"Evil urges, baby," squeals Jim James in the title track of his band's fifth studio album. "They be part of the human way!" A slinky funk strut delivered in Prince-like falsetto that blows up into a proggy Southern-rock guitar duel, "Evil Urges" rallies you to "Dedicate your love to any woman or man/No racial boundary lines, no social subdivisions" and notes that "evil" is often in the ear of the beholder.
But coming from a young band whose first three albums earned them a reputation as hairy torchbearers of guitar-driven classic rock, the title is also about messing with expectations. More so than 2005's mildly experimental Z, Evil Urges explodes the band's sound with the same kind of creative leap that Wilco took on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and Radiohead took on Kid A.
MMJ's reverence for Neil Young and Crazy Horse is well documented; their Prince fetish less so. They've covered "I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man" live, employed Prince-ly nomenclature (see 2005's "It Beats 4 U") and happily mixed drum machines and lengthy guitar jams (see 2002's space-funk-folk-rock epic "Cobra"). But nothing in their discography could anticipate a song like "Highly Suspicious," Evil Urges' biggest WTF moment. Squeaking out rhymes like "Home alone dotting your i's/Peanut-butter-pudding surprise!" in helium falsetto over boogie-rock guitar outbursts, drill-sergeant backing vocals and clipped drum spasms, it's better suited to an I Love the '80s! mix, set between "Little Red Corvette" and Devo's "Whip It," than to a My Morning Jacket album. (And, dude, I don't even want to know what a "peanut-butter-pudding surprise" is.) It's both hilarious and badass.
MMJ also embrace prog rock — a direction that initially seems at odds with their populist jam-band vibe. But James is determined to have it both ways. The elaborate, shimmering vocal overdubs on "Touch Me I'm Going to Scream, Part 1" recall 10cc's prog-pop landmark "I'm Not in Love." And the record's 13-minute tag-team finale, "Smokin From Shootin" and "Touch Me I'm Going to Scream, Part 2," morphs between Radiohead's computer-assisted soul, avant-roots rock and a chugging Pink Floyd space anthem. "Oh! This feeling is wonderful! Don't you ever turn it off!" sings James on the latter song, amid majestic Fender Rhodes chords and Loch Ness monster slide guitar, building to a surprise ending sure to result in thousands of spilled bongs. He could be singing about sex. He could be singing about MDMA. And when he notes how long it's been since he's been challenged to think "about the way things are" and "the way they could be," he could even be singing about a certain presidential candidate. Just as there are innumerable sexual metaphors, James knows sex can be a metaphor for innumerable things.
Yet you sense that for all his freaky ambition, James is still an old-fashioned guy trying to reconcile his love of tradition with the modern world. One of the record's standouts is "Librarian," an acoustic love ballad that's so archaic it's clearly a hallucination: The singer wanders through book stacks ("Since we got the Interweb, these hardly get used") and sees his crush listening to the Carpenters on AM radio. But songs, like books, invent their own reality, and by the time he reaches the hoary nerd-girl come-on, "Take off those glasses and let down your hair for me," it's enough to make you forswear your Amazon account
Like the bunch, implacable as a swarm of bees, life eventually overhauled me. The game was up. I had found I could not give up cycling, in the way that the phrase implies, with a single, irrevocable act of renunciation. I could only let it go, little by little, like paying out line to a kite which grows ever more distant, until finally the end of the twine slips though one's fingers, and the kite is away, gone on the wind. When it comes, it is an event that feels more like an accident than an exercise of will.
Mitchell Fair and his wife, Eugenie, sped over the whiskey-colored plains in their aging Infiniti, "cutting prairie," said Mitchell under his breath, thinking it sounded western.Is one of the underplayed ones. And everyone has a great name. Plus, Brokeback Mountain was on the TV last night.
ESTP - The Doers
The active and playful type. They are especially attuned
to people and things around them and often full of energy, talking, joking and
engaging in physical out-door activities. The Doers are happiest with
action-filled work which craves their full attention and focus. They might be
very impulsive and more keen on starting something new than following it
through. They might have a problem with sitting still or remaining inactive for
any period of time.
I sit here sipping coffee out of a thermos plunger cup, bought from Amazon, half watching Two and Half Men, over digital freeview, looking out over the privatized Virgin train line and the shared ownership newbuild, while my robot vacuum scuttles about cleaning the flat; later I'll be off to John's 35th birthday lunch. I wonder when I considered being middle aged, say 25 years ago, I had this in mind. Probably a less stupid robot would have been involved (although I might have glumly predicted a global depression).
But speaking of smart/stupidity, today's entry is a DVD, from LoveFilm (like netflix). They won't get a thorough recording on this blog (hello future, again), like history books, but may get a mention now and then.
