Longform
Crucial Track for 22 April 2025: No More Heroes
"No More Heroes (1996 Remastered Version)" by The Stranglers
Today's prompt is 'Share a song that changed your perspective on music.'
I'm gonna have to go back to 1977 for this one. That year may not surprise you, being as it was the core of the original punk days.
I was 13, as of August. 'No More Heroes' came out in September, Wikipedia tells me. I can't tell you when I first heard it, but I do know it was on a Sunday afternoon, after a week in which my friend Brendan had strongly urged me to get into punk.
It came on the radio, and it was the first punk song I heard.
The Stranglers were less punky than the Pistols, Clash, Damned, etc, of course, being older and to some extent, bandwagon jumpers. But who gave a fuck about that when they made a song as good as this?
Operation Mincemeat, 2021 - ★★½
This has a slightly interesting connection to home for me. Just last week we were walking past St John of Hackney churchyard, a common route from the Narrow Way home, when we stopped to look at a plaque outside the Hackney Mortuary. It describes the top-secret military operation the film is named after. The dead body that was used to deceive the Nazis was stored at the mortuary for three months. You can see a picture of the plaque at the Wikipedia page for the mission.
So why not watch the film? It's an interesting story, it's got an impressive cast, and it's on Netflix.
Good thing about that last, because we'd have been mildly annoyed if we'd had to pay extra for it. Trouble is, it's not very good.
It's not terrible. Two-and-a-half stars from me means it's OK, but just barely. On another day I might have given it three. The problem might be with us: knowing the story in advance could remove all tension, except from the romance subplot. But no, I think that was OK. I think it's more that sometimes the various parts of a film — which is a complex thing to create, after all — don't come together well enough, for reasons that are hard to define.
Crucial Track for 20 April, 2025: Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da
"Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" by The Beatles
My earliest musical memory might be this. I was well under five, maybe only three. My gran — my mum’s mum — was staying with us because she wasn’t well. I walked into her room with my big sister, singing.
Says gran, ‘Is he swearing?’ My sister had to explain that I wasn’t saying, ‘Oh bloody’ something.
Crucial Track for 19 April, 2025: London Calling
"London Calling" by The Clash
It seems wildly unlikely that I — or indeed, anyone — could have a single ‘favourite song’ throughout high school. Not least since ’high school’ itself is not a commonly-used term here in the UK. Though my secondary school did actually have ‘High School’ in its name.
Secondary school lasts six or seven years, though (true, back then, some got out after four, but even so). Who’s going to keep the same fave for that long, especially during such formative years?
At the start, if I had a single fave, it would have certainly been by The Beatles. By the end it would have been The Clash or Stiff Little Fingers.
So let's go with 'London Calling', a Clash song that mentions The Beatles, albeit negatively: 'phony Beatlemania has bitten the dust.'
Crucial Track for 18 April, 2025: Another Girl Another Planet
"Another Girl Another Planet" by The Only Ones
What is a song that instantly energizes you?
I feel I should answer that with something relating to Star Trek, but that’s the wrong kind of ‘energize’ (or ‘energise’, as I would spell it).
Although ‘Another Girl, Another Planet’ does sound like it could be about Captain Kirk.
I’ve heard it described as Peter Perret’s love song to heroin, but also seen a more recent interview where he said it wasn’t about that.
Anyway, if you want to get me on the dancefloor, this one’s chugging intro is always a good bet.
‘Space travel’s in my blood,’ after all.
Crucial Track for 17 April, 2025: If I Can't Change Your Mind
"If I Can't Change Your Mind" by Sugar
The prompt was 'What song do you wish you had written?' So many, of course, especially since I used to play guitar very badly and sing in bands, and I have written a few songs.
But for some reason, the one that popped into my mind was 'If I Can't Change Your Mind' by Sugar. Bob Mould's work after Hüsker Dü was varied, but this track off Sugar's first album is just glorious.
I'm Still Here, 2024 - ★★★★
Outstanding drama based on the true story of a Brazilian family's experiences under the dictatorship in the 70s and beyond. Eunice Paiva's husband, Rubens, is taken in by the military. She, too is detained for several days and questioned, though released. One of her four daughters is also taken, but released after a night.
But Rubens is never seen again, his body, like that of many of his countryfolk, never found.
Sad, yet life-affirming, as it's about the resilience of the family, and Eunice's strength as a mother. She went on to become a human-rights lawyer.
Recommended.
📗 Books 2025, 9: The Interpreter, by Brian Aldiss
Slim, old-fashioned, good idea, but not that well executed.
📗 Books 2025, 8: The History of Rock ‘n‘ Roll in Ten Songs, by Greil Marcus
Should I include it if I started it years ago? Yes. Is it beautifully written? Yes. Is it definitive? Certainly not.
Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat, 2024 - ★★★★½
Absolutely loved this jazz-fueled documentary about the events running up to the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, first and short-lived prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1972.
It's a bleak, dark story, but so well told, and with such a great soundtrack, that you rarely feel anything other than pulled along by the narrative.
Which itself is kind of a piece of jazz in the way it's structured. The style has some similarities to Adam Curtis's work in its use of archival footage and the way it lets text, sound, and images overlap and interact. Though Curtis uses a voiceover narrative (or at least did in the one I've seen, while Johan Grimonprez here, does not, simply letting everything speak for itself.
The Ipcress File, 1965 - ★★★★
Great, stylish sixties spy story, with Michael Caine. He's a man who cooks! and makes coffee in — get this — a cafetière (french press to our American friends). Très Moderne!
More to the point, British scientists have been giving up their roles and/or disappearing mysteriously. The word 'defecting' is never used, The USSR is not mentioned explicitly. But this 'brain drain' is harming Britain's defensive capabilities. Harry Palmer joins a team that is investigating the disappearance of the latest scientist.
The plot isn't all that good, to be honest, it's a bit bumpy in places, not as coherent as I'd like. But the overall style of the thing, the way it plays to fears of mind control and brainwashing, and the general verve with which it's done, get it a high mark from me.
The Philadelphia Story, 1940 - ★★★★
Really fun romcom from 1940. It cleverly keeps you guessing about who's going to get together with whom till very nearly the end.
📗 Books 2025, 6: The Pale Horse, by Agatha Christie
Christie does the supernatural! Or not? And reaches the 60s.
The Severed Floor is not the Black Lodge
In which I complain about Severance being too slow, not guaranteed to finish, and not Twin Peaks.
Maybe You Can Post Your Way Through Fascism
Some thoughts on how that post about posting not being enough might have discouraged some writers.
📗 Books 2025, 5: Annihilation, by Jeff VanderMeer
As The Dispossessed starts with a wall, Annihilation starts with a tower. And as LeGuin’s wall round a spaceport both closes the planet off from the rest of the universe, and encloses the universe, depending on how you look at it; so VanderMeer’s tower has its topological oddity. It starts at ground level and goes down, into the ground underneath it, rather than rising into the air.
Or so the Biologist sees it, But this is Area X, and things are rarely as they seem.
The Biologist is the first person narrator. Accompanied by three other women — the Psychologist, the Anthropologist, and the Surveyor — they are the latest in a series of groups sent in to investigate the mysterious zone.
Almost everything is unexplained in this book. It is incredibly compelling, gripping, even, but everything remains unexplained, the ending is open. Yet while there are three more books in the series, I feel it’s such a perfect little nugget, beautifully crafted, that to read on would almost spoil it.
I suspect that’s not true, though. We are in safe hands with VanderMeer, so I expect the continuation will be sound. I remember my friend Simon having a similar response when he read Hyperion. Its perfectly-crafted open ending seemed to him like it didn’t need a sequel. But of course The Fall of Hyperion was magnificent, and so were the two Endymion followups.
Anyway, this is great, but you probably already knew that, what with winning awards and being ten years old.
📗Books 2025, 4: Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen
We started watching Miss Austen, the BBC serial about Jane’s sister Cassandra trying to get hold of Jane’s letters a few years after her death. That made me want to read some more Austen, the only I’ve read before being Pride and Prejudice.
So I tried Northanger Abbey. Which is mainly a spoof of the gothic novels that Austen herself would have been reading at the time, and also, of course, a romance.
I enjoyed it a lot, but it ended very surprisingly. It has the omniscient narrator you might expect for a book of its time, but it’s mostly written in close third-person. We are privy to Catherine’s thoughts and fears. But the thing is, when we get to the climactic scene, when everything is going to be resolved and our heroine end up happy (it’s not much of a spoiler), Austen (or the narrator) turns away.
Instead of being with Catherine as the hero rides to her emotional rescue, we are told about it. We’re kept at a distance, no longer aware of what’s going on in her head. It’s an absolute masterclass in the difference between ‘showing’ and ’telling’ in writerly terms; but the wrong way round for a really satisfying experience.
Perhaps it was a continuation of the style of those gothic romances she was parodying, but read today, it’s a strange choice.
Sweet Smell of Success, 1957 - ★★
This film is at number 95 on this Time Out list of the hundred best films of all time that we've been dipping into.
Why?
It's really quite a bad film. Characters of no merit, dialogue that sometimes reaches snappy but often sits in the leaden cliché realm, and just general horribleness.
It's good for the scenes of New York, the crowd scenes in bars and restaurants, and yes, it has its moments. But overall, no, didn't do it for me.
It's not like amoral characters make the film amoral, but you need to have someone to root for. That should be the gossip columnists's sister and jazz guitarist who were a couple. Sadly they're just too feeble (and too sidelined) as characters.
📗 Books 2025, 3: The Great When, by Alan Moore
I think I read somewhere that this ends on a huge cliffhanger. It doesn’t. Or I wouldn’t describe it in those terms.
It has an epilogue, entitled ‘The Old Man at the End’, set 50 years or so after the main story. Someone we take to be the protagonist fears for his life; and the close-third-person narration hints at or mentions some events that intrigue. But we’re not left hanging.
The book is described as ‘a Long London novel’. though, so we certainly expect additions to the series in time.
The term ‘Long London’ is not used in the book, I think, though our normal, everyday London is called ‘Short London’ at one point. ‘The Great When’ is used, and is one of the terms for another London that exists parallel to ours in some sense. Certain people, with certain kinds of imagination (or damage), can find and use some few portals between the two realms.
You know the sort of thing. Parallel worlds, unseen realities, aren’t exactly new. But Moore is such a good writer, this is a high, fine example of the form, even if there have been others like it before. The richness of his description and believability of his characters make this a five-star affair, if I gave stars to books.
And books are key here. It all kicks of in 1949, when Dennis Knuckleyard, 18 years old, orphaned in the war, and working in a second-hand book shop, comes into the possession of a book that doesn’t exist.
It is imaginary, being named in an Arthur Machen tale. Which means he has to get it back to the other London before very bad things start happening.
Highly recommended, and I eagerly anticipate the next volume, despite not being cliffhung by this one.