Birthday books

This year's batch...

Day 4, Tokyo: The Wind-Up Fish Chronicle

Thanks to the wondrous effects of ongoing jetlag, me and Dan wake up at 6.20am. We decide to head over to Tsukiji fish market. It's the world's biggest wholesale fish and seafood market; 2,300 tonnes of fish are delivered here each day. (Dan: "Wow, there really are plenty of fish in the sea.")

This means two things: one, you will see so much fish that you will feel a like everyone is staring at you because you're not a fish. Two, you will have to keep your wits about you to prevent yourself from getting run over by one of the many forklift trucks which zoom around trying to knock people over.

Once you've trawled (ha!) around the market, you can go to one of the nearby sushi restaurants and eat fish that's only been killed about three minutes ago, ie fresh as you fucking like. This is exactly what we do.

Then it's off towards Ginza, and everything starts getting a bit flash. We go through skyscrapery bit Shiodome, which I initially pronounce à la Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, but is in fact supposed to be said "she-oh-doh-meh". Stupid gaijin.

"This is the heart of Ginza," I announce to Dan, reading from the guidebook. "This is Ginza Yon-chome crossing – apparently it 'often features in films and documentaries as the epitome of this overcrowded yet totally efficient city'." We gaze up at all the tall buildings and imposing signs. It certainly is very impressive.

We walk a block along to the next crossing. I spot the Wako building. "Oh, hang on," I say. "I got it wrong. This is the heart of Ginza."

In the afternoon we visit the weird 'n' wonderful 'n' weird Ghibli Museum in Mitaka – a shrine to the animation of Hayao Miyazaki, most famous for the Oscar-winning Spirited Away. The information leaflet I'd got on booking the tickets promised that the design of the building would be "somplicated and fully realized, that it is much more than just a draft" (sic). It also explained that the shop featured "quality products and not cheap trinkets or souvenirs, at prices reflecting Hayao Miyazaki's sense that art is more important than commerce". Easy, tigers!

Despite the seemingly passive-aggressive attitude, the place turns out to be brilliant. There's a short film made specially for the museum, featuring flying cat buses and Miyazaki favourite Totoro, these amazingly detailed moving models showing how animation works, and some stuff about giant Russian bears that didn't make much sense, but was still touched by the hand of Hayao, and therefore ace.

Back in Shinjuku in the evening, we meet up with my friend Eli, who is on crutches and walks at about 0.5 kmph. As we settle down for some food, she explains some of Japan's mysteries to us ("Why did we have to buy an extra ticket on the tube when we changed lines?", "What am I eating?" etc). I wish we could keep her!

Then, hold on, I see myself eating noodles in a small cafe-restaurant in Tokyo, laughing with old friends, while Dylan's 'Desolation Row' plays on the stereo. I'm in a Murakami novel!

Laurie load

It’s Stephen Fry night on BBC2 tonight, but let’s not forget the awesome talents of his old comedy partner Hugh Laurie. The Lozmeister, as he’s often known, may have disappeared to America to play House, but he’s still a National Treasure in my book.

Edmund has posted a nice Jeeves and Wooster clip of Laurie at the piano; here he is on the guitar and harmonica (he plays the drums and saxophone as well, apparently). The music is a nice pastiche of early to mid 90s Dylan (or any number of American country acts, I guess), but Laurie’s sheepish facial expressions are priceless.

Pepper spray

Everyone's been getting a bit flustered about the 40th anniversary of Sgt Pepper this month, so perhaps it's time to unleash a savagely bitchy piece of writing from Dylanologist Clinton Heylin, in an attempt to restore the natural balance of things.

Heylin's introduction to Bob Dylan: The Recording Sessions (1960 - 1994) begins by laying into the most famous "sessionography" book, Mark Lewisohn's The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, in which the writer, a celebrated authority on the Fab Four, analyses The Beatles' recording career. But he does so in a way which Heylin sees as highly ignorant...

