Music

The Coode Street Filk

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

In this week’s episode of the Coode Street Podcast, Jonathan and Gary discuss getting a new intro for 2013. They wonder whether John Anealio might write them a song. Well, John is a talented and generous guy, so I’m sure he’ll come through. But just in case he’s too busy, I thought I would lend a hand.

Of course I am a talentless hack without an original idea in my head, and in thrall to right-wing US cultural imperialism (or possibly I just want to wind up Chris Fowler and Jonathan McAlmont). So I have shamelessly stolen re-purposed created a homage to filked a Southern Rock classic. It is quite appropriate in its way.

Rambling Fan

{refrain}
Lord I was born a rambling fan,
Trying to make a podcast and doing the best I can.
So when I have tech problems, I hope you’ll understand.
Oh I was born a rambling fan

Now Gary teaches English in Chicago.
His academic resume is grand.
He likes to spend his weekends chatting on the phone,
A glass of red wine in his hand

{refrain}

While Jonathan’s from far off Perth, Australia.
His jobs are SF editor and dad.
And if he spends too much time chatting on the phone,
His daughters tell him that he’s bad

{refrain}

The podcast known to everyone as Coode Street
Brings SF commentary to our ears.
It rambles and it wanders yet it always entertains,
May it keep doing so for years.

{refrain}

For those of you who are much to young to remember the original, here it is.

Dark Angels Fundraiser Giveaway

~ Cheryl

As some of you will already know, I am a big fan of London-based musician, CN Lester. CN is classically trained and fabulously talented, producing music that ranges from baroque opera to alt rock. I blogged about CN’s last project here.

CN’s latest venture is Dark Angels, an album of songs with Toby Carr on guitar and CN providing the vocals. The material ranges from Benjamin Britten to musical arrangements of Roz Kaveney’s poetry. There’s a fundraiser at Indiegogo to cover the costs of recording and production. It has a week to run and is around $800 short of the goal.

Now, I have signed up at one of the levels that gets me two tickets to the album launch party in London on the 29th. But I can’t go. So here’s the deal. If you go and sign up at the $15 level, which just gets you the album, and let me know you have done so, I’ll put you into a draw, and two lucky backers will get one of my tickets to the party. OK? (New backers only, please, as the point is to get CN over the target.)

As you’ll need to know in time to make plans, I’m going to end the contest on Monday night. You need to get in before then.

Of course if you don’t live in London then you too are unlikely to be able to attend, but the album is going to be fabulous and it is well worth backing. Go here, please.

Marian Call – Live in Trowbridge

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

The first I can remember hearing of house concerts was from Dave Nachmanoff. Kevin and I discovered him when we went to Al Stewart gigs in the Bay Area. Dave also performs on his own, and he does house concerts. I remember thinking at the time that this must be the sort of thing that very rich Bay Area folks do — paying to actually have the artist perform live in your home. This was long before I had heard of Amanda Palmer and seen how a musician can build a fan base.

A couple of months back someone contacted BristolCon on Twitter and asked us to publicize a European tour by an American singer-songwriter, Marian Call. As well as playing gigs in pubs and clubs, Marian would be doing house concerts. I passed on the link and thought no more of it, until my friend Marjorie informed me that she’d be hosting one of these events. In Trowbridge? Really? And free entry, pay what you can? Well it was interesting, so I agreed to go.

Of course then I had something of a travel nightmare, and was two hours later getting home than I should have been. I also had work come in. The net result was that I missed the first half of the gig. I did catch the second, however, and was pleased that I did.

Like my friend Talis Kimberley, Marian has come out of the SF&F community and filking. While filking has something of a poor reputation at conventions, it has produced some really good musicians. Talis and Marian are fine examples, and Marian tells me that she knows Seanan McGuire and Sooj Tucker, so I guess a lot of my Bay Area friends already know how good she is.

I’m not going to review the music beyond saying that I enjoyed it. I was very tired last night and not concentrating well. Besides, there are free samples available on Marian’s website that you can listen to. What I can review is the gig itself. Marjorie’s house is not huge, but it coped. Marian was accompanied by another singer-songwriter, Scott Barkan. I counted an audience of 16, one of whom turned out to be Marian’s boyfriend, so I guess 15 paying guests. Refreshments were on a BYO basis. And from Marian’s point of view, she and her team got accommodation for the night, which must help a lot with expenses. (Note to Kevin: they are traveling on a BritRail pass). Economically, this works. It isn’t making Marian a fortune, but it is covering costs and helping build a fan base, which is what it is all about.

