the look of it.

Juan Diego Florez seems to be one of those singers (like Cecelia Bartoli) who polarizes people. I know a few people who can't stand his voice. Like it or not, however, his singing is incredible on a technical level. I happen to like it, although I need to be in the right mood. At least, that's true on disc, I'm always in the mood to hear him sing live. I've seen him a couple of times at Covent Garden: once in The Barber of Seville with the incredible Joyce Di Donato and once in Fille Du Regiment with Natalie Dessay, probably the most perfect opera experience I've ever had in the theatre.

I did make the mistake of listening to this on the way to work today - JDF has the kind of voice that my ears might need to wake up a little more to fully appreciate, especially in a disc of arias where there's a higher density of top notes than you'd get in an evening in an opera house (you'd also get other voices in the opera house).

I love this disc - it's also great to see a couple of non-operatic pieces (Amapola and Granada) that mix things up without feeling the need to go all crossover and sing something wildly inappropriate just to generate a few sales. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against crossover as such, I just think sometimes people chase sales at the expense of producing quality. Not here.

Monday 20 September 2010

#17 Britten - Peter Grimes (Davis/Vickers)

Britten: Peter Grimes

I love Peter Grimes, love it - in the way Kevin Keegan would have loved it if Newcastle had beaten Manchester United (probably more so).

The first recording I owned was the Britten/Pears one and I loved it - still do. A couple of years later my wife bought me the John Vickers/Colin Davis recording on vinyl but, vinyl not being so portable, I ended up not listening to it as much. I finally got round to getting the CD a while ago and have spent the past few days listening to pretty much nothing else other than this (although I did watch the ENO Philip Langridge DVDyesterday).

It's wonderful to have more than one outstanding recording of any opera to listen to and it's especially great when the versions bring out very different sides of the drama as is the case here. Vickers' singing is much more muscular and brutal than Pears' and Davis conducts the score with an equal amount of conviction. The standout scene for me is Grimes' first entry after the Passacaglia ('Go there...') which hits you with the force of a gale and leaves you reeling.

Grimes features as a (relatively small) reference in the novel I'm currently writing, which is one of the reasons I've been listening to it so much - more on that later though.

#16 Radiohead - The Bends


Radiohead - The Bends
When I was at university everyone banged on about this album and I bought it thinking 'they can't all be wrong'. I listened to it a fair bit at the time but it never really got under my skin in the way I was expecting it to.

I have roughly the same relationship with Radiohead as I have with U2 - I can see why what they do is good, why it's important, why it's unique and why people love it. I just don't - love it that is. I think with U2 I know why that is. The band, Bono in particular, have spent so long creating a kind of post-modern rock-god-for-the-masses image that it actually gets in the way of me seeing them as real people singing about real stuff. Radiohead aren't the same though - they're pretty much as real as it gets.

All that said - I do love Fake Plastic Trees and High and Dry. I guess that's part of the problem with this album for me - after Fake Plastic Trees it's basically peaked for me and the rest seems like a let down.

I've got OK Computer as well and it hasn't bowled me over either. I reckon it's a bit like mushrooms or rhubarb though - eventually you have to stop trying and concede it's just not for you. There's so much music I love in this world I don't have enough time to listen to music I don't. I do still feel like it's my error though and there's something I'm missing.

Friday 17 September 2010

#15 The Beatles - Please Please Me


Please Please Me

I love this album. Everybody bangs on about how Sgt Pepper is the best Beatles album - it's not. Neither is the white album or even Rubber Soul (much as I love them all...well...Sgt pepper not so much...)

From the count-in to 'I Saw Her Standing There' to the final ragged yelps of 'Twist & Shout', Please Please Me did as much to kick pop music up the arse as anything before or since. It set the standard for future bands and made it the norm for bands to sing well, play well, have personality, write their own songs, push the boundaries of recording blah, blah, blah...

People get tired of The Beatles as they've been round so long but this album is like a cotton bud for tired ears & heads - it shifts the accumulated crap and lets you hear clearly again. Works for me.

Plus...George's solo on 'Boys' is brilliant.

Wednesday 8 September 2010

#14 Punch Brothers - Antifogmatic


Antifogmatic
For those not in the know Punch Brothers are the band formed by former Nickel Creek mandolinist Chris Thile - for those of you who don't know who Nickel Creek were, they were the band that Punch Brothers' frontman Chris Thile used to be in. All clear? Good.

