A Free Man

With exams due, lectures to prepare and reports to write, A Free Man has not enough feet in too many camps this week.  My head’s all over the place and I’ve started posts about topics as diverse as sedition, mobile phones, Lyndon LaRouche and my bus ride to work. Instead, I’ve decided to harness all this disparate thought to make a seamless link between Jarvis Cocker and Wee Z.

Jarvis Cocker is one of my rock gods. I selected my last pair of glasses almost entirely because I wanted specs like Jarvis. Really. Like the Barenaked Ladies, Pulp brings me right back to the early days of my relationship with (stalking of) Dr. O’C. She turned me on to the Brit Pop pioneers, among other great bands I hadn’t heard. “Common People” has got to be one of their best and one of the best of the genre.

Almost as cool as Jarvis is Captain Kirk himself, William Shatner. If Star Trek isn’t enough for you, how about his bizarre foray into pop music with another four-eyed rock god, Ben Folds. Agnes, here’s another cover for you - Big Giant Head does Pulp.

Ben Folds is apparently collaborating on a new album with author Nick Hornby who wrote “About A Boy”. The film adaptation of his book starred Hugh Grant in the role of man-child Will.

Hugh Grant also starred as the rakish Daniel Cleaver in “Bridget Jones’ Diary”, a secret guilty pleasure. (”Bizarre what some men find attractive.”). His co-star in that film was Colin Firth.

Colin Firth played Harry Bright, a British banker, in “Mamma Mia”. And speaking of bankers…

 

 Podcast Video: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Jarvis Cocker - "Running The World" [4:39m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Pulp - "Common People" [5:52m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 William Shatner - "Common People" [2:21m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Popularity: 54% [?]

The sunshine bores the daylights out of me.
Chasing shadows moonlight mystery.
Headed for the overload,
Splattered on the dirty road,
Kick me like you’ve kicked before,
I can’t even feel the pain no more…

My first memory of The Rolling Stones is one of profound dislike. I’m not saying that I was some sort of music snob child progeny, but the Stones songs that I heard on Top 40 radio and saw on MTV in the early 80’s just flat out sucked. Cap their sub-par 80’s work off with the absurd duet that Jagger did with Bowie in 1985 that MTV played the hell out of and I think my impression of the Stones as overrated and lacking in any real talent was a legitimate, if short-sighted, one. This was a band for graying, beer-bellied bikers with the tongue emblems on the leathers that periodically roared through my dank north Florida town on the way to Daytona, not for the discerning young Culture Club fan. (Yes, really. Regrettably.)

The source for this distaste was that I had very little exposure to the Stones’ earlier work. The only “oldies” that I listened to was the old records and 8 tracks that my Dad had and he preferred McCartney and Lennon to Jagger and Richards. Certainly I would have heard “Satisfaction” and “Gimme Shelter” on the radio, but they never resonated with me growing up - they just didn’t apply to my small town childhood.  And then you see Mick Jagger “dancing” in the streets in a bright mauve silk shirt on MTV and it’s pretty easy to dismiss The Stones as irrelevant.

My opinion about The Stones started to change the first time that I saw Lawrence Kasden’s “The Big Chill”, or more precisely, listened to the soundtrack for that film. “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” is used so effectively in the funeral scene of that film (yes, that’s the kind of teenager I was) that I was inspired to go and check out more of The Stones’ earlier work. I bought the double cassette “Hot Rocks” and never thought of The Rolling Stones in the same way again. I can still remember the feeling that “Satisfaction” inspired the first time I really heard it in my late teens. That raw frustration, rebellion, absolute disdain for “that man”. The Stones were punk before punk was even an idea in Joey Ramone’s teenage mind. That rock and roll swagger of Honky Tonky Women” and “Street Fighting Man” that seemed cliched to me in the early 80s got me through the bulk of my 20s. From that greatest hits collection, I dug into Jagger ad Richards’ back catalog and some of the the obsessive, darker, introspective stuff from those late 60s and early 70s records hit home for me in my early 30’s.

‘Cause all you women is low down gamblers,
Cheatin’ like I don’t know how,
But baby, baby, there’s fever in the funk house now.
This low down bitchin’ got my poor feet a itchin’,
You know you know the duece is still wild.