If you’d like to see Marian yourself, the tour calendar is on the website. She’s off Up North today, playing Sheffield, Manchester, Stockport, Birmingham and Edinburgh in quick succession. There are then three gigs in London next week. After that she’s off to the Continent for a while, and the tour finishes up with a couple of dates in Dublin in the middle of the month. If she’s not coming near you, well there are albums available from the usual places.

Oh, and Marian is recording a live album during the tour. If you are at the Manchester gig, or the Sunday night one in London, you can be part of that recording. More details will doubtless be available on Marian’s Twitter feed.

Bristol: Trains and Brains

~ Cheryl

Yesterday, as advertised, I had a day out in Bristol with Feòrag. One of the highlights was getting to travel on the Bristol Harbour Railway, which was in steam over the weekend. Feòrag has some video, which hopefully she’ll post to YouTube later. The service has no enclosed coaches, just open wagons with seats in them, so there’s nothing to protect you from the locomotive’s smoke. I now know why steampunk characters wear goggles all the time. I suspect that we both smelled of coal for the rest of the day.

Two important things to know about Feòrag are that she’s an expert on beer, and a vegan. This poses challenges for a tour guide who knows little about beer and is a carnivore. Thankfully Feòrag had come well prepared, including with an impressive iPhone app for the beer connoisseur. Of course being so close to Somerset we ended up drinking in The Apple, a pub specializing in cider located on a canal barge. Over dinner I was pleased to hear Feòrag give the thumbs up to the Bristol Beer Factory. I have been happily drinking their wheat beer at the Arnolfini for some time, but it is good to have my preferences supported by expert opinion.

Talking of dinner, we took ourselves out to Clifton to visit one of Bristol’s best known Indian restaurants: the Thali Cafe. I’m pleased to report that their vegan options got the thumbs up, and from my point of view the meat-based food was fine too.

In the evening we joined my friend Marjorie at the Colston Hall for a concert by Jonathan Coulton and his regular support band, Paul and Storm. Fortunately for the musicians, the stars were not right and we were unable to wake Fluff Cthulhu in time to get him to the gig. However, here’s Jonathan performing a song that I think Fluff would approve of (well, apart from the bit about compromise — Elder Gods don’t do compromise).

By the way, I asked Jonathan if he’d consider playing Worldcon. He said there were scheduling issues as PAX is generally held over Labour Day weekend, but he’d love to do it. Were Kevin and I running Events for 2014 as we did for 2005, I’d be working out how to get him over, though I suspect he’d need to do it as part of a tour to make it possible.

The Big Let Down

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

Well, that was an interesting two weeks. Many of my friends who previous claimed to despise sports were suddenly filled with enthusiasm for types of competition that even I find dull. A country that tends to be embarrassed by nationalism and success was suddenly flag waving like crazy. Against all expectations, the Opening Ceremonies had been a roaring success. All that remained was to go out with a bang.

Oh dear.

So what went wrong? I suspect two things. Firstly, stadium rock does not televise well. The sound is poor, and if you allow each act only one or two numbers then no one has much of a chance to get the crowd warmed up. The staging was great, and there were a few highlights (mainly from dead people on video, but I thought Brian May was superb, Annie Lennox’s bit looked fabulous and I loved the phoenix ballet at the end). Mostly, however, the music fell flat. And yet what were the Opening Ceremonies if not a bunch of song and dance numbers?

The other big difference between the two shows was that the Opening Ceremonies had a narrative. If one particular item didn’t work, well you were still carried along by the story. In the Closing Ceremonies, each act wasn’t just on its own, they were actively in competition because of that. That’s how our monkey brains work. If there is no story, then we’ll make one, and it will usually involve conflict of some sort.

Of course the story still has to be well told. It is easy to ruin a ceremony with a story that seems forced or unnatural. But a good story line will carry the audience through low points in a ceremony, and encourage the audience to view the event as a whole, not as a collection of individual shows.

Ah well, at least we have proved that there are things that can’t be fixed by the addition of a giant tentacled monster.

