Category Archives: Messaged from the Outhouse

Southend to bid for UK Capital of Culture

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Today the Echo-News website reliably informed me that Southend on Sea, a town in South East Essex, is going to bid to become the United Kingdom’s ‘Capital of Culture’. According to the Department of Culture’s website, the chosen city (town) should be able to deliver:

  1. A high quality cultural programme that reaches a wide variety of audiences, and is a fitting follow-on from Liverpool Capital of Culture and the Cultural Olympiad;
  2. A programme that uses culture to lead to lasting social regeneration by engagement, widening participation and supporting cultural diversity;
  3. A demonstrable and significant economic impact from the programme;
  4. Credibility in their plans (including support from key partners) and track record in delivery; and
  5. A clear approach to maximising legacy and being able to evaluate impact

Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Southend (or ‘Saaaafend’, as the indigenous population calls it), but on first impression it doesn’t strike you as a particularly highbrow place.  It has three theaters (which admittedly isn’t bad), numerous casinos, arcades, 7000 fish and chip shops, 19000 bars, a sea front with a pier and millions of East Enders populating these attractions on the weekend. This being a sea side town in South- East Essex, the stilettos are high, the ladies very blond, the tattoos manifold and the lager cheap. If a week in Ayia Napa is your sort of thing thing then Southend is the place to be.

Even if Southend Council would be able to deliver the above list of cultural highlights, I would be concerned about the size of the audience attending the events. I think it would be more realistic if Southend would bid for the title of  “Party Capital of the UK”. The winning town would get 1 year of central government funded increased street cleaning, heavier police presence, more prison cells, a bigger A+E and a Liver unit.

I am sure Southend would benefit more.

Kim Stanley Robinson’s First Stinker?

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Kim Stanley Robinson is one of my favourite authors. I have read and re-read the Mars Trilogy, awed by this chap’s visionary tales, loved the ‘Three Californias‘, sniggered at ‘Escape from Kathmandu’, fell in love with the NSF during the ‘Science in Washington‘ trilogy, wanted to live in an Asian utopia in ‘The Years of Rice and Salt‘ and longed to be on Pluto while reading ‘Icehenge‘.

And now I have just finished Galileo’s Dream, and what can I tell you?

It’s a stinker. Absolutely terrible.

Everything that made me a fan of KSR in the past is missing: the carefully researched scientific prose, the utopias that were so well thought out that they were likely to happen very soon, the sociological visions, the heterogenous groups of vastly different protagonists and, of course, communal bathing and a ‘Frank’. Always a Frank.

So, what do we get here? A curmudgeonly Galileo Galilei that gives the reader no chance for empathy or sympathy, as he’s an obvious anthrophobic, lying, scheming egomanic arse. And just because 17th century alone is obviously not sci-fi, Galileo gets whisked away ever so often to the Jovian moons of the 30th century to help out with the issue of newly discovered life in and around Jupiter.

Yup. No kidding.

With other words, KSR has abandoned his legacy as being the one Sci-Fi author you could safely recommend to your friends who until now saw Sci-Fi as for the anorak wearing members of society.

Not anymore.

Favourite Orchestral Pieces?

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A recent Reddit thread made me think about what my favourite orchestral pieces are. While I am happy to admit that these days I tend to listen more to jazz than classical music, it nevertheless continues to be an important part of my ever expanding music collection. The people most culpable for shaping my taste in (classical) music were probably the conductors in the various orchestras I’ve been playing in. There is nothing like playing a piece of music for weeks to really getting it to know inside out. Even initially inaccessible works like Hindemith’s “Plöner Musiktag” start sounding beautiful after you’ve given them a whirl a couple of times.  So I probably have to thank these poor men (and women) in front of me, wielding their little sticks and shaking their fists at the cocky part of the wood wind section. Anyway, here are my 10 favourite orchestral pieces of all time, in no particular order:

  1. Luigi Cherubini: Requiem in C-Minor.  Emotive, rousing stuff from the man judged by Beethoven to be the best of his contemporary composers
  2. Johann Sebastian Bach:  Christmas Oratorio. The classic singalong.
  3. Johannes Brahms: Symphony Nr 1. Once you’ve heard the brooding, evocative first movement you’ll never forget it. Breathtaking.
  4. Franz Schubert Symphony: Nr 8 (Unvollendente): Lovely transitory work that slots right between the classic and romantic period. Haunting.
  5. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Symphony Nr 41 (Jupiter): One of the most astonishing pieces of music ever, its fourth movement manages to cram five motives into an absolutely mindblowing fugal coda. You must have the mind of Stephen Hawkins to mesh them , make them sound beautiful and manage to let them finish all together.
  6. Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony Nr1.  I know, you might say that Nr 3/5/6/9 are all more glamorous, but my favourite is Nr1.
  7. Joseph Haydn: Symphony Nr 82 (L’ours).
  8. Jean Sibelius: Finlandia. Even it’s use in ‘Die Hard 2’ can’t ruin it’s appeal.
  9. Gustav Holst: First Suite in Eb. Never mind ‘The Planets’. This is far more evocative.
  10. Leonard Bernstein: Symphonic Dances from West Side Story. ‘Nuff said

So there you have it: the 10 most played orchestral pieces at casa del fordiebianco.

Prefab Jesus Pop

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Paddy McAloon is, well, was one of my favourite song writers. His work for Prefab Sprout has rarely been bettered, and albums like Andromeda Heights and From Langley Park to Memphis are on my list of most played vinyl ever.

So it was rather unsurprising that I was rather excited by the announcement of the release of a new album with new material by Prefab Sprout called ” Let’s Change the World With Music“. Instantly downloaded (remember going to the record shop around the corner every day until the album you were waiting for finally arrived?) from Itunes, I gave it an instant spin (well, I gave the hard disk a spin) and was initially delighted by the usual McAloonesque harmonic joys, but soon was beginning to worry that I might have downloaded something resembling ‘Christian Pop’.  References to God, Jesus and Angels are flying around liberally, and I wonder whether this is a concept album to drum up support for the Church of England.

The sound is a bit weird as well: while the songs themselves reflect McAloon’s musical genius, the production sounds like somebody threw together some ideas on an eighties drum computer and a kid’s synthesizer, often detracting from the beauty of the compositions.

I wonder whether Paddy’s beard length correlates with the religiosity of his lyrics. On the other hand, I can’t really be mad at a guy who made some of the most beautiful music in the universe. A bit like Bach, if you think of it.

Let’s hope it’s just a phase.