Now, “Let It Bleed” is my favorite Stones album, but it’s not the one that the iPod chose on my Friday free day with Boy Z. Instead we got what is generally considered to be their best record, “Exile on Main Street”. This behemoth, upon its release in 1972, changed The Stones from just another 60’s rock band to THE rock band of the 1970s.  changed rock and roll on its release in 1972. So much so that whenever a band crosses some sort of critically established threshold, this is the album evoked as a comparison. For example, “‘Being There’ is Wilco’s ‘Exile on Main Street’” or “With ‘Brighter Than Creation’s Dark’, the Drive-by Truckers have recorded their ‘Exile on Main Street’”.

And it is a magnificent album. It’s a rollicking, seemingly endless trip - like a drunken summer afternoon riding around in the back of a pick up truck. It’s hot, it’s dirty, it’s fuddled. The boogie piano and mellow slide show this band at it finest - borrowing elements of country, soul, rhythm and blues, even jazz - to make a new kind of rock and roll.

Listening to “Exile on Main Street” with my son on Friday, listening through his virgin ears, I heard a song like “Hip Shake Boogie” for what it must have been at the time - a redefining of rock and roll. The subject matter of the song…

…I wanna tell you ’bout a dance
that’s goin’ around…

…is bog standard rock, is in fact how rock and roll started out a couple of decades earlier. But the way that The Stones come at it would have been all new at the time, the dirty boogie sound that they were employing and Jagger’s grumbling, lackadaisical vocals.

Z was indifferent to the music, but did like my singing and hip shaking. He’s more of a fan of dance than music right now. I’m a little disappointed that hes’s not up shaking his own hips yet. Particularly since Chris’s daughter, who is younger than Z, is all over the interwebs with her dancing. But hey, it’s not a race, right?

Right?

I do think that The Rolling Stone have held on for far too long. I also think that they’re the McDonalds of rock and roll, a universally recognized franchise with that damn tongue logo ubiquitous. And I think that they haven’t made a really good album since “Goat’s Head Soup” in 1973 (maybe 1980’s “Emotional Rescue”). But all that aside, the Rolling Stones changed rock and roll for the better in the late 60’s and early 70’s and some of those albums -  “Let It Bleed”, “Sticky Fingers”, “Their Satanic Majesties Request” and “Exile on Main Street” - are among the finest ever made.

Z, most likely, is never going to see the depressing spectacle is The Rolling Stones today and I’m a little envious of that. He’ll be able to pick and choose from their back catalog, ignoring “Dancing in the Street” and “One Hit To The Body“. Hell, Z may even think of The Rolling Stones as they would like to people to think of them - as the greatest rock band the world has ever seen.

Let this music relax your mind, let this music relax your mind.
Stand up and be counted, can’t get a witness.
Sometimes you need somebody, if you have somebody to love.
Sometimes you ain’t got nobody and you want somebody to love.

——————-

The Rolling Stones’ “Exile on Main Street” is available from Amazon.

 

 The Rolling Stones - "Shake Your Hips" [3:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Popularity: 65% [?]

Annie Savoy: What do you believe in, then?
Crash Davis: Well, I believe in the soul, the cock, the pussy, the small of a woman’s back, the hanging curve ball, high fiber, good scotch, that the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent, overrated crap. I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I believe there ought to be a constitutional amendment outlawing Astroturf and the designated hitter. I believe in the sweet spot, soft-core pornography, opening your presents Christmas morning rather than Christmas Eve and I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days. Goodnight.

I had intended to start yesterday’s post with a  kind of statement of things I believe strongly in, the point being that I did not want to argue about the merits of evolution again. A sort of personal manifesto. The post was getting fairly unwieldy, though, so I killed it.

But I’ve been coming back to the list since then and I actually like it a lot. NPR listeners may be familiar with one of my favorite of their programs, “This I Believe”, on which average people read an essay about their core beliefs. One of these days I’m going to write a proper “This I Believe” essay. But until then and with apologies to Edward R Murrow, Michael Stipe and Crash Davis, here is what I believe.

