Rodrigo Y Gabriela

Please please please check out Rodrigo Y Gabriela! Look here first, then go and buy their new album. I saw them first in a brief snippet on Channel 4, one of those ten minute filler things. I had heard of them before, but nothing had really registered. Then I saw them play - my god!

I guess since they play acoustic guitars and come from Mexico, there is a temptation to call them flamenco-based, but since they started off playing in a thrash metal band and throw in covers of Metallica's Orion and Stairway to Heaven as well on their new album, they defy classification.

Go to their website (www.rodgab.com) and watch the live video of them playing the first track - it's just two guitars, a girl and a guy, but it's like nothing you've heard before. Phenomenal virtuosity, but unlike the deeply, deeply boring playing of the thrash scene they came from, they're not in thrall to technique over emotion or groove. Their songs are fantastically rhythmic without saying 'look at me, I can play in 13/19' or some such meters, have fabulous playing from both of them and make every track a joy. I thought the gold standard for albums like this was 'Friday Night in San Francisco', but this might make me change my mind.

P.s. I didn't know whether to be amused or angry at one of the reviewers who posted about this album on iTunes. I paraphrase, but the gist of it was - 'they're from Mexico, but they're way better than Cheech and Chong, so buy this album'!!! So what if these guys are good enough to be compared to John McLaughlin, all that Americans know of Mexican music is a stoner comedy duo from the 70s??? Surely not? Oh well, I guess that person meant well...

It shouldn't surprise you at all ...

I first heard Billy Joel around the age of 14 or 15, growing up in Calcutta in India. We had one state-run broadcaster and the only western pop you would hear on it was either at lunchtimes or late at night. 'Lunchtime Variety' on Sunday usually featured some interesting DJs and one of them used to play this interesting piano-driven track called 'Surprises' endlessly.

The first collection of his I heard was a 'Greatest Hits' cassette, which of course did not even feature 'Surprises', which was on 'The Nylon Curtain'. This was the first real album I heard, full of little gems like 'Allentown', with its steam-whistle intro, 'Pressure', with the immortal non-sequitur 'All of your life is Time magazine, I read it too' and the cod-Beatles-psychedelic 'Scandinavian Skies' that is much less irritating than it sounds.

Fast forward to New Year's Eve 1999/ 2000, years after Billy Joel had either decided to become a 'serious' classical musician or hit a serious case of writer's block, he decides to play some New Year's shows at Madison Square Garden, which was interesting, but not half as much as the prices for the show - top tickets around $ 3000!!! For a guy who used to sign off on stage saying 'Don't let the bastards grind you down', it was a depressing little segue into 'Exclusive pre-booking for American Express cardholders' or some such. I think it was The Eagles' neverending 'Reunion/ Farewell' tours that started to set my teeth on edge and longing for 1977 all over again (this was of course before Johnny Rotten appeared on 'I'm a Celebrity, get me out of here'), but this was up there with the greediest of them.

When I saw he was touring again this year, on the strength of the success of 'Movin' Out', the musical based on his songs, it seemed like another bad cash-in by someone whose best days are clearly behind them. Having said that, I have to confess I was struck by the live album that's come out of his 12 nights at Madison Square Garden earlier this year - '12 Gardens Live'.

Unless there has been a vast amount of studio overdubbing added on (think Led Zeppelin's Song Remains The Same...), his voice, singing and playing are all surprisingly strong. It's not as if there are any huge surprises in the arrangements, but when I heard 'Miami 2017', I was ready to love the album. He's dipped deeply into a very strong songbook and played some of my personal favourites - 'Zanzibar', with the great 'I got a jazz guitar, I got my old man's car, I got a tab at Zan-zi-bar!'; 'Everybody loves you now'; 'Keepin' the Faith' - 'I got a fresh pack of Luckys and a mint called Sen-Sen'; 'Big Shot' and of course 'Movin' Out'. With these, you can even forgive clunkers like 'Always a woman' and 'River of Dreams'.

I'm still not going to watch the show when it rolls around - I refuse to be the sheep that gets sheared for the pension fund or the second alimony (There's an idea for a tour - 'The Summer 2006 Alimony II Tour!'), unless there are some new songs or a new album that at least proves the artist in question is trying to do some new work. (The exception being The Rolling Stones, who put out new albums just to have a name for the tour. If you sat Keith Richards down and asked him for the name of the last three Stones albums, I think you might wait a long time.) But by all means, run out and buy '12 Gardens Live'.

