Bugs and Opera

There's a long and very fine tradition of animation matched to music and some of the best came out of that glorious period in the 1940s and 50s; its not really a coincidence that one artform which requires close attention to timing and rhythm would work so well with another. And back in the day when studios could afford the much more lush, detailed animation (unlike later eras where budget constraints mean much less flowing animation) and the studio would just happen to have an orchestra on staff too they made some of the finest, with one of Hollywood's greatest ever stars (and a personal role model for me growing up), Mr Bugs Bunny being in not one but two of the best ever made, The Rabbit of Seville and What's Opera, Doc?, probably both of which would be my earliest introduction to the world of classica music, not too mention a lifelong appreciation for the skill and imagination of animators.

Rabbit of Seville, featuring Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd (1950) @ Yahoo! Video

What's Opera, Doc? - Click here for funny video clips

Sleeping Tree

One of my photo friends online pointed me to Giulio Frausin and some rather lovely music - you can listen to it online or download it here, check it out and if you enjoy it pass it on.

A Glorious Dawn

I see that this fab remix of the late and much missed Carl Sagan's word from Cosmos that has proved popular on YouTube is getting a release as a traditional 7 inch vinyl. Funnily enough a friend sent me some music tracks he came across recently, from Cosmos, which we both remembered watching; it was instant nostalgia for me. As a boy I adored the series; I was already fascinated by astronomy and the exploration of space and this fueled it, as well as introducing me for the first time to Sagan. Years later I'd admire him for speaking out for the importance of scientific research for the sake of research and not simply for commerce, for the value of knowledge over susperstition and the need to take care of our own remarkable world, so different from the other planets we were exploring - he even publicly berated Margaret Thatcher once when she was Prime Minister, scolding her for her lack of support for pure research and environmental awareness, telling her it was shocking that someone who actually had proper scientific training could be so foolish.

Apparently the B side of the single looks like the cover of the famous gold record disc which was placed in the Voyager spacecraft, so that long after they had completed their mission of exploration (which they did so magnificently) and headed out of our solar system and into the deep, cold depths of interstellar space, should they by some remote chance be found by another civilisation they could play them and hear sounds from Planet Earth - greetings in many languages, poetry and snatches of music, which Sagan helped oversee. Carl's been gone a while now, sadly, but that gold disc is now travelling still, further than any man made object in the entire history of the world has ever travelled, waiting for the day when someone - something,perhaps - finds it and plays it. (via Third Man Records)








And while we're at it, here's a short video, the Pale Blue Dot, by Carl. As the aging Voyager reached towards the edge of our solar system he argued for NASA to turn it to face back towards us - no easy task when the vast distance meant even radio signal commands travelling at the speed of light would take some time to reach the craft, then longer for returns, assuming it even worked. But he argued and they did it and the result was 'the family portrait', a view of the worlds of our solar system as no-one else in the history of our species had ever seen it, a shot taken from the edge of what we know from a little machine about to cross that boundary, a parting gift from one of the great missions of exploration. And in that picture a tiny dot, a blue dot taking up even less than one pixel. That dot being the Earth. Everything we've ever known, every person who has ever loved and lived, every cat, every dog, every Triceratops, every dolphin, every fern, every bush, every fish, every work of art, all contained inside that tiny, tiny dot... Sagan had that wonderful gift of enthusiasm and the ability to communicate the sense of wonder to all, a great spokesman for science.

"Hello, I'm Johnny Cash..."

Cash: I See a Darkness

Reinhard Kleist

Self Made Hero

"If you wanna save your soul from hell, cowboy, then change your ways today. Or you'll ride with us through these endless skies, forever on the hunt for the Devil's herd..." Ghost Riders in the Sky

To say award-winning German comics creator Reinhard Kleist's graphic biography of the late, great Johnny Cash arrived with a fair weight of expectation - mixed with anticipation - on my part is an understatement. Those of you who've been reading the blog for a good while may recall that we first talked about this work nearly two years ago when the original made a big splash in Germany. In fact it sold out its original print run from Carlsen and among the awards it picked up was the prestigious Max und Moritz, before going on to be picked up and translated into other languages by publishers like Dargaud in France and an English language version was apparently on the cards from Dark Horse. Since many of us were eager to read it in English we were pretty happy at this, but then it went quiet and seemed to vanish off the radar until Blighty's Self Made Hero stepped forward. Home of the Manga Shakespeare and some fine literary adaptations we've been very much enjoying this seemed like quite a departure for them. Was it worth the wait? Was it worth the effort? Oh yeah. It was.