A Public Spectacle

~ Cheryl ~ 11 Comments

I hadn’t been intending to watch the Olympics opening ceremony, but I’m visiting my mother this weekend and she put the TV on around 9:00pm to see what was going on. I spent the next 4 hours glued to the screen wondering what Danny Boyle would manage to get away with next.

Of course he wasn’t in change of everything. The old men in suits managed to get to make boring speeches eventually, and I’d like to comment briefly on Jacques Rogge’s self-congratulatory comments about gender equality. Yes it is a good thing that even the Saudis have caved in and allowed women to compete, but set against that M. Rogge is presiding over some entirely unjustified rule changes. As this recent New Scientist article notes, while testerone might help build muscle, there’s no evidence that it inevitably makes you a better Olympic athlete in any disciple. What testosterone does to is make you look less conventionally pretty or, as the tabloid newspapers would have it, “look like a man”. These new rules are not about excluding people who are not female, or excluding people with an unfair advantage, they are about excluding women whom the IOC think are likely to be picked on by the media and accused of being “really men”. It is an exercise in spin, and nothing to do with sport.

But back to Danny Boyle and his remarkably exuberant celebration of British culture as it really is, rather than as right wing politicians would like it to be. Given how little love there has been for the Olympics in my Twitter stream up until now, what happened last night was remarkable. The only poms whingeing were those for whom the word “multi-cultural” is anathema. And their complaints did not go down well. If it were possible to recall MPs in this country, Aidan Burley’s arse would be toast by now. As it is, I suspect his constituency party will be getting a strongly worded letter from Tory HQ suggesting that they find a new candidate for the next election.

Of course Boyle can’t have been free of political constraints. His job was to celebrate Britain, not to point out all of the horrors from our history, so celebrate he did. It is what he managed to celebrate that was remarkable. We got the Sex Pistols, we got a lesbian kiss, and we got a remarkably moving (and multicultural) tribute to the victims of the 7/7 bombings. All of these things, so Twitter tells me, were beamed live to Saudi Arabia where they took live coverage. The USA opted for a long delay in coverage so that they could censor anything that might offend Americans Rush Limbaugh. Twitter tells me that all of the above items disappeared from the US coverage.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in London, the Metropolitan Police were doing what they do best: kettling, beating and pepper-spraying protestors.

Pop music, of course, is meant to distract us from all that. But one of the things about pop music is that most people don’t listen closely to the lyrics. Danny Boyle, I think, does. Thankfully I didn’t hear “Turning Japanese” being played at any point – using that song is a very common error at international events. But tucked into the ceremony there was a brief reference to London’s railway system, and with that we got a song by The Jam. Here’s an except from the lyrics:

What you see is what you get
You’ve made your bed, you better lie in it
You choose your leaders and place your trust
As their lies wash you down and their promises rust
You’ll see kidney machines replaced by rockets and guns
And the public wants what the public gets
But I don’t get what this society wants
I’m going underground, (going underground)

(Lyrics by Paul Weller, © Universal Music Publishing Group – read the whole thing here.)

Yes, right in the middle of the biggest public spectacle the UK has had in ages, and in the middle of a double-dip recession, Danny Boyle sneaked in a song that satirizes public spectacle as a distraction from political problems. Well played, Mr. Boyle, well played.

Africa Revisited

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

Here are a few follow-ups on the subject of African science fiction.

First up, with thanks to DaveH for the heads-up, the BBC World Service has a programme narrated by Lauren Beukes which includes interviews with Neill Blomkamp (District 9), Wanuri Kahiu (Pumzi), Jonathan Dotse, and Nnedi Okorafor. It is well worth a listen (and includes Lauren pronouncing her last name). You can find it on the iPlayer.

In addition I attended an event in Bristol at the weekend at which Mark Bould and Roger Luckhurst presented a couple of French films on colonialism as works that could be interpreted as science fiction. This was, if you’ll pardon the phrase, a bit of an academic exercise, but it was interesting all the same.

Les Statues Meurent Aussi (literally Statues Also Die, but I’d translate it as Even Statues Can Die) is a 1953 film by Chris Marker and Alain Resnais about the effect of colonialism on African culture. The central argument of the film is that by removing African cultural artifacts from their cultural context and placing them in museums we are not preserving culture, we are killing it. That’s an important message, and one I need to take to heart as I’ll be helping stage a museum exhibition (albeit nothing to do with Africa) in the next few months. However, it isn’t in itself science-fictional.

