April » 2006 » Le Flâneur

Has Wayne Coyne gone mad?

I watched the Flaming Lips last night last night at the Apollo theatre in Manchester. The show was a continuation of the spectacular antics that have characterised their live outings in the last few years. The set opener, the incomparably brilliant ‘Race for the prize’, was accompanied by a barrage of giant orange balloons that fell on to the audience. The stage was beset with ‘Flaming Lips freaks’ dressed in Santa Claus and alien outfits. Such energy and love in one place I have rarely encountered. The noise of the crowd seemed to be much greater than that of a four thousand seat arena. There was a tremendous sense of really being part of something.

The show however, started before the first note was played. Wayne wondered around the stage with roadies making sure everything was just right, at one point setting up the miniature camera attached to his microphone. He also shone a hand held spotlight into the audience to check everyone out. I think that this display was supposed to demonstrate a procedural transparency and the Lips ethos of dialogue and respect for the fans. On their website Wayne discusses his distaste for bands that just play for themselves and seem contemptuous of their audience. They played a varied set with a couple of oldies thrown in. The new songs, especially ‘Yeah Yeah Yeah’ song, stood up well beside the classics as if they’d been written with live performances in mind.

In the end though they probably only played ten songs, which didn’t really matter when they were of the sort of calibre as ‘Do You Realize?’ and ‘She don’t use Jelly’, but this was due in part to the amount of talking Wayne Coyne did in between songs. The man’s always been slightly unhinged but maybe this development needs to be nipped in the bud. Perhaps someone needs to lead him to speaker’s corner to get it all out of his system. These little episodes included philosophical meanderings about the corrosive nature of organized religion (see also the lyrics on the new album), how wonderful and discerning flaming lips fans are, and the evil war pigs of the Bush administration. Now I agree with the sentiments, it’s just it seemed that he was stating the obvious at times. But this is a minor quibble with what was ultimately a triumph. Are the flaming Lips the best live act there is? The most brilliant I’ve seen certainly.

Posted @ 16:28:25 on 26 April 2006 back to top

Spongebob/ Cheese/ Wainwright

SpongeBob/ Cheese/ Wainwright

I am safely back in Manchester. There was quite a buzz about the place on Sunday evening as the undergrads anticipated their loan cheques and were reunited with their new pals. Spring has arrived in my absence and it’s been really quite pleasant outside today.
Whilst in Devon I talked to Matt about the SpongeBob Square Pants Movie, I’d spent an enjoyable couple of days on the farm, even partaking in some light work duties. He mentioned that the memory of one moment in the film had caused him to laugh out loud on the bus, inviting odd glances from his fellow passengers. It was a funny film we agreed, as we reminisced about some of our favourite moments. So here they are, the top five. If you haven’t seen it yet then, well, you’re just wasting your life really.

* SpongeBob acceptance euphoria at the employee award ceremony. A bit like a similar scene in Zoolander. SpongeBob’s facial expressions are a hoot. The drawings for this cartoon are great. Though the figures of the characters are kept simple, there is an enormous depth and range to what the faces can express. A lot of the comedy comes from this.

* Bubble party. SpongeBob and Patrick become enraptured by a soap dispenser blowing out bubbles and have a spontaneous “bubble party” in a rough bar on the wrong side of the ocean.

* “Turn us into men”. The princess tricks the pair into continuing on their quest by ‘magically’ turning them into men. They respond in a most unmanly fashion by dancing about and performing little pirouettes.

* “Now we are men” patty-cake. After being duped into believing they’re men with the aid of cunning seaweed moustaches, Spongebob and Pat sing a song and start vibing on some complex and impressive patty-cake style moves. They offer encouragement to one another and take it in turns to pull off the best moves to the amazement of some captivated canyon sea monsters. Pure class.

* “Have you got the bag of winds?” SpongeBob enquires as to whether Patrick has the ‘bag of winds’ about his person. I can’t describe this bit you just have to watch it.

The film goes someway to explaining one or two things I’d always wondered about SpongeBob. For instance; what does SpongeBob do for a living, and what is the nature of his relationship with Patrick? Are these not legitimate questions or am I loosing my mind?