By the way, on the subject of topping up pension funds, I was rolling over with laughter when I read the name of 'The Eagles'' latest tour - it's called 'Farewell 1' - ha ha ha! How brazen do you have to be to make it so bleeding obvious - why not call it the 'Blatant Cash-in till we come round again' tour? More 'authentic', isn't it?

Reality-based vs BS-based...

Ron Suskind has quietly risen to some prominence in the last few years as one of the few journalists to take any kind of in-depth look at the shenanigans of, what we must call for lack of any other words, the Bush Administration.

I first read his excellent piece on the sham that was Compassionate Conservatism - my personal opinion has always been that anyone who believed those two words fitted together deserved what they were going to get, but this was a long, calmly written article that was all the more damning for the unpartisan, reflective nature of the piece.

His book, The Price of Loyalty, was excellent - for the first time, there was conclusive evidence that Iraq was always on the agenda for Bush II. If 9/11 hadn't happened, something else would have, to enable them to pursue their dream of taking down one of the easiest targets in the Middle East. The rather flattering portrait painted of Treasury Secretary Paul O' Neill (who after all oversaw the ballooning of gigantic budget deficits fuelled by extraordinarily illogical tax cuts) can be at least excused by O' Neill's defiance in going on the record with his criticisms.

Then, this came out before the 2004 Presidential elections. While Suskind could not in any light be mistaken for a Bush supporter, the careful, even tone of his writing keeps it from sliding into hoarse polemic, though the message could not have been clearer. This was an administration that was led by a profoundly incurious son of privilege, used to getting his own way not through his own accomplishments, but his family name, his connections and lately, the trappings of the power he had acquired. It was also remarkable for his continuing to unravel the lies behind Bush's pose of being a man of faith, not an angle most liberal commentators were comfortable pursuing.

This new book, however, seems to call a spade a spade quite unflinchingly. It is a hard-eyed look at the GWOT (Global War on Terror, if you haven't been keeping up) and what it's been yielding. Apart from anything else, it is worth the price of admission for this: When his CIA briefer led George W. Bush through that famous daily briefing of 6th August 2001, which told the President that Bin Laden was determined to strike inside the US, how did the great defender react? What was his comment on it? Perhaps a stirring message to his troops on the need to fight? A thoughtful comment on how it would take years of struggle to defeat such an enemy?

Not even close. Apparently, it took the form of a sharp comment to the CIA employee in question - 'All right, you've covered your ass, now.' And no further questions or comments.

But surely, 9/11 changed everything? Since then, he has risen to the occasion?

Um, here's Sidney Blumenthal in Salon - "At one briefing in 2002, Suskind writes, Bruce Gephardt, deputy director of the FBI, told Bush that a group of men of "Middle Eastern descent" in Kansas had been discovered offering "cash for a large storage facility." "Middle Easterners in Kansas," said Bush. "We've got to get on this, immediately." Bush is reported to like barking orders, almost at a shout. The next day, he demanded a report. "Mr. President, the FBI has Kansas surrounded!" "That's what I like to hear," Bush replied. But it turned out that the men of Middle Eastern descent were operators of flea markets, not would-be terrorists. The diligent FBI had closed in on their accumulated piles of old clothing and Sinatra records."

Not much else left to say, except that I'm rather glad I haven't visited Kansas since 2000!

Corners being turned

This is essential reading (From the Washington Post - free registration required). At the end of the day, even assuming the civil war were to magically disappear, what Bush, Blair and assorted other jokers have done is created another unstable fundamentalist state in the Middle East.

Iraq is so screwed up that none of their neighbours will tolerate any arrangement that might lead to peace. Iran and Turkey will not tolerate an independent Kurd state, Iran will not tolerate a Sunni-majority south, the Saudis will not tolerate a Shiite-majority Iraq and the possibility of the Kurds, Sunnis and Shias reconstituting a unified Iraq is as likely as Christmas in July - but George the Fourth won't be around to pick up the pieces, will he?