What got the film into the event is the fact that at one point the narrator says, “We are the Martians of Africa”. He then goes on to talk about diseases, which makes it fairly clear that Marker and Resnais had Wells in mind when making the film. Wells, of course, wrote The War of the Worlds in part in reaction to the genocide of the native Tasmanian people by European (mostly British) settlers.

Given when it was made, it is unsurprising that, despite their good intentions, Marker and Resnais come over incredibly patronizing at times, but the film is visually stunning. You can see the whole thing on Vimeo, though sadly only in French. There’s a subtitled version on YouTube, but because of length restrictions it is split into three parts.

The other film was La Noire de… by Ousmane Sembène, a Senegalese filmmaker who lived part of his life in France. The SFnal connection here is even less obvious, though the extreme lack of communication between the heroine and her employers has a lot to tell us about alienation. Diouana, a young woman from Senegal, takes a job as a maid with a French couple living in Dakar. When her employers return to France they invite her to come with them, with disastrous consequences.

I’m going to display my prejudices here. There are good reasons for studying films. There’s much more room to read meanings into images than with text. Also you get far more respect in the UK if your study of science fiction is confined to film. But equally it can be hard to get over a subtle argument in a film and this one left me largely with questions that got in the way of whatever story it was trying to tell.

Of course it doesn’t help that we are also working with a translation. Even the title is difficult. The subtitled version is called Black Girl, but that’s not what the French title means. Wikipedia translates the French title as “The black girl belonging to…” but (and hopefully Kari will correct me if I am wrong) I much prefer “The black girl from…”. That’s a much more accurate summation of how Diouana falls between two cultures.

Further events related to the African Science Fiction exhibition are happening this week. On Thursday evening there’s a talk about the relationship between the music of the Mbenga-Mbuti people (commonly known as “pygmies”) and the soundtrack of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Entrance is free, but you do need to book a place so see here for details. And on Saturday there are some free talks examining possible African futures: details here.

Gone Gigging

~ Cheryl

This afternoon I headed into Bath. First on my list of errands was a visit to the nice folks at Mr. B’s who had obtained the new Liz Hand and Matt Ruff novels for me. Then later it was on to an event at the Rondo Theatre that my friend Marjorie had alerted me to.

The star of the evening was a young fellow called Mitch Benn whom I understand that Gollancz have signed up for a novel or two. Well I waited for a couple of hours for him to read from the book, but all he did was sing. Apparently the book isn’t out yet. I shall have words with Messrs Spanton & Weir. Fancy sending the poor lad out on tour before the book is published.

Having said that, he was quite good at the music. He’d even brought a band with him. Being a musical satirist involves aping other people’s acts as well as writing amusing lyrics, and Benn & his band displayed a fine range of styles. There was one song that could easily have been written by Flanders & Swann, and two that were pure John Cooper Clarke. I’ve also developed a soft spot for “Rasta Queen Mother” because, well, reggae and making fun of the royals, you can’t go wrong really.

Sadly all of the YouTube material I’ve looked at has been pretty poor quality compared to a live gig with the band. Recordings from Benn’s radio show appear to have canned laughter added, and a lot of it is done solo. The band makes a big difference, even though there are only two of them. I was particularly impressed with Kirsty Newton who just oozes personality on stage. She has a fabulous voice too. I can’t understand why she’s not a big star.

Anyway, it was a fun evening. Mitch Benn and the Distractions. If they happen to be playing near you, go see them.

Moebius Documentary Online

~ Cheryl

Yesterday I was tweeting about watching a documentary on the life and career of comics genius Moebius (Jean Giraud), who sadly died on Saturday. I had the thing recorded from when it was on Sky Arts, but Joe Gordon has found it on Vimeo. It’s fascinating, and you can find it here.

One of the people interviewed in the documentary is Giraud’s former partner at Métal Hurlant, Philippe Druillet. This morning Jon Coulthart did a post about album covers that use Druillet artwork. There’s some good stuff there, and also clear evidence that death metal bands can be guilty of more than just crimes against music. (Sorry all you death metal fans out there.)