Almost 4 years ago when I left my job in music publishing to work for a mate's website, I was bought a mandolin as a leaving present. Good present. I slowly taught myself to play it and started looking around for mandolin players and mandolin-related stuff to listen to. I came across Chris Thile courtesy of the splendid Woodsongs Old Time Radio Hour podcast. Turns out he was promoting his new album How to Grow a Woman From the Ground so I hunted round and bought a copy. The band on that album turned into The Tensions Mountain Boys but nobody got the joke so they became Punch Brothers.

In 2008 I was reviewing CDs for americana-uk as a bit of a sideline and wanted to review Punch Brothers first album Punch. Despite requesting a review copy (twice) it never came so I downloaded the album from iTunes and reviewed it from that - it was one of only two 10/10 reviews I gave - the other may well be Disc of the Day at some point. Read the review here

Anyhow, here we are with Antifogmatic - if I could I'd give this 11/10 but I can't as that would be mathematically incorrect (plus I don't write reviews any more). This album has almost all the things that I love about classical music and opera and miss from time to time in popular music (for want of a better phrase to cover everything from Hank Williams to Iron Maiden - ie non-classical music). It has stunning variety of texture, colour, dynamic and touch of playing. Plus the songs are also incredibly, incredibly good.

There's nothing I don't like about this album and Missy has possibly the best instrumental break ever (courtesy of Gabe Witcher on fiddle).

Punch Brothers are my favourite band currently in existence on the planet.

Tuesday 7 September 2010

#13 Fairport Convention - Liege & Lief


Liege And Lief

This album regularly tops the polls of best folk and folk-rock albums of all time and for very good reason. Liege and Lief set the standard for so many of the elements of folk rock that we now expect and marks the arrival not only of Sandy Denny as one of the UK's finest voices but also of Richard Thompson as a true innovator on the guitar. Add to that a cracking rhythm section and some inspired fiddling and you get a band that's capable of everything from the taught, menacing thump of Tam Lin to the gentle washes of sound that underpin the sublime Reynardine.

Listening to the guitar solos on the longer tracks reminded me of recent disc of the Day #9 - Televisions Marquee Moon. You could drop the needle (so to speak - we are on CD here after all) at a random point in the solos to title track Marquee Moon and swear you're hearing Richard Thompson.

Brilliant stuff.

#12 (re-visited) Messiaen - Quatuor pour la Fin du Temps (Barenboim)


Oliver Messiaen: Quatuor pour la Fin du Temps (Quartet for the End of Time) (1940).

OK, I promised to listen to this again post-hangover so here we go (not that it's taken this long to get rid of the hangover).

I really enjoyed this second time round. As I often find with more tonally challenging music I found the slower movements easier at first. I guess it's down to being able to hear the harmonies unfold rather than being hit with them all in one go, as you often are in the faster sections.

My favourite track at this point is 5 - Louange a l'Eternite de Jesus - but there's clearly plenty in the work as a whole that will unfold as my ears get used to it and hear past the 'easier' bits.

Glad I came back to it. There will be a new disc later today

Saturday 4 September 2010

#12 Messiaen - Quatuor pour la Fin du Temps (Barenboim)


Oliver Messiaen: Quatuor pour la Fin du Temps (Quartet for the End of Time) (1940).

I bought this after reading Alex Ross's wonderful The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century


In truth I did what I always do with music books that are well written - I blast through and don't take time to listen to the music the author is talking about at the time. I did this with Humphrey Carpenter's Britten biography amongst (many) others.

I listened to it on headphones at 10 in the morning at work with a hangover so I have no idea whether I liked it or not. Judgement is reserved but I will revisit this in another post when my brain is capable of listening properly.

In the meantime I will endeavour to get back to the book from the beginning and do some extensive listening after I read each chapter. May take some time but that's fine by me.

Friday 3 September 2010

John Cage birthday playlist


I love the idea of doing a playlist in honour of John Cage's birthday (Sunday would be his 98th). Basically you select everything in your iTunes that has a track time of 4'33" - see Alex Ross's wonderful blog for full details

Here's mine - oddly a bit Tom Waits heavy but a fair representation of my tastes (although maybe there should be a tiny bit more early 80s heavy metal in there!)

#11 Verdi - Rigoletto (Bruson/Gruberova/Shicoff/Sinopoli)


Verdi - Rigoletto
Rigoletto is the first opera I listened to, and I didn't really expect to like it. Ever since I was a child I hated opera singing or, to be more accurate, I hated big wobbly soprano voices (which is what I thought all opera singing was). I bought a few discs of orchestral excerpts from Wagner operas as a teenager but didn't go in for all the hoyotoho-ing of the full versions.

