God bless you, Mr. Vonnegut

Our house has just acquired Netflix, and tonight we watched 'Slaughterhouse Five', which I first watched in a cinema in London back in 1972.  I think I went with Jennie Brousson, a young lady of Huegenot descent ... but memory plays tricks.  (That's so funny, if you're ahead of me.)

The book which preceded the film was written by the late Kurt Vonnegut.  I knew him as a science fiction writer, but at this distance I can't recall which books I had read;  maybe his early short stories, which were hard science fiction or sometimes just fiction .... but then he went far, far out.  He can be compared to Philip K. Dick (yes, yes ... the author of 'Blade Runner' blah blah blah), but unlike the great Dick, he wasn't actually insane.

Which is quite surprising, really.  OK, so he drank a great deal and smoked after it became unfashionable.

If you read his books and the broad brush strokes of his life (look them up, I'm not spending the whole evening posting links), they overlap.  He creates characters that reoccur, and details of life that do the same.  Vonnegut had a sister who died young, and a mother who committed suicide;  his book people have suicidal mommas, and one story features siblings who are scandalously linked.

But don't run away with the idea that he's using his work as self-analysis.  He just uses material.  You don't have to know anything about him to enjoy reading his books.  He worked in a power plant - he writes stories about it.  He lived near a volunteer fire station and helped out - he uses it, several times. His brother was a weather scientist - he uses it ('Cat's Cradle', and that's the only other title I'm mentioning).  He gets interested in art - he illustrates his books with powerful line drawings.

[A total aside:  Kurt's older brother Bernard invented the process of seeding clouds with silver iodide to promote rain.  I am obsessed with Kate Bush, and the song 'Cloudbusting' is about another maverick who believed he could create rain.]

In 'Slaughterhouse Five', the main character Billy Pilgrim "comes unstuck in time", drifting between decades and a future in which he is abducted by aliens (before it was fashionable) to the planet Tralfamadore.  Small wonder, since he suffers trauma in a plane crash, which occurs some years after he served in WW2 and survived the firebombing of Dresden, in which over 100,000 civilians died. But Billy Pilgrim is a curiously bland character, never really reacting to anything or taking a positive direction.  He is like the hero of 'The Tin Drum', or maybe just another version of The Fool.

I think Vonnegut just felt too deeply about Dresden, and other acts of barbarity which crop up in his books, to express his emotions, even through his characters.  He simply describes.  No, that's not quite true ... he describes with innuendo.  He's saying; "You see?  You see what we do to each other?  Any idea why?  Me neither".

It is no surprise that the words many picked up on in the seventies from his books was the bathetic phrase "So it goes".  (Me, I preferred "Poo-tee-weet?"  Look it up, fer crissake.)

There are many flashes of true brilliance.  The American Nazi Howard W. Campbell, Jr. in 'S5' and 'Mother Night', who has designed his own uniform that makes him look like 'Captain America' (or maybe 'The Shoveller' from 'Mystery Men').  Ice-Nine (look it up).  Bokononism (ditto - what is the wampeter of YOUR karass?).

But for me, the greatest is Kilgore Trout.  Kilgore is the world's worst sci-fi writer.  He has never been published, although he has written hundreds of stories, and in one book attends a Sci-Fi convention ('with hilarious consequences').  Oh, that's not quite true.  Some of his MSS have been stolen by publishers and used to bulk out pornographic photomagazines, with their titles changed to crudities.  I think this is Vonnegut doing a little satire on the decades when Sci-Fi mags proliferated.  [And still existed, alas.  Where are they now?  I have a kindly rejection letter signed by the great Ben Bova. That's as near as I got.]

Kilgore Trout gives Vonnegut licence to invent stories that he never actually has to write himself - a writer's dream.  I'll never forget the one about the alien that tries to warn of a cosmic disaster, but is blasted because he looks like a sink plunger, and because his species' form of communication is tapdancing while farting.

