SORRENTINO’S YOUTH

YOUTH directed by Paolo Sorrentino (Italy, 2015)

“Youth is wasted on the young”, quipped Oscar Wilde, or was is George Bernard Shaw?

Whoever made this observation, knew something of the poignancy and sadness of growing old.

All Paolo Sorrentino’s films to date have featured elderly characters struggling to come to terms with the realisation that the best years of their lives are almost certainly behind them. Youth , despite its title, is no exception.Paradoxically, it is more about facing up to the inevitability of dying than the carefree pleasures of our ‘salad days’.

At its heart is the friendship between a retired composer Fred Ballinger (Michael Caine) and Mick Boyle (Harvey Keitel) a film director who believes that he still has at least one great film in him.

MY TEN FAVOURITE ALBUMS OF 2012

Tom Carter who, with ex-wife and musical partner Christina, makes up one half of Charalambides had more opportunity than most for self reflection this year but not in the happiest of circumstances.

During a UK tour he was struck down with severe pneumonia and spent long periods in isolation as part of his treatment. Due to the absurd health system, this also meant he faced huge medical bills.

Thankfully, if his prolific contributions to Twitter are anything to go by, he now seems to be on the road to recovery. One of his Tweets was to the effect that, this year, instead of making lists of the best new albums, we should go back to past years and check if those records we raved about have stood the test of time.

While I understand where he’s coming from, for me, one of the key appeals of contemporary music is that it fuels an insatiable desire for something truly radical and fresh. Needless to say, 2012 passed with plenty of good new sounds to enjoy but nothing that could be described as life changing.

ASCENDING FROM SUGAR!

Depressing day at work and listening to the new Beth Orton album (Sugaring Season), her first in 6 years, didn’t lighten my mood. Do we really need another folk song about magpies? I’ll listen to this again when I’m in a more hospitable state of mind.

News of a new Godspeed You! Black Emperor, almost a decade after Yanqui U.X.O.,was more in tune with my ratty mood.

You can currently stream the whole album at The Guardian – or at You Tube – two massive tracks  Mladic and We Drift Like Worried Fire and two intense drones.

Just what the doctor ordered!

Don’t accept imitators.

GY!BE : HOPE IN A DARKENING WORLD

The nearest thing to a cheesy group photo of GY!BE that you are ever likely to get!

Godspeed You ! Black Emperor (GY!BE) specialise in extended quiet-loud  instrumentals, classical in scope but punk in attitude .

They are proof positive that, musically speaking, there are more effective ways to subvert the system other than the clichéd rebellion of mainstream rock.

The Kranky record label once called their apocalyptic soundtracks “Hopeful and harrowing narratives for our darkening world”. If you are looking for  further illumination of the band’s philosophy or political standpoint, you are in for a disappointment.

GY!BE’s own grammatically challenged and wilfully obscure album sleeve notes and minimal online communications read like frenzied missives from the front line of an unspecified global war. They are random stream of consciousness rants tapped out on cheap typewriters. Their opposition to corporate culture is plain but they resist setting this down in any coherent manifesto.

PUNKS : PAST AND PRESENT

Malcolm McLaren RIP

Punk has always been as much about the spirit as the music – a state of mind, an attitude that you recognise as soon as you see or hear it.

Malcom McLaren was a master manipulator of others who had this Punk spirit – notably Johnny Rotten & Vivienne Westwood – but, personally, I would argue that he was not a bona fide Punk. I see him more as an entertainer – a Svengali-like attention grabber; a Warhol-like self publicist with an ego to match .

His slippery personality means that when you start talking in terms of integrity or honesty his reputation begins to become a little tarnished. Nevertheless, you can’t ignore the fact that, but for him, there would have been no Sex Pistols. His place in history is assured.

On the day he died, Anarchy In The UK was played on the radio both going and returning from a concert in Bologna by present day carriers of the flame, A Silver Mount Zion (SMZ) from Canada.