According to Tom Waits there are three ages of man: youth, middle-age and “You’re looking good‘”.
I fall comfortably into the third category.
What have I learnt from 67 years on the planet?
Something and nothing.
I don’t believe that getting older automatically makes you wiser but it does give some perspective.
For what it’s worth, here is a list of ten random tips that I can pass on:
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“Is it too soon for a 12 minute a capella song about a quilt maker?” This is not a question you are ever likely to hear Coldplay’s Chris Martin asking. Come to think of it, the only artist who would ask this is Richard Dawson.
He is not oblivious to the fact that his music will divide listeners. I put him in the same love it/hate it category of The Fall, Scott Walker and Jandek. At its heart, it could be classed as contemporary folk music but he has rightly resisted such a reductive label. Continue reading
I was thoroughly entertained by the BBC 4 profile on John Cooper Clarke and it was a pleasure to see that he is miraculously still in the land of the living after kicking his longstanding heroine addiction.
It’s heartening too to see that he is winning a whole new audience, some of whom were alerted to his genius when a neutered version of Evidently Chicken Town featured on the closing credits of an episode of The Sopranos.
This is still one of his funniest and powerful poems even when the emphatic adjective has been altered from ‘fucking’ to the milder ‘bloody’. Film of his performance in the documentary shows that there’s nothing to beat the original when it comes to the venomous delivery of peerless lines like:
Poems like this and Beezley Street (which rhymes with uneasy cheesy greasy queasy and beastly) are Britain’s answer to Desolation Row although comparisons to Dylan are exaggerated for someone who has passed the best part of two decades without writing anything new.
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Today I had my siesta with Scarlett Johansson.
Unfortunately, it’s not that I pulled big time – she was only on my mp3 player. I was listening to her new album of Tom Waits covers .
Tom Waits, it goes without saying, has one of the most distinctive voices in rock. Scarlett, it has to be said, has one of the least distinctive.
Immediately we encounter the crux of the problem with this record.
Obviously it would be ridiculous to expect her to try to emulate Wait’s singing style – she’s only 23 and she’d have to have smoked around 50 cigarettes a day from the age of 5 to get even half way towards her gravel-voiced hero.
An alternative would have been a high risk strategy of doing a major re-vamp of the songs which would almost certainly ended in tears and would have had Waitsian fans up in arms.
The middle way, which is attempted here, is to perform the songs relatively straight and call upon the help of some talented mates.
TV On The Radio’s David Andrew Siteks co-wrote the one original tune of the album (‘Song For Jo’) as well as producing the record and supplying his multi-instrumental skills. The finished result is,according to the website link for the album, “murky and thick” which is another way of saying her voice is buried in the mix somewhere if you’re bothered enough to listen for it. A certain Mr. David Bowie sings on two tracks, “Falling Down” and “Fannin Street”, an indication of the celebrity endorsement she can call upon.
The decision to make such a record could be construed as (delete as appropriate) :
bold /imaginative /presumptive / arrogant/ill advised/respectful.
If you’re kind you’d say this was the kind of dreamy pop that might make you want to go lie on a branch with wellingtons on – which is what you see her doing on the album’s cover shot.
It’s certainly not the turkey it might easily have been but it’s plain that the record didn’t get made on Ms Johansson’s vocal talents alone.
According to Tom Waits, the three ages of man are: Youth, Middle.Aged and “You’re looking good!”
Elvis went from cool and slick to fat and sick.
Jackie Coogan was a cute kid but ended up as Uncle Fester
Even the grace and style of David Bowie couldn’t mask the ravages of time
CONCLUSION : Time waits for no-one.
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