D CDs #484: Actually I'm Middle Aged; Thanks For Bringing That Up

This is one I approached with trepidation.  A CD best known for (essentially) two cover versions, one of which the album is named after?  That's enough to ring alarm bells.  Not for reasons of musical snobbishness - which isn't to say that isn't in the mix at all - but it's simple logic: if your best known songs are from other people, there's nothing to hang one's expectations on, and no baseline from which to work.

Let's get "Sweet Jane" and "All The Young Dudes" out of the way first, then.  Both are wonderful songs. Both are strong enough and important enough to generate a feeling of '70s life even for someone like me who only experienced the very end of the '70s, and that was while in utero.  None of this is in dispute.  The question is, though, how well do these songs hold up to the originals, or, in the case of "...Dudes", what we might plausibly expect the original to have been?

In both cases, the answer seems the same. Comparing this version of "Sweet Jane" to the Velvet Underground original, two things immediately stand out.  First, Mott the Hoople were a damn tight outfit when they needed to be.  The Underground had a tendency to play their stuff with a feeling of slight decompression, and always on the edge of unspooling. MtH replace this louche faux-indifference with a laser-like focus. Second, it turns out doing that drains the song of some of its charm.  I once had a friend who asked me why Stevie Jackson didn't sing every Belle and Sebastian song, his voice being so much clearer and stronger that Stuart Murdoch's.  The answer is here.  Songs are not quests for technical perfection, even if often - as here - there is some value in giving that a go.

"...Dudes" demonstrates the same... I don't want to say "problem"... quality. It runs entirely like one would expect a Bowie song to run if it was being played by an exceptionally good Bowie tribute act, but one where aping Bowie was more important than inhabiting him.  I know of no truly great cover song which is lauded for not straying too far from the original.

Be that as it may, though, Bowie made his choice, and MtH hit the result out of the park, for all I might suspect Bowie's own swing would have taken the song further still.  This seems to me the case for the album as a whole.  Even at its absolute least inspiring - the pleasant but drawn-out "Sucker", the filthy keyboard-led dirge of "Soft Ground" - what you have is a bunch of guys with immensely solid musical chops belting out smartly-crafted songs.  Hell, they even prove they can unwind where necessary with the tasty stoner-stomp "Momma's Little Jewel", though the aborted intro and associated bickering suggests they might be trying a little too hard to appear spontaneous.

In short, there is a great deal to like here, and more still to admire, even if such feelings tend to fade out rather earlier than the songs do. Finding things to love is a little harder.  "Jerkin' Crocus" and the aforementioned "...Jewel"  get the blood pumping (though the former's obsession with nads pulling and judo holds on the scrotum means any increase in a man's heart rate may simply be attributable to nerves), but elsewhere the disc is in danger of collapsing under its own weight.  Too much is too similar, and for too long. "One Of The Boys" is a nifty bit of glitter-heavy grooving but its false end four minutes in really should have been where it stopped for real. It and the other six-minute slices on offer here simply aren't interesting enough to sustain their momentum.  To be sure, picking on MtH for what was a common '70s approach - take a simple, funky idea and extend it to ludicrous lengths - seems a bit unfair, but if they wanted to avoid me sniping at them for it they should've written an album that got further into this list. A problem doesn't disappear once it seeps into the mainstream.

In the final analysis, it's only the waves of string and percussion lapping over Ian Hunter's lament on "Sea Diver" that troubles the disc's outsourced songs.  It's heartfelt, and it builds and fades with commendable speed.  It's proof that the band could indeed stand on its own two feet, that it didn't have to lean on Bowie and Reed to get the job done.  They had the chops after all to make a great album.

I just don't think this is it.

Five tentacles.

Bachman's Turning Overdrive

Via the utterly irreplaceable Charlie Pierce, this video is spectacularly childish but also about as funny as something can be when it focuses on the upcoming destruction of human civilisation.



Some of the comments below the video are just as hilarious:

"They would take over the free world with this hoax if everyone was as gullible as their converts."

"They didn't have the consensus to back Global Cooling so they literally just changed the name."

"Would you care to explain what caused the end of the ice age and melting of glaciers? No man, no power plants, no autos, etc."

"If you reduce CO2 in the atmosphere, what will take its place? Something must and you're just hoping it is good."

