Music Monday: Alabama Shakes

Alabama Shakes are everywhere at the moment; on the cover of the NME, on Jools Holland, being written about in The Guardian, in session for 6Music, playlisted on Radio One... by rights, that fact should make them get right up my nose, the 'Next Big Thing' label being one that's guaranteed to annoy.  But actually, they're so good that it's impossible to feel anything other than admiration.  Their gig on Friday in Birmingham was a triumph, the band working their way through debut album Boys & Girls as well as playing some new material.  I don't have time to post a full gig review, or even much of a usual Music Monday ramble (the endless task of getting myself sorted for America continues...), so without further ado, here's their performance of Hang Loose from Jools Holland a few weeks back.

Looking forward, not down

I'm finding things tough at the moment.  Rather than feeling excited about moving to the States, I'm just feeling stressed.  The seemingly endless amount of forms I have to fill in to get my visa... the long list of jobs I need to get done, both at school and at home, before I leave... the worry that things might not work out and it could all fall through... the worry that it will all work out and I'll actually have to get on the plane come July!  I know it's churlish to complain, when I worked so hard to get to this point, but I'm definitely in need of happy thoughts and things to look forward to.  And luckily, there is plenty to be cheerful about, with my weekend set to get off to a good start this evening as I'm off to Birmingham to see Alabama Shakes. 

I'm also looking forward to... 
spending tomorrow afternoon at The Lansdowne, an awesome pub in Leicester which has become a home-from-home recently, for a clothes swap, lunch with mates, and much daytime drinking (the best kind);

upcoming visits... from my dad & brother on Sunday, and my mum next weekend;

seeing the peerless Karima Francis on Wednesday;

a BBQ with friends (if this rain ever stops, anyway);

spending the first weekend of June at Field Day festival in Hackney.  Beirut, Metronomy, Jeffrey Lewis, Blood Orange... oh my.

Books Q & A

Helen over at Using My Loaf tagged me in a book post the other day, which excited me greatly because there's nothing I love more than banging on about books.  It's why I became an English teacher after all.

So, the rules:
1. Post these rules
2. Post a photo of your favourite book cover
3. Answer the questions below
4. Tag a few people to pass the Q&A on to: I'm tagging Laura and Sarah.

 

What are you reading right now?

I have the most awful habit of starting books (particularly non-fiction) and then failing to finish them, so my bedside table is always stacked with partly-read books.  Piled on there at the moment are Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered by E.F. Schumacher, Rat Girl by Kristin Hersh, and Lonely Planet Colorado. 

Do you have any idea what you’ll read when you’re done with that?
The new Patrick Gale hardback, which has just arrived from my long reservation list at the local library.  He's a wonderful and much under-rated author.

My favourite book cover - the Folio Society edition of I Capture The Castle.

What 5 books have you always wanted to read but haven’t got round to?
I have an extensive collection - 63 at the last count - of books waiting to be read.  Of those, the ones that have languished the longest are:
1. Wuthering Heights, although it's not so much always wanted to read as tried to read, hated and gave up.
2. Oryx & Crake by Margaret Atwood.
3. The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins.  I loved the first 50 pages but never read any further.  Curse of the non-fiction book again.
4. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee.  I promised my friend Caroline that I'd read it if she read Judy Blume's teen classic Forever (surely the reason the name Ralph is so out of fashion?).  She kept up her part of the deal, I'm still trying to get round to mine.
5. Not exactly 'always', but I've been carting Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policeman's Union round for weeks without starting it.

What magazines do you have in your bathroom/lounge right now?

Oh Comely, Bust, Bitch, last Saturday's Guardian Guide.

What’s the worst book you’ve ever read?
I read and enjoy a lot of 'bad' books - trashy American crime fiction is a real favourite -but if I truly dislike a book I tend not to finish it.  One exception: Disgrace by Michael Coetzee.  Read it from cover to cover then threw it across the room because I hated it so much.

What book seems really popular but you actually hated?

See above.  It won the Booker for heaven's sake, but it's such self-indulgent, middle-aged, middle-class, white male moaning.

What’s the one book you always recommend to just about everyone?

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel.  I love this book SO much, and it inspired in me a new love of history and fascination with the Tudor era.
What are your 3 favourite poems?

I love teaching WW1 poetry, especially Wifred Owen's Anthem For Doomed Youth (I always recite the first lines of this -"What passing bells for those who die as cattle..." - during the silence on November 11th) and Dulce Et Decorum Est.  Also Shakespeare's Sonnet 29 (especially as sung by Rufus Wainwright), and John Donne's The Good Morrow. 

Where do you usually get your books?

Charity shops mostly, but also secondhand bookshops, Waterstones, and independent booksellers.  I'm trying really hard not to buy from Amazon, but it's not always easy.