Making Hay in the mud

Finally managed to go to the literary festival at Hay-on-Wye this year. The town itself has always seemed to have that slightly magical aura that very few places in the world seem to retain. I mean, there is hardly a town in the country that doesn't have an identikit High Street with identikit burger bars and spotty teens in hoodies just getting there from Central Casting.

Actually, that's unfair - there are at least two or three basic models of High Street. At the more tasteful, 'upper-income' end, you have the Henley-on-Thames/ Windsor model, where the thrift shops have better books, even the burger chains have mock-Tudor frontages and there isn't a 'Texa Fried Chicken' within smelling distance. Further down, you have the Reading/ Croydon model, where there is still a pedestrian area, the Waitrose has been downgraded to a Sainsbury's and Cafe Rouge is a hotbed of exciting cuisine. And then, at what we can euphemistically call the 'cash-efficient' end of the market, we have the Hayes model. Here, the FARA thrift shop looks like Selfridges, you pop into Argos but not too often because you might go dizzy with the excitement, there's a guy at the Barclays ATM complaining to his friend about the lack of information on his receipt ('It said "Do you want an Advice Slip?". I thought it was going to give me some advice - this is just a receipt!') and the culinary choices veer between Greggs, Baker's Choice and ... um, that's it!

How did I get on to this? Ah Hay.

Yes, that there is still a town in this country where there really isn't much of a High Street and there are more book stores than any other kind put together, now that's something! Small book stores, large book stores, second hand book stores, new book stores - heaven! Every time I dipped into one, I swore blind that it would be the last store I even entered. And then I'd come to the next one. It was when I hit the store which was selling new books for £ 1, every book! that I really lost it. Carrying the whole lot back from Cardiff by train was much less fun. Much much less.

Highlights:

1. A 1930s, large format compilation of H. M. Bateman's elaborate cartoons. The first work of his I ever saw was the memorable 'The Boy Who Breathed On The Glass At The British Museum'.

2. 'The Dictionary of National Celebrity'. Superbly funny stuff. Co-written by William Donaldson, who died recently at a ripe old age after a rich career of boozing, shagging and all round debauchery. He was also the author of the Henry Root letters and the excellent 'Brewer's Rogues, Villains and Eccentrics'. It cost me £1, but I would happily pay five times that for a volume that enriches my life with the knowledge that 'Victoria and David Beckham' also forms the acronym 'Bravo! Victim and dickhead'.

The festival itself - as a first time visitor, I loved it. J and I went up to Cardiff, met up with her cousin and his partner and drove up to Hay-on-Wye. In spite of the crowds, we managed to take in at least one talk each - I attended a talk by one of the few Britons to come out of Guantanamo Bay - Moazzam Begg. I had in fact seen him arrive earlier in the afternoon. In the middle of the busy ticketing tent, a short, darkish, bearded Asian man with his young son and a folded umbrella was wandering around slightly confusedly - only because I had seen photos of him did I realize that this slight, innocuous man had actually been through experiences and hardship that would make most of our lives look like a gentle stroll in the park.

His talk was fascinating not just for the content, on which more at a later time, but because I found myself in an interesting position. The strength of his religious beliefs as well as his stated conviction on the issue of Kashmir, both of these were points on which I disagreed strongly and with as much conviction. However, even to my mind those did not in any way even begin to justify what he had to go through with the Americans, especially at Guantanamo. He's written a book which I intend to pick up, even if I see myself arguing with it loudly on public transport. What I did find remarkable was his even-tempered dry wit, even when talking about what must be his darkest hours.

A sample was this anecdote he offered: At one meeting/ interrogation where representatives of the British Secret Service where present, they offered him a copy of Jeremy Paxman's 'The English', apparently as a peace offering. According to Begg, it provided him a great deal of comfort in trying to reconcile his identities as a Muslim and a Briton. When he was out and actually met Paxman, he mentioned this to him and even showed him the copy in question, with a stamp of 'Approved by U.S. forces' on the flyleaf. Begg said that for once, Paxman was open-mouthed and stunned into silence, before recovering enough to point to the book and say 'Well, there's evidence of torture right there!'

On a related, rather ridiculous note, I see from a Village Voice report that the US Army says that detainees being interrogated at Guantanamo sit on a chair that looks like a more comfortable version of the Barcalounger. I am reminded of the Spanish Inquisition sketch from Monty Python - are these 'evildoers' really being interrogated with an American version of 'Bring out the comfy chair'?