(The Cash family, including young Johnny, singing in the cotton fields)

Anyone who's listened to Cash's music over the years knows his songs came out of his life; the darkness and the light were both there, he lived through them, he pretty much lived his songs. And that's part of the point Kleist makes here, how so many people (including people like me who'd normally run a mile from anything remotely labelled C&W) bought into Cash because his singing is honest; you feel the raw emotion in his voice, in the early work and even in the final years (his cover of Hurt is immensely raw and powerful, for example, it could have been made for him to sing at that age in his life).

But since Cash's songs often deal with loss and the struggles against the forces that can all too easily grind us all down in everyday life, living those songs means he himself never had an easy life and Kleist selects segments of Johnny's life, from the childhood days on their New Deal sponsored cotton farm, struggling to fight their way out of the Depression, singing to keep up their spirits during back-breaking labour, marrying too young, his self destructive, amphetamine and booze fuelled behaviour touring on the road as his success grew, the love between Johnny and June Carter, the famous music gig at Folsom Prison.

(Folsom Prison; no fancy sets or theatre, just Johnny, June and the boys in the band in front of hundreds of hardened prison inmates; a gig that's passed into musical legend)

Its a long work as comics go, over 200 pages, but even so there is no way it can pack in as much in depth detail as a prose biography and Kleist wisely avoids the temptation to simply jam in as much of Johnny's life as he can. Instead he opts for a roughly chronological approach which takes in elements of the life that shaped Cash and his music, interspersed with comics interpretations of of some of his songs. In fact the book itself opens with one of these songs being acted out - almost the equivalent of the dream sequence in a movie, where the protagonist drives a car with number plates reading 'HELL' through the streets of a gambling city where he "shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die." While some of the song sequences have a slightly different style about them Kleist keeps the differences in style mostly small so on a first reading it isn't always obvious you're in a song/dream segment and not an actual 'proper' biographical chapter, until the penny drops and you realise this is based on one of Cash's songs.

At first I thought this was a bit of a failing on the artist's part, not more clearly differentiating between biographical and song-based chapters. But as I was drawn further and further into the book I changed my mind and decided that this was actually a good decision on Kleist's part; as I said earlier you can't really separate the man and his music; he sang life as he saw it and lived it, they were part of him and he's in each of them, so although the song chapters are a sort of fantasy they are also, in their own fashion, biographical.

The art through most of the book, both the biographical and the interpretations of the songs, is mostly in a suitably moody black and white with some gray tones for effect, although occasionally for the songs Kleist uses a more cartoony style (such as he uses for 'A Boy Name Sue'). There are a couple of distinctive exceptions to this, however, a section where June and his mother try to help Johnny kick his dependence on drugs that's leading him down a dark highway, executed in negative: white lines on a black background, an eerie sight of a human nervous system arced in pain, a glowing ball emerging from within, darkness and light, black and white, drugs dependency and love all warring within his body in a couple of wordless but very powerful pages. A song segment for The Ballad of Ira Hayes is again in a totally different style, much more symbolic and cartoony but equally powerful and, given the contrast they make with the principally more regular style through the rest of the book their impact is much stronger.

"Call him drunken Ira Hayes
He won't answer anymore
Not the whiskey drinkin' Indian
Nor the Marine that went to war

There they battled up Iwo Jima's hill,
Two hundred and fifty men
But only twenty-seven lived to walk back down again

And when the fight was over
And when Old Glory raised
Among the men who held it high
Was the Indian, Ira Hayes" (the Ballad of Ira Hayes)

The music itself is normally presented in long, winding strips, reminiscent of the stretched out, long, narrow proto-speech bubble you see on say, 19th century cartoons, before the more common, modern speech bubble developed. Here Kleist uses speech bubbles for, well, speech, the long, thin ribbons for the songs. Its simple but very effective, giving the reader something of the feel of music, the way it doesn't always seem to come from one source but moves through the air, reflecting, echoing, drifting, carried on the wind, almost an elemental force. It also allows Kleist to visually display something of the power of music; for me he achieves this most powerfully in the chapter on Folsom Prison, as the music drifts out seemingly on the wind, across the echoing, depressing halls, through the bars, the razor wire and out into the trees beyond. Its hard not to think of the opera scene in The Shawshank Redemption and like that remarkable scene of modern film this too has a simple, elegant power to it about the ability of art to touch lives and reach through barriers.

(Cash and Dylan jamming in a studio; how much would you love to have been in that room??)

Its a wonderful read; in fact I found after I'd finish I had to go back and re-read it more slowly and enjoyed it even more on the second reading and I know its going to be one of those special books that I go back to every so often and read once more. Its a story of a 20th century icon, a man who bestrode pretty much all normal boundaries of genre to appeal to a far wider audience and a remarkable life. Its a story where the likes of Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley and Bob Dylan are just supporting characters (let me say that again: Lewis, Elvis, Dylan - I mean come on! Great flawed gods of music). But mostly its about a man, the darkness he sees around him that almost swallows him and the lights that lead him back out the edge of the darkness (although he'd never be completely free of it), the love of his mother, his lost brother, June. This will be going on my books of the year list.