Zoe Rahman in Concert

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Long time readers may remember that I discovered Zoe Rahman back in 2006 when she was a finalist for the Mercury Prize. Since then I have been playing Melting Pot fairly regularly, but I haven’t kept up with what she has been doing. I have enough to do keeping up with books, and quality Jazz musicians, sadly, get no more media attention than quality science fiction writers.

Yesterday, however, I noticed a tweet from my friend Jon Turney saying that he was going to see Rahman in concert in Bradford-on-Avon. That’s only a few miles away from me, so I jumped at the chance and went over to join Jon and his wife for the evening.

Before commenting on the gig I should note that we had dinner in a restaurant I’ve not tried before. Orient Express seems a bit of an odd name for a quality restaurant because it makes it sound like a fast food joint. It will appeal to Kevin, however, train fan that he is, and I’m delighted to say that the food was excellent, good value, and beautifully presented. I suspect that Kevin and I will be eating there if he’s ever able to come back here.

So why, exactly, is a Mercury Prize finalist playing gigs in Bradford-on-Avon? Well, because of the Wiltshire Music Centre, a purpose-built concert hall opened in 1998. It only seats 300 people, and it was pretty much full for Rahman, but that’s OK for many of the top quality musicians that it caters for. Good music is often a minority taste. According to the website the Centre has “the finest acoustic outside London” (that’s a quote from Sean Rafferty of BBC Radio 3). Crucially it also has a really nice Steinway piano. Rahman used it when she toured with Courtney Pine a while back, and liked it so much that she booked the venue again for her own tour.

The downside of the venue is that Bradford is built on the side of a steep hill leading down to the Avon. The railway station is at the bottom, and the Music Centre is at the top. They really need something like a San Francisco cable car going up that hill. Thankfully Jon had come over from Bristol in a car. Now that I know the venue is there, and how good it is, I’m rather more interested in getting my own transport.

Most of the concert featured music from Rahman’s new album, Kindred Spirits. Rahman is half-Bengali, and that influence is clear in her music. However, she is also one quarter Irish, and lately she has been incorporating that tradition as well. Jazz, of course, is neither Bengali nor Irish, and yet the end result works beautifully, and makes Rahman’s music unique. Interestingly one of the tunes she picked, written by the great Bengali polymath and Nobel Prize winner, Rabindranath Tagore, is also based on an Irish melody.

The band for the tour comprises Davide Mantovani on double bass, Gene Calderazzo on drums and Rahman’s brother, Idris, on woodwind. Jon mentioned that he was looking forward to seeing Calderazzo perform before the gig, and I can see why. He has wonderfully constrained and expressive control of his kit. There’s none of the “I am a mighty warrior who will beat these drums into submission” with Calderazzo, he just sits there channeling the flow of the music through his body and into the instrument. At times you can’t even see him moving. Idris Rahman mainly played clarinet, and did a fine job of interpreting an Irish jig on that instrument. Personally, however, I loved the old saxophone that he used on one piece.

The band for the album is much the same except that Oli Hayhurst plays bass and Courtney Pine guests on one track, using an alto flute for that Irish jig. I bought a copy of the album during the interval (Rahman does the merch chick work herself — surely she could find some fans to do it like Marjorie and I did for Jonathan Coulton.) At the start of the second half of the gig she announced that she’d found a CD that had fallen out of the packing, and she didn’t want anyone to go home and find theirs was missing. Sure enough, it was mine. Thank you again, Zoe.

If you’d like to see Rahman yourself, and I highly recommend it, you can find the remainder of the tour dates here.

Farewell, Davy

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Yeah, this is one of those “is she really that old?” posts.

Davy Jones died today. I was a few years short of being a teenager when The Monkees were huge stars. I don’t think that Davy was my first crush. That honor probably belongs to Adam Faith. But I do remember the Monkees TV show with a great deal of fondness. And for a manufactured band they were surprisingly good (at least in part because of the top quality song writers they worked with).

Here’s Davy and the boys being their usual goofy selves.

Yes kids, people really did dress like that in the Sixties.

A Musical Hugo Recommendation

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

I don’t pay as much attention as I should to Kate Bush lyrics, despite Paul Cornell’s eager evangelizing of her SFnal credentials. My thanks, therefore, to Ian McDonald, for pointing out to me that my favorite song off 50 Words for Snow is in fact a time travel story.