Tom Lehrer is supposed to have retired as a satirist after he learned Kissinger had won the Nobel Peace Prize, declaring that satire was dead. This looks like the remains were exhumed, spat on and then rendered for burger meat at the local meatpackers.

He goes purple in the face so you don't have to ... and Seinfeld on the car stereo

Continuing the Daily Show theme, check this out. I saw him first on guest appearances on The Daily Show, in a segment called 'Back in Black' and just got hold of one of his live albums, when he appeared at Carnegie Hall.

On The Daily Show, he's always one last syllable this side of a fatal apoplectic fit, while on the live album, he's more evenly paced. I always find him spot on in terms of his targets (his riff on how gay marriage is 'destroying' marriage in America is rather good) and am always heartened that there are some liberals who are willing to amp up their feelings to the volume that the loony right always subjects us to.

He's the first standup who I've put on my iPod since one J Seinfeld.

Speaking of whom, I still remember listening incessantly to 'I'm telling you for the last time' on my car stereo in the summer of 2001, when I was living in Chicago. I was living an upside down life, in an upside down year (about to get a lot worse) and it seemed fitting that I lived in downtown Chicago and commuted an hour out into the sticks, near Schaumburg. The trip into work could take anywhere from an hour to an hour and a half and when I got to work, it would be time to sit by the phone and start a day of cold-calling! Controlling the all-too-natural impulse to lie down and die in a quiet corner was possible only because I would listen to the Seinfeld live album all the way in and bound into work with a grin on my face.

Another album of that summer was 'Roxy and Elsewhere' by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, but more on that later.

Media Matters - more than ever

The inexplicable cravenness of the US media coupled with their strange fondness for balancing the Right Wing Republican point of view with a Right Wing Republican point of view drives better men than me insane.

This series in Media Matters is indispensable. Depressing and tends to enrage you, but still indispensable.

People like Jon Stewart and Keith Olbermann who're trying to stem the tide of whoredom deserve thanks and ratings in equal measure.

Random Rants...

I liked:

• 36 Quai des Orfevres: French thriller, starring Daniel Auteuil and Gerard Depardieu, as well as the lovely Valeria Golino, known unfortunately in the English speaking world only for Hot Shots! Depardieu might be more famous, but Auteuil can claim to be an even better actor. From The Closet to Hidden and now 36, he has the range and the chops to act anyone off the screen. Excellent film.
• Zappa presents Zappa: I didn't think I would get to see anyone competent ever play the music of the late, great Frank Zappa live. So, when his son Dweezil announced a tour including Napoleon Murphy Brock (from his phenomenal Seventies touring band), Terry Bozzio (from one of the better Eighties' lineups) and Steve Vai, I was on. Great show at The Royal Albert Hall, including two songs on the massive pipe organ! No Terry Bozzio, but as Dweezil said, a better show than the last time his dad played that venue. (For those less obssessive, in 1971, when Zappa played there, an audience member charged him and knocked him into the orchestra pit. A drop of 15 feet. The subsequent year or so that Zappa spent in a body cast and a wheelchair for a broken back did not increase his affection for playing live in London). Here's a review for the previous night's show in Manchester - London went off without a hitch and seemed to be even tighter. If I had one gripe, it was that Frank's arrangements were never as conventional as Dweezil's seemed to be - it was never obviously intro-chorus-solo-chorus-outro, but full marks to Dweezil for putting on a very good show. And Steve Vai has more charisma to burn than whole cities full of people ...

I loathed:

• Fanaa: Every once in a while, you can tell Aamir Khan's private banker has called recently. You want to know what this film is like? How about - there's one of those obnoxiously sweet Hindi film kids, with a full hour of screen-time ( at least it felt like an hour to me!) who insists on referring to himself in the third person. As in 'Rehan wants milk mama', or 'Rehan wants a colonoscopy, mama', or some such. Is that enough for you? What about the fact that this mediocre piece of crap goes on for three and a half long long hours?

The 10 - no, make that 3 - Commandments

One of my few regrets about living in London is that we do not get to see The Colbert Report on this side of the pond. I was a fan of Stephen Colbert way back when, when Jon Stewart's The Daily Show was already becoming the only news show in the US worth watching.

