COME ON AND …..BOOM! BOOM!

Humping for Britain.

When I think of Englebert Humperdinck, I always think of  the god-awful Release Me, the single which prevented The Beatles Strawberry Fields / Penny Lane from reaching number one in 1967.

Nowadays ‘the hump’ is apparently big in Eastern Europe which may be one the reasons he was selected to perform the UK’s Eurovision song – Love Will Set You Free.

At 76 , he looks in better shape than the Buranovo grannies but it still seems bizarre and wrong-headed to select him as UK’s representative.

The turgid apology for a love song he sang was also completely  out of synch with the brash showbiz image of the contest.

DAVID BOWIE AND THE 1970s

THE MAN WHO SOLD THE WORLD  by Peter Doggett (The Bodley Head, 2011)

One of the greatest books on contemporary rock is Revolution In The Head by Ian MacDonald. Subtitled The Beatles’ Records And The Sixties, this illuminating song by song guide to everything the Fab Four recorded is worth buying for the introductory essay alone – ‘Fabled Foursome, Disappearing Decade’. In the space of just 34 pages, MacDonald puts the monumental achievements and legacy of The Beatles into lucid perspective and recognises that we will never see their like again. The way music is made, promoted and consumed has changed beyond all recognition since the heady days of the 60s so the cultural impact the four young men from Liverpool had is unrepeatable.

MacDonald was commissioned to write a similar book on David Bowie but sadly the project floundered n 2003, when he killed himself after a long period of clinical depression. The mantle has passed to Peter Doggett who has himself written a critically praised book on the Beatles, You Never Give Me You Money, which focused on the band’s break up and immediate aftermath.

In his introduction, Doggett admits that Revolution In The Head was the unashamed model for his book although the format is not entirely the same and it has to be said that it’s nowhere near as good.

OLIVE KITTERIDGE – REMNANTS OF CORPOREALITY

OLIVE KITTERIDGE by Elizabeth Strout (2008)

Our time on this planet is relatively short and if, like Olive Kitteridge, you happen to be “an unapologetic atheist” you don’t even have the consolation of this being prolonged in an afterlife.

Through good health or by good fortune we may live to a ripe age but there are no guarantees. There are several reminders in this marvellous novel that life can take unexpected turns and that tragic accidents or debilitating illness can happen at any time.

Recognition of the brevity of our existence can prompt us to live more intensely with a determination of treat every day as if it might be our last. Equally, the burden of mortality can weigh heavily upon us and make it harder to enjoy a lightness of being.

In extreme cases, out of desperation, suicide is the ultimate get out option. In ‘Incoming Tide’  a man, Kevin Coulson, revisits the town of his youth and recalls the trauma of discovering “his mother’s need to devour her life had been so huge and urgent as to spray remnants of corporeality across the kitchen cupboards”.

To call this Pulitzer prize-winning work of fiction a novel is a little misleading since it is really a collection of thirteen stories. Olive Kitteridge is the common thread throughout but not always the main character. In The Piano Player she smiles and waves hello but plays no active part in the story and in ‘Criminal’ she is  briefly mentioned only as a scary math teacher.

CRAZY HORSE PULLING JESUS’ CHARIOT

Nine years on from Greendale, I’m excited at the prospect of a new Neil Young & Crazy Horse album scheduled for release on June 5th 2012 even though the track listing looks very weird.

It’s entitled Americana and consists solely of cover versions, mainly of old folk tunes that are so familiar that are usually regarded with contempt.

Songs like Oh Susanna,Tom Dula, Clementine and She’ll Be Comin’ Round The Mountain’ which as been renamed Jesus’ Chariot.

TOM PETTY – BIGGING UP A DREAM

After more than thirty years in the music business, I don’t begrudge Tom Petty the right to an epic documentary charting his career.

I would, however, challenge the implicit presumption that he is as important a figure as Bob Dylan or George Harrison, both of whom have been subject to similar films directed by Martin Scorsese.

Those movies, No Direction Home and Living In The Material World, lasted 208 minutes which Peter Bogdanovich trumps by thirty minutes.

As any reconstructed male will tell you, size isn’t everything and there is no good reason why Running Down A Dream should be so long. The story of the Heartbreakers’ roots as Mudcrutch and how the bond between musicians has remained so strong could have been told in half the time and would have made a much slicker and more interesting film portrait.