Saturday, October 04, 2008

Mixed messages

Songs can be misappropriated. Songs can be taken and given a different life to the one intended for them. The song that is currently in my head as the best song ever is one that has a complicated personal history.
  • The song's writer, Mark Knopfler, is not someone people admit to liking without reservation. Dire Straits have history. Like Queen only less interesting and without a dead member to help people reassess their (non-existent) worth. Although it needs to be said that any song, used appropriately can be brought to life. Dire Strait's Brothers in Arms was astonishingly (and annoyingly) effective when used the in The West Wing
  • Newcastle United play the song as the teams run out at St James' Park. Newcastle United are currently another one of those joke football teams where cliches are spouted about passionate its fans are whilst new story focus on the pathetic way the business side of the club is handled
  • It has taken ages for the film concerned to be released on DVD. The reason for watching it this time round was a newspaper give-away in a recent promotion. As much as I love both the paper concerned and the film, I am uncomfortable with this as a method of promotion. It blurs the lines of what papers are there for and that worries me. Is it a reward for loyal readers or a pathetic attempt to lure in the waverers? I think I know the answer
  • Last year I wrote an essay about the producer of the film, David Puttnam for my MA. It's an area I'd like to explore more but watching the film reminded my how much better I'd have done if I'd looked at it more closely. There's so much to write about but I only had 5000 words and half a dozen elements to write about. I'm revising for next exam at the moment and am following the same, lazy pattern. I could do more. I ought to do more. I probably wont
The film, Local Hero, is a truly fantastic film. The soundtrack is almost perfect.
The contrast between the city and the sea is more important to me than ever. Although I now live in a relatively quiet part of London, it's still London. And I still want out.
For the next fifteen minutes, Going Home from the Local Hero soundtrack is the best song ever.

Friday, October 03, 2008

The end of the world is nigh

I was frustrated when The Guardian chose recent events as a backdrop for an article entitled on whether or not capitalism had run its course. My problem is not with the thinking behind the subject matter but the way it was put together. It was an opportunity to ask the poster boys of the old left to throw their hands in the air and shout "we told you so". So you did. So you did. Now is not the time for triumphant schadenfreude. Ideological gloating can come later.
Well, whatever happens to capitalism now is not to be debated on this page but whilst wandering through one of the capitals of capitalist endeavor of the last eighty years, Leicester Square, one of the more recent symbols of capitalist endeavor blasted Bob Dylan's Maggie's Farm into my ears.
Even though it has nothing to do with the Thatch, even though it has nothing to do with the deregulatory monster she helped to create, even though the lyrics (as much of Dylan's best work is) can only be made sense of by a teenage miserable with pretensions to more delusions than you've ever heard of, the repeat button was hit until I got to work.
The refrain, "I ain't gonna work on Maggie's Farm no more" can be taken as a celebration or a lament. It's up to you. It doesn't really matter because although it's from 1965, for the next fifteen minutes Maggie's Farm is the best song ever.