Lewisohn... was the man who informed all those who purchased the CD version of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - courtesy of some liner notes already ODing on hyperbole - that the sessions for Sgt. Pepper were "perhaps the most creative 129 days in the history of rock music."

I could have called this book "129 Days of Studio-Time" but it is most certainly not about the fey indulgences of the Fab Four in the winter of 1966-67... To put Lewisohn's (staggeringly ignorant) "most creative 129 days in the history of rock music" in context, Dylan managed to record his entire studio output up to and including 1976's Desire in just 90 days!

Beatles schmeatles, then. Although the introduction is brilliant, the rest of the book is so intensely geeky, I'd hesitate to recommend it to even the most obsessive of Dylan fans. Sorry, Clint.

How does it feel?

Rolling Stone put up some quality audio clips of the magazine's co-founder Jann Wenner interviewing Bob Dylan (spotted by James).

I was going to link to the page, but they've taken it down, the fools. Shame, the clips were really good, with some hilarious role reversal going on; the first one had Wenner coming across as the moody one who Dylan was trying to impress, rather than the other way round. At one stage Dylan asks Wenner if he'd ever noticed how upbeat some of the postwar popular music songs are. "No," replies Wenner, sounding fed up.

Luckily I transcribed another bit before they were consigned to the cyber graveyard...

Jann Wenner: [exasperated] I’m trying to interview you.
Bob Dylan: I know.
JW: And you’re not being very helpful with this.
BD: Jann, have I ever been helpful?
JW: Well, you have in the past - you’ve given some really great interviews in the past several years.
BD: Well I wasn’t on tour when I was doing it you know, I could be fully present for your interviews. But now, I’m thinkin’ about amps going out and y’know...
JW: You don’t have people taking care of those for you?
BD: You would hope.
JW: So you can’t find a good road man, is that the problem here?

You are to blame

You don't know when to stop, do you? Back in the '60s, you rose to fame when Bob Dylan famously slagged you off in his song Positively 4th Street.


That kept you quiet for a few decades, until you had an almighty comeback in December 2006 when Time magazine named you person of the year.


However, in February you fell from grace, when The Mirror blamed you for the death of model Anna Nicole Smith.


And now, just when you thought things couldn't get any worse, in the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shootings, everyone is looking for a scapegoat. Some blame the police, some blame gun laws, some blame computer games. But again, The Mirror knows who's really responsible.


You never learn.


NB This post is an extended rewrite of a previous one. Do I look like I care? (Don't answer that.)

Ain't Talkin

Nice email from my friend James K, who's a bit of a Dylan obsessive, just now:

Rumours of a new Dylan album in September 2007 - he apparently already has six songs ready. Just giving you a nine month heads-up.

Twenty-five great tracks of 2006

Feeling list-less? This should sort you out: my 25 favourite tunes of the year. This is one mean playlist; go to iTunes and treat yourself.

Music Is My Hot Hot Sex - CSS
Why: Beyonce's Crazy in Love for electro-indie kids. Also features the sassiest Portuguese rapping heard since [simile missing].
Key lyric: "Music is my granddad / Music is my great granddaughter / Music is my sister / Music is my favourite mistress"

TV – The Sugars
Why: The catchiest tune of the year, it's Helen Love shagging The White Stripes with an excellent anti-everything sentiment at its centre.
Key lyric: "I don't like the people that make the TV / And the people on TV don't like me"

Crazy – Knarls Barkley
Why: Because that F# to B major chord change (the thing's in B minor for crying out loud!) is the most unexpected thing to happen in pop music in eight and a half years.
Key lyric: "Does that make me crazy? / Probably"

Thanks for All the Aids – Akira the Don
Why: Scared a lot of record execs, possibly because the great, hummable tune smuggles in some highly subversive lyrics which have a go at everyone, from the World Bank to Keane.
Key lyric: "If your kids are on Ritalin you are / Twelve times worse than the worst crack whore"