Every day it becomes more clear to me that our planet is nothing but a sitcom for other, less insane sentients to watch in fits of hysterics. 'Sit down and be quiet, podlings!  "Earth vs Earthlings" is about to start, and this is Sweeps Week, so they're bound to obliterate some low-lying Pacific islands at the very least!'

Even Arrested Development Couldn't Make It Funny

I've always known that Monopoly is simply too horrifically dull a game to have been designed to entertain people, and via Erik Loomis, I finally have the proof.  It was dreamt up by Lizzie Magie at the start of the twentieth century, and it came with two rules sets: one where the aim is to have all the money and grind your opponents into the brick dust left over from building your hotels over their childhood homes, and another where the aim is to collectively generate wealth and live in a socialist utopia of your own construction.

No-one bothered playing the second game.

It's a really neat idea. Offer people the chance to work together or screw each other over and watch as they stampede towards the latter option, even at the expense of playing a shitty, shitty game.  Monopoly, it turns out, is the game our species deserves.  There is little even the most hardened cynic could say that would top that.

A Tale Of Cocktails #40

Woo Woo

Ingredients

.

3 oz vodka
1 1/2 oz peach Schnapps
6 oz cranberry juice
1 lime wedge

.

Taste: 10
Look: 7    

Cost: 8
Name: 10
Prep: 8

Alcohol: 4
Overall: 8.2

Preparation: Combine ingredients with ice and stir. Add lime wedge to garnish.

.

General Comments: At last, we reach the apex of cocktail technology.  Something sweet, and tart, and with added citrus just in case you didn't get the message. It looks good, too, and while some people might object to ridiculous onomatopoeia like "Woo Woo", those people are dead inside.

This drink wins everything.

The Horrb Truth About Engih

Whilst wasting time at work the other day Youtube was kind enough to recommend some clips from The Ricky Gervais Show.  Which was OK, I guess, if you're not bothered about two immensely rich and famous people basing a show around being a dick to their mate.

Which is pretty unfair, really, because Karl Pilkington is clearly a genius thinker, whose mind is simply too far beyond our puny comprehensions to understand.  His fear, for example, that we are gradually running out of words strikes me as entirely reasonable.  Consider, for example, that with only 26 letters, there can be only 456 976 distinct words. With over a quarter of a million words in our language, that's... er, well, that's enough, I guess.

Except shut up!  Every word has to have at least one vowel, right, or a "y" at least.  That excludes fully 160 000 words, leaving us with just under three hundred thousand words... which is still enough.  But that's still not good enough.  I can't imagine four letter words with three consecutive consonants catching on. There's a possible 96 000 of those, which gets us down to 200 976. And that's insufficient

Or is it? Not every word would have to be exactly four letters long, after all.  If we allow three letter words as well, that gives us extra options. There are 17 576 three letter combinations, though 8 000 of them have no vowels and can be discarded. That gets us to around 21 000 words, which is still not enough. We could add in two letter words (276) and single-word letters (the six vowels, say), but that's still not enough.

Which means, people of the world, that the English language cannot be condensed into a series of (theoretically, at least barely) pronounceable words of fewer than five letters! And once you insist on at least one vowel and no more than three consecutive consonants, there's only 676 1376 of those.

So, really, we could replace our entire dictionary with words of five or fewer letters, many of which the human mouth would have some chance of pronouncing!  I recommend this happen as quickly as possible, to allow us to sensibly track the progress of the language, and to drastically shorten all books in existence. Yes, many will object, but since the word "object" won't exist by the time we're done, it doesn't really matter. Er, mattr.  Right?

Watashi Wa Wolverine Wakarimasen

Step one in any self-respecting hero's journey to Japan:
head down a well; fuck up Sadako.

Given my stated interests, I should probably say something about The Wolverine.  I'm finding myself oddly unmotivated, though.  Not because it's a bad film - it's definitely better than the first and third X-Men films, and there's a case to be made that it's better than it's predecessor.  I don't know where this malaise has come from.  Maybe the Avengers juggernaut and the surprisingly funny Iron Man 3 have set the bar a bit high. Maybe I've just seen enough superhero films for now. Maybe it's just that after almost three hours of dental surgery yesterday the film would have to really stink for it to really register.