Music has always been eligible for the Hugos. In 1971 Paul Kantner was nominated in Best Dramatic Presentation for the concept album, Blows Against the Empire, which he made with Grace Slick and other musicians who would eventually form Jefferson Starship. A Firesign Theater recording also made the ballot, and that’s one of the years in which No Award won that category. I suspect a certain amount of fannish grumpiness.

Anyway, these days, most music would appear to belong in DBP: Short. That’s more the case for “Snowed in at Wheeler Street” because it is a duet performed by Kate and Elton John. They are, I suspect, both people who would love to get a nomination, though I doubt that either would be able to turn up in Chicago. I note that Kate named her record company Fish People, which suggests that she too has been reading books full of dead names.

There’s no official video for the song as yet, but several people have uploaded their own efforts to YouTube. This one is the best. As befits something that travels through time, it has mainly railway stations rather than airports, but I think you’ll be able to see why this song means a lot to me. And trains are rather appropriate, of course.

Anyway, here it is, enjoy, and if you like it please consider nominating it. “Snowed in at Wheeler Street”, Kate Bush & Elton John (Fish People).

I don’t want to lose you…

…again.

Ashes to Snow – A Music Review

~ Cheryl

Today’s sound track for the day job have been largely Kate Bush, but it didn’t start that way. I have recently purchased the new album by CN Lester. It’s called Ashes, and I’m very impressed with it.

I met CN through Roz Kaveney and the folks at Trans London. CN is very talented, charming in person, and also a fine blogger. Their musical interests are highly varied, ranging from classical to Alt. Rock. CN is a key member of the En Travesti Ensemble, which performs Baroque Opera. Ashes is at the other end of the spectrum, being mainly piano and voice.

You need to get this album anyway, because how can you not buy a piece of music from which the publicity shots were taken in John Clute’s library? I mean, really, how awesome is that?

But if you do need to talk music (and I know it is a subject about which I am woefully ignorant, despite my love of listening to it), this is where the snow comes in. Because Ashes reminded me quite a bit of the new Kate Bush album, 50 Words For Snow, in particular the first track, “Snowflake”. It shares the same rich, echoey piano sound, and the same floaty vocals. And I know that a lot of you out there are huge Kate Bush fans (I’m looking at you, Mr. Cornell), so I figured you might like Ashes too. The album is available electronically on iTunes and from Amazon. If you want an actual CD, you can get one direct from CN.

Here’s the trailer.

Happy Cthulhumas

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Let’s face it, many of us, especially those with small children, will have lost our minds by the time that the holidays are over. So why not get it over with early? Here, for your dismay and desperation, are the melodically malevolent madmen of the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society with a range of festive tunes you will never be able to forget.

It’s The Most Horrible Time of the Year

Oh Come All Ye Old Ones

Silent Night, Blasphemous Night

I’m Dreaming of a Dead City

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Fishmen

Winterval Dinner: Sorted

~ Cheryl ~ 21 Comments

Those of you who are going to be home alone over the holidays may like to know that there will once again be foodie blogging here. I have sorted out something to amuse myself in lieu of roasting children over an open fire, or whatever it is us wicked witches were supposed to do before health and safety legislation put an end to all of our fun.

I have Tybalt to thank for that. That’s Small Tybalt, who lives with my friend Marjorie just down the road, not Big Tybalt who occasionally pesters my friend Seanan in San Francisco. Cats are pretty smart creatures, and Tybalt is a dab hand with the TV remote. A few days ago he pounced on it and gave Marjorie a heavy hint as to what he might like for Winterval. What came on screen when he pressed the buttons was an ad for this.

You see, everyone is doing turducken this year, so Aldi have decided to go one better and add some goose to the mix. Thus I have a fine four-bird roast to cook. This, I am sure, will be yummy. And because I thought to peer around the rest of the store while I was there I also have a guinea fowl to roast for new year.

You may be thinking that this is all very lazy of me, and you’d be right. I really ought to cook more stuff from scratch, so I’m going to make an effort for the appetizer. If all goes well, there will be chestnut and mushroom pâté. This required me to buy a small bottle of Harvey’s Bristol Cream, which made me feel like a right old maid, but one does have to have the right ingredients and I wasn’t going to buy a whole bottle of really good sweet sherry just for this.

