As the decade draws to a close I thought why not attempt to make a list of the top twenty albums from the past ten yea..what? Everybody's doing them? Really? But I thought no-one liked making lists? That contradicts much of what I believe. Hmmm. Anyfucks, here you are. Get on with it.

1)Sufjan Stevens; Illinois

2)Dirty Projectors; Bitte Orca

3)Joana Newsom; Ys

4)Wilco; A Ghost is Born

5)Sparks; Hello Young Lovers

6)The Lilac Time; Looking for a Day in the Nigh

7)Half Man Half Biscuit; Achtung Bono!

8)Scritti Politti; White Bread, Black Beer

9)Richard Hawley; Lowedges

10)Randy Newman; Harps and Angels

11)Rufus Wainright; Want One

12)TV on the Radio; Dear Science

13)Bob Dylan; Love and Theft

14)Rilo Kiley; More Adventurous

15)XTC; Wasp Star

16)Cat Power; The Greatest

17)Lambchop; Aw C'mon/No You C'Mon

18)The Decemberists; The Crane Wife

19)Luke Haines; Off My Rocker at the Art School Bop

20)Elvis Costello; Secret, Profane and Sugarcane

You should probably buy them all.

Incidentally, an honourable mentions goes to: http://tinyurl.com/yb8mut7

Thunks.

Graveyard of Lyrics

What Ho!

This blog is called the Graveyard of Lyrics. It might, however, be more appropriate to call it the Hospital of Lyrics. These lyrics aren't yet dead, merely on a life support machine.

I am a songwriter. It is important, before we proceed to make it clear that I am not just a lyricist.I write melodies too. This is necessary to make clear, for the happy continuation of this piece:

"In olden days an inch of stocking was looked on as something shocking now heaven knows, anything goes"

...That couldn't have been written by a 'lyricist'; It contains too much internal trickery, too much inherent melody; if you read it through, the only way it works is in it's melodic form, it dictates itself to you. Clearly, when I say 'melodic form' here, I by no means imply the notes are bound up in the words, simply that it dictates a rhythm, thus you can tell it is written by a musician/lyricist (Cole Porter, incidentally).
If you write lyrics and the melody, you are blessed and cursed with extra impetus, extra responsibility, but chiefly the capacity to add an extra dimension to what you write. I can't just sit at a desk and write a page of lyrics. They come to me with their melody attached. Rather, I affect them, infect them instantaneously with rhythm and melody. Most of the time, anyway. This, as I said, gives them a life of their own; you start writing something with a lyrical impetus (ie; a subject) as well as a rythm, then it's pretty much alive and writes itself;

"I'm covered in mothdust but I'm sinking to the flowers, dog jowls and calabrese and I'm down on my knees having a tug on these laces are disgracing my boots which keep me grounded but I'm only really passing the time until this notion of this ocean of pain dissipates and makes me bouyant again"

That's an extreme example of something where the rhythm was very dictatorial.

But I digress. The reason I amble with so much pre is that I am posting here couplets which have nowhere to go.

A song is anything that sticks. So said Bob Dylan. What he meant is that a song is anything which stays alive long enough to be completed, become inflated and then floated. Sometimes songs don't work because they're no good. That happens to everyone in all walks of life. I'm not concerned when something isn't good enough. What concerns me is when something sticks but won't inflate fully. There's nothing as bad as a semi-inflated balloon. Or a mixed metaphor.

I have, through the years begun, and subsequently left, pale orphans of lyrics. Couplets, sometimes more, which I love but whose impetus is minimal. Sometimes it's the thematic impetus:

"The wind is the finest of stylists of hair
on a list that consists of your brushes your combs and your fingertips"

I did write one more couplet:

To this list I insist we just add one more thing
the way sunlight comes over and swaddles you in like it knows it should

