Personal Blogs

As mentioned in the previous post, my earliest exposure to music primarily was through my mother's playing of rock n roll, but my acquired tastes are many and varied.

My main criteria is only that some thought has gone into the production: apart from this, I don't feel constrained by genre or artist. I am also willing to admit that some artists that I like can produce dire songs and that some I am ambivalent toward can occasionally aspire to brilliance. It is the virtue of those in the latter category that I intend to espouse in this post. 

Firstly, Elton John. While the soundtrack of my early adulthood included 'I'm Still Standing' and the gender-ambiguous 'Nikita', (although, given Elton's sexual orientation, maybe the title is a Freudian slip upon Bernie's part,) the only album I feel contains moments of sheer unadulterated genius is 'Goodbye Yellow Brick Road'. And the highlight of the album is the rarely-given-any-airtime 'Sweet Painted Lady'.  (  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=up-q544g4sE  )

The simplicity of the song and the heartfelt lyrics hearken back to the golden age of chanson Francaise, as does its subject matter. I find most of Elton John's output quite anodyne, but this little song stands head and shoulders above anything else he's ever done. I especially like the line 'opportunity awaits me like a rat in a drain'. I feel that songwriters these days are far too sloppy compared to those of earlier eras; in 'Cry Me a River (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwheXIa8Cl0 ) not only does Julie London use the word 'plebeian' in correct context but also as a rhyme. Compare this with the Fast Food Rockers. 

There are, of course, exceptions: 

Garth Brooks (  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojNIiS5kIbc  )

Taylor Swift (  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfWlot6h_JM  ) 

Barry Manilow (  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKR2n-G-wdM  )

Abba (  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92cwKCU8Z5c  ) 

What these seem to have in common is that they all tell a story or, in the case of Garth Brooks, are a hymn for those that feel disenfranchised. Again this is an almost direct link to the chanson tradition, where the music is not important because the emphasis is on the lyric. Perhaps the finest exponents of this genre in recent times - post Edith Piaf - are Charles Aznavour and Jacques Brel. The first serves up deceptively smooth tunes with dark lyrics about sexual ambiguity or broken hearts, the second is a 1960's precursor to the later Punk Poet tradition. It is impossible to do an impression of Brel singing - or snarling - the following song in daylight: it needs to be done in the small hours, preferably in a bar in Montmartre as the weary barman stacks the chairs onto the the tables, and accompanied by a Gauloise cigarette and a large calvados. Enjoy! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0k63grkip5I

If Charles Dickens was alive today, I could quite happily throttle him.

I appreciate that Dickens was a prime mover in the reformation of English society, championing the downtrodden masses (and yet was a bit of a cad as regards his family); and that he was also a fine exponent of the written word, but by heck Hard Times is a hard read. I keep attempting it, and after one or two pages the lure of Dorothy L. Sayers proves too strong and I find myself re-reading the adventures of Lord Peter Wimsey.

I can't understand why I find Dickens so hard. My taste in literature is quite catholic: Whodunits of the golden age; James Lee Burke's evocative crime novels of modern Louisiana with his elegant prose verging on the poetic; Rudyard Kipling with his tales of the raj, and of the brutal and licentious soldiery, and even of the native population, and all told with an affection and a lack of condescension that belies his modern critics and their accusations of unfeeling Empiricism; the correspondence between Eloise and Abelard, and the radical musings of Julian of Norwich (though for a medieval woman in her thirties, becoming an anchoress could cynically be seen as a clever career choice - three square a day and a roof over your head) ; P. G. Wodehouse and his farcical tales of the bright young things dragging the air of the belle epoch far past its sell-by date and yet remaining timeless and hilarious; the distinctly not-glamorous espionage novels of Eric Ambler, Len Deighton and John Le Carre and yes, Gary Oldman did a very workmanlike job in the film but it does not compare with the old television adaptation,).

And yet Dickens sends me to sleep faster than chloral hydrate.

Still, must.....keep....trying.