I should also try to do something imaginative with the vegetables. Goose fat and potatoes may be involved. But I think I might also have a go at a seemingly impossible culinary task — making Brussels sprouts edible.

Green fingered types such as my mum and Mark Charan Newton will doubtless say that this is all about getting them fresh from the garden. However, I have no garden in which to grow them, and long experience has taught me that where plants are concerned my fingers are decidedly black, so instead I have to resort to culinary trickery. There has to be a way of making them better than just solid lumps of boiled cabbage. I have some ideas (which is, of course, very dangerous).

Meanwhile, back with the old maid bit, while I was in Tesco getting the sherry they were, as is inevitable at this time of year, playing jolly Christmas songs. Thus I heard Noddy Holder sing this:

Does your granny always tell ya that the old songs are the best?
Then she’s up and rock ‘n’ rollin’ with the rest

I spotted a couple of young girls, maybe 9 or 10, dancing in the aisles and singing along, which I guess goes to show that the old songs really are the best. But it also reminded me that rock ‘n’ roll would have been close to being old hat when their grandmothers were kids. You need new lyrics, Noddy!

Keep Calm and Protest On #OWS

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Guns and flowers

This morning when I woke up my Twitter feed was full of news of how the NYPD was clearing out the Occupy Wall Street camp. The fact that they found it necessary to do so in the middle of the night, while imposing a complete media blackout, tells you all you need to know about what was going on.

Doubtless there is a lot of anger that protests are being cleared like this. (Other cities have done the same, sometimes less secretively with more violence.) On the other hand, it is a clear sign that the authorities are on the run, and making mistakes. I’m old enough to remember the Kent State shootings, and what they did to American public opinion.

Also, yesterday I was making some edits to my interview with Ahmed Khaled Towfik, the author of Utopia. One of the things he told me about was the brutal murder, by Egyptian police, of a young man called Khaled Saeed, and how this was one of the main sparks that led to the Egyptian revolution.

No one wants people to have to die for protesting authority, but equally it is true that few things get the media and public opinion on your side more effectively than some good old-fashioned police brutality. That we are starting to see it happen means that we are winning.

At one point during the morning Amanda tweeted some lyrics from a song I remember well. It is old, but it is just as appropriate today as it was when I was a kid. Here’s the whole thing.

Keep calm, protest on, and sing!

Bindel – The Musical

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

Over on Twitter various trans folks have been suggesting the sort of documentary they might make, had they been in charge of My Transsexual Summer. The hashtag is is #diytranssummer if you want to check it out.

For context, I probably need to remind you that prominent lesbian journalist and one of Britain’s foremost trans-haters, Julie Bindel, once suggested that a convention of trans people would look like the set of Grease. It you remember what I said on Wednesday about people in transition having a tendency to overdo the gender performance you’ll know where she got the idea from. Trans people go through a second puberty with their hormone treatment, but to some extent they go through a second adolescence as well. Suggesting that we are always like that all the time, however, is a silly stereotype for which Bindel has been repeatedly berated.

Anyway, I suggested that my #diytranssummer would include the trans people staging a performance of Grease with all of the cast dressed like Julie Bindel. A few people kindly found this amusing. Unfortunately, having thoroughly earwormed myself, I had to go on and produce something. It turned out slightly different.

Bindel – The Musical (a trans love story)

The action takes place at a high school where the kids are divided into two gangs: the Pink Boys, who are all gay, and the L-Birds, who are all lesbians. There’s a strict dress code. The Pink Boys are all very metrosexual, and the L-Birds adopt k.d. lang chic.

At the start of a new term, Danny Zuko confesses to his Pink Boy friends that over the summer vacation he met a wonderful butch girl, and is worried that he might be straight and trans. Unbeknownst to Danny, Sandy Olsson has just enrolled in the school.

The bad kids in the class, Ben and Julie, bully Danny and Sandy mercilessly, accusing them of being traitors, perverts and dupes of the patriarchy. Much misunderstanding and misadventure ensues. However, the rest of the kids think it would be cool to introduce a bit more gender diversity into the class. They encourage Danny and Sandy to cross-dress.

Enter Danielle and Alexander. They look like fairly conservative teenagers (think Sandy and Danny at the start of Grease), but the Pink Boys have gone for the full Priscilla drag queen look, while the L-Birds are all Dykes on Bikes. Danielle is rather embarrassed and wracked with guilt, but with encouragement from her friends she soon relaxes into her new identity. Here’s the big song and dance number.

Danielle:
I got chills, they’re multiplyin’, and I’m losin’ control
Cause the gender I’m displayin’, it is so dismayin’

Danielle:
I better shape up, and look like a man,
it’s the normal thing to do
I better shape up, I should be a man,
to my chromosomes be true
It’s the right, it’s the only thing to do

Chorus:
You’re the gender you want
(you’re the gender you want), ooh ooh ooh, honey
The gender you want (you are the way we want),
ooh ooh ooh, honey
The gender you want (you are the way we want),
ooh ooh ooh, honey
It’s what you need (how you should be),
oh yes indeed (yes indeed)

Alexander:
Give your life new direction,
You’ll be happy this way
I can give you affection, what d’ya say?

Danielle:
I better shape up,
cause I want a man

Alexander:
I’ll be the man,
Who can keep you satisfied

Danielle:
I better shape up, I can be your girl

Alexander:
You be fine, and I want you by my side
Are you sure?

Danielle:
Yes, my self I cannot hide

[repeat chorus]

At the end of the song Ben and Julie confess that they have been swept away by the romance of it all and will be becoming androgynous so that they can have a relationship without sacrificing their principles. Everyone lives queerly ever after.

The End.

Death Comes to Bristol

~ Cheryl

I spent yesterday evening in Bristol at the fabulous St.Georges where I was magnificently entertained by the Aurora Orchestra and Peter Straub. Like most of the audience, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect, but I very much enjoyed what I got. It went something like this.

automatic writing, automatic writing, automatic writing, automatic writing, automatic writing, automatic writing, automatic writing, automatic writing, automatic writing, automatic writing, automatic writing, automatic writing…

For their Hallowe’en tour, the orchestra is playing a set that includes many somewhat spooky pieces of music. They open with an arrangement of the popular carol, “Adeste Fideles” (“O Come Al Ye Faithful) by Charles Ives which slows the tune to a funereal pace. It is decidedly unheimlich, and sets the scene perfectly.

Also in the first half is “Octandre” by Edgard Varèse which people other than me (much to my relief) have compared to Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring”. I discover that the theme from The Thomas Crown Affair, “Windmills of your Mind”, was originally a French song called “Les Moulins de mon Coeur”. I think I prefer the original. The first half closes with a very familiar piece: “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” by Paul Dukas, made famous by Mickey Mouse in Fantasia.

An American writer called Peter is visiting London. His past is about to catch up with him.

The second half opens with a performance by pianola genius, Rex Lawson. If you think that a pianola is just something on which crappy music is churned out in the salon bars of Westerns, you need to hear this guy play. (YouTube is our friend. Here he is, playing the scherzo from Mendelssohn’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream”.)

“Sweetheart, you’re not carrying a drink. No matter how they feel, his women are always carrying drinks.”

“No, I’m carrying a gun. Haven’t you noticed? He wants me dead, but I’m not going to spend eternity in the Mississippi just for his sake.”

She wasn’t. Health & safety rules required a last minute change to the script. Apparently even a toy gun was deemed unsafe, but a knife was perfectly OK. Sopranos carrying knives can still be dangerous, even if they are only singers, not New York gangsters.

She is, however, heavily pregnant. This is fortuitous circumstance, but somehow it is entirely more appropriate that a dead woman who has just walked out of the Mississippi river should be so.

“But I’m not…” Peter says. “I didn’t come here to be…”

Aldo smacks his knee. “You wound her up, you know, you can’t blame her for wanting to get rid of you.”

Other music for the second half included “Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel”, a song by Schubert in which the titular woman has far less luck than Penelope in waiting for her lover to return; and Valse Triste, a Waltz written by Sibelius as part of the music for a play written by his brother-in-law, Arvid Järnefelt. The play was called “Kuolema”, which is Finnish for “Death”. The dancers, aside from the heroine, are all ghosts. When she joins the dance, there is a knock on the door.

“I’m going to kill him, that selfish stupid blind heartless…”

Peter takes the stage for this final piece. He and the soprano, dance. She stabs him.

Peter is dead.

The end.

Happy Hallowe’en.