Category Archive: Modern Music
Zappa
(Directed by Alex Winter) (2020) Frank Zappa (21/12/1940 – 4/12/1993) was a one man show created for an audience of one: himself. Obsessively writing, arranging and producing realms of material, he’d allow others to perform with him, though they were never quite good enough, and he’d suffer people to buy his records or attend his concerts, although they weren’t really hip enough to understand the work. It was either his way or go elsewhere. And his unorthodox, multi-faceted output is always interesting, even if, for example, a double album like 200 Motels turns out to be a bizarre waste of time….
Continue Reading →Beware the Jealous Guy
On 8 December, 1980, about 5 pm, a man truly ‘crippled inside,’ Mark David Chapman, posing as a fan of singer-songwriter/crypto-Jesus John Lennon, got Lennon to autograph his latest (rather patchy) record, Double Fantasy, out the front of his fashionable Dakota apartment in New York City. Lennon and his wife were on their way to record more unmemorable songs. On their return, at about 10.50 pm, Chapman shot at Lennon five times, hitting him with at least 4 bullets. Lennon, rushed by police to hospital, was DOA. Chapman was arrested without further incident and claimed that The Catcher in the Rye…
Continue Reading →Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga
(dir. David Dobkin) (2020) (Netflix) If you love the Eurovision Song Contest, read on. If you hate, or are merely indifferent to it, stop reading now. No-one likes that kind of negative weirdness. Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga was scheduled for release in May 2020, in order to coincide with the final of the real Eurovision contest in Rotterdam this year, but the final was cancelled, tragically, due to some little pandemic or other. Who wouldn’t risk a bit of respiratory failure for the chance to see acts like this – Thank goodness that at least we…
Continue Reading →All You Need is Love
25 June 1967: “All You Need Is Love”, the Beatles’ anthem of peace, was beamed to the World via a global television broadcast from the EMI studios in London. The sheer logistical immensity of the broadcast, coupled with the over-loaded production, gave the song a certain cachet, although it is essentially a condescending, lumpen hymn to an utopian Neverland, with lyrics that are the purest dross. Yet it lingers, like a piece of old furniture one intends to put out in the hard rubbish but never does, which says something for its unabashed sincerity and heartfelt elements. Perhaps the better…
Continue Reading →The iPod Playlist for a Plague
Social distancing..."The Plague of Thebes" by Charles Francois Jalabert (1842)
Armagideon Time (The Clash) [“A lot of people won’t get no supper tonight A lot of people won’t get no justice tonight…”] Bad Moon Rising (Creedence Clearwater Revival) [“I see a bad moon a-rising I see trouble on the way I see earthquakes and lightnin’ I see bad times today Don’t go ’round tonight It’s bound to take your life There’s a bad moon on the rise…”] Coming Home (Falling in Reverse) [“Transmission from the stars A message from the atmosphere Etched into my heart Your purpose there is still unclear The ghost of you lives on Through everything I…
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