Russell Davies

Legislation in landscape

The King of Rome

 

I was convinced I'd written about The King of Rome before, but I couldn't find it, so perhaps not.

Above, is the actual King of Rome, in Derby museum. The song by Dave Sudbury, is gorgeous.

 

Wild Hifi Drums

Cows with calvados

Can be adamant

Wrecking

♫ #lastfm artists: The Bird and the Bee (89), Raymond Scott (36), The Internet (27), Haiku Salut (19) &.. via @tweeklyfm #music

— russell davies (@undermanager) August 16, 2015

I enjoyed The Bird and the Bee a lot last week. Summery, poppy, 80ssynthpopduo-y.

Bits of Swing Out Sister, bits of Tom Tom Club. Sly lyrics, good tunes.

If the world was about singles this would be the single:

222-228

Travelling Sprinkler - blog all highlights

Nicholson Baker's Travelling Sprinkler is lovely. A story of a poet, not writing poetry, being comfortably and uncomfortably middle-aged, thinking about music and learning to write songs.

He writes something true about temperament and tuning. Something that should probably go in the Analogy Library:

“Here’s the first thing you need to know: The orchestra doesn’t play in tune. That’s what makes it sound like an orchestra. It can’t be perfectly in tune. If it was perfectly in tune, it would have an entirely different sound. It’s a collective musical instrument that is always slightly out of tune with itself."

He captures that first rush of hearing stereo:

"I put the headphones on, and I lowered the needle on Zubin Mehta conducting The Rite of Spring, and suddenly I was there, enclosed in the oxygenated spatial spread of stereophonic sound"

"I couldn’t believe how big a world it was—how much bigger and better stereo was than mono. The human ear had figured out something many eons ago, millions of years ago, in the sacred springtime of the world, long before there were humans, in fact—something basic that very smart scientists took a while to figure out: You need two ears"

And he makes me feel old by describing someone with an obviously dwindling career whose tastes and assumptions very closely match mine. It's the flip-side of coming top at culture.

"Underworld is good. I discovered them by chance on a long plane flight. I was poking at the touch screen, looking for something to listen to after watching a very good documentary on Picasso and Matisse—Matisse comes off well, and after his operation he uses a pair of large shears to cut colored pieces of paper—and I saw a song on a list called “Bigmouth.” It was a dance number with an insanely honking harmonica and no words, and it was by Underworld, a band who had also created something called “Mmm… Skyscraper I Love You.” Back in the eighties they were doing things I would like to have done—chopping up found voice clips ahead of the game—although they were too tolerant perhaps in their early days of zappy saw-toothed sounds, as everyone was. The song I liked best by them was a more recent one called “Bird 1.” “Bird 1” is about something—I don’t know what—something about a white stick and a shaft of sunlight and a fly and a chainsaw of tiny firecrackers. I’m always a sucker for a shaft of sunlight. It’s stoned, I guess. It’s “poetry.” The chorus is splendid. “There is one bird in my house,” sings the main Underworld man, Karl Hyde. Not “a bird,” but “one bird.” There’s basically only one chord for most of the song, as well as one bird. There are a great many words in the song, however. Most of them don’t rhyme, and as in many great songs, the words aren’t terribly important. I would like to write something like this."

Concerto for Cozy

Mad Drums

Norwich, city of some stuff

At the start of the holidays we asked Arthur if there was anywhere in the world he'd like to visit this summer. He said Norwich. (Blame Alan Partridge.) He was not wrong. We had a lovely day out. 

The castle/gallery is ace and mad. A proper municipal collection of random and locally relevant stuff.

Local wildlife is gathered in cabinets, numbered and labelled.

Plunderings from around the world have been donated by local benefactors.

Local industries are represented. Obvs.

And there's the odd thing you've never heard of before. Like Custard Cups.

But it's not just the usual. There's a Jeff Koons show on at the moment.

And there was this rather interesting experiment with 'unwanted' museum stuff.

Then we drove out towards Kings Lynn to visit Houghton Hall, where there's a bunch of art.

They have a lovely Richard Long.

And a fantastic collection of model soldiers in dioramas. Exactly what you'd do if you were a wealthy schoolboy. 

My favourites are made with flattened, almost 2D figures. They had a similar quality to a Hanna-Barbera cartoon, as though Lawrence of Arabia had been shot by Ruby and Spears.

But, the main event, why we were there, was a sort of glacial 'son et lumière' organised by James Turrell. It's a pretty good excuse to sit on a lawn for 40 minutes, though as soon as Anne muttered 'Pimp My Stately Home' I couldn't help but think that it's exactly what a car modder would do with a stately home. Lots of pink and blue neon under all the ledges.

It rather made me nostalgic for my car account days, when someone would have suggested sticking a massive bass bin in there too. The background chat would also have been less (or at least differently) annoying too - not so much talk about the Chinese stock market and Waitrose points.

The next day we rounded off the trip with breakfast at the fantastic Cafe Britannia, handily located in Norwich prison.

Well done Norwich.