Interesting observation about some of my favourite writers: J.M. Coetzee is a South-African, and therefore from a mixed cultural background by default, who now resides in Australia. Kazuo Ishiguro was born in Japan and moved to England at the age of six. Jon McGregor was born in Bermuda and grew up in Norfolk. Rachel Seiffert grew up in England while her parents were German and Australian.
Right now I am reading Hugo Hamilton’s Speckled People, in which he describes growing up in 1950s Dublin with a German mother and an Irish father (who did not allow for English to be spoken).
These children of ours, the ones that we will have in the future, they are bound to become good writers.
Music Is My Girlfriend have released a new album by Stars in Coma, which is André Brorsson, who is from Sweden like the label is. I had heard some of his songs before, which I thought were nice, but I didn’t know they were as brilliant in a Razorcuts-y way as the two songs that Tom linked to.
A couple of other fine blogs that make our RSS readers look even more interesting. Flog: Fnarf Blog, which writes about pop and books and pop books, has the most uneven distribution of posts among the months of the year. All of 2008’s posts were written in February, for instance. He makes up for that though with the most aesthetic link list I have ever come across.
You Shall Know Our Discography has been going on for a long time, posting mp3′d versions of a record collection. A fair bit of which also resides in my collection and even some stuff that I am selling, but also things I would never ever part of. Like this Cannanes record for example – even though I boringly have the cd version of it.
Love Goes On! is the blog of Christos, who is the biggest Cannanes fan in the whole solar system. His blog isn’t overflowing with posts which, given his great taste in music and ever greater enthusiasm, is a big shame.
Not sure if dressing as bears and shouting random syllables is thought to be a new Al-Qaeda tactic, but Bearsuit kinda got arrested and deported from the States where they were going to play two handfuls of shows.
RSS food: Among the Aisles is a new blog about music and literature and things like that by what I understand to be a New Zealander currently resising in London. It could well become one of my favourites. Confessions of a nearly starving artist is what I may hope to be the ironically named blog of Adriano who is in Brazilian Postal Blue. He posts, among other things, new songs of his band, of whom you will find some old songs here.
Popshaped
We bought ourselves tickets for Indietracks this summer. So I am going to see some bands I have wanted to see for a long time (The Wedding Present, The Beatnik Filmstars, Comet Gain, Milky Wimpshake), some bands I would love to see again (Ballboy, The Occasional Flickers) and some new bands that I have yet to tick off my seen live-list (The Roadside Poppies, The Zebras, The Deirdres, Pocketbooks). And a whole bunch of others too, as well as many regulars from the place where indiepoppers hang out during the 364 days a year when there is no Indietracks. And there is something with trains too. So that is going to be a lot of fun.
To prepare ourselves, we will play records at the aforementioned Exeter Goes Pop! tonight, go and see three new bands in Bristol on Saturday and see five not-so-new-but-all-the-more-legendary bands in London six days after that. It all makes me look more like an indiepopper than I actually am these days, for I am going through a phase of listening to only a little bit of music and even less indiepop. But that might be an extra reason to not spend another two weekends at home with the safe trinity of books, broadband and bed.
Exeter goes Badges!
So it will be Exeter Goes Pop! tomorrow. Which is when people celebrate Last Supper, but I can not find any link between that and the club night, other than that you will not have to worry about getting up early on Friday. In any case, we will be playing music at the Phoenix from 8pm and will not stop playing music until after 11pm, when the venue closes and we will take trains and buses to our respective Devon villages. We will not charge you anything, like we never do. It would be nice if you wore one or two badges though.
Flipper’s Guitar – Goodbye, Our Pastels Badges 
(The April edition will be exactly four weeks later –yes, that is the seventeenth–, when we will have a special guest playing some songs. You might want to make a note in your agenda.)
That is what it is all about
The train ride through the West Country, the one that I have done so many times now but where suddenly, somehow many villages, rivers and valleys were to be seen that I swore had not been there before. Reading John Banville’s The Sea, of which I have only consumed the first twenty-something pages but which, I am sure, I will enjoy greatly once I get into it. The man who sat next to me, who was supposed to be in the previous train, which however had broken down near Taunton, and who spoke with a sweet German accent. And listening to The Bartlebees, whose singer Patrik incidentally sings with a similar German accent. Is it nice that a band like The Bartlebees existed? And isn’t Patrik’s voice, despite – no: because of – the accent, one of indiepop’s sweetest? And does listening to them not make you want to wipe the dust off your record player and play all their records and singles and decide that life is good?