Eanie Meany – Jim Noir
Why: Twangy, understated and totally old-skool psychedelic; mentions garden gnomes, which you don't get with Girls Aloud.
Key lyric: "If you don't give my football back / I'm gonna get my dad on you"

Emily – Joanna Newsom
Why: Rhapsodic, weird and truly unpredictable, there was nothing else like it this year.
Key lyric: "And the meteorite's just what causes the light / And the meteor's how it's perceived"

Dress Up in You – Belle and Sebastian
Why: Lovely ballady stuff from B&S, still the only band who can sweetly sing "…so fuck them too" before seguing into a highly dignified horn solo.
Key lyric: "I am the singer, I am the singer in the band / You're the loser, I won't dismiss you out of hand"

Kidz – Plan B
Why: Scary and real; also unforgettable.
Key lyric: "Ai, listen up. Fuckin' cunts."

Country Girl – Primal Scream
Why: Simply a brilliant rocker that still has some of the churning danciness of previous Scream incarnations, elevated, as ever, by a pumping Mani bassline à la Kowalski.
Key lyric: "Crazy women / Mess your head / Wake up drunk and beaten / In some strange bed"

Alice the Goon – Quasi
Why: Sounds like a load of grand pianos being chucked off the roofs of art galleries by lunatic geniuses.
Key lyric: "Electric eel / Swimming the seas of the unreal"

See Me In My Dreams – Silver Sun
Why: You know how we said that Sugars song was the catchiest of the year? Well this is catchier.
Key lyric: "On the Northern Line, oh what have you found?"

Meeting Paris Hilton – CSS
Why: Manages to sound sharply satirical, mainly by using the word 'bitch' many many times. Laters Paris!
Key lyric: "She came to me and said: 'Do you like the bitch, bitch?'"

We Are the Pipettes – The Pipettes
Why: What a statement of intent! They are the Pipettes!
Key lyric: "We are the Pipettes and we've got no regrets / If you haven't noticed yet, we're the prettiest girls you've ever met"

Workingman Blues #2 – Bob Dylan
Why: The spidery piano intro means you know it's going to be a classic by 0.03.
Key lyric: "No man, no woman knows / The hour that sorrow will come"

Fee Fie – The Hidden Cameras
Why: Best use of the triangle, like, ever.
Key lyric: "Smell yearning"

Rough Gem – Islands
Why: Seems to be about mining and the planet's limited resources, but sounds more fun than every Christmas toy ever invented.
Key lyric: "Dig deep but don't dig too deep / When it's late, you'll see the hole is empty"

Running the World – Jarvis Cocker
Why: Furious song that gets its point across without shouting. Lots of swearing, though.
Key lyric: "It stinks, it sucks / It's anthropologically unjust / But the takings are up by a third / Cunts are still running the world"

I'm Free from the Chain Gang Now – Johnny Cash
Why: Weary but triumphant, a wonderful last track for the Man in Black's final album.
Key lyric: "All the years I was known by a number / How I kept my mind is a wonder"

Manitoba – Tapes 'n' Tapes
Why: Sounds like you know it already, but you know you don't.
Key lyric: "When you see streams of boulders / Higher hills from higher moulders"

Lust in the Movies – The Long Blondes
Why: Features a chorus that sounds like a non-sequitur, but which, as you soon realise, is what it's all about.
Key lyric: "Edie Sedgwick, Anna Karina, Arlene Daaaahl"

It Hurts to See You Dance So Well – The Pipettes
Why: Very short, very sweet, trussed with gliding, wintery harmonies.
Key lyric: "But you never knew / How much I was in love with you"

Black and White – The Upper Room
Why: The 80s were back again. But this time they were good.
Key lyric: "Pain pain pain pain pain pain"