Reinhard Kleist will be one of the guests at the excellent Comica festival in London this year; He will be in conversation with (appropriately enough) someone well known to Brit comics and music fans, Charles Shaar Murray on November 22nd; details here.

blowing your own trumpet

In early to work, out late so a little narked; beautiful, golden autumn evening outside so decide to enjoy slow walk home, wander up the Royal Mile, camera in hand, coming across this bloke playing some jazz on his trumpet. Nice autumn evening, cool breeze, cool jazz, nice. Put some coins in his instrument case, took a couple of pics then just settled nearby to listen for a few minutes and enjoy it.

electric ukulele land

A couple of buskers on the Royal Mile doing the rock thing but with ukuleles instead of electric guitar, but doing the full guitar heroes movements; as I listened to them rocking out on their ukes I realised they were giving big licks to Queens of the Stone Age! First time I've heard QOTSA on ukuleles - I had to shoot a brief vid clip so I could share the sound as well as grabbing a photo:

Nocturnal cycling piano player

A couple of evenings ago I was drinking in the city's Grassmarket, an area I rarely drink in these days - its mostly tourists and first year students who go there - but I was meeting some friends who have been working abroad and arranged to meet several folks there. The whole square has been done up recently to make it more open; if you don't know the city its a square behind and below the imposing bulk of Edinburgh Castle in the Old Town, one side lined with pubs and inns, some of which are very old (going back to the 1500s), some of which, when they were actual coaching inns, played host to Robert Burns on visits to Edinburgh. And as we sat outside on a warm evening we heard music. Not unusual in a public square, especially during the Edinburgh Festival. And we all turn to see where it is coming from and we see a man in evening dress and top hat cycling his piano through the Grassmarket as he plays. When I told other people of this the next day I got the 'oh, Joe's off on one of his magical fantasy land tales again' looks, but I have documentary evidence:







I must apologise for the low quality of the pics, but shooting freehand (not that a tripod would have helped if I had it since he was moving most of the time) in a dark square at night is never going to give crisp, clear pics and the flash wasn't much use in that situation either. But I had to try and grab some pics because even in Festival time Edinburgh you just don't see a man cycling a piano through the city streets at night all that often. It was all wonderfully eccentric and delightful and magical and I loved it. Little bizarre delights like this that the city sometimes just throws up to you are part of what makes life fun. And here's a very short video clip - its brief and even darker than the still pics, very murky night-time streets (and far away from the street lamps) but it was the best I could do on the spot to give you a tiny taste of this piano moving through the streets as he played:

The Ukulele Lady sings!

And here, as promised, is the short video I shot of Amanda Palmer singing us all an appropriately sci-fi themed song with her ukulele before her book signing yesterday:

The Ukulele Lady

Amanda Palmer warming up in the basement of Forbidden Planet in Edinburgh this afternoon before a signing (and singing!) session for her and Neil Gaiman's book "Who Killed Amanda Palmer". Amanda has a music gig later this week as part of the Edinburgh Fringe (and is doing smaller gigs during the week as well), Neil is in town shortly for the Edinburgh International Book Festival, we're helping her sell the book while she's here and today was a nice chance for the fans to come and meet her - really good turnout, city centre buzzing with Festival goers plus a big line of fans waiting to meet Amanda adding to it all. This was Amanda getting into her zone before meeting the fans by performing a song for us all; I've videoed her performance (with her permission) and will add it here once I have time to sort it and upload it to YouTube.

Je suis jalouse

And since its Bastille Day, another French-themed post, methinks, this is a pop video from Emily Loizeau who I've been getting into recently, most of her tracks are in French, with a handful in English, most enjoyable.

Fleur de Saison

Rather like this video track of a French pop track by Emilie Simon, found by following a suggested link on YouTube while looking at some Dave McKean animations (on which note, we've got a major Dave McKean interview in the works for the Forbidden Planet blog in the near future to look forward to):

Evelyn Glennie at the Filmhouse

One of my favourite musicians, Scottish virtuoso and solo percussionist Evelyn Glennie, will be at the Edinburgh Filmhouse for a return visit to coincide with a screening of the documentary about her, Touch the Sound. For Evelyn the title is highly approriate - she started to lose her hearing when she was a young girl and yet still continued to learn music, attend music college after leaving school then blaze an internationally successful career as a solo percussionist, a role in music that's all but unheard of. She feels the music, the vibrations of the instruments, the feel of the material and she creates an astonishingly diverse musical world from this very physical method of listening and playing (she's very physical on stage, I've seen her live several times and she's a dynamo) from classical to folk to jazz to improv music played right on the street.