I've been ill, so during the week I fired up the laptop and watched Smart People. I think everyone knows the problems with this: not least the unbelievable romance, the smugness, the implausible romcom plot pretending to be the Wonderboys meets that wine drinking film artsiness. Would a book titled 'You Can't Read' really pay for Stanford? And an angsty poem in the New Yorker? Really? But I liked bits of it, not least all the actors enjoying themselves (but not Quaid's limping - an actorly reference to a wife-killing car crash, one assumes), and Page's snarkiness. And every family needs a Haden Church. The scene about the jeans being 'snug' was pretty well done. And I liked the bored lecturer feeling. Plus 'uxorious' is useful word. However, it left me wondering, what's up with Sarah Jessica Parker. Even the final credit shots of the 'happy new family' had her half hidden behind furniture, or almost out of shot. And the few scenes she got were basically the coquettish indie ticks she always does (poor me, I'm a little awkward but look at me being cute). Perhaps it was all truly awful and the director left it all on the cutting room floor. But even Michael Douglas had a Wall Street in him, so when's a decent film going to come along? The very watchable Quaid would also be happier churning out flicks in the 1950s, I reckon.
Back to 2009: now my robot is beeping at me, asking for attention. Not so smart.
A trip to the cinema on Wednesday, the first in 2009. I had last seen Mickey Rourke sometime in the early 1990s, when a friend, who looked 18, got a copy of Wild Orchid from the video store. Did they? Didn’t they? Much pausing and rewinding didn’t answer the question. And now, here in 2009, was Mickey Rourke looking like ... well, nothing on earth. Perhaps a human Easter Island figure, made out of plasticine, hair dye, and poloni. In the film – a kind of art house rocky, combined with freakish come-back, he really was a wrestler, Raging Bull-Miller-Lite – he makes a series of phone calls to his estranged daughter from increasingly distraught telephone boxes in the bleakest parts of New Jersey. There’s even a pile of moulding railway sleepers next to one. His daughter is living, he suspects, with her girlfriend, and a new sense of purpose provided by his heart attack at the end of a gruesome ‘necro-wrestling’ match, along with some encouragement from his ‘tart with a heart’ stripper, near-squeeze, and 80s poodle-rock fan Marisa Tomei, leads him to try and get in touch with her again. His method? Bearing gifts, including a ridiculous silk, wrestling style sweater with her initial on it. Needless to say, apart from a board-walk memory moment they share, it ends, literally in tears after a drink and sex-induced night of fireman impersonating sex causes him to forget their father-daughter rapprochement dinner. Meanwhile, our man, the ‘Ram’ to give him his ring-side title, bores of his retirement work as a delicatessen sever (we hear earlier how he’s nothing but a used up piece of meat), and returns for one final match, a 20-year on reunion with ‘The Ayatollah’ (now a successful Arizonan car dealer). The symbolism is about as subtle as Rourke’s fascinating, massive face, and somehow as engaging and puzzling. There is the war (‘hit him with the false leg’, veterans lodges, the aforementioned Ayatollah, etc.) He drives a Ram van, he suffers the little children (in his trailer park, who see him as a hero – he is, of course, still a child himself), he sacrifices himself for his crowd, the Passion is quoted by Tomei (I’m not sure if we see more of his butt or hers?), and the cinematography makes the ring a Golgotha. Finally, he sacrifices himself in one final, heartstopping (ahem) ramjam, and we wonder if the director (Aronofsky) is making the point that the crucifixion was one almighty ‘ah, fuck it’ moment. And speaking of, my friend mentioned at the start of this synopsis is now a vicar.
Monocle arrived on Saturday. I'm never quite sure if it's a complicated joke, possibly financed by a Czech artist, either on me, or what. But I like it. This issue was a good one, not least because it was about something current, with good, cheeky reporting on Iceland (get knitting and fishing!), attempting to be positive, and was a truly fantastic, and I mean really great, photo essay on South Korean shipbuilding. The shots look like they are an advert in themselves for the continued existence of Fujifilm film. There was also an interesting piece on running gear, with the natty Uniqlo HeatTech T, which has got me through winter on the bike. And it's cheap, showing it's not a Euro version of the Robb Report, thank god. (Esp. when you add in the free drinks at the sub. reception). Plus a piece on Portland, or rather North Portland, with its 'large stock of classic housing... and signature Craftsman-Style bungalows', which somewhat bitterly amused Mika who came round on Sunday, and whose bro' has been suckered into a Craftsman-Style bungalow on the wrong side of the track and at the wrong mortgage rate.
Could share Mathias Dahlgren's 'Last Meal', too. The Swedish chef (ahem) opts for 'rustic rye and cheese sandwich and a robust cup of black coffee', preferably in the Nyckelviken forest. Not sure about the decision to line-break WHSmith at WH in the 'Observation' sign off, mind (which promises 'tweaks and changes to the line-up, along with our first national survey spotlighting Mexico'. Look forward to it, along with my tote).