With which I was never happy from a lyrical point of view, though it does have music. The first couplet I really love. But I had no idea where to go; Does anyone want an entire song about hair? Actually I would happily write a whole song abut hair if I happened to have enough to say about it at the time. There is, while we're here, a magnificent poem about hair called 'Woman Combing. Degas' by R.S. Thomas which I can't locate on the internet so you'll have to do your own research. Lazy.
One option, clearly, is to move on from hair as a theme, and that would have been my intention, but then it just became 'a song about a girl' with no reason for her to exist. It wasn't about someone when I wrote it, it was, plainly, about the wind bineg a great stylist of hair, so it couldn't be about someone when I continue to write it. Of course there are NO rules, I totally acknowledge that, but there are feelings, strange instincts which stop you from being dishonest in prose or poetry, which want to drive you in the correct direction. I could no more write about a non-existant girl without an initial impetus to do so than I could put a fried egg on top of a bowl of shreddies; it's imaginable, indeed it's phyiscally highly possible, but it simply isn't part of the cereal's narrative.

I am currently working on this:

She turned your straight line to a curve
with her dress like a map of the world
And, oh!, what rose to the top
When her techtonic plates puled apart

This may yet be completed but I include it here for the same reason; I am in awe of it. Let me make something clear here: Just because I love a lyric, it doesn't make me egotistical or pretentious or any suchlike pejorative terms. It simply means I have, accidentally, uncovered something. The cliche about the sculptor is true; Writing is mostly unconscious sculpting, plucking the wind from the void and handing it to people. So it's as surprising to me as it is to anyone when I create something, this means I have a feeling of dettachedness from my words. I am thus able to judge them, in the truest sense of the word, objectively. (I don't mean I objectively know them to be inherently good, simply that I enjoy them like objects seperate from me, the subject)

The inherent truth of the above lyric, if you will indulge me (I hate explaining lyrics, but as this is an academic piece, I feel a little unrestrained) is: Being in a relationship changes you yet you remain the same. How, in terms of image can you describe a change yet a stasis? You could say that if you are a straight line then a background can change you. How? If you put a straight line on a globe it becomes curved. [Obviously, literally it does not. Art, however, is never literal, even when it thinks it is. The very act of description, of representations belies the object you are representing. Denies truth with it's very attempt at it.] So to make this abstract flurry a physical image, could you put a map under the line and call it a relationship? Yes. The map could be a dress worn by the girl. Then it becomes interesting because the default setting for art is pretty much sex. Thus the idea of the line being over a woman in a dress like a map of the world ignites feeling of sex, especially considering all this talk of lines and curves (those lines and curves are not sexual, per se, though they imply sex-to-come). And we have impetus in the form of image and intent, thus we can allow a light vusual pun, can we not? "What rose to the top when her techntonic plates pulled apart?" Her plates (feet), pulling apart (her legs, running along a fault line, seperating) allowing you to enter her. I shan't patronise you further by describing what rose to the top...
My problem then is where to go with it. I don't' want to describe sex, that is not my impetus. I have an enormous fear that whatever I shall add may ruin what has come before. I don't wish to persist with the metaphor at too laborious a length, but I don't want to let go too suddenly of the imagery, its too potent. I do have several options- continue with the use of geometry as a theme, or geography as a theme.

I was born in the middle of june
With a Gemini Sun
And a Leo moon
But I fear my virgo
Ascended too soon

No idea where to go with this baby either. Don't want to write about star signs. Or another girl song.
Then there's this:

They're coming to take me away; no joke
They're coming to tear me apart
though time turns your coal face to diamond
It turns, back to black, a dead heart
And turns your soft skin into paper
Which tears as you turn in your bed
And sleep comes a such a respite from
the fears that, by day, bow your head

Which becomes too poetic towards the end. Even towards the beginning, aguably, it's too facetious. It teeters on the brink of cliche and angst-poetry yet retains something thanks to it's humour (loosely speaking, it is not serious) and its use of images. But it sounds to me like it could be read by a grandiloquent Welshman. OverANNUNCIATING every OTHER syllable, then whispering, squeezing dry the flannel of sadness. And it's rhythm is persistant. It wants to carry on, and carry on in that same trotting, horses and cart, roll, step, roll, jolt manner. And I prefer to subvert rhythm; ie: To go back to Cole Porter, same song:

"Good authors too who once new better words now only use four-letter words writting prose
Anything Goes"

This invents its own rhythm, which, as I said, dictates a melody. The above lyric (mine) is a poetic lyric, it begs to be read or doesn't beg at all. It could be slung into any already existing melody or be used to create any number of its own. And that is not what you (I) want. When the rhythm is unique, the song will be.