And Kurt/Kilgore became the universe's only recursive author.  Kurt Vonnegut once made Kilgore Trout write a novel called 'Venus on the half-shell'.  I was amazed some years later to see that actual title listed in the end-papers of another SF novel, and spent years trying to find out what the hell was going on.  Come the Internet, all was revealed;  Philip Jose Farmer (another SF writer of note) posed as Vonnegut and wrote a fairly amusing parody novel, a copy of which I now have ... but it seems Kurt was not amused.  Follow up the story yourself.

I love science fiction.  No, not precise enough ... I love good writing, with imagination.  If it's science fiction, too - I'm in hog heaven.

I can't believe I've never blogged about QOTSA

This is not going to be a think piece.  And I think that's the point.

Look, I like a bit of Vaughan Williams. 'The lark ascending' and all that. But sometimes there's a need that even Led Zeppelin can't fill. Here's Queens of the Stone Age. Which basically means Josh Homme, who is a guy I wouldn't want to meet at noon in Death Valley, never mind in a dark alley. I do not see him going gentle into that goodnight.

Don't ask me why, but genre nazis have called this 'desert rock'.  I think I get some of that .... but I really don't think Los Angeles, out there on the Pacific coast and forever young, really looks into its interior and sees the desert that separates them from the great Midwest, heartland of dreams and bread basket of the entire world.  That breakfast cereal you're eating probably contains Kansas corn. 

The sonic landscape of this album is incredible.  Of course, for me the guitar is supreme, and here we have distortion within clarity and precision.  It's not just noise for noise's sake. 

This album has at least two classic tracks, but the whole thing is almost a concept album. There's 'First it giveth', and then there's 'Go with the flow' (it's at 27 minutes, it's amazing).  The official video for the latter has amazing graphics  ... but it's undoubtedly somewhat offensive. Be prepared:

Ok, after all that, I recommend you come down with some chilled music, or people are going to be looking at you weirdly all day.  I know I do.  Try some Labi Siffre or Joan Armatrading.

A pet is for life, ain't it the truth.

I’m afraid this blog is straying further from its original intent than usual.  It’s not that I am no longer just as interested in music, it’s just that I have written about most of my heroes, sometimes twice or more, and repetition might become a mite boring.

Instead, let’s consider pets and vets.  [Sensibility alert:  this piece will mention unmentionables, and make use of ‘v’ words and even the ‘c’ word (although not the ‘c’ word you probably anticipate).]

Our 11-year-old cat had a problem in an intimate area.  Suffice it to say she was sitting down gingerly and with reluctance.  We decided to pay our vet to snap on some disposable gloves.

Now, although our vets and their receptionists and assistants are fine, their premises have been and remain godawful.  Yes, they are perfectly clean and tidy etc., but they freak our cats out in anticipation from the moment we ram them into the animal carriers;  and I hate them too.  For a start, they have an electronic bell that sounds whenever the door is held open, and it sounds like ‘Avon calling’.  Actually, more like ‘Avon shouting’.  It’s just so slightly off pitch that you could easily imagine it being played to Prometheus, as he waits for the eagle to swoop down and perform internal surgery without benefit of anaesthetic.

Also, all pet owners have to wait in the same area.  You’ve never seen fear, until you’ve seen a caged tabby (that has hitherto received nothing more than a mild reproof for clawing the curtains) staring up into the eyes of  an Irish wolfhound that has come in to have its molars cleaned of lingering bone fragments from Ocado drivers.

So while the pets work each other up into hysteria, they make us wait.  (“The first thing you learn is, you always have to wait.” – slight muso reference, there.)  It’s like the dentist’s; but, unlike toddlers, you can’t distract animals with the toy collection or the book shelf.  Oh yes, there’s a water bowl for dogs, but no cat would ever use a public drinking place, and having a St. Bernard lap at a bowl near your cage simply means, to a cat; “I am lubricating my jaws to make it easier to eat you alive, slowly, when your owners (who have suddenly decided to torture you for no reason) drag you out of that box.  Welcome to hell, pussycat.”

OK, one of the examination rooms at our vet’s practice has (in addition to the normal examination table, weighing scale, wall cupboard full of exciting recreational drugs and inevitable computer terminal that the vet pecks at with no discernible result other than to inflate the consultation time) a window in the ceiling with a curved dome.  I don’t know what it is about this (actually, having stared at it myself, I am beginning to get an idea) but when our cats see it, they go totally tharn.  It’s worse in winter evenings, when it’s black and you can see distorted reflections in it.  If you’re a sci-fi buff, then the easiest way for me to describe it is as the Blind Spot which replaces windows when the hyperdrive is turned on, in Larry Niven’s ‘Ringworld’ and ‘Known Space’ novels. (Damn good classic hard science fiction, but I digress.)

After all that, having devices inserted into your orifices probably pales into insignificance.  Anyway, you’re still waiting for the St Bernard to reappear and chew you slowly from the paws up.

Look, our poor cat experienced medically-induced trauma, and it was actually worse than I have said.  I wasn’t exaggerating for comic effect, this time.  The lampshade cat collar came off within an hour of our bringing her home.  They must know that no real cat would tolerate that stuff.

[Note to readers who like cats;  we are rigorously pursuing every other item of the treatment regime.  The cat is now stress-free and in recovery mode.  If you hate cats, then disregard this …… imagine I have nailed the cat to the side of the shed, and that carrion crows are gathering.] 

All this is by the by.  The incident that prompted me to write didn’t feature us or our pets at all. 

Before us in the waiting room was a lady in her late seventies or eighties, with a bad limp and a walking stick.  I deduced that she had no partner or carer;  I speculated further that she had no children, otherwise they might have been present to help her.  Although she may have been married, she was just a singleton elderly female, of whom there are many.  She seemed composed, and was even smiling on the small yappy dogs that other owners brought in during our wait.  She was waiting for her bitch, which had been receiving treatment.  It was a large but not huge dog, some kind of greyhound maybe, which had been fitted with a lampshade collar.  It was also elderly and grey haired, and evidently nervous.

They have a talkdown procedure at this vet’s, where a young lady comes out and explains the meds and the procedures all over again, before eventually getting to the whopping size of the bill.  Maybe they do this to prevent arguments, because people are reluctant to make a fuss in front of others. 

Anyway, the young lady was gaily explaining that the dog’s distressing problem stemmed from an infection of her vagina.  A little frisson went round the room.  She handed over some antibiotics to put in the dog’s food, and then a tube of gel and some gloves, explaining gaily that this was to be applied twice daily to the vulva.  The frisson went round the other way, and someone of a sensitive nature fainted.  She then gaily advised the owner that she should just generally monitor the dog’s chuff.  Which was the first time I have ever heard the word used in real life.

Look, I don’t underestimate the elderly, and this owner may have been a scrub nurse or a mortician at some point in her life.  But she didn’t look like that, and it is quite possible that her life prior to that moment had included nothing much more distasteful than a soiled doily. 

I’m not sure what point I’m making.  I’m not saying that I personally am worried about the naming of parts or discussion of such matters;  at my time of life it takes a lot to shock me.  I think I’m saying that intimate stuff like this, even when we’re talking about animals, should not be done in a public waiting room, as a routine measure.

And that ownership of a pet means more than just buying them food, and toys they never play with.

I was moved to write about this, and yes, if I was a better writer or thinker I could surely enlarge this to something more significant to the cosmos.  But after having reported the anecdote, I’m going to stop here.

Murray comes out at Wimbledon

My mind was elsewhere, when my good lady wife came into the room and said; "Murray's coming out at Wimbledon."

And I thought;  "Yes, it all fits.  The body image consciousness, the desire to excel, the reticence in talking or to disclose personal details, the powerful mother figure with cropped hair - even the pretty girlfriend as a 'f*ck you' to the straight male world.  Good for you, Andy, I'm sure you will be happier and will go on to great things."

And then I woke up.

Terry Pratchett for God

It’s no secret that one of my many obsessions is the author Terry Pratchett, and his creation Discworld – world and mirror of worlds.  At first, I suspect like many others, I thought it was just an amusing sci-fi/fantasy series, but I quickly realised that within the wild plots, free-wheeling humour, pinpoint character portraits and searing critiques of …. of … well, just about everything (Read ‘Going Postal’.  You’ll pick up the stuff about Ankh-Morpork and the Patrician Vetinari as you go along, and as for Adora Belle Deerheart and the Golem Trust which she runs …. well, as Jimmy Carter almost said, I have committed fictional adultery with her in my heart.) there is a man who wants to take us by the neck and shake us silly.  He is the Charles Dickens de nos jours.  What a cruel joke God is playing on him, if you still think God exists.

Oh, you were maybe expecting something about music in this, my music blog?  Well, welcome to the Interweb.  It’s chaos.  I can do anything I damned well please, and I please to write about Pratchett right now.

Not least because his life mirrors mine, except that I haven’t written 30-plus novels.  A minor point, I think – after all, I have a hat just like his, and at a distance people poke each other and whisper excitedly, until they get close.  AND I invented the plot of ‘Hogfather’ before he wrote it, and have files of correspondence between me and him (admittedly, after the first brief note from Terry, his side tapers off sharply) to prove it.

But I digress.  It’s what I do best.

You bought ‘A Brief History of Time’, by Hawking, didn’t you?  Did you get to page 145 (no, me neither), where he breaks down and admits that he’s just having a laugh, and he hasn’t a clue what it’s all about, and we should just pursue our quest for the perfect Chicken Tikka Massala followed by the perfect Mohito, and then listen to ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ with the quadraphonic speakers just so?  All else is silence.

I had a point here, somewhere.  Oh, yes.

I am re-reading the ‘Science of Discworld’ trilogy.  I’m not overly (Incidentally, ‘overly’ is a word my English master at secondary school refused to believe existed.  You can tell I didn’t go to a good school.) fond of spin-offs from any franchise, but I make an exception for these.  They are funny, and thought-provoking.  Terry collaborates with two science-based authors, and successfully contrasts the magic-based structure of Discworld with the quantum-mechanically based structure of the ‘real’ universe (a reality you soon come to doubt) – with hilarious consequences.

The science authors make the trilogy a bit verbose, but stick with it.  Each book features alternating chapters between discourses on real science, and the efforts of the wizards at Unseen University to create and understand a pocket-sized universe of their own.  Many important points are made.  (A lot of which I couldn’t follow.)  Charles Darwin is visited by the Discworld ‘God of Evolution’, with his inordinate fondness for beetles.  The Auditors of Reality crop up.  Rincewind has a virtual comet land on his head, and The Luggage goes paddling in primordial seas.   

The trilogy covers the creation of the universe, and evolution.  Big subjects.  But out of it all, the one which captures me is ‘time’.

We really have no conception of how long a million years really is.  Really.  I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts compared to

Sorry.  Flipped over into the wrong obsession, for a moment.

OK, there’s lots of stuff about the physics of time and the fact that current hypotheses say that time’s arrow could be reversed, and there’s string theory and multidimensional/parallel universes and black/white holes and dark matter and the whole Deep Space Nine scenario ….  but time and time again, I come back to Time.

The species we call ‘human’ has been on this planet for an eyeblink of time.  We’ve done pretty well (deforestation and imminent extinction of most major mammals aside) in our study of what the hell is going on, but we haven’t got to grips with time.  As witness, the fossil record.  We comfortably assume that, because we have some fossils of trilobites and fish and the odd ichthyosaur and dinosaur and hadrosaur and pterosaur that we have a clear picture of evolution.  Nope.  There were tens of millions of years when the earth was ruled by creatures that we know about, but are not photogenic enough to have appeared in  ‘Walking with Dinosaurs’. 

Not to beat about the bush, WE DON’T KNOW SHIT! 

Fossils are amazingly rare.  It’s just the sheer mass of them, accrued throughout immense lengths of time, that makes us think otherwise.  There are hundreds of millions of years in our history when no fossils were formed or preserved.  The earth is 4.5 billion (Did you get that?  Billion?  That’s 1,000,0000,0000,000 years – think of all those tax returns.) years old, give or take.  It’s quite possible that there was a flourishing civilisation of some kind two billion years ago, with intelligent entities saving up to buy a second home in the polar regions where it was nice and chilly all year round, until a comet impact turned the planet back into hot lava.  And then we evolved from the remains of their equivalent of a Lamb Biriani.

I could say something trite, like; “Life will find a way!”.

But I have run out of energy, and I was never very good at conclusions. 

Live long and prosper.

[Damn!  I can never do that finger thing!]

"I Can't Believe It's Not Amon Duul!"

Right, we have just had a totally insane twenty minutes here, and I want to share some of the magic of early 70s Krautrock with you.  

Bob (you all know Bob, one half of Alpines, our in-house rock band) had a friend coming round who knows EVERYTHING about all things musical.  So I challenged Bob to ask him - who was Renate Knaup-Krotenschwanz, and which band does she perform with?

Here's some clues.  Before Kraftwerk (and perhaps Neu!) took it into all that electronica, there were German groups who knew how to rock, but weren't limited by blues-boogie or heavy metal.

People, we are talking Amon Duul.  Amon Duul II, to be precise, although Amon Duul I didn't release much material.  (Sorry, I can't figure out how to do the umlauts.)  Basically, they were a hippy commune that spawned some music and split into two bands ..... probably their most famous piece being 'Jail House Frog', which if you stick with to the end includes one of the most massive saxophone solos prior to 'Baker Street'.

Ah, they had great titles, great artwork, and sometimes great tunes.  'Dance of the Lemmings' (double album - 'Race from here to your ears' has some great demented guitar solos) was what drew me to them.  It took me months to get hold of a copy of 'Yeti' (another double).  'Phallus Dei' *sniggers*.  Yep, there's a lot of self-indulgent noodling, but they could get it together.  I saw them live at Imperial College in 1972, and I am one of the few people in the country with a copy of the live album that came from that tour.  They had two drummers on stage, John Weinzerl was cranking out immense guitar, Renate was warbling like a good 'un ......  glad it was in that dawn to be alive, or sunnink.  Their bassist went on to play with Lemmie.  Rock nobility.

Look, it's Friday night, drink has been taken .... I was urging Bob to pursue his career by creating an Amon Duul tribute band, which we were going to call 'I can't believe it's not Amon Duul,' or 'Lemmingmania' .... alas, it is not to be.

And woooo ... the Duul are still living the hippy dream.  If I can, I am going to post a link to their official website, which is sprawling and messy and slow and ..... hey man, this stuff is really primo, you know?

http://www.amonduul.de/

Click on the pic that opens, to get, you know, stuff .....

Famous for fifteen minutes?

Well, some of us would make do with less than that.  The occasional letter in the Guardian.  A blurred image in the background of some news footage.  Inhaling the same air as Joanna Lumley in Heathrow Arrivals.

And, of course, some of us couldn't care either way.

But then, you have to ask yourself - why is there YouTube?

Try an experiment.  Open Google, riff some random keys and hit 'Enter'.  I bet near the top of the resulting list will be a YouTube video.  (Disclaimer:  Doesn't actually work every time - most people seem to riff with the left hand only.  Be reasonable.)

But I digress.  Here's some stuff I came across while looking for other things.  I think they are poignant, whilst being good in and of themselves.

First up, Patrick Butterworth doing a cover of Florence and the Machine's 'You've got the love'.  

He's good, but that is not completely what drew me to this.  It's the little details.  The view out of his high-rise flat window, the bottle on the window sill .... I don't know.  The whole kit and caboodle.  I hope it works out for you,  Patrick, I really do, you have talent.  

Now we move up a level, so that you can watch chantoosie Nina Schofield doing an excellent cover of "Tidal Wave" by 'Sub Focus ft. Alpines'.  

Note the use now of pre-recorded accompaniment, professional mike guard, in-ear mixing probably with click track ..... MS Schofield regularly performs live, and I wish her larger venues.

As the Reverend Eli Jenkins says in 'Under Milk Wood';  "Praise the Lord, we are a musical nation!".  (Of course, he was talking about the Welsh, who see it as their god-given right to sing on all occasions.  I'll never forget the night at Uni in 1974 when we accidentally went into the 'Welsh' pub in Aberystwyth on a Saturday after the rugby, and were subjected to hours of students standing on tables bellowing out 'Sosban Fach' .... well, when I say hours, I mean until we could throw down our drinks and repair to more civilised surroundings.  No lingering offense;  I'm half Welsh, myself.  Doesn't mean I can't make jokes about sheep.)

Right, losing the thread, my interest and probably yours.  

OK, how about this.  Somewhere out there right now is an as-yet unregarded home-made video from someone who, over the next twenty five years, will revolutionise the future of popular music, generate a whole new industry based on some entertainment technology yet to be invented, lead a scandalous private life, and die in mysterious circumstances possibly involving alien contact.

All YOU have to do is to find it, get involved, and your fortune is assured.

The demise of HMV. That's a real watershed.

So, we no longer have any major High Street chain selling music, in physical formats.  This makes me unhappy.

Let me take you back to the late sixties and early seventies.  On the television, we have Top of the Pops and The Old Grey Whistle Test.  In the main, that's it and that's all - radio was rubbish, apart from John Peel's programme (lord, I miss you, John - why do the good die young.).  If you liked pop music, you were glued to the former, and if you had heard about Captain Beefheart, you tried to stay awake for the latter, while revising for your chemistry mock O-level or similar.

Here's a typical Saturday for a burgeoning muso in those days.  Cornflakes and BBC Radio Four news, which may even have still been called 'The Home Service'.  Denim flares and wedge heels on, or maybe loon pants .... RAF greatcoat ..... off into town to flick through all the albums in the racks of some six or seven music stores. 

OK, this isn't me, but it's reminiscent:

Boots and Woolworths used to sell records, fer crissake.  There were specialist stores that would get in US imports .... you could come across amazing things by accident.  It was an education.  

My significant other has reminded me that some of these stores would have booths where you could listen to a track or two off the album you were thinking of buying.  They even allowed you to go into the booths in pairs - it was a more innocent time.  And you could smoke a fag in there.  I can remember when the whole world reeked of Embassy No. 1's.  When I moved to London for my one year at Imperial College studying phsyics before I was rusticated, I remember flicking through the racks at Virgin Records in Notting Hill.  I may even have seen the sainted Mr. Branson on one of those Saturdays, but obviously I couldn't distinguish him from the other bearded hippies and sundry oddballs behind the counter.  

And of course you would buy your copy of New Musical Express, which had amazing, amusing and informative articles about groups like The Ramones or John Macloughlin or Sun Ra or The Incredible String Band.  Robert Fripp would be advertising courses in 'Guitar mechanics' in the small ads.  Warner Brothers would be taking out double page spreads to advertise their latest hopeful supergroup, who would never be heard of again.  Money was sprayed into the industry like nobody's business.

And now, we've come to this.  Amazon, iTunes, and Spotify.  Bands unable to fund their careers and albums, unless they tour themselves to death in grotty venues.  I despair.  We NEED music.  Popular music has kept me going, when all around has looked dark.  Look, I'm OK now, and I want to give something back so that there's something left for the future.  But I don't think online and download is the way to go.  It's not a community thing.  In Kingston, we have one proper record store left.  Banquet Records.  They have racks you can flick through, they support local groups through events and displays and instore promotions, they know about what's going on.  I want their babies.  (OK, Ed, rein it in a little.) 

Right, I no longer know where I'm going with this piece, so that's an indication that I should end it here.  Hey, I'm not being paid to do this, so I can do what the hell I like.  So good to be free of The Man.