Ldn – Lily Allen
Why: Savvy but innocent; manages to make tales of mugging seem fun.
Key lyric: "A fella looking dapper, but he's sitting with a slapper / Then I see it's a pimp and his crack whore"

Boom [Remix] – Akira the Don ft Bashy
Why: Sampling Elastica's Connection is good, but the rhymes – mentioning subjects as varied as David Cameron, Costcutter and Lebanon – are even better.
Key lyric: "Zimmer zimmer zimmer got a donner and a dick"

Gun vs Knife – Dan Sartain
Why: Both menacing and uncertain; according to new research, they don't write 'em like this any more.
Key lyric: "Bring your gun and I'll bring my knife"


Last year's 25 great songs

Albums of 2006

It's list time here on planet Earth, so here are my top five long-players of the year, with five also-goods.

Top five
Cansei De Ser Sexy – CSS
The Life Pursuit – Belle and Sebastian
Alright, Still – Lily Allen
Ys – Joanna Newsom
Awoo – The Hidden Cameras

Honorable mentions
Dad's Weird Dream – Silver Sun
Whatever I Say I Am That's What I'm Not – Arctic Monkeys
We Are the Pipettes – The Pipettes
Modern Times – Bob Dylan
Howling Bells – Howling Bells


Last year's faves

Top of the corpse

Today it was revealed that James Blunt's Goodbye My Lover is, according to the Bereavement Register, the most requested song for funerals. How depressing.

For some reason, I've always had quite a firm idea of the tunes I'd like played at my funeral; I even created a playlist called "Will's funeral" on my housemate's computer featuring the songs I want. Just in case something happened to me and some cack-handed acquaintance ended up choosing their own music. There's not much reasoning behind these (no resonant lyrics, a la Candle in the Wind), they're just songs I couldn't do without. They are:

1. Visions of Johanna - Bob Dylan
2. Typical Girls - The Slits
3. Duchess - Scott Walker

Come on then, what are yours?

Close listening: I Got You Babe by Sonny and Cher

0.01 It's Groundhog Day! Seriously, will you ever be able to hear those opening bars without thinking of Bill Murray under tightly wrapped covers in that B&B?

0.06 Cher's droning monotone kicks in. "They say we're young and we don't know…" I don't believe Cher was ever young. Even when she was 9, she was a woman.

0.16 Sonny interjects: "Well I don't know if all that's true…" Sonny doesn't think Cher's young either.

0.26 A clarinet! How many mainstream pop songs do you know with one of those? Captain Beefheart doesn't count.

0.35 "They say our love won't pay the rent". They're right! It won't! Listen to their sound financial advice, you fools!

0.39 "Before it's earned our money's all been spent." I know it's the '60s, but that really is no way to live your life.

1.05 The strange and very hippy middle eight. "I got flowers in the Spring / I got you to wear my ring," coos Sonny foolishly.

1.18 Cher cuts in, incredibly out of tune. "And when I'm sad, you're a clown..." But she sings it without the comma, so it's like she's saying she's sad that her lover is a complete fucking clown.

1.21 She continues: "And when I get scared, you're always around." Which actually sounds terrifying. Like her boyfriend is some kind of omnipresent puppy.

1.42 "Then put your little hand in mine," suggests Sonny soppily. On the words 'hand' and 'mine', we realise just to what extent Sonny is impersonating Bob Dylan. It's shocking. Though Dylan would never write or sing such a drippy lyric.

2.01 There's this weird instrumental couple of bars, when it sounds like someone should be singing or playing a solo, but has forgotten. Possibly everyone's still shocked by Cher's out-of-tune singing, or Sonny's shameless Dylanising.

2.11 Sonny sings a quiet and subtle line - he clearly wants to do a building crescendo to the end (à la Oh Come All Ye Faithful). Cher doesn't realise that this will require the singers to start quietly. She lets rip with a ridiculously loud and harsh slug of a line.