Well then. Thank you for your time. Sorry if this piece is a little stringy, I've had very little sleep and just wanted to get this stuff down. Woke up after 3 hours sleep with this:

Embroiled in embraces unlovely
trying to remove her top
Wine had hastened this weary conclusion
and he wasn't the sort to say 'Stop!'
there was something about her quite tragic
there was something about her quite bland
and though him wrapped around her improved her
it turned him to less of a man.
In rooms where there's no telelvision
and the silence in held in esteem
and there's no central heating to speak of
so you make your own sights, sounds and steam;
The images you are enacting
are dishonest and vulgar and cheap
it's not that you really don't like her
it's that you'd rather be home, and asleep
and your hand moves across her dead body
and hers ventures coldy 'cross yours
but the actions mean nothing to either
your the cheapest- the freest- of whores.
So back to the rooms that delight you
and back to the warmth of your flat
where your hands can stay under the duvet
and the pillows are friendly and fat
where the warm television will chatter
and the radio swims 'round your head
you may be alone, never matter!
your alone with your top on in bed.

Which is rather silly. So sorry for that, too. Have a nice day now.

mx

Credit Crunch Supper No.1: Pork Osso Bucco with Risotto

This meal costs about 6 pounds for two people. And it's so fucking delicious. You'd pay at least twelve per portion for it at Carluccio's. Osso Bucco is a lovely cheap and flavoursome cut from the shin of the pig. It takes about two-hours fifteen minutes or so, but the majority of that can be spent watching a film. I watched Max Ophuls' 'La Ronde'. Chiefly so that I could use the pun; 'You are Ophuls, but I like you'. Remember, you can watch any film, up to 90minutes. It doesn't have to be pun-friendly, though this does help in the retelling...

Ingredients:

1 Onion
2 Fingers of Celery
Three prongs of garlic.
A good inch of Chorizo (Ideally Piccante)
4 Pork Osso Bucco (about 3 pounds at Waitrose, since you ask)
Two tins of tomatoes.
Some Parmesan
Some Butter
Some salt and pepper.
A lemon.
A ladle. (To taste)

In a thick pan, with a lid, ideally a Le Creuset bastard, fry, on a medium to high heat, in olive oil, some roughly chopped wadges of chorizo. Try to get them to stick to the pan, but not blacken.

Reduce the heat.

Add some more olive oil.
Add finely chopped onions, garlic and celery to the whole shebang. Stir around and let them brown off for about 5 minutes. Turn everything out onto a, I don't know, plate?

Increase heat. Place your Osso Bucco into the pan. Leave them be for about 4 minutes or so- you want them to colour up. Like Robert Downy Junior, only more tasteful. Turn the little Robert Downey Junior's over. Let them brown on the other side. After 5 minutes or so, turn them out onto another thing. Anything flat, really.

Turn the heat right down.

Here's the vaguely complicated bit; you want to deglaze your pan; pour a dribble of hot water in the son of a bitch and let it fizzle. Stir frantically. Add about half a pint or so of water to the pan and continue to stir. Then pour out the (hopefully) meat-brown liquid into a jug or anything, really.

Okay. You might want a cup of tea now. Or a piss. Do it, no one's watching.

Put some fresh olive oil into the pan; put it on a medium heat. Add the Osso Bucco, add the the mirrepois (that's what the french call finely chopped onions and celery). Add to this the two tins of tomatoes. Increase heat and bring pan to a kind, but not overbearing, bubble. Once done, reduce to lowest heat. Put on the lid.

Now is the ideal opportunity to watch a film. As this meal is pretty much Italian, I would suggest Umberto D. This film is 89 minutes, which is ideal.

After an hour. Pause the film. Isn't the dog cute?. Anyway. Remove the lid from the pan. Go on, fuck off back to your film.

Once it ends, run back into your kitchen. Put the pan of meat-water into a saucepan. Add another pint to it and bring to the boil. Reduce to a simmer. Put a couple of slices of lemon into the meat-pan.