I saw this documentary a few years back at the Edinburgh International Film Festival and it was an incredible experience, touching, moving, inspiring, as music (or any real art) should be. Afterwards, in front of a sold out audience Evelyn came on with the director for a Q&A session (always one of the pleasures of Film Fest screenings, that often some of those involved will be there for a talk before or after the movie). Then one of the simplest of instruments was produced, a snare drum. The lights went back down in the cinema except for an uplighter shining up through the clear skin of the snare to Evelyn standing over it and this amazing woman improvised an incredible musical set using just a pair of sticks and a snare drum. Watching and listening to her it strikes you that sometimes some people were just born to do something, regardless of obstacles placed in their way, such as deafness; her music is inside and no lack of hearing can touch that. The screening is on Tuesday at 6 with Evelyn on hand, if you haven't seen it I encourage you to experience it.

Bach

One of my favourite pieces of classical music, some of Bach's beautiful cello work performed by YoYo Ma:

Tesla Coils do Doctor Who theme

The Tesla Coils do their own unique interpretation of the iconic Doctor Who theme (via Boing Boing) - geektastic!

Pink Martini - Lily

Melanie's really got me into Pink Martini recently, I've been totally grooving on their albums Hey, Eugene, Hang on, Little Tomato and Sympathique, with an intoxicating mixture of styles, themes and even different languages on some songs (Spanish, French, Italian, English and more). Check them out, your ears will thank you. This is them performing 'Lily'; it makes me want to grab someone and dance...

Strange fruit...

Via Boing Boing a link to a great Billie Holiday rendition of the haunting Strange Fruit. First time I ever heard this song was back in the early 80s, being covered on a Souixsie and the Banshees album and back then I was too young to realise it has been around for decades. I've heard it by different artists numerous times (not uncommon in some films and documentaries dealing with the Deep South of the USA and racial prejudice) but I think this version by the great Ms Holiday is the best:

Spiegel im Spiegel

Arvo Pärt, one of my favourite 20th century composers and one of his more beautiful (and yet elegant and fairly simple) pieces:

Metamorphosis

One of my favourite pieces by Philip Glass, Metamorphosis One. I was listening to some of the music from the Battlestar Galactica soundtrack and thinking the composer Bear McCleary was clearly influenced by Glass, then during a couple of episodes of the show they actually go and play this particular piece...

Current listening: Hollywood, Mon Amour

Currently listening to a very cool album, Hollywood Mon Amour (two or three film references in one, which appeals to a film fiend like me), although when I tell you it consists of songs from popular 80s movies you'll probably be thinking, hold on, Joe, how the hell can that be cool? Well, I admit it has more than a couple of tracks which I loathed in their original forms, like the theme song from Arthur ("When you get caught between the moon and New York City, I know its crazy, but its true..") or the bloody awful Eye of the Tiger from Rocky. But here I like them. Here they are very different. They have been reworked by Marc Collin, producer for the ultra cool Nouvelle Vague (another movie reference) using a number of artists and like the covers Nouvelle Vague perform they are very, very different from the originals, hip, and cool. Check the site out where you can hear some samples from the album.

The Black Widow

For a little Halloween treat head over here and listen to a classic Alice Cooper track, The Black Widow, which begins with a cameo voice-over from that gentleman actor with the velvety voice, Mr Vincent Price.

Magnum, PI

Can anyone enlighten me as to why I imagined a thrash metal version of the theme to old heavily moustached cult show Magnum PI? Its not like I've seen it anywhere recently, I don't know where it came from, but for some reason when one of my colleagues shoved on some very loud rock after closing time while they were tidying the store I suddenly imagined the growling singer and thrash rock they had on covering the theme from Magnum PI.

McKean video

Browsing YouTube I came across a singer I hadn't heard before, Izzy - pretty song but I was more taken with the video, which is by the excellent artist and film-maker Dave McKean, who I had the pleasure of seeing at the Edinburgh Book Festival this summer.

Like a drug

Going through some old albums recently I came across one I hadn't listened to in ages, one of my favourite bands that no-one else ever seems to have heard of when I mention them, rock band They Eat Their Own, who I picked up years ago in one of the second hand record stores in Edinburgh - must have been the early 90s because I remember the lyrics to one song, Better Now, turned out to be appropriate for a college essay I was working on and I ended up quoting them to add a nice touch to the paper. There isn't a huge amount out there on They Eat Their Own, but there is a YouTube of Like a Drug. Which is, as it happens, the song that reminded me to dig out that album because Fiona Apple who I've been listening to recently does a cover of it. Although her version isn't quite as rude and sadly this video version by the original creators is also slightly censored version - "you consume every thought but if you called me I would tell you to fuck off" becomes "tell you to get lost" which just doesn't have the same raw impact, but it was all I could find.