1. I believe in Karma, The Golden Rule, reaping what you sow, however you label it. You get back what you give out.
2. I believe that a civilized society has an obligation to look after its poor, its weak, its sick. I believe that, unfortunately, government is the only entity that is imparial enough to be capable of doing so.
3. I believe that through some bizarre twist of fate I’ve ended up with the most wonderful woman on the planet as a life partner and the mother of my child.
4. I believe that we can explain the incredible diversity of life on this planet without invoking the supernatural. I believe in Muller’s Ratchet, Mendel’s Laws, Occam’s Razor and Darwinian Evolution.
5. I believe that I am as happy as I make up my mind to be.
6. I believe that my son is as close to a perfect expression of humanity as you’re likely to find.
7. I believe that a world without music would be a world in which I would rather not live.
8. I believe in a personal god of my own understanding.
9. I believe that every person has a fundamental right to choose their own path in life. To make their own choices about their bodies, about where, how and if they worship, about what they read and say, about what they do behind the four walls of their home. I believe that their right to choose their own destiny stops when their fist hits my face.
10. I believe that it’s getting better all the time. A little better all the time.

And…

I believe in coyotes and time as an abstract
Explain the change, the difference between
What you want and what you need, there’s the key…

I believe my humor’s wearing thin
And change is what I believe in
I believe my shirt is wearing thin
And change is what I believe in…

I believe in example
I believe my throat hurts…

What do you believe?

——————-

R.E.M.’s “Life’s Rich Pageant” is available from .

 

 R.E.M. - "I Believe" [3:50m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Popularity: 83% [?]

Bob: It gets a whole lot more complicated when you have kids.
Charlotte: It’s scary.
Bob: The most terrifying day of your life is the day the first one is born.
Charlotte: Nobody ever tells you that.
Bob: Your life, as you know it… is gone. Never to return. But they learn how to walk, and they learn how to talk… and you want to be with them. And they turn out to be the most delightful people you will ever meet in your life.
Charlotte: That’s nice.

(From “Lost In Translation“)

The last time we were in Sweden, Dr. O’C’s sister looked after Baby Z for a night so we could get a much needed night out together. It was such a relief - a few baby free hours - that we thought we would try to replicate that experience this time around. We planned to go see the Oscar winning “Once” at one of the city center cinemas.

Well, I’m slightly chagrined to say that my normally flawless sense of direction failed me and we got slightly turned around in the streets of Göteborg. So much so that we couldn’t quite find the cinema. Dr. O’C suggested asking directions, obviously not realizing how laughable a concept this is to any man worth his salt. Our luck seemed to change for the better, however, as we found a second cinema that was showing “Flyga Drake” - the Swedish title for “The Kite Runner“. Both Dr. O’C and I had really enjoyed the Khaled Hosseini book and probably would have gone to see the film earlier if not for, well, you know. We rushed to buy the tickets and almost as an afterthought I asked the clerk:

“It is in English?”

To which she replied:

“Yes, yes, English.”

Dr. O’C astutely pointed out that all of the films for adults in Sweden are in English with Swedish subtitles. Except, apparently, for those that are in Dari Persian, with Swedish subtitles.

I wonder what our fellow cinema goers thought as we slunk out of the theater ten minutes into the film.

Image: I’ve no idea what this statue in the center of Göteborg represents nor what that man is doing with that knife, as I don’t read Swedish. But I love the vandalism/artistic statement.

Popularity: 18% [?]

This post has nothing to do with Bill O’Reilly or GolfWeek magazine. No, today we’re talking about the wonderful world of advertising. I tend to think of myself a discerning consumer, not easily swayed by Madison Avenue’s efforts. In fact, like most people, I tend to change the channel, leave the room or tune out completely when faced with TV advertising. But the first time that I saw this ad for Gucci’s new fragrance, I was enthralled. The first thing that snapped my attention away from whatever I was doing rather than watching commercials was their use of Blondie’s “Heart of Glass”. Advertisers are getting smarter with their music choices these days - using slick pop songs to catch the potential consumer’s attention - and this is a perfect example. Once Gucci got my attention, they kept it with a beautifully visual ad. It features rich golds and earth tones and models dancing in seductively in slow motion, one of whom looks remarkably like Chan Marshall. Yep, you’ve got the Cat Power fans. The money shot is a dreamy sequence featuring the models ecstatically sensing a subtly visible stimulant (presumably the fragrance) with a fade to the brand name. Gucci by Gucci….