In a totally different pan on a medium heat put a big dollop of butter. Scoop out, from the other pan, a ladle-full of onions (if some tomato and chorizo comes along for the ride, that's just fine by me) and put in pan with the butter. We're making risotto; Pour some risotto rice into the pan. You be the judge of how much. But 2 mugs full should be okay. Stir the risotto about in the pan to cover it in butter. Now you know the drill; Add a ladle of liquid from the pan and stir it about, ensuring rice doesn't burn against the bottom of the pan. Once the liquid has evaporated, add another ladle-full of meat-water. You will probably need to do this for between twenty and thirty minutes. It's fun, though. You know it's ready when it no longer tastes like uncooked rice but, instead, tastes like risotto.

Turn off the pan with the meat in it. Add salt and pepper to taste. Remove two of the Osso's and put them on a plate. Put a little of the onion mixture atop them.

Turn off the heat under the risotto pan. Add another dollop of butter and some Parmesan shavings and stir excitedly. Add salt to taste. Add a fork to taste.

Ladle some of the risotto onto the plate with the meat. Do a fucking dance.

Retire to your dining room and watch a comedy show whilst you eat. I watched an episode of Peep Show, but you could watch Seinfeld or Arrested Development. It's totally up to you really. But it should be one of those three.

If you have any questions please leave comment and I'll be onto you like a ton of bricks, as my old P.E teacher used to say, in a totally different context.

Okay, see you soon.

Your Obliging Blogger

Have You Seen..?

In my youth I would scour the shops for French Films (they are a genre all to themselves, hence the capitalisation). I used to look particularly for the Artificial Eye logo; This is not because they are a better distributor than any of the others: No, It was simply because to me, they were a sure chance of a naked willowy young lady.
Other boys had their page threes, I had Charlotte Gainsbourg (still an obsession of mine) in Merci La Vie, in An Impudent Girl, in The Cement Garden. Later I had Simone Signoret, I had Anna Karina, I had Catherine Deneuve. The others could keep their smut. I needed humanity. Bleak, sad, real; funny.

This was my introduction to film. For a while there I thought that Bertrand Blier (director of 'Merci La Vie', of 'Les Valseuses') was as ground breaking as they came. It took a long while for me to fully embrace film to the extent that I discovered him a pale rip off of Godard. Later still that film could be termed an obsession for me. I dallied for a long time at the periphery. Something (or someone) always stopped me from taking that dive into the seemingly pretentious waters.
It took, as it usually does, being enabled; a great video store, for me to be truly liberated. That, and later, the BFI, gave me pleasures, which compare and, in most cases, exceed those pleasures gained from any but the best novels.
Thus I devoured everything by Fritz Lang, by Louis Bunuel, by Murnau, by De Sica, Fellini, Antonioni. I watched anything vaguely Noirish. I explored silent cinema (Feuillade), MGM, New Hollywood, of course the Nouvelle Vague, Italian Realism, German Expressionism.
And last month I quit the video shop because I'd seen everything.

Not everything of course. Just everything that tickled me.

I joined Sofa Cinema and sat there attempting to work our how their boast of having over 60,000 films fitted in with their not having, for instance, Die Nibelungen (an apparent Fritz Lang masterpiece). Of course a great deal of what I really wanted to watch was still not available in the UK; a mixture of rights issues and quality of print- another blog, another time- but I needed films.

Then I heard about the new book from David Thomson. Have You Seen..? is, as it says on the front, 'A Personal Introduction to 1,000 films'. It is alphabetical, its first entry being Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein, its first entry by date is 1898. Its a wonderful book.
It is wonderful for numerous reasons; No points system, a wandering eye which plucks from the ranks of the everyday films usually ignored in similar projects (Terminator, Dawn of The Dead) but, equally, a love of the absolutely obscure.
His obsessions, seemingly, mirror mine, which helps. Most of the works of Lang, of Bunuel and Hitchcock help make this tome the heaviest reference book in Christendom. But there are so many fresh, exciting, intriguing additions; I have never seen (am about to watch) anything by Max Ophuls, I am fuzzy on the MGM-ers; George Cukor etc. And this films lays them out on a plate ready for my (and your) devouring.