"I don't buy
Your true life stories
'Cause I've seen
The way you lie
But I don't mind
The things you tell me
Because I know
We'll say anything to get by

But when we're together
Somehow I feel better
My disease always tricks me
I believe you can fix me

You're insane
I love the drama
Tell the truth
You love it too I know you
Reason strikes
We fight and break up
'Cause it seems
The easiest thing to do

But when I don't get your call
I go into withdrawal
You consume every thought
But if you called me I would tell you to fuck off

I need you
I need you like a drug
I need you
I need you like a
I need you
I need you like a drug
I need you
I need you like a
Drug

It turns me on
To say I love you
But deep inside
I know it's lust not love at all
One day we
Will leave each other
But we pretend
The end's not inevitable

I require protection
From my own obsession
In the object of you
One day I will rise above you

I need you
I need you like a drug
I need you
I need you like a
I need you
I need you like a drug
I need you
I need you like a

Until then
We'll stay together
I guess things could be much worse
One day things will be much better
But I don't really want to write another verse

'Cause when we're together
Somehow I feel better
My disease always tricks me

I believe you can fix me

I need you
I need you like a drug
I need you
I need you like a
I need you
I need you like a drug
I need you
I need you like a
I need you
I need you like a drug
I need you
I need you like a
I need you"
I need you like a drug"

Marching band Tetris

I pinched this from my mate Olly:

Accordion by the beach



Down on Portobello beach this afternoon (a dry day!!! a day with no howling gales!!! Quick everyone outside!!!), my mate's dog happily running around sniffing interesting smells (most animals walk about with their heads held up to see around them, except dogs, who trot around with their head pointing downwards so they can sniff everything) and as we walked along the beach we could hear music. Walking up onto the nearby esplanade we saw this chap playing the accordion, while nearby a wee boy was dancing happily to the music. It sounded like a little bit of France in the middle of Edinburgh's seaside and put us in happy mind of our trip to Paris coming up in a few weeks. I imagine in Paris accordion players busking must be a bit like bagpipers in Edinburgh.

Rhythm song

Checking YouTube for something completely unrelated I stumbled across this decent quality clip of one of my favourite musicians, the Scottish solo percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie. I've loved Evelyn's work for years; being a solo percussionist was pretty remarkable in the classical world, being a woman who chose to forge a path as a solo percussionist even more so, but being a deaf woman who carves out an international career as a highly respected musician is just astonishing. I've been lucky enough to hear Evelyn perform live several times and she is a powerhouse on the stage, utterly immersed in her music; the notes she cannot hear she feels.

This clip is from the documentary Touch the Sound, which I saw at the Edinburgh International Film Festival a few years back and at which Evelyn surprised the audience by appearing during the director's Q&A and giving us an impromptu performance, just her alone with a snare drum, in the dark a single light shining up through the skin of the drum as she stood on the Filmhouse stage and utterly transported a rapt audience. I came out of the cinema into a bright summer day, a head full of music; that was one of those days where I floated home feeling the world was wonderful sometimes.

Rockford

Can anyone tell me why I spent all day yesterday with the theme from the Rockford Files stuck in my head? I was humming in the shower first thing and realised it was the Rockford Files; thereafter it was in my head all day long. I haven't seen it repeated anywhere recently or seen any old film on TV with James Garner, so gods know why it suddenly leapt out of the murky depths of my brain (I don't care to look down into the recesses too much, I'm not sure what I'd find in there).

Random recent scenes

Princes Street this evening on the way home, basking in late sunshine; outside the oh-so-posh Jenners department store a bagpiper in full highland dress is jamming with two black musicians playing some sort of ethnic variation on tom-tom drums. They're clearly all enjoying themselves as are the locals and tourists who stop to listen to this mix of African and Scottish. It sounds brilliant.

On my way in and out to work I pass some spectacularly beautiful displays of bright, colourful, fresh flowers in Princes Street Gardens and the crescents at the West End; in the bright sunlight the flowers almost glow. The council mismanages a lot of things in Edinburgh but kudos to the gardners for creating such beautiful, eye-catching displays that just make your day nicer by being there.

Making the most of the sudden burst of warm, summer-like weather we head down the coast where near the beach at the Fidra Lighthouse I bump into my friend Claudia with her visiting parents. After a very long walk all the way down the beach to North Berwick we're licking our yummy ice creams when my big cousin and her husband suddenly appear.