2.17 Cher takes control, apparently stealing Sonny's bits. No more alternating lines – the woman wants all of them. Now it's like she's singing the words of love to herself. "I got you to talk to me," she continues. No reply from Sonny there.

2.28 She's still going. "I got you / I won't let go" seems to sum it up.

2.38 The song ends with the devoted pair singing that last grammatically dubious "I got you babe".

2.45 No it doesn't. It comes back. Something approaching the crescendo Sonny was clearly hoping for at 2.11 begins to take place, but it fades out even before it's come back. We're left loving it all and hating it all, but certainly wanting to hear it again. Frustrating and brilliant.

Fuchsia #2

Dylan hits Brixton

"It's like one massive Dylan gig!" enthused my friend James, who's going to all five of the consecutive nights Bob Dylan is playing at Brixton Academy this week. "With gaps," added a nearby Mancunian.

I suppose you could take the formula one step further: for some people life is one big Dylan concert, with gaps. I don't think I'm quite one of those people, but on my way to the Academy I did actually start to feel quite nervous, in case something went wrong and I missed the whole thing.

I didn't, thank the good Lord. Dylan played a real crowd-pleaser of a setlist, but the amazing moments were during the songs you didn't think you'd be bothered about. Mississippi, Cold Irons Bound, Highway 61, Love Minus Zero/No Limit, Summer Days and John Brown were all extraordinary. Even though it's 'barely' two years since Dylan recorded it, Mississippi already sounds like a new song. John Brown came on like the dark Scottish indie-skiffle of Sons and Daughters and the graphic war-is-bad lyrics made everyone stand still. And Summer Days kept switching brilliantly between '40s swing and heavy guitar-thwacking.

There were a few letdowns - Stuck Inside of Mobile and Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine) got a bit boring even before he started singing them (I don't really like the latter - that riff's as annoying as hell), and I Don't Believe You was fairly forgettable. But that's nitpicking - by the time Like A Rolling Stone rolled round, with the house lights flashing up on the crowd for the chorus, the lowlights were a distant memory. Wish I'd got tickets for all five nights.

Setlist is here.

Bury the rag deep in your face

It's been a while since I wrote the blog. Oh lordy lordy it's been a while. Since the Guy episode, I've moved house, and been drinking - nay quaffing - from the cup of culture like a thirsty Brian Sewell.

The question I've been asked constantly over the last few weeks is, "Are you watching /did you see the ScorceseDylan documentary?" They all know I'm a huge Bob Dylan fan, see. The answer has been "no". I managed to buck the trend, by going to a Dylan tribute concert the night of the doc, in which various singersongwriter types got onstage and played Dylan songs. Billy Bragg, Martin Carthy, Odetta, Willy Mason, Liam Clancy and KT Tunstall were all pretty great. (I've noticed that a lot of people loathe KT Tunstall but are unable to give a reason for their hatred. If I hated her, my reasons would be that she gets a bit MOR at times and her voice is just a bit too perfect. But I don't hate her, so I'm not bothered about this.)

I'd like to single out Roy Harper and Barb Jungr, who also played, and were appalling. Barb Jungr particularly, whose cover of Like a Rolling Stone made me want to wrap my jumper round my head in pain. After turning Ring Them Bells into an over the top Celine Dion-like mess, she demolished Like a Rolling Stone, transforming it into a horrible slow "atmospheric" ballad. Lines like, "Threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you?" she'd sing with a questioning inflection in her voice, point at an imaginary person, and put on a slightly cross face. This triad of inanities was unbelievably painful to me. Even more painful than Christopher Ricks' dire Like a Rolling Stone article in The Independent the other week.

Anyway, they filmed the show for BBC4 and you can see a couple of clips (of Bragg and Tunstall) here.

And tonight, Matthew, I'm going to be Nathan Barley: off to Medicine bar in Shoreditch to see an alt-rap hip-hop collective called Crack Village. Totally Mexico. Read the press release. They sound terrible.