His writing is passionate but never ever blinkered; he is critical of virtually all of his darlings- raising lesser known works higher in the pantheon and lowering untouchable 'classics', yet he is sparing and never facetious. Each review is stuffed with details of the photographer, the supporting cast and anyone who excels in the film. It is an education.

And now, I'm afraid, my Sofa Cinema list is bustling. I am worried, however, that if this book sells as well as I expect, that there will be a long wait for the titles I most pressinlgly wish to see.

Now, where did I leave that video of Merci La Vie?

Why Blog? Why Me? Why Now?

I am in general disagreement with the currently held view that blogs are a threat to journalism. I appreciate that they effectively already are from an employment sense- especially in the American Press, but that is Market Forces and they are clearly a different sort of son of a bitch.

In terms of quality of criticism, however, blogs will remain like those tawdry bands who litter up venues such as London's 'Dublin Castle', most of them called things like 'Cock Sleeve' or 'Bunny Vinegar Dream', all of whom will fail and failingly so. Even their failure will be dismal.

And Bloggers? Well, occasionally, just like the very occasional band, one will stick his or her head above the metaphor and cause something other than annoyance at poorly formed sentences and will, at a pinch, be taken to heart. That person will be embraced by the mainstream, so far as serious journalism is mainstream, and, as it were, will have a gold record, 47 adoring young women gnawing at their knuckles in the manner not seen since The Beatles of '64 and a bucket of Schloer, for to stem the dryness.

Who am I to suddenly, and for no pissing reason, provide you with undesired information? I am Martin, and I will be Your Obliging Blogger. Why is what I choose to say worth listening to? Well, hopefully because I am a pretend expert on all manner of subjects but am able to use irony and humour to deflate my apparent ego and to let me get away with vague inaccuracies.

I do not intend to publish inaccuracies though. This will be an exclusive Salon in which I hope you will react to my views on such things as Films (never, my friends, The Movies) Literature (Books?) TV, Restaurants, Language, and many many things. I will attempt to be lucid and fluid but not too lucid; Memories of my Philosophy of Language exam which lasted 3hr on my 21st birthday, wherein I reached an impasse at 2 hours and 14 pages and changed my mind about the question we had been set, I then spent the final hour amusing myself by arguing against my conclusion, attempting to sound like I had been playing devils advocate...but I digress, the point is that rambling and digression are where humour and where the beauty of language take over. So I may just digress a lot.

Why now? Two of my friends have blogs; blessays, whatsoever you wish to call them. Many people I know have them and I have, sure, dabbled my toes in their frosty waters but, for the best part, I don't care for blogs; I don't really care enough about other people's opinions: It has taken me twenty or so years to find a -very short- list of journalists whom I actually enjoy reading; Jonathan Meades, Charlie Brooker, Will Self, Jay Rayner, Armando Ianucci, John Gray...I do not intend to spend my time reading those who may be misguidedly thinking they have the rights to join their ranks simply because the technology exists for them to appear to do so.
But I have to ignore the competition for moral reasons too. I don't want to believe someone I know might be better than me.
It has thus taken me this long to decide to ignore the possiblity that there may be calls of 'Turncoat' or 'Arriviste' and jeers for my hanging as a symbol of a society gone mad with opinions. Having a view is not expressing it; Heavens, expressing it is not journalism; Journalism isn't necessarily good journalism; One person's good is another's pretentious rubbish.
Please don't get me the fuck started on Stanley Kubrick. Not this early on.

These, my pretty young things, are the hurdles. Hopefully you will have fun watching me attempt to jump them, and have the good manners to laugh when I knock the buggers over- Show restraint and an almost (almost) Christian generosity of spirit when I return to pick the hurdles up and start practising within eyeshot of you.

Well, that's enough spouting from me. I will hopefully bring bigger, more substantial- possibly tougher- pies to the table soon so if, for you, this was a little light and needless, then please except my humble (Pie?) apologies; this was meant as an introduction and now that we know each other, we can dispense with the kindnesses that leave dying flowers standing; lets kick off our dancing shoes, remove our stove-pipe hats, pour ourselves a glass of old Tawny and stare dreamily, hopefully; wistfully at the fire as it reflects back at us the world and its refractions...

Your Obliging Blogger