When I started looking about for more information about the ad I found that it had been directed by David Lynch. With films like “Dune”, “Blue Velvet”, “Wild at Heart” and the unfortunately short-lived TV series “Twin Peaks” Lynch. His films featured driving and ultraviolent story-lines, sharp dialogue and were both visually and sonically stunning. Lynch was the king of alternative film in the 80’s and into the early 90’s. But then came “Lost Highway” and “Mullholland Drive” - two films that were still visually stunning, but were just cryptically dull. Lynch seemed to be losing his narrative touch and officially became a director non grata for me when he did “The Straight Story” for Disney, which features nearly two hours of an old man riding a lawn tractor. I shit you not. I have kind of lost track of his career since then and don’t know if it has gotten so bad for Lynch that the only work he can find is in commercials. I suspect, however, that it is some kind of badge of honor to do a high fashion ad - like Baz Luhrmann and Nicole Kidman’s Chanel ad last year.

The good news for Gucci is that this ad worked. When I was thinking about gifts for Dr. O’C’s first Mother’s Day this damned ad was lodged firmly in my head. Just like the little media-powered robot that advertising agents would like me to be I toddled down to Boots large drugstore chain and bought the new Gucci fragrance. Even as I was paying for the perfume I found myself flummoxed by my submission to the corporate will.

Things end well if you believe that we’re often unwilling victims to corporate manipulation. The bad news for Gucci is that Dr. O’C was apparently not as enchanted as I by their ad. I need to put this gently, because she has so many truly lovable qualities (and reads this blog regularly). Let’s say that she can, on occasion, be a difficult person for whom to buy gifts (and one who’s going to be peeved to have this part of her personality revealed on the interwebs). Sorry, fashion giant, but you get an A for effort.

———————

“The Best of Blondie” is available from and Amazon. Gucci’s damn fragrance is available at fine retailers everywhere.

Here’s the ad via YouTube:

 

 Blondie - "Heart of Glass": Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Popularity: 14% [?]

I’ve always thought that the best way to get a real sense of a place is to spend a lot of time with the natives. When those natives are family, you the traveler have got it made. Not only can you get nice home-cooked meals, a comfortable bed to sleep in and, in a non-English speaking country, a personal translator but you get to see beneath the shiny, crowded tourist exterior of your destination. For these, and many other reasons, we’re lucky that Dr. O’C’s sister married a Swedish fisherman and now live with their two boys on the outskirts of Göteborg, Sweden. We get over there once or twice a year and have had the opportunity to “see” more of Sweden than if we had done the same number of trips with a Rough Guide.

This was our first trip with Z and it was fantastic to watch him starting to interact with his cousins (most of it pleasant despite some of the pictures in the slide show above) and to meet his uncle, with whom Z seemed completely enamored. We got the chance to do a lot more child-friendly touristing - ice skating in Frölunda, a wander around the grounds of Gunnebo Slott and swimming (and water sliding) in Mölndal. Z got to participate in more of the activities than you might think, though I’m still slightly hurt that his mother didn’t trust my skating skills enough to let me take him on a spin round the rink.

We jumped on the offer of babysitting from Z’s aunt and high-tailed it into town for our first “date” since last September. We went to see “Juno” at a wonderful old city-center cinema in Goteborg and had coffee and cakes afterwards. The film was great, and even though it’s a teen rom com, is entertaining enough for the old folks as well. It was subtitled in Swedish which made for interesting audience surveillance- I think that a lot of the punchlines were just lost in translation. How do you subtitle this, for example:

“Yea, you just take Soupy-Sales to prom I can think of so many cooler things to do that night. Like, you know what Bleek? I might pumice my feet, uh, I might go to Bren’s Unitarian Church, maybe get hit by a truck full of hot garbage juice, you know? Cause all those things, would be exponentially cooler than going to prom with you.”

I had heard two things about Juno coming in - it had a great soundtrack and a questionable message. The first is absolutely true - one of the best movie soundtracks since “Rushmore“. It features an outstanding singer-songwriter that I had not heard of in Kimya Dawson and classic tracks from Belle and Sebastien, Mott the Hoople, Sonic Youth, Buddy Holly and others. For this guy, a good soundtrack goes a long way toward my enjoyment of a film.