Bus to work on Monday; as I am getting off one of my friends from the book group is getting on although I only have a chance to say hello to her as we pass. Clearly it is my week for randomly bumping into friends and family as I go about. Who will be the next Guest Star in the ongoing soap opera of life?

Walking down Middle Meadow Walk a temporary wooden wall hiding the building works in the old Royal Infirmary which has been covered with posters for Fringe shows is now peeling and torn, scraps flapping in the breeze now it is all over. The grass of the Meadows still shows the marks of the recently departed marquees and big top from shows.

Hot, sunny day, warmer than most of the summer - great. Except it is too hot and dreadfully airless at my desk at work and I'm dying for some fresh air all afternoon - a good excuse to meet a friend and sit outside a pub on the way home drinking cold beer in the fresh air and watching the sun slowly dipping towards the horizon.

Sitting in Beanscene with Mel, enjoying coffee and cake I notice they have details on how to buy the antiqued leather sofas they have in the cafe - the sign advertising this is simple but brilliant "order a sofa to go". Oh yes, please, can I have a skinny latte, triple choc muffin and a sofa to go?

The fat lady has sung...

Although not the fat man since he's lost his breathing privileges. Or is it too soon for Pavarotti jokes?

Out with a bang

And thus Edinburgh's Festival season, the world's biggest arts festival, comes to an end for another year with mighty explosions echoing across the city like the pounding of the Castle's cannons as the traditional classical music and fireworks concert took place. I was lucky enough to be invited to my friend's workplace which has a good view out towards the front of the Castle rather than standing with the 250, 000 others in the streets and hills of the city watching it all. It was a lovely late summer evening as we walked into the city centre, the last glow of the sun washing the stones of the Castle in a copper glow before finally fading into darkness, the stars beginning to appear in the sky above the floodlit fortress. An air of expectation from thousands of people waiting in the dark... The orchestra in the Gardens begins to play and suddenly the dark night explodes in light, colour and sound, incredibly ephemeral sculptures and flowers of light in the air, lasting only seconds.













I love fireworks - there are some things you never grow out of an a huge fireworks show is one of them. But fireworks launching into the sky from an ancient fortress atop a volcanic rock is something else again. I love living here. You can view the full set at larger sizes on my Flickr stream.

Binari - Korean musicians at the Edinburgh Fringe

The Korean musicians I was talking about earlier, Binari, setting up for the Edinburgh Fringe as the Festival circus hits town. This is in Edinburgh University's historic Old College building quadrangle.

Fringe time

Its Edinburgh, its August, its time for the first stirrings of the world's largest arts festival. The Fringe starts officially over the weekend, but already most shows are in town and running their (much cheaper tickets) previews. The husband and son of Mel's cousin are over from Norway and I met them all straight from work at the Pleasance, one of the main spots for Fringe life. Mel and I introduced the Fringe newbies to our laid back way of doing it, which is to park out bums on a seat in the cobbled courtyard of the Pleasance (a hub with dozens of shows going on all the time, from tiny rooms to proper theatre sized shows) and wait for the many people coming round giving out flyers and telling folks about shows until we saw one we liked and off we went to see Son of a Preacher man, a stand-up comedy with Markus Birdman, an aetheist son of a clergyman - it was brilliant and I highly recommend it if you're going Fringeing.



Afterwards we headed back down to the Royal Mile to get some food at Wannaburger and as we approached the Old College Building we heard a powerful beat and decided to have a quick look. We found Binari, a Korean musical group pounding drums in the old quadrangle, the sounds echoing around the space as they performed a sound check, that wonderful, almost frantic and kinetic drumming and singing. And its just so cool that walking past somewhere you just come across something like this, but that's what happens in Edinburgh at this time of year. Its a circus, its maddening, busy and crazy and at the same time brilliant.



Last time I was in this building was for the launch of a major Scottish history book in the gorgeous Neo-Classical space of the Playfair Library, this time it is Korean musicians in the quad filling the night with music. After we'd had a late meal we walked up the Royal Mile, even near 11pm still buzzing with people as the Fringe starts up then as we approached the top of the Mile we had another treat.



A rehearsal for the Royal Military Tattoo was finishing up at the Castle and the cavalry were leading their horses down towards the horse boxes to take them home. Imagine a warm summer night in the middle of the Old Town, lights from the Tattoo flickering across the Castle and bagpipes playing while the clip-clop, clip-clop of horse's hooves come down from the Castle, creak of leather and clink of metal as cavalry troops lead their immaculately groomed animals down the cobbled street then round past the hub to the waiting transports. Even in Edinburgh this isn't exactly an everyday sight.