His own show is fantastic. As he proved at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, the man has no fear and seems to value the truth more than his access to the 'Dick and me go hunting' club.

This is child's play for him, really, but great stuff nonetheless.

Protest music?

This is a particular bugbear of mine. I often go off on these jags on 'how come Dylan/ Young/ fill-in-a-name have to write protest songs forty/thirty/twenty years after they first started? How come no one's interested in doing that any more' and then descend into a foaming rant in which the words 'sellout', 'wankers', 'greedheads' and such can barely be made out before J kindly leads me away from polite company into a darkened room and my favourite straitjacket.

But I digress.

The point is, it's not that simple. Read this.

Conservatism

Excellent article by Alan Wolfe in the Washington Monthly - Why Conservatives Can't Govern. Now that Ann 'Kill 'em all' Coulter is what passes for a Conservative Intellectual (kind of like horse poop passing for Chanel no 5, but that's a debate for a different day) and any pretensions along the lines of 'Conservatives are more efficient' have been blasted to hell and back, the grey hairs of the movement are wringing their hands at the 'hijacking' of the Conservative movement.

It takes me back to a childhood spent in Bengal, in India, where the collapse of the Soviet bloc was dismissed by leftover Stalinist types with one simple retort - what was in practice was never 'true Marxism' as Marx would have defined it. If it were 'true Marxism', it would never have collapsed. Apart from the elegant circularity of the logic, in this case it is the delicious irony that you have to love - ideological opposites resorting to using the same scraps of tattered dogma to keep reality out.

Wolfe has a simple premise - if someone with an ingrained belief in the evil of government runs government, the results are exactly what we see in the US today. All the guff about how this is not 'true Conservatism' is just that - guff. I'm curious as to why there haven't been more furious, Bill O' Reilly style denunciations of this article - but then one of the conditions of joining Faux News or the NRO could be an inability to focus on one thing for more than two seconds. I would expect the worthies of the Standard to weigh in on this though.

Reading...

The joys of a three hour commute on London's commuter rail network are few and far between, so I should thank the fact that it lets me read for extended stretches of time. I weave in and out of periods when I don't touch fiction at all, but I stumbled on a couple of authors lately who have repaid the effort.
(My usual tactic for discovering new authors is to pick up interesting looking titles during my thrift shop browsing [God bless Oxfam Bookshops, British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research and all of the others!] and then follow up on the author if it seems worthwhile. )
The first was Jasper Fforde, who's whimsical without being twee, inventive without being a complete showoff about it and often quite funny. At the same time, there is a level of commentary underneath it that's quite sharp as well.
Start with 'The Eyre Affair', work your way through 'Lost in a Good Book' and 'The Well of Lost Plots' and finish with 'Something Rotten' - all of which feature his heroine Thursday Next. She's a cop or a detective of sorts, in an England (and occasionally Wales) that is ever so slightly different. Well, different enough that the Crimean War was still going into the 1980s... He's recently started another series, with 'The Big Over Easy' and 'The Fourth Bear', which I haven't gotten to yet.
Given the growth of his writing across the successive books in the Thursday Next series, he seems to be just getting started, so he should be fun to watch. He has an excellent, if rather busy, website that's well worth a visit, at www.jasperfforde.com

The second author who's not new by any means, but new to me, is Jonathan Coe. At last count he had at least six novels in print, but he made his mark with 'What a Carveup', 'The House of Sleep' was well-acclaimed and 'The Rotters Club' was a huge success. There is a sequel to 'The Rotter's Club' as well - 'The Closed Circle'.
I bought 'The Rotter's Club' and started it - halfway through I ran out to the shops to pick up everything else by him! I then went on to 'What a Carve-up' and am halfway through 'The Closed Circle'.
He's ambitious, expansive, funny and quite pointed in his social commentary. 'What ...' brought out comparisons to Dickens, but for me, he's a lot closer to Robertson Davies, who had the misfortune to be Canadian and thus almost obscure for today's readers. He has the same effortless sweep, encompassing families and mini-dynasties, stretching across decades and creating characters who you can care for. Very highly recommended.

A Huge Improvement...

Already this blog is a huge improvement over others (two? three?) that I started and never went back to. The reason was simple and the same in each case - after spending hours thinking of a phenomenally apposite title for my blog, I would forget it and never manage to get back into it again! This time should be different....