Sophie sent me this link for the Cheese Hamlet in Didsbury. http://tinyurl.com/qaelr They claim to have ‘The world’s best cheese’. Maybe worth investigating further – I’m always up for a nice piece of cheese

Other exciting news: Rufus Wainwright has been added to the FIB bill! The website has had a bit of an overhaul, and the line up looks a bit more finalised now. Can’t wait.

Justice for Azerbaijan

Just watched ‘This world’ on the BBC and as is often the case with documentaries that expose human rights violations I feel angered and powerless by the experience. It was about Azerbaijan – one of those extraordinary Central Asian countries we hear about very infrequently, unless it’s from a comedian doing some sort of hapless foreigner character.

It followed the experiences of two young activists trying to bring about a peaceful revolution in the lead up to the elections in November 2005. These two likable young men, Murad and Emin, were inspired by similar peaceful movements in Serbia, Georgia and most recently the Ukraine. They even appropriated the colour orange in the hope of galvanising popular opinion against the government. The film showed just how difficult it was in a state under such a regime to make any sort of protest whatsoever. In what to my somewhat naive mind seemed on the surface to be a relatively developed country, dissent against the authoritarian government would not be tolerated even on a small scale. The police were, and still are, sanctioned to use brutal force against even the slightest hint of dissent. The sense of frustration that these men experienced was palpable. The fascistic leanings of the Azerbaijan government would seem obvious to any impartial observer. This film seemed to suggest that harassment and fear tactics were authorized by the party in order to mobilize the people into stage-managed pro-government rallies presided over by meat-headed thugs with megaphones. Songs about the ‘blessed homeland of Azerbaijan’ were sung with a distinct lack of enthusiasm by these poor souls as they dutifully trundled along the parade route.

Sadly, even though the European Council, the body responsible for regulating and overseeing a fair electoral process condemned the election last year, (which as this film showed was clearly rigged in the governments favour), the United States government still supports the regime and the fake result. So the opposition in Azerbaijan have a serious problem in that, unlike the instigators of the revolutions in the aforementioned countries that they wanted to emulate, the West by and large does not look favourably on their cause. Surprise surprise, the West is willing to turn a blind eye to human rights abuses when oil and the ‘War on Terror’ are concerned.

After the European body announced their findings on the result the Government capitulated to foreign pressure and allowed the opposition party and its supporters to demonstrate for a meager ‘two hours’. This rally was attended by an estimated 30 thousand people and was deemed a success despite it having to come to an end so abruptly. With the eyes of the worlds press momentarily on Azerbaijan there was at last some cause for optimism. One of the results was the organisation of a further demo to build upon the momentum they had gathered. Unfortunately the worlds press were not present at the next one and the Azerbaijan authorities came down hard upon the crowds. The film captured shocking footage of savage beatings as the police broke up the crowd and tore down placards and banners for freedom. One step forward two steps back it seems.
One could not help but feel a profound sense of sympathy for Murad as, in the immediate aftermath of these awful events, he declared to the camera that “this is no longer about just freedom, human rights and democracy; this is about justice for the people – Justice for Azerbaijan”. So I write this post to express my solidarity with the opposition movement in that country, and in praise of an excellent and informative film.

This film and recent events in Nepal have made me think about democracy in general. On the day in which‘the worlds two most powerful men’ (George W Bush and Hu Jintao) met in the US, it has really struck home to me that fair democratic systems are the real anomalies in the world, and not so-called ‘rogue states’. Stating the obvious perhaps but still. Are the liberal Western European powers the only things even close to fair and representative democracies the world has? Or is it all just a sham and a swindle?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/this_world/4908406.stm

Manchester Passion

On Friday I arrived back in Devon for the Easter break. On leaving Manchester I reflected on how the next time I leave that city it may be for good. I have to say that it is a prospect I am not exactly relishing – it really feels like home now. Anyway it was in such a contemplative mood that, whilst idly channel hopping in front of the box late on Good Friday, I stumbled across a broadcast of the Manchester Passion, an event which had taken place in the city earlier that evening. The BBC website described it as a “contemporary retelling of the last few hours of Jesus’ life using popular music from the cream of Manchester bands from Joy Division to The Smiths and Oasis”. Having been somewhat dubious about this idea when I first heard about it a few weeks back, and despite my lack of religious conviction or what is often nowadays characterised as “spirituality”, I was surprised to find myself deeply moved by the spectacle. Against the odds this production of the story of the passion story centring on Keith Allen’s breezy narration, and featuring stripped down string arrangements of classic manc pop, worked a treat.