And it certainly doesn't stink.  There's a lot to be said in its favour.  The frequent action scenes are tight, and the script is perfectly serviceable, if a wee bit workmanlike.  The Japanese setting is utterly gorgeous, but without the kind of dismissive "this is just a pretty view spoiled by weird locals" [1] approach American cinema took a long time to shake off, if indeed it every really did.  There's obviously a limit to how much cultural exploration one can fit into a film fundamentally about slashing shit with claws, but there's some nice little touches here, like the home-cooked meal scene, or the beautifully bizarre (and bizarrely shaped) hotel featured halfway through.

In most ways, then, The Wolverine is probably a better film than its predecessor, which in itself was a perfectly decent film.  There's just two problems that stop me from being more enthusiastic with the movie than I am (spoilers below):

In Which I Hate Everything

It's been kind of a shitty week for progressives, or really anyone with souls.  First off, Starbucks in the States decides there's just no fun in drinking a soy latte if you can't stir it with gun barrel.  Which, in itself is up to them, though I hope they make it exceptionally clear to their patrons just who it's' been decided they'll be safe sitting next to.  Of course, the NRA - one of those organisations so horrifically unpleasant at its highest echelons it's difficult to feel for those members who object to being lumped in with their mickity-mucks - decided this was reason to celebrate, and the best way to get their gun-lovin' a goin' was to head off for a day trip to the Starbucks at - and you know where this is going - Newtown.

The bloody-minded insistence that a country can only be safe when it's packing enough lead to sink Grenada (actually, they tried that in the '80s, I think) strikes me as pretty much entirely untethered from anything I can recognise as reality, but fair enough. People can believe it honestly, and they can believe it completely.  Showing up to gloat about their victories in a town that lost twenty six lives in a school shooting just eight months earlier?  That's about just wanting to be dicks.  Every time Aaron Sorkin gets on his high horse about liberals just plain not liking people who like guns, I think of instances like this, and I think "Well, gee, chief, why do you think that is?".

Naturally, when the Starbucks in question shut early, the NRA complained they were being victimised. Because freedom doesn't just mean getting to carry guns, it means being forced to sell coffee to gun-carriers who should be spat upon in the street.

(And not for nothing, but Charles Pierce absolutely nails it here: how can a Muslim-sponsored building near Ground Zero be a profound offensive to the survivors of 9/11, but sending armed caffeine-addicts into Newtown to remind them how utterly, completely their horrific tragedy has mattered to anyone with any power is what the Constitution is all about?)

Sticking with America and guns - because really, how could you run out of material that way? - we stumble across some delightful anti-abortion protesters (via Maha) who are attempting to get an abortion clinic in Wichita moved.  Their justifications for this contain two of the most perfect encapsulations of far-right thought I can remember reading:

[I]t is inappropriate for schoolchildren commuting past the clinic to see protest signs depicting graphic images relating to abortion.

[T]he South Wind Women’s Center is allowing volunteers to escort women into the clinic in hopes that they will harass the anti-abortion protesters outside and provoke a shooting. He said Julie Burkhart, the founder and owner of the clinic, would blame the incident on the protesters in order to raise money.

I'm not sure there's any point in playing Wingnut Bingo ever again.  What right-wing bromides, soundbites, insults or accusations could compare to these statements, these masters of the form.  This victim-complex as artwork.  Abortion protesters should get what they want because otherwise they'll show horrible photographs to passing children?  Volunteers are deliberately exposing themselves to gunfire so that if they're shot they can blame the protesters?  It's not that I've never heard this kind of argument before - I've seen Reservoir Dogs - but there's a reason "If they hadn't have done what I told them not to do they'd still be alive" is a line from an actor playing a psychopath rather than a comment offered to the local press.  It gets hard to listen to the far right complain liberals all think they're smarter than them whilst they also insist they can't be expected to see a worker at an abortion clinic offering support for victimised women without blowing their heads off.

Guns don't kill people, people doing things wingnuts hate where wingnuts can see it being done do.

But let's not pick on the US. Terrible arguments and terrible treatment of people is the sport everyone can get in on nowadays.  Unless they're gay, obviously.  To say that this is an unbelievably cowardly decision by the IOC seems a waste of breath, but it's the decision's basis in a rule banning "propaganda" that turns it from snivelling wretchedness into an out-and-out "fuck you".  Because in an entire country just been told to round up their homosexuals and keep quiet if it makes them queasy, nothing says "presenting only one side of an argument" like the idea there should be one building in six and a half million square miles where people can sit without fear of being beaten to a pulp for the crime of making Vladimir Putin feel icky.

Gods, but I loathe this world.