How beautiful is this horse? Just think, this is all happening in the heart of a capital city at 11pm, with a huge castle right behind me as I took this while behind the horse you can see the floodlit Herriot's School which at night looks like where very young wizards get sent before they are old enough to go to Hogwarts.



Even at that time of night you can see the sky just doesn't get fully dark at this time of year. Shame I didn't have the tripod to take these properly but obviously I wasn't quite expecting this. A little bit on unexpected magic.

New Jonas Moore mash-up

Upcoming multimedia webcomic The Many Worlds of Jonas Moore has had another musician take up the offer to remix material from the site - this time top producer Phil Nicholas, who has worked with Fat Boy Slim among others, has remixed Make It Through (sung by Steve Hart) to video and art material from the Jonas site. Very cool. I like the fact that Howard and his Jonas team are inviting people to remix material into new forms and the fact that quite a few musicians have taken up the offer so far means, hopefully, that it will mean the series will have appeal beyond the normal comics community too.

Seven Ages of Rock

I've really been enjoying the Seven Ages of Rock series on the BBC these last few weekends, from the Who ("Won't Get Fooled Again" is still one of the most kick-ass rock songs with great guitar licks) and Hendrix (who give me my theme tune, "hey, Joe, where you going with that laptop in your hand? Gonna write my old blog down...") through the wonderfully weird late 60s early 70s stuff (Floyd and the Wall, the wonderfully androgynous Bowie), the performance rock (dear old Freddie and the boys from Queen), the Metal years (memories of my leather-clad, long-haired, headbanging times at Madison's rock club), great goddam music.

Then last week's episode, Left of the Dial, charting indy rock from the mid 80s to mid 90s, from early REM through to Seattle, Nirvanna, Henry Rollins, Black Flag, the grunge scene. Again great music, great attitude (almost punk in the DIY and fuck-it-all attitude) but for me personally that one was something more; that was the soundtrack to my student life, the music of my college years, drinking, noisy parties with various substances passing around, good friends, more drinking, doing a course I really liked (where watching movies counted as 'research') and basically having one of the best bloody time of my life (never understood the cliche that the school days were the best of your life - college was much better. It came with louder music, later night, longer mornings and drink and other pleasurable things). Somewhere along the line I also managed to earn myself a good degree in between waking up after a party and finding someone had painted 'graffiti' on our flat's walls with shaving foam or tripping over my wall mirror on the floor because someone had taken it down to snort off of. And that music there all the time. That episode just plugged me directly back into my mid 20s student life for an hour. And I fucking loved it. Might be years in the past now (scary to think how many years and how quickly they've gone past) but god that music just pulled it right out of me as if it was yesterday. And at least that era didn't end with a shotgun in the mouth for me. I love classical music, I adore jazz, but a big part of my soul is forever rock and roll, a true believer in the Holy Trinity: bass, drums and electric geetar, baby. There's a part of me that still wants to bawl out "touch me, I'm sick". I hope there always will be.

Fopp no more

Dammit, looks like Fopp has gone to the wall, probably the only music store I spend time in these days (never been mad on Virgin, not the best range plus they are too pricey and I haven't been into an HMV since I left The Bookshop Who Shall Not Be Named since it is part of the same company and therefore part of the Evil Empire. Plus their range and prices weren't terribly good either and I never liked browsing there). For those who don't know it, Fopp was became a nationwide group doing really good deals on music (and later DVDs and some books and graphic novels) and was especially good for backlist albums at very cheap prices which encouraged you to stock up on older material too. Which meant since it was cheap you thought, well, I'll just buy that and that and that...oops, just blew thirty quid... They also had a 'suck it and see' policy where you could return an album if it really sucked.

But it was also a special institution to music lovers in Glasgow where it first started and my mates and I spent many happy time having a rummage through the music on offer on the store on Byres Road near Glasgow University. In fact a couple of months back when Gordon and I were through at the revamped Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum we went for a walk in the sunshine afterwards, up towards the University towards the old stomping grounds of our younger days for a drink then into Fopp there. Sure, we had Fopp in Edinburgh (two of them actually) but going into the old Glasgow store was also a nostalgia trip for us. I was thinking in going in for a browse this weekend (downloading is fine as far as it goes, but I still like to physically own an original album) but that ain't gonna happen now. I feel especially sorry for the staff as they are not only out of a job but according to the news reports they aren't going to even get paid at the end of this month.