Meanwhile, Obama is showing he can't really do reported speech, but he can swear like a mofo.*
*P.S. Canongate have not edited this for non-U.S. readers, so some references, such as "Tim should call himself Tom" can be opaque. On T&T, see Tim & Tom: An American Comedy in Black and White (Chicago). I think a PhD will have be written at some point on the influence of American comedy on political rhetoric. And I'm serious about that - what other election has swung or been informed so much on Saturday Night Live, the Daily Show, Bushisms, - and that's before the putative researcher looks at the influence of stand-up on stump speeches, convention orations, and even Obama's admitted early obsession with comedy records? Not least, this gives politicians, such as Giuliani at the Republican convention, an excuse to allude and exploit race and class in public.
"Later, lying alone beneath a mosquito net canopy, I listened to the crickets chirp under the moonlight and remembered the last twitch of life that I'd witnessed a few hours before. I could barely believe my good fortune."
We really are scraping the barrel today. Thanks to the American Embassy, today's big read was a US calendar, this month's pin-up being Brice Canyon, which I failed to reach during my trip last year to Las Vegas. Almost as much snow at the Grand Canyon, though. I've also been sticking dates into my new Debrett's diary (remaindered), so it's on topic: proper books to follow (although a few chapters on the Ottoman Empire could be counted, I won't).
4 days in and I've already succumbed to magazines. And not even paid for magazines, but the kind you pick up for free in overpriced design shops. But, and b2009ks is about honesty if it's about anything, magazines are what people read. Even Google Books is now stuffed to the gills with shiny and colourful magazines. So entry number 3 is a selection of design magazines. Or more bibliographically correct, trade catalogues. Grey literature. Very collectible, it seems now, if you've a pile of pre-1960s swimming pool fixture trade catalogues. More so if it's Victorian.
Design (publisher: BoConcept), Aram (Aram) and The Conran Shop (Conran Shop) have so far provided me with very little information, but a lot of glossy interiors, minute pictures of pieces of expensive furniture, and the occasional thoughtoid, thanks to said designers, such as 'why not go with a bit of colour, such as on your cushions here and there'. Put together with Grand Designs magazine I flicked through on the train down to Somerset, I don't think I've read a more vacuous series of publications.
All this because I need a sofa. The cost differential of somewhere to sit, read (which seems important to this blog) and have a nap between the made-in-china, zero credit and snooty sales-assistant shown designer settees is vast. Even John Lewis doesn't solve your problems. Ikea almost did, but somehow I couldn't do it. All they are is a bit of cloth, wood and possibly some metal. Some springs and a bit of beech if you're lucky. All to show off like an upholstered womb or leather-clad penis, ostentatiously placed in the middle of the main room. 'Look at me! Look at my wonderful minimalist modernist upmyself off-the-peg taste!" No other piece of furniture (or thing I own) makes as much a statement, so expensively, about so little.
Anyway, I got one. Partly out of a desire to stop having to think about it all, and partly because I saw one, calling me, across the floor of the Conrad Shop (in grey). It met all the requirements: comfy, low back, legs, and not too fussy. In 12 weeks, I should be able to sit and read on it. I certainly won't be able to afford to go out and do anything now. Oh, and I saw Paul Weller in Waitrose while I was going about my business doing all this. (As well as met Ms Aram in the Aram store, who was very nice).
This is a book that I claimed to have read at a party to impress a girl a while back. That probably tells you more about the kind of parties I go to and my attempts to chat people up that I usually care to let on. I reveal it, though, as a reminder of how bad this book makes you feel. Really bad. It's a weird one to read, as it's a memoir wrapped in a series of introductions, first when BO was famous for being the president of a the Harvard Law Review, and then when he was running for the senate. I think he was about 12. Actually, it's even worse - he was barely in his thirties. And now of course, he's about to be president of the USA - President-elect, in the lingo. This is a great thing. And, after 33 pages, it's pretty clear he can write (if write a bit too much). All marvelous. But it's sure good at making you feel a little... inadequate. Barack would have no trouble nattering to the aforementioned party girl.
I'll let you know how I get on. Although I'm sure you've all already read it.
(Oh, and good work Canongate on snagging this for your small, but well-formed, quirky list)
Haruki Murakami, What I Talk about when I Talk about Running (Harvill Secker, 2008). Trans. Philip Gabriel.
"At a certain point, though, I decided that I should just write honestly about what I think and feel about running, and stick to my own style" (vii)
Haruki Murakami, the Japanese novelist and translator, can be counted on for a certain number of things in his novels, which he has now been writing for over three decades. The pleasures of cooking, particularly spaghetti and eggs. Ironing. Mysterious girls with beautiful ears. Stubborn and slightly melancholy loners as central figures. Beer. Explicit, tender, and often sad, sex. Slightly faded, drab hotels, usually named ‘Dolphin Hotel’ that open a door into a slightly off-kilter world. Mysterious quests, with talismanic figures offering guidance along the way. Talking cats. Jazz and 1960s rock. There is also a certain style that recalls a twist on the gumshoe novels of Chandler, the short stories of Carver, and science fiction that remind you that Murakami has translated many of the American greats into Japanese.
All this adds up to make him one of the most well-known cult authors, read by millions of young readers who, particularly in the novella Norweigan Wood, have picked up on the sparse style, the counter-cultural references, and the slightly hip-outsider status of his fiction. Now, the term cult doesn’t really cut it as a label for him. Murakami is one of the world’s best selling ‘literary’ writers, is translated widely – and with the epic ‘Wind Up Bird Chronicles’ is clearly gunning alongside the big men on the world-fiction stage, taking aim at the Nobel prize with his gumshoe-magic-realist reflection on the darkness in modern Japanese society and the horrors of World War II. Critics are not sure about him now. Is there something of the Emperor’s New Clothes? Is he too popular? An exercise in stylish Orientalism, in the Edward Said sense?
Murakami has also published essays and the non-fiction ‘After the Quake’ and ‘Underground: the Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche’, both of which he said he felt obligated to write as a novelist. What I Talk about when I Talk about Running falls into this section of his work. Categorised by the publisher as a ‘sporting memoir’ it takes Murakami’s obsession with running as its central theme. And by so doing, places him firmly back into another cult category – that of the dedicated runner, the obsessive long-distance biker, committed swimmer and repeat triathlete.
Murakami has run 26 marathons around the world, one ultramarathon in the north of Japan, several triathlons and jogged solo from Athens to Marathon in the heat of summer. The book offers ten chapters, not-quite-mini essays, recording his training for the 2005 New York marathon, and reflecting on what he things about when he runs, why he runs, and how this relates to his writing. The pain of the marathon after the twenty-second mile. We learn about his training, some of his best and worst runs, his timings, and how he is facing the reality of ageing. He finds bicycles torture machines, and swimming often causes him problems. Even though he is a good swimmer, something about the stress of the event freaks him out (water – and wells – are often a symbol of trauma in his novels). He loses his goggles, smears them in Vaseline instead of saliva, and gets kicked in the head. Some of his time is spent in Cambridge, Mass – ‘Sam Adams beer!’; ‘Dunkin’ Donuts!’ – and some in Japan and Greece. We learn how writing is linked to his running. He ran to keep fit enough to write, but found out that he is a runner. Putting word after word onto paper are a bit like putting one foot in front of the other.
So what is Murakami up to here? The final chapter perhaps gives a clue. He has gone over the chapters, which were written as he went along in his training, when he had the time, and polished until they say exactly what he wants them to say. They have the air of being quickly written, perhaps as though they are a diary, or being demanded by an editor (we learn that he has promised this book for ten years), but we also gather that he is a very careful craftsman, slowly tightening each screw one by one – to borrow a metaphor he likes to use. It feels, he admits, that this is the time to write this book. So, the lightness, the slightness, is a considered ploy. The philosophy is lightly worn, too. There is a lot about reality, how things are as they are. How people are either runners, or they are not. That being a novelist needs talent. And work. This insight is nothing new, but then nor is it flighty, or pretentious, or faux-philosophical essaying.
In this work, Murakami seems to offers two things, as well as a peon to that group of people who are runners, and who will recognize the camaraderie and solitude of those who run, the obsessions, the pleasures, and perhaps that cleanesss of mind that comes from repetitive and exhaustion of the road.
Firstly, it’s a memoir, and given Murakami’s well-known love of privacy (he never, or hardly ever, gives interviews), likely to be the only one we have. He tells us about his early jazz bar, and some of the places he’s lived. We learn a little about his wife, what it is like to work and struggle, how he became a writer one day at a baseball match, how he thinks about his readers, and the way he digs down creatively to find what he wants to write about. He writes carefully about the psychological dangers of writing about the subconscious, digging down into a vein of darkness. Without saying much, we learn a lot. What is the Murakami that is revealed? Self-effacing. Stubborn. Likeable. A little shy. An eye for pretty women. Obsessed by LPs and music. A creature of habit, but able to make sudden changes. A cautious man, but willing to take the risks he wants.
Secondly, it’s an exercise in style. His words try and get at the thing exactly, in a voice that, in translation, is slightly hip, conversational, polite – despite him claiming he’s not a gentleman on the first page. What I Talk About... is a carefully limited world. Writing. Running. Getting older. How a runner knows their own body. Cambridge, Mass. Greece. A matter of tone, as much as content, matched by everyday words, but Murakami has the ability here to do something that gets inside your head, much like his other work. Murakami, by writing about what and how he has become what he is, makes you wonder some of the same things about yourself.
