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.
I should note it’s Petroc Trelawny’s last day on the BBC Radio 3 Breakfast show today. I’ll miss his dulcet tones, and especially his weird pronunciation of ‘Bach’.
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.
Radio saying SpaceX’s latest launch will be the first to orbit over the north and south poles. That’s wrong, of course: there have been plenty of circumpolar satellites. I wonder if it’s the first human-occupied one to enter that orbit; or just the first commercial one to do so.
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.
I tried the ‘Hey Siri, what month is it?’ question, since people have being saying it can’t answer that.
It gave me to today’s date. Which seems fine. It’s more than I asked for, and includes the information I wanted, so…
When did the 20th of March become the first day of spring? I saw lots of mentions of it yesterday, and they’re even saying it on Radio 3 this morning.
Currently reading: Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose 📚
And on page 40, this quote:
Finally—and there is no way to convey this unless you read the sentence aloud or at least, as your first grade teacher cautioned you not to do, say it silently, word by word, in your mind
What are they teaching kids in American first grade? What does she mean, you were taught not to say it word by word in your mind? How do you read without doing that? Or at least learn to read?
📗 Books 2025, 6: The Pale Horse, by Agatha Christie
Christie does the supernatural! Or not? And reaches the 60s.
This isn’t a story so much as a floating mass of jellyfish tendrils with which the viewer intermittently comes into contact. And the show’s premise is a joke that neither a Hollywood millionaire or a Silicon Valley behemoth have any right to make. It’s a long, long exercise in seeing how long your customers will tolerate being laughed at.
I don’t agree with the early part of this New Statesman article, but there are some good points in it, not unrelated to my post the other day.
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.