Where do you usually read your books?

Where don't I read books?!  In bed, on the train, in waiting rooms, in the pub.  But mostly in one of my two reading spots at home: my comfy chair by the fire in the winter, and my sofa in the book-lined but draughty front room in summer.

When you were little, did you have any particular reading habits?
In the school holidays, I'd have to visit the local library every other day, because the six books we were allowed to take out would last me about 40 hours before I needed new ones.  I had fairly shocking taste in books though: lots of Nancy Drew mysteries and Enid Blyton.

What’s the last thing you stayed up half the night reading because it was so good you couldn’t put it down?

The Hunger Games (the first one) a few summers ago.  I started reading at 8pm and finished at 4am because it was impossible not to finish it in one sitting.  Sadly the latter two in the trilogy never lived up to the promise of the first one (especially the final instalmant, Mockingjay.  What a disappointment!).

Have you ever “faked” reading a book?

All the time during my degree.  I sat my finals on 'The Literature Of The Fin De Siecle' having only read Mrs Dalloway, The Importance Of Being Earnest, half of De Profundis and one Katherine Mansfield short story.  Blagged it and managed to pass.  I actually really liked those writers, I was just a twat at the time.

Have you ever bought a book just because you liked the cover?

No.

What was your favourite book when you were a child?
After refusing to read it for years (I've never liked having books recommended to me, especially by my mother for some reason, and her repeated insistence of a book's brilliance is a guarantee that I will never read it), when I was about 9 I watched the first episode of the TV adaptation of Anne Of Green Gables and plunged headlong into the series, devouring the books in one weekend. 

What book changed your life?

Probably Generation X by Douglas Coupland.  Or if not changed, then affirmed the life I had chosen to live in my early twenties.  I still harbour a desire to step out of the rat race and go and live in Palm Springs, a la hero Andy.

What is your favourite passage from a book?
Chunks of Shakespeare that I've memorised because I teach it every year aside, I really can't think of anything.

Who are your top five favourite authors?
There are very few authors who never write a duff word, but I've loved everything by Neil Gaiman, Armistead Maupin, Poppy Z Brite, Christopher Brookmyre and Sarah Waters.

What book has no one heard about but should read?
My answer to this is actually the same as Helen's: What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn.  Moving, funny and brilliant.
What are your favourite books by a first-time author?

The previously-mentioned but utterly amazing Generation X by Douglas Coupland, The Secret History by Donna Tartt, Lost Souls by Poppy Z Brite, The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood, Prep by Curtis Sittenfield.

What 3 books are you an “evangelist” for?

Gosh, just 3?  There are a ton of books I evangelise for at school.  As far as I'm concerned, making teenagers read books I love is one of the few perks of the job.  Two I recommend all the time are Framed by Frank Cottrell Boyce and The Shell House by Linda Newberry.  Framed is the funniest book I've ever read, it has me howling no matter how many times I go back to it.  If it doesn't make you laugh out loud you are most likely clinically dead.  And The Shell House is a lovely, tender story set partly during WW1 and partly in contemporary times, and deals with sexuality, faith and loss.
Out of school I recommend Interpreter Of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri a lot, often buying copies to give away.  It's Pulitzer-winning short story collection, and although short stories aren't usually my thing, Lahiri's are so beautifully constructed and narratively strong.  Her second collection, Unaccustomed Earth, is amazing too. 

What is your favourite classic book?

Persuasion by Jane Austen, a wonderful story of love lost and found.  I'm an incurable romantic and the final scenes with the letter make me sob with joy.  Some women may want to find their Darcy, but I'm all about Captain Wentworth.

5 other notable mentions?
1. The Great Gatsby is my favourite American classic.
2. For YA fiction which is 2o years out of date but still delightful, Paula Danziger's novels.
3. Stephen Chbosky's The Perks Of Being A Wallflower.
4. Any of Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodie series.  Another instance of my mum telling me how brilliant something was and me refusing to read them.  When I eventually picked one up, I finished it in one sitting, howling with laughter all the while.
5. Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy.

Music Monday: The Beastie Boys

While indie has been my constant for the past twenty years, there's not a genre of music that I haven't been a fan of for however fleeting a time.  UK garage; thrash metal; funky house; riot grrrl; hip hop: they've all taken their turn on my stereo.  In my first and second years at university I got heavily into The Beastie Boys, thanks in large part to Graham, the DJ at the club I worked in (and spent half my life at), Alcatraz.  And so began my first hip hop phase, as I bought the records (on vinyl, naturally.  I was such a poser), wore the t-shirt, read Grand Royal, the Beastie's magazine.  I'd wear my baggy jeans slung low on my hips, a baby tee with Tank Girl or Spiderman stretched across my chest, sneakers on my feet and my hair in spikes.  When Sabotage or Sure Shot came on in the club, I'd charge around the dancefloor with the boys.  I cringe now to think of that gauche 19 year-old trying too hard to be cool and urban.  Trying too hard to keep up.

I was surprised by how sad I felt when I heard that Adam Yauch, aka MCA, had died on Friday.  The Beastie Boys will always take me back to those good times on the Alcatraz dance floor with Steve and Kirsty, Millar and Pacey.  And later in the 90s, around the time of Intergalactic's release, with Adam, Becky, Dave, Mike... people I've largely lost touch with but who were the centre of my world for a long time. 

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing

Life is either a daring adventure... print from the Happy Deliveries Etsy shop

My mum is amazing at knowing just the right words to say or, in this case, share.  Knowing that I'm feeling a little overwhelmed by the daunting task of packing my life up and relocating to America for a year, on Sunday she gave me a slip of paper on which was printed the above quotation in full:

"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all. 

Security is mostly a superstition.  It does not exist in nature."

How perfect is that?!  If I wasn't in the process of getting rid of all extraneous stuff and putting the rest into my attic, this print would be top of my lust list. 

Music Monday: Ryan Adams

Posting another Ryan Adams song on Music Monday feels a bit like breaking the rules.  Although the first video was long enough ago that, if this was a mixtape, the tracks would be on different sides, I would prefer to try and find a different artist each week.  But my gosh, he was so great when he played in Sheffield on Friday, so more Ryan Adams it is.

This video was filmed earlier in the tour, in the Netherlands, but is a great representation of the gig on Friday.  He played the whole show solo, swapping between playing an acoustic guitar, a piano and a mouth organ.  I'd imagined him to be the kind of person who wouldn't play old stuff - particularly not the 'greatest hits' type songs - but his set ended up being an amazing mix of new tracks from Ashes & Fire plus a ton of older material, including Whiskeytown and Cardinals songs, and arguably his most famous singles, Firecracker and New York, New York (from 2001's Gold).  Come Pick Me Up was the last song of the show, and one I'll be humming to myself for many weeks to come.

An Instagram weekend

Now that I'm counting down the weeks until I leave, I'm trying to make every weekend count.  And so despite the horrible weather, this weekend was a busy one...

1. Amazing gigs by Bombay Bicycle Club (ok, Wednesday's gig wasn't at the weekend) and Ryan Adams.  Highlights of the latter included a slightly mental, five minute long, whispered paean to his cat, Mr Cat, as an introduction to New York, New York; his witty and sarcastic between-songs banter; a beautiful acoustic version of Come Pick Me Up; and an encore featuring Alice In Chains' Nutshell, thus proving that I am not the only one hung up on the early 90s Seattle scene at the moment.

2. Taking lots of photographs of my lovely house.  Part of the planning for my exchange to America is working out whether the guy I'm exchanging with wants to live in my home, hence frantic measuring of rooms and the taking of many photos.

 

3 & 4. An extremely rainy and windswept walk with my mum and brother on the moors above Halifax on Saturday afternoon.  These pictures were both taken in the brief ten minutes of sunshine as we walked around the grounds of Shibden Hall, site of many a childhood trip.

B marks the spot

I love maps and I love typography, and when I was in Iceland last October the hotel we stayed in had some cool map-covered wooden letters on the wall.  Etsy seller Little White Dog makes beautiful bespoke map-covered letters and other paper sculptures that would make amazing gifts for a wedding or special birthday, but at £25 a pop I couldn't justify the expense.  So I decided to have a crack at making something similar myself.  

 

Tending towards the slapdash when it comes to crafting, I naturally bodged it up a little bit, putting too much PVA glue on the map I used (a vintage New York City transit map poster from Baileys Home & Garden in Ross-On-Wye) but all told I'm thrilled with the effect. 

The cardboard letter was about £2.50 from Hobbycraft, with the 'B' standing for both Brown (my surname) and Brooklyn (the part of the map I used for the letter, and where I've spent many a happy trip visiting cousins).  As I have a drawer full of interesting vintage maps that I picked up in Hay-On-Wye, I can see map letters becoming my new go-to gift.

Seen & heard: April 2012

If you thought my obsession with the early 90s grunge era was over, think again.  I have enjoyed re-watching some classic 90s films and discovering a new take on the Kurt Cobain story. 

1. The Truth About Cats & Dogs.  How I loved this film the first time I saw it.  And the time after that, and the twenty or so times after that.  So why did it leave a sour taste in my mouth this time round?  I think it's partly that I just can't get my head around Janeane Garofalo in the ugly duckling role; she is stunning, but seems to be permanently cast as the frump just because she's