Blogs

One of the worst pieces of music I’ve heard this year, I think, would have to be the Manic Street Preachers’ cover version of Rihanna’s “Umbrella”. It’s part of a grisly tradition: guitar bands – usually some plodders like Biffy Clyro, possibly working at the behest of Jo Whiley – indie-fying a pop hit.

Trying to cover the entirety of Neil Young’s tempestuous 40 year career in a documentary film lasting not much more than 60 minutes is a bit like trying to pour the Atlantic into a bucket, an impossible task, however noble the intentions.

OK so I might get sick of this one after a while, but we’re not blogging for posterity here. Chairlift are yet another band from Brooklyn (though originally from Boulder), and their debut album, “Does You Inspire You”, is another record that’s making me rethink my long-nurtured antipathy towards ‘80s revivalism.

There’s a story about Steve McQueen being offered the role of architect Doug Roberts in The Towering Inferno. McQueen turned it down, asking instead to play fire chief Michael O’Hallorhan, claiming that there’s no way an audience would find him believable in any role other than a straight-ahead man of action. The part of Roberts, instead, went to Paul Newman. At that point, in 1974, Newman’s most successful roles had been as outlaws, con-men and rebels – characters arguably not that far removed from the kind of people who peppered McQueen’s own CV. But it says a lot, perhaps, about how cinema audiences were prepared to accept him, that despite the succession of outsiders and wild ones he’d played, there was something inherently likeable and appealing about Newman.

A long time ago, one of my old NME colleagues described a pretty rackety record – approvingly, I should say – as sounding like “a flight of stairs falling down a flight of stairs.” That phrase came back to me this morning when I put on the debut Abe Vigoda album for the first time in a while.

I’ve just finished the excellent latest edition of Granta, subtitled “The New Nature Writing”, and become fascinated by the idea of Ghost Species. The concept comes up in a piece by the estimable Robert MacFarlane (I can’t recommend his books enough, incidentally). Apparently, a ghost species is one that has been out-evolved by its environment, leaving it doomed to extinction.

What to make of this, then? It’s a little late to expect everything Jack White records to sound like “The Big Three Killed My Baby”, of course. But still, even after the richness of the last Raconteurs album, “Another Way To Die” comes as something of a big, glossy shock.

At the tail end of 2006, I interviewed George Clooney in New York for our short-lived and sadly missed sister title, UNCUT DVD. It was around the time of Good Night, And Good Luck and Syriana, two movies that conspicuously harked back to the Seventies’ cinema of conscience. Syriana, particularly, referenced the political thrillers of the era, and during a lively, 40-minute conversation the man who in another life was the voice of Sparky the gay dog in South Park spoke enthusiastically about his love of great movies like Dr Strangelove, Network and All The President’s Men, and especially the classic alienated heroes from ‘60s and ‘70s cinema.

Quite a bit of activity on yesterday’s Dylan blog, as you might expect. Interesting, though, that most of the talk seems to not be about the music, but about SonyBMG’s marketing strategy for “Tell Tale Signs” – chiefly the high price being asked for the 3CD set which, as I pointed out, is certainly worth having.

Around the time, I think, his “Eureka” album came out, I interviewed Jim O’Rourke. It was O’Rourke’s most conventional, song-based album to date, but he still had the musical outlook of an improvising musician. He wouldn’t be touring the album, he told me, because he never wanted to play the same thing more than once. Even a radically rearranged version of a song would be in a way dishonest, he thought. The best way for an insatiable creative force like O’Rourke to make music, it transpired, was to start with a totally clean sheet every single time he picked up an instrument.