Skip forward several years to 2000. I started a job at a music publishing company administering royalties - part of my job was processing royalties for Ricordi, one of the biggest opera publishers of all time. I asked my boss if she'd lend me some opera to listen to as I thought I might as well know what I was dealing with and, in simple terms, I fell in love.

I love this recording of the opera. Bruson is a fine Rigoletto and I've always liked what I've heard of Niel Shicoff, who seems to have suffered from being a great tenor at a time when there were 3 much more famous tenors around. Maybe he wasn't quite in the same league but he's not far off.

The best thing about this recording for me though is Edita Gruberova's Gilda. Some people aren't too keen on her voice, saying it lacks warmth. However, we're not dealing with a worldly-wise Violetta here (although I believe her recording of Traviata is also excellent - I haven't heard it). Gilda is young and innocent and the cleanliness of Gruberova's voice is a great fit. Her Caro Nome is simply beautiful.

10 years on and I'm a huge opera fan - who'd have thought.

Thursday 2 September 2010

#10 Wagner - Tristan und Isolde (Domingo/Stemme/Pappano - EMI)


Wagner: Tristan und Isolde
I bough this on a whim second hand a few months ago (in its original release rather than the new version with e-libretto) for about £4 as it was missing the booklet and box.

I love Domingo but my main reason for buying this was Nina Stemme as I saw her as Isolde at Covent Garden recently and she was simply jaw-droppingly good (even with Ben Heppner walking the role of Tristan as - I think - Lars Cleveman sang it from the wings). She doesn't disappoint in this set either, although with a few more years (and a few more performances of Isolde under her belt) she's even better now than in 2005 when this set was released.

So, you get Nina Stemme and Domingo, who else? Rene Pape as King Marke, Olaf Bar as Kurwenal, Ian Bostridge as the shepherd and Matthew Rose (who I very much like) as the steersman (oh, and some bloke called Villazon as the young seaman). Not bad for £4 I don't think!

Admittedly I would pick the Bohm/Nilsson/Windgassen 1966 Bayreuth recording over this if you forced me to choose but you wouldn't do that...would you?

#9 Television - Marquee Moon


Marquee Moon: Remastered & Expanded
About 15 years ago I went through a New York Punk phase. Armed with Clinton Helyin's wonderful From the Velvets to the Voidoids: The Birth of American Punk RockI trawled my way through the CBGBs era bands and beyond. Much of it I don't listen to any more (and probably won't) but there are a few albums that have become firm favourites and this (along with Patti Smith's Horses) is definitely one of them.

Much is always made of the guitar interplay between Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd on this album (and rightly so). However, listening to it again, it's the rhythm section that really stands out, particularly Billy Ficca's wonderful drumming that manages to be taught, supportive and solid yet always inventive and interesting.

I'd forgotten just how lost I can get in the title track and just how much I love the rest of the album. Now I want the remastered expanded version so I get the bonus tracks....

Wednesday 1 September 2010

#8 Gorecki - Symphony No3


Górecki - Symphony No 3; Olden Style Pieces
Having got the day of to a meditative start with DotD #7 it gets even slower with #8. Any symphony whose 3 movements are:

1. Lento
2. Lento e largo
3. Lento

is never going to thunder at you like Mahler and the sustained, in a way minimalist, quality of the writing definitely gives the whole piece a cinematic feel. Everything unfolds slowly and gently, like a long reflective novel and the addition of a soprano (in this case Zofia Kilanowicz) adds an element of lyrical sadness but, ultimately, the 3rd movement ends on a note of hope.

I'd forgotten I even had this disc until I found it on a shelf at work this morning!

#7 Miles Davis - In a Silent Way


In a Silent Way
I did find my copy of Miles Davis' Porgy & Bess but then found this and went with that instead. Bit of a weird choice for my walk to work through the City of London but a great meditative start to the day.

The mix of electric (keyboards/guitar) and acoustic (trumpet/drums/bass) gives the music an ethereal yet solid feel that always seems on the verge of something (rather like a much shorter Tristan und Isolde) til things finally get going part way through It's About That Time.

Seems like the Miles Davis fusion album you're supposed to love is Bitches Brew but give me this any day or, preferebly, late in any evening.