“Are you going out tonight?” the hairdresser asked me this morning. It took me a few seconds to realise the normality of this question: that other people, normal people, do tend to go out on a Saturday night. And now I realise that it is past 1am on such a Saturday night and although most of that night was spent reading, for the first time in ages I am still awake. I like life like this.
Anne Enright The Gathering. I was going to write that the book is dark, depressing and at times made my stomach turn. Because it is all that. But in the end I decided it was so well written –and with, deeply hidden, a positive twist too– that I am glad I read it. And that Enright –who indicentally featured in today’s Guardian– deserved that Booker Prize she won for it; as much as these prizes can be deserved.
The beauty of life is hidden in small things. Though sometimes one has to look really hard. Today I found the first five (five!) slugs of the year in our kitchen. Spring is coming really close now.
107
I forgot, among others, the United Kingdon… [via]
My fascination with the First World War has always been a lot bigger than that with the Second. Partly because, thanks to Dutch neutrality, the war has always been the more ‘indie’ of the two big wars, partly because it is so closely connected to the nineteenth century. That mightily fascinating nineteenth century. And, rather incorrectly and even more unfairly, the War to me is mostly what happened in France and Belgium: the soldiers excitedly taking trains towards the front, the stories of the likes of Louis Barthas on what really happened there. Hence, while at least 13 veterans are still alive at time of writing, the news that Lazare Ponticelli, France’s last surviving poilu of the Great War, died yesterday feels like the end of an era. It is strange.
From an interview with John Darnielle:
“How do you feel about all your old rare tapes and records going for big bucks on eBay?”
“I used to be a record collector type…. So it’s kind of cool, really, to think that people are getting excited about ‘Songs for Peter Hughes’ the way I’d get excited about getting my hands on a copy of the Sisters of Mercy’s “Adrenochrome” seven-inch.”
So let us say the sale, which still includes a couple of Mountain Goats items, has been endorsed by John Darnielle himself. Phew. (No, Mr. Darnielle, I am not going to sell that Hound Chronicles tape that I must have played a million times during my final months of secondary school. Never. If only because I doubt that after all these years it still plays well.)
Four years of French at secondary school has tought me better, but my stubborn subconsciousness keeps humming Plastic Bertrand’s Ça Plane Pour Moi whenever I am at an airport, pretending it means something like ‘that plane for me’. Filles Sourires has posted over a dozen cover versions of the song.
If I could read poetry
My problem with reading poetry is that after about ten lines, the words start to become blurry and lose their meaning. From then on, it may as well be Swahili or Basque or Klingon what I’m reading. Hence the poetry that appeals to me most is that which makes use of a lot of alliteration and assonance (thanks, Alex), making the words into a smooth and sweet flow of sounds. But I would lie if I claimed to be able to give you a list of my favourite poets or poems; neither in Dutch nor in English.
I did not have an upbringing that taught me how to appreciate arts, something which hasn’t helped me build a personal canon of poetry either. In my mum’s living room there is a poster of Marten Luther King’s I Have A Dream. It has been there since forever and was put there out of a genuine politically correctness, not because of the special meaning of King’s words. Art has always been something to appreciate just as I was (rightly) taught to appreciate a cleaner’s work. How to appreciate art we never wondered.
It is never too late to change that though. This very Saturday I found myself at the local library, browsing through its tiny selection of poetry books. In particular I was looking for something by T.S. Eliot or W.H. Auden. The former was mentioned as an influence to both J.M. Coetzee and Jon McGregor, while the latter was also mentioned in relation to McGregor’s prose. I had concluded them to be ideal starting points.
They didn’t have books of either poet; hence imagine my surprise when I discovered that this very week, The Guardian is giving away booklets with selected work of some of this language’s greatest poets. They started with T.S. Eliot yesterday, while today’s booklet contained work of W.H. Auden. All for me.
Of course, most of these poems are free from copyrights and are freely available on Wikisource (or, indeed, on the newspaper’s website). But still. It could potentially make thousands of people interested in poetry. It could certainly make this person interested in poetry.
It was late, late in the evening,
The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
And the deep river ran on.
W.H. Auden ‘As I Walked Out One Evening’
I think if we opened both the front and back windows now, there’d be no need for hoovering for the next month. Though I would probably have to put all the records back into alphabetical order. Photo courtesy of BBC Devon, which has some more photos.
All the records that are part of the sale are currently in boxes in a more or less random order. Previous experience has taught me that it is a good idea to check first if the things on the list are the same as those in the boxes and that the aluminium disc is indeed the one the jewelcase says it is. Which explains why it might take me a bit longer to reply to emails. Don’t worry though, things go on a first come first serve-basis, so just email me what you want to have. Speaking of email, I read that at thinksmall@gmail.com, in case that wasn’t very clear.
If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things
I really loved Jon McGregor’s second novel So Many Ways to Begin which I read during the final days of 2007, but it still took several attempts for me to get started with his 2002-debut If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things. To say that I was rewarded for trying is a big understatement.
The novel describes a day on an ordinary street in northern England as well as how events during this day have affected the life of one of its inhabitants three years later. In careful prose the lives of the people who live on the street are being described: the way these lives are seemingly unaffected by those of others, while they are also intertwined with them. In some cases even fatally.
Most of the book builds up to something big and, probably, bad that is going to happen. Which, in the end, does explain some questions that occur during reading. But not in a way where every tiny detail throughout the book turns out to have a meaning in some bigger scheme. The small details that matter remain small details and I think it’s McGregor’s way of describing them that makes me so mightily impressed by this book. There is also the fact that most of the book is set on the day princess Diana died, something that is not mentioned at all. I am happy to take this as a statement for the importance of ordinary everyday things.
Jon McGregor is only two years older than I am and was in his mid-twenties when he wrote this book. When I think of this, it makes me incredibly jealous. But it also means he has got forty years of writing ahead of him. And I have got forty years of reading his books ahead of me.
Popmusics
Almost two years ago, during my final weeks in Nijmegen, I started selling some of my records. In fact, I intended –and still intend– to get rid of the vast majority of the 2000+ things I once had. Since I’ve got most of them here in England now, the sale will continue.
Some of these records were once loved a few steps back in the evolution of my taste. But too many were only bought because they were cheap, or because I was curious what they would sound like, or because I couldn’t think of anything else to buy. Buying records had been as much an addiction as a temporary solution for boredom.
Enough self-pity though, let’s do business. The full list, which includes the likes of Hood, Elliott Smith, Lou Barlow and Nothing Painted Blue and some 800 others, is here.
On 28 March, The Pines, Would-Be-Goods, The First Division and a new band consisting of Lupe Pipas and Alisdair Clientele will play at Positively 4th Street. Which is somewhere in London.
On 28 March, Soda Fountain Rag will play together with Spencer McGarry Season, Michael Knight and Sweet Baboo at the The Buffalo Bar. Which is somewhere in London.
‘Seeing a simple answer to this basic mathematical problem, some clamber over the netting and sit down in the empty seats, because the game is about to start. Which is like telling a steward his mother’s a whore and his dad’s George Reynolds.’
When Saturday Comes has moved to a purpose-built £35m arena named after the chairman’s building company 12 miles from the town centre. Or something like that. At least their website has got a big overhaul. For the better, I would say. And perhaps the best ever story on football has been put online.
Here is a nice video of a nice song by The Rosie Taylor Project. That is: the song is really good in a quiet, lazy Sunday afternoon way and I like the beginning of the video. If everyone in the world had an attention spam span like mine, YouTube videos would never last longer than 20 seconds.
I was told of the band by Ed, who released their debut single on his label Bad Sneakers; both the band and the label hail from Leeds. Ed grew up in Budleigh-Salterton though, which is just a few miles east from here, and even went to school in Exmouth. With Sidmouth’s The Visitors and Lovejoy’s Richard who lived here for a few years, East Devon has done really well contributing to Pop! Perhaps we should consider moving our club night to Exmouth?
Rotterdam or anywhere
The 1898-built Witte Huis (white house) was the highest office building in Europe in its time. As nowadays it is not more than a small landmark in the skyscraper-dominated skyline of Rotterdam, this is hard to imagine. I must have seen the building many times, but had never really given it a good look. When I saw this photo during some random web-surfing last night, I realised that it is really stunning after all. Next time I am in Rotterdam, I should make sure to have a better look. Unfortunately, the original red roof has been replaced by a rather dull grey one. But I suppose one should be glad that at least it survived the 1940 bombings that left most of the town’s centre in ashes.
I was born in Rotterdam; hence it is one of the towns I feel most connected too. Too bad then that I have never lived there and, in fact, have only spent four or five nights on its soil — not counting the one in the summer of 1978 when I was born in one of its hospitals.
Rotterdam is by no means pretty, though that is mostly due to the aforementioned bombings, as well as the rush of rebuilding with a lot of concrete; I love looking at pre-war photos of busy streets filled with men in hats. I should ask my grandma, who lived in one of the northern suburbs around that time, to tell me more about it. Still there is something about the town that makes me really like it. That makes me like it so much better than the, unfortunately and unfairly, much more famous capital. It might be what a contemporary poet once wrote: Rotterdam can’t be caught on film / Rotterdam is much too real.
The Beautiful South – Rotterdam (or Anywhere)
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