Jonas Moore mashups

There's an upcoming new multimedia webcomic coming up which I have been blogging about on the Forbidden Planet blog recently called the Many Worlds of Jonas Moore. Unlike most webcomics (some of which are very, very good) Jonas Moore is taking advantage of the fact it is online to used mixed media, so we we have comics panels, animation, video, music and even archive footage as we follow the actor Colin Salmon (from the Pierce Brosnan James Bond movies and Resident Evil) as Jonas Moore, a character in an online game who has become sentient in a world where the British Empire never fell and the world population is kept quiet by being addicted to many online games, some of which seem very similar to our real history. Marked as defective and to be deleted JOnas goes on the run across the different games worlds. A bit Matrix, a bit Moorcock and a dash of Bryan Talbot's Luther Arkwright.



One of the things I really like about the concept isn't just the mixed-media format but the fact that Howard Webster is encouraging readers to take the material and remix it into their own mashups - so far some indy bands have remixed some of the viral videos they have created to go with their own music (such as the one above). With so many big studio comics-based movies using the bands on their soundtrack as a marketing gimmick to get folks to go I like the fact that Howard is doing this remake-your-own approach; they're also hoping if people remix material later on to create sidebar stories that the best may be incorporated into the ongoing story. Apparently this sort of approach is really pissing off the professional marketing folks and ad agencies, which, in my book, makes it even better. And doesn't Colin Salmon look bloody cool on that bike (Lili, stop drooling over him!)?

Of silence and music

Channel hopping while munching lunch I accidentally came across a programme on Ruth Montgomery, a young musician preparing for solo performances with the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic. The solo spot is a tremendously stressful role for any musician - indeed being the person standing out there in front of everyone else on a stage for any kind of performance is pretty stressful. I've done that a few times myself and it really does put the frighteners on you; first time I had to do it was a largely last minute addition to the school opera when I was about 16. Walk out from behind that curtain, light in your face, dark auditorium, the feel of two or three hundred people looking expectantly at you; mouth goes dry, confidence bids you adios and genuine shivers go down your spine. Then you do what you rehearsed to do and if it works the stress and fear vanishes to be replaced with elation. That doesn't make it any easier the next time you have to do it though, you still go through the stress and fear and cotton mouth thing everytime, but that early experience paid dividends much later when I would have to walk in front of a few hundred folks and introduce a major author.

So yes, I can empathise how stressed she would be, at least to a certain extent. Ruth has another level of worry to add to what would be a worrying time already for any musician about to do their solo spot - Ruth is deaf. She has problems with an early rehearsal because the piano is in the wrong place so she can't get close enough to the violins to feel them and can't see the conductor's movements clearly enough, something they simply hadn't considered when setting up the stage. On hand was one of my favourite musicians and a personal heroine, Evelyn Glennie, one of the most famous soloists in classical music and again, a performer who is completely deaf. Watching both of them was a reminder, if any really be needed, that the real artist creates from within; deafness doesn't stop feeling and it doesn't silence that inner voice, a part that speaks without words in an inner dialogue with the artist, a dialogue they then translate into music, words, dance, paintings that other can share with. It's not the physical abilities, its that inner dialogue and the feelings it creates; if you don't have that then how can you communicate it to anyone else, regardless of whether you are a musician, a poet, a dancer?

And in one lovely little scene, as Evelyn is rehearsing her own spot you could see a wee deaf girl, just about 6 or 7, totally enraptured, her hands moving to copy Evelyn's (anyone who has been to one of Eveyln's performances will know she is pretty dynamic on stage, she doesn't just play, she moves to the music she is making). It was just the most gorgeous scene, this little deaf lassie copying the deaf musician; it wasn't just cute it was the realisation that this might be opening a door to a world this child had never really encountered before. And isn't that one of the effects any artist longs to make on someone?

For the journey

A couple of weeks ago I was talking about the gorgeous animation for Lloyds TSB bank - it doesn't make me want to switch banks, but the animation is lovely, following a couple on their train journey which is also a compressed version of their life as they meet, fall in love, marry and have a child. The style of the animation from the looks of the long-nosed characters, tall skinny buildings and raised railway line is obviously influenced by the wonderful movie Les Triplettes de Belleville, which is not a bad animation to borrow from. There are a series of them, apparently, with the second running on TV now (these sorts of adverts are often the main source of income for struggling animators); YouTube has the first one up now:



Someone left a comment on the previous post on this subject (sorry there was no name on the comment I think) asking about the lovely music which goes along with the adverts. I did a bit of Googling and found on the Boosey and Hawkes (very famous musical name) that the music is a version of Eliza's Aria by Elena Kats-Chernin, composed for the ballet Wild Swans, based on a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen - according to the B&H site it will be getting a new release on CD along with other work including her Piano Concerto No 2 and Mythic. There's a link on the B&H site to where you can order the disc - I may pick that one up myself. Meantime someone else has uploaded the music to YouTube as well: