Middle-age grunge

Missus O and I went to see "Montage Of Heck" yesterday afternoon.  It's the story of Kurt Cobain's life, from his troubled childhood in Washington to his troubled adulthood.  It's a turbulent tail of course, and Kurt's travails are well-documented.  The director, Brett Morgen, decided instead to let those close to him give their versions of events and then to splice this reportage with the singer's own writings and recordings.  Cobain was a prolific recorder of sound montages, and, helpfully for biographers, also kept extensive notebooks that detailed his feelings and plans.

It was tough viewing.  There was a dreadful inevitability about Kurt's demise.  He was too sensitive to survive the macerating effects of stardom.  What surprised me, although I know the band's story well, was the speed of their ascent.  They went from promising local band in the north west United States to latter day Beatlemania in a matter of months.  Those who knew and loved Kurt feared for him, especially his mother.  She recalls the telling and prophetic day that he called at her house with a cassette of the then unreleased Nevermind.  She realised in an instant it would be huge and the potential cost it would exact from her diffident, emotionally-needy son, telling him "Oh, my god - you'd better buckle up."

She was right of course.  Kurt simply couldn't stand being famous.  He appeared bewildered.  People he didn't know were praising him.  For someone who felt rejected after his parents' divorce, this was too much.  He become reclusive, suspicious and paranoid.  His drug use escalated and we all know the rest.

The hardest thing to take from Kurt's death is his vulnerability.  He was so very childlike.  One felt compelled to nurture and protect him.  But it was clear that by the time the world knew his name, he was beyond redemption.

White noise

I was thinking about ELO the other day.  There was a programme about Jeff Lynne on the telly last weekend, in which all his rock star mates lionised the world's most famous Brummie, and Jeff was pictured in his palatial California home, writing and recording.  I must admit, like most people in their 40s, I have a soft spot for The Electric Light Orchestra.  Their literate, assessable music was everywhere when I was a nipper.  It was optimistic-sounding and well written.  Lovely.

The trouble is when I listen to the band now, as a grizzled adult, there is vague feeling of dissatisfaction.  It's like eating Spacedust; your body's not fooled for an instant.  You're swallowing something with calories in it, but your stomach is crying out for nutrition.  And that, sadly, is what happens to my mind when listening to ELO.  It just washes over my brain without sinking in.  It should be more satisfying.  It's still good music, but it lacks something...a little 'heart' perhaps?  This pains me because I admire JL hugely; he's a great songwriter.

The same thing happens with The Police, but that's less troubling as I never cared for the blond ponces much anyway.  The Police are the exemplar of bands that despite having sold gazillions of records, leave a scarcely vapour trail in history's sky (nice metaphor, me!).  When's the last time you heard them on the radio?  Exactly.  How many people still buy their albums?  Never and none.  And why?  Because they too lack heart or authenticity.  

I suppose that's it.  If something is heartfelt and is done with integrity, then even if one hates it, it's still preferable to glib.  The professional haircuts in the music papers (Google 'music papers' if you're under 30) used to bemoan Abba lacking passion, but that's to misread the situation.  Abba laid their lives bare; their sex lives, infidelities, domestic arrangements - all were co-opted as material for their songs.  But they are educated, middle-class Swedes, so their art, as with most Scandinavian art, has a detachment, a certain distance.  That's a Scandinavian trait, and Abba's work must be judged in light of this.  There's also a huge amount of self-serving posturing in the journalists' position on this - the unfashionable end of pop.  Abba are and always will be effortlessly uncool, and the NME and Melody Maker could not forgive them this.

But, think about it: people love Abba, still.  The work isn't glib and disingenuous; it's heartfelt.  It's like Kraftwerk.  Are they cold?  They should be.  But they're not.  They mean it, and that speaks to people.

Burt Cocaine

There's much excitement chez moi at the moment at the prospect of a film about the life of Kurt Cobain, Montage Of Heck, which opens this weekend.  The reviews look great, and for mosh pit denizens of my vintage, KC is a nonpareil musical figure anyways, so that's a win:win.  The missus loves the whole subject and period too.  It's redolent of A-level results, long summer days and the early years of college.  What-is-not-to-un-dislike? as we say at the coalface of po-mo.

Other than that there's not much to report.  I am on the lookout of a compelling hobby.  The shortlist has been whittled down to two finalists: home brewing and electronics.  

I used to do a bit of HBing when I was a student.  There was an economic imperative then; I was skint and constantly thirsty.  Now I have plenty of disposable income for grog, but considerably less time.  And it's a time-heavy hobby.  Also, the trouble is I can't actually recall if I enjoyed the process of brewing.  Or was it simply the fruits of those labours that bring a rose-coloured image to my mind's eye?  The entry level costs in terms of equipment and hassle are high, so if I commit and it's as dull as fuck, I'm lumbered.

Electronics is pretty good in terms of the outlay and its practical benefits.  However, there is a lot to learn, and the pastime does attract nerds.  Yes, it does.  They're generally better socially adjusted and less troubling to the authorities than sci-fi fans, say, but they are geeky nonetheless.

I'll think on.

Fings ain't what they used to be

There's a programme on the telly at pres. called "Back In Time For Tea".  The premise is that an ordinary suburban family, who happen to live 50 yards away from yours truly actually, live for one week in the manner of a decade past, eating what people of the time ate and using the technology that was available then too.  There are five episodes in the series, starting in the 50s and ending next week in the 1990s.  Last night's episode took us back to the 80s, when I was in my young adult pomp.

The rather too neat meshing of the premise and and title makes me think they came up with the latter first, and worked backwards.  No matter, it's very entertaining stuff.  The producers hit the reality TV mother lode with the family they picked; they're perfect, unpretentious, intelligent, genuinely funny and also very game.  They take the whole thing seriously enough to enter into the spirit of the age with gusto - even the children.  And going back in time does involve some very real material privations, so the sacrifice of the youngsters is admirable.

The programme is unexpectedly enlightening too.  It shows that most of the major lifestyle tropes that we associate with a particular era are driven by a technical innovations.  The 60s saw the household introduced to nascent convenience food, increased consumer durables and the subsequent invention of the teenager.  The 70s saw mothers forced into the workplace in increasing numbers due to the dire economic situation.  This drove the need for more pre-prepared, convenience meals.  Iceland and Bejams really took off in this decade.  And the 1980s was the era of the microwave.  I'd forgotten that people were actually advised to roast chickens in microwaves in the 1980s, because it was quick.  Unfortunately, the bird came out cooked, but the colour of porridge.  No matter though because you can simply then smother it in Marmite.  Yum Yum.

The odd thing about last night's episode is that it made me feel all nostalgic, which is strange because I hated the 80s.  It was the period when I came of age, but objectively it was not a pleasant time to be young.  Unemployment was endemic and the culture was quite fractured and violent as I recall.  I don't recall the music of the 80s with any great affection.  It was The Jesus And Mary Chain or Johnny Hates Jazz, neither of which I had any time for.  The Smiths were there at the beginning of course, but they burned out quickly, albeit brightly.

The fact that the programme was filmed in the very streets I grew up in probably helped my misty-eyed rememberances.  It just goes to show I suppose that we all mythologise our own pasts.  Now I've realised this, I might rework mine to include a bit more derring-do and gymnastic shagging than the current iteration.  If Clare Grogan reads this, I apologise in advance.

Olé, Olé, Olé, Olé...

Missus O and I spent the long Easter weekend in Ireland, at my parents' house.  For once, the weather was absolutely spectacular.  There was scarce a cloud in the sky the whole time we were there.  It was warm too, so warm in fact that we were able to head down to the North Atlantic coast, which is about 10 miles from their home, and stand on the rocks without sou'westers and harnesses.  Normally in April that far west in Ireland you'd only find people training for Special Forces selection venturing that close to the water.  If the cold doesn't get you, the vicious swell will.  Not this weekend though.  It was lush.

Happiness really simply does boil down to the distance between hope and reality.  To give yourself the best statistical advantage of being cheery, it makes sense to adopt a pessimistic outlook.  That leaves plenty of scope for reality to be better than one anticipates.  When this happens, one's mood lightens.  The bigger the vide between espoir and actualité, the better.  It graphs as a classic eponential curve - a slight increase in the difference rendering a massive uplift in the quality of life.

The flip side of this of course is that when the empirical universe falls short of the Platonic, it grates something fierce.  Even if objectively the conditions aren't really that bad, but they are simply worse than expected, it all shite.  And, again, the larger the gap, the more pronounced one's grimace becomes.  

This weekend, the distance between the lines was huge and for the positive.  The light was splendid; I slept well, ate well, got plenty of exercise.  It was lovely.  Such was to life-affirming effect of the conditions that I even didn't have a face like a spanked arse when the alarm clock went off this morning, heralding my first day back at work.  And that, friends, takes some doing - believe me.

Doofus Wainwright

They've only taken the doors off the offices at work.  All of them.  Why?  They're going to boil them or something.  This only a week or so after we received a cod-legalese security document that we were warned to read and then sign.  I'm one of the few who did the former, and am subsequently one of the few who has yet to the latter.  It basically gives the Ps-that-B the right to sack you at a moment's notice for some actual, but trivial breech of protocol.

One of the po-faced and hysterically overwrought clauses insisted that all sensitive documentation be kept under lock and key.  How one is to achieve this in a doorless office is not made explicit.  Perhaps that will be included in the third iteration; we received the second yesterday.  That one I haven't read.  It also urged that all paperwork be shredded, which is fine if one has a shredder.  Otherwise it's a ball ache, frankly.

Anyways, all that's by-the-by for the moment as it's Easter weekend.  Four days off and nothing to do but enjoy oneself.  We're off to Ireland to visit my parents.  It's the first time we've been to their new home, which will be a nice change.  The village they used to live in was extremely remote.  It was like being adrift on a giant raft, albeit with three well-appointed pubs.  That's why rural Irish pubs are so appealing; there's literally nothing else to do once the sun goes down.  You can't walk anywhere because there are no pavements and no street lights.  And Irish motorists are very unforgiving under dark.  Like vampires.

Ain't half been some clever bar stewards

I nipped out at lunchtime, and, in spite of myself, ended up in a bookshop.  I lied that I'd have a fruit-based browse only, and not succumb to the temptation to have a half.  Ten minutes later I found myself the proud owner of The Richard Burton diaries, which runs to about 1500 pages.  It's like a 'phone book, despite being in paperback.  I don't like toting hefty tomes like this - they provoke sciatica - but I read the first couple of entries and simply had to have it.  The writing is so very elegant.

Allied to his gifts as a writer, Burton live the single most glamorous life imaginable.  When not gadding about the fleshpots of Europe and American, drinking, smoking and rutting like a Viking grandee, he would retire to the beautiful, rangy library of his Swiss home and read and write.  He was a learned and thoughtful man, RB.  He didn't bury his working-class Welsh roots too deeply, but he was a philosopher-prince when left to his own devices.  This is evident even in his childhood diary entries.  He esteemed all learning, and literature in particular.

He must have been a wilful and courageous boy to have gone against the cultural grain like this.  I dare say his interest in letters and acting attracted plenty of violent derision.  It must have taken plenty of resolve to stick it out.  I wish I'd had such a clear vision of what I wanted to do with my life at that tender age.  It simplifies so much.

Actually, I still haven't worked what I'm doing with my life.