As far as the second preconception, I had heard that the film was strongly anti-abortion and kind of flippant about teen pregnancy. I don’t know about these criticisms. I tend not to look to teen comedies for my life lessons, but maybe some folks do. It is not the anti-abortion diatribe that some on the left and right have been bemoaning and celebrating. I don’t have the experience to know if teenage pregnancy is like a Belle & Sebastien song, but I reckon they might be glossing things over a bit. I just wanted to go out (without baby in tow) and have a laugh with my love and “Juno” was a great opportunity for that. Political and social commentary aside, it’s good fun and even though I could relate the most with Jason Bateman’s shady character, I came away from the cinema with a smile on my face.

It would make more sense to attach a song from “Juno” to this post, but I’m not in the mood for making sense (check this post out for one of the Belle & Sebastien tracks from the film). Instead, to finish out a week of Scandanavian music here’s one of my favorite Swedish bands Peter, Bjorn and John doing “Objects of My Affection”. Their 2006 LP “Writer’s Block” is available from Amazon, and eMusic.
“And the other day, this new friend of mine
Said something to me
‘Just because something starts differently,
Doesn´t mean it´s worth less.’
And i soaked it in, how i soaked it in,
How i soaked it in…”

 

 Peter, Bjorn & John - "Objects of My Affection": Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Popularity: 22% [?]

It was a Harry Potter filled weekend in A Free Man’s household this weekend. I finished the book in an orgy of laziness on Saturday - don’t worry, no spoiler from me. Although, Dr. O’C’s Mom spoiled it for both of us by passing along some gossip she’d heard about the ending, and people wonder why your loved ones’ mothers are hard to deal with. In addition to finishing the book, on Sunday we went to see the new Harry Potter film. It was good, what you expect from a Harry Potter movie. But what I found amazing was the number of advertisements before the movie. There were no less than 20 standard 30 second TV commercials before the previews, advertising in themselves, even started. We don’t get to the movies often, so I think that this seeping in of TV commercials before the films is stands in starker contrast than if we went every week. I don’t know what it’s like in the States, but I imagine very similar. When we were leaving in 2004, there would be a couple of commercials prior to the films, so I suspect that number has risen since then. What annoys me is that I’ve paid £7 to go and see the film and then I have to be subjected to 20 minutes of ads before another 10 minutes of ads before the film? Harry Potter is OK because product placement can’t be slipped into the film, but in a lot of cases you are then subjected to another 2 hours of advertising in the form of product placement.

Advertising is nothing new, but it’s become ubiquitous in the past couple of decades and its crept beyond the places we expect it - TV, radio, newspapers. I wonder how long the average person goes without seeing an advert. As I type this virtually any website (this one included) that I go for sourcing or information is festooned with ads. When I venture outside, I will see advertising on peoples’ clothes, cars, buses, trains, sides of buildings, and so on. When I go shopping anything that I purchase and place in a bag is like a little kick back to the shop in which I’ve just spent money. If I buy a coffee, I advertise with their takeaway cup. Can anyone in the States name a sports arena not named for some company or another? These things are often a blight, while in Crete this spring we were driving along the north coast, enjoying the rugged hills rounded a curve and were confronted with a bright red Vodafone billboard that was the size of an office building. Nice.

And one could continue. What’s troubling is that advertising is perhaps the only media (and I use the term loosely) in which deception or even outright lying is inherent. This is particularly insidious in advertising to children and there is less and less government control of advertisers. The ultimate goal is to sell the product, and any means necessary is OK. I don’t remember the last item I purchased solely because of an advertisement, but I am brand loyal. I buy Apple computers, Levi’s jeans, Sainsbury’s groceries and I could go on but I am, in effect, advertising. My point is, where does this brand loyalty come from? In some cases, maybe the brand I use is superior, but in other cases (groceries, coffee) it is not. So, despite thinking myself an intelligent discerning consumer, I am susceptible to some sort of advertising.

A few years ago a novel called “Jennifer Government” by Max Barry came out - yes I realize this is an advertisement. It’s a novel of a dystopian future, “1984″ or “Brave New World”, in which giant conglomerates run the world. People are named based on the company for which they work - Julia Nike-McDonalds, for example. The police and the NRA are publicly-traded security firms; and the U.S. government only investigates crimes it can bill for. Hmm - privatization of public services, private security contractors running war zones and parents, God knows why, are already naming their children for corporate brands. Maybe we should auction off the naming rights for Baby D, or shall we just wait until they go to work?

Image credits:

Harry Potter Bus

Jennifer Government

Popularity: 21% [?]