Cynics may accuse Manchester City Council of trading on the city’s illustrious pop past whilst ignoring the cloying homogenisation of its very fabric that has happened at break neck speed under this government. There are those that have misgivings about the manner in which the city has developed in the last ten years or so. I have to ask myself at times, when people are visiting for example, and also out of some sense of civic pride, what is so special about Manchester anymore? All these towns look the same these days do they not? But this event, in its presentation and sheer verve, served to underline just what made the city great in the first place – its indefatigability and bravado spirit, or at least it served to reinforce that particular myth. But one can say with some certainty that the endurance of this myth rest on the power of all the superlative music that has its origins in the city.

It is as though the music somehow reflects on the city as a whole. The spirit of the music, in this case, came through the limitations of the production. So the actor playing Jesus who sang Blue Monday, despite the rather hosh posh nature of the accompaniment, brought out something in the music that is constant – it’s essence if you like, it had a nobility and poise, and in this context it worked really very well. Similarly there was something quite marvellous about James’s sit down also which lent itself very well to this kind of re-rendering. It brought a lump to my throat (though the Gin and Tonics may have had something to do with that). Tim Booth played Judas incidentally and his hairdo and beard arrangement was very similar to the Judas type character in the first and only good Matrix film. Perhaps the most brilliant moment was Jesus singing form the very top the Manchester town hall – I am the resurrection by the Stone Roses though by this time the drink had really got to me, but nevertheless a really powerful moment.

Incumbent upon my present circumstances is a concern about which of my experiences of the city I will bring with me into the future, in short what will endure when all else is faded. And I now realise that it is music that has always been so central, my point of departure and arrival so to speak. Manchester Passion reaffirmed this idea. It has been a great pleasure and privilege to dance in the middle of the night to Blue Monday and the in the very city from which it originated – to buy into my own little piece of the myth.

Design Issues

OK so I’m responding to some negative responses to the image that was situated on the banner. The black and white photograph on the edge of the banner was deemed in some quarters cheesey and cliched. A fair point though it was never meant to be read as emblematic of the site itself. Nor was it meant to be some sort of indication of my psychological well-being. It was a just a fairly quiet image to sit in the corner and not detract from the text. Anyways I’ve replaced it with a detail of a painting by Martin Kippenberger called ‘Paris Bar Berlin’. I’m sure I’ll change it again soon.

This was a painting I saw at the first of the weirdly titled ‘Triumph of Painting’ exhibitions at the Saatchi gallery a couple of years back. It’s basically a painting of a wall of paintings in a cafe. Perhaps Kippenberger is referencing the tradition within modernism of paintings within paintings – I’m thinking here of Manet, Van Gogh and Matisse who all at some point painted works from their collections as part of interior scenes. One neat little idea of modernism is that it is to some extent the representation of representation. So works such as these are a kind of literal simulation of that process. But I like the sort of work that conveys a sense of affection for a place and I’m sure this must be a basic driving force for many artists. Maybe it was just a place in Berlin Kippenberger liked to hang out in. I’d like to find out more about it.

Kippenberger is a really interesting artist. Though an excellent painter himself his practice spread across a variety of media. Sometimes an assistant would paint something for him, or he’d employ a sign painter to copy an image he’d selected. He also made extraordinary three dimensional creations. All these tropes are gold dust for critics and theorists. I wish I’d been aware of his work when I was at art college as some of his work seems to encapsulated the notion of ‘good bad painting’ that I was searching for at the time (if that makes any sense). Prior to the Young British artists of the 90s Kippenberger was a master of self promotion and the propagation of his own myth, which maybe explains why the British art establishment never really embraced him up until now. I really enjoyed his long overdue retrospective at the Tate. It runs until the 14th of May.

http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/kippenberger/

Reith Lectures

Just listened the first of this years Reith lectures given by Daniel Barenboim. The general theme or idea is ‘In the beginning there was sound’. Barenboim has a refreshing take on the role that music plays in society and he managed to sidestep, despite repeated questions from the audience afterwards, the usual issues that plague discussions about music and democracy in a public forum. At one cringe-worthy moment, referring to the conductor as Maestro, the cellist Julien Loyd Webber (offspring of that bloody awful composer), asked a question about inclusion in musical education in inner city schools – whether ‘educationalists’ lost their nerve with regard to introducing children to more challenging music. Though dressed up as neutral this seemed rather loaded to me, and what’s more, it really missed the point of the lecture. In Barenboim’s view music is in fact “nothing until it comes into contact with a human being”. There is no universality of meaning or understanding. His favorite definition of music by composer Ferruccio Busoni reflects this view “music is sonorous air”. It is therefore a mistake to attach to music some inherent moral value or impose a hierarchical structure. Classical music is to some extent a closed bubble. It relies on traditions and structures for its survival and can be a bit stuffy to say the least. So it was nice to here one of its great luminaries talk about it in a more open and post modern sense.

Barenboim also talked about the way in which the visual, in terms of the way in which we perceive the world has become dominant. It is certainly true that a whole new generation are growing up with a different way of understanding the world – one that privileges visual culture and that entails new skills and a different kind of intelligence. Whether this development is as alarming as Barenboim claims I am not so sure. People of his generation can tend to be a bit doom and gloom about the future. I was watching an interview with Jan Morris (older still) last night on the television, she seemed particularly pessimistic about the post 9/ 11 landscape.

I am looking forward to the other lectures to see if my understanding thus far is consistent with what else he has to say or whether I’ve got him all wrong.

Toxic Titties come to town

I had the pleasure recently of meeting two members of the lesbian art collective Toxic Titties. They attended our seminar on identity politics, an area in which they are heavily invested. They were very entertaining and charming as they discussed their latest projects. Being male and straight put me in a bit of a minority but this was no place for prejudice – this was radical critical theory with a punk attitude. Right on sister!

Naturally they were acquainted with our esteemed Professor Jones – part of the hip side of the Los Angeles art scene. It would seem as though LA divides into high end big bucks art palaces and a subversive bohemian counter culture just like any other big city. Though by their description in LA it is even more pronounced, it is after all the playground for the American super-rich (parts of it anyway). Can’t wait to visit.

There is an artist called Vanessa Beecroft who caters for the extremely rich. Her work seems to straddle a variety of contexts, I first encountered it in a style mag for example, but it has also graced the covers of respected art journals. Toxic Titties have a real problem with her work for obvious reasons. Mainly though it is because for some people, mostly straight men in positions of authority, though perhaps a growing number of women also, her work is designated post -feminist. Now this is a can of worms I don’t intend to open here but I would recommend to anyone to read Ariel Levy’s recent book ‘Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the rise of raunch culture’ for some thoughtful and considered insight into this matter. To cut a long story short though a couple of members of Toxic Titties answered a call on behalf of Beecroft for ’skinny boyish looking models’ and were recruited to take part in a performance at the Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills. This involved standing around in high heels in the nude for punishing hours, both in a studio and in a three hour performance in the gallery itself. The result for the Toxic Titties was a damning indictment in essay format of Beecroft’s working practices. They exposed the exploitative mechanisms behind an image such as the one above. In the process of their stint as models, Toxic Titties also unionised and negotiated a better pay deal for the women involved. They had planned to sabotage the actual performance but I suppose they chickened out. They were apparently unprepared for how exposed and degraded they felt. The only escape from the boredom was to indulge in fantasies about their fellow models, the only real perk in their ordeal. Have a look at their website to find out more. http://www.freewaves.org/festival_2002/artists/toxictitties.htm

In the beginning

So here it is. What the world has been waiting for. My blog. Finally. Calm yourself now.

It’s going to be about nothing in particular. If something interesting happens I may write it down here. Everyone is welcome to read. But if you don’t know who I am how on earth did you end up here?

Big thanks to Rachel for the space, and to Rick who I am blaming for the name.

Le Flâneur

Seeking out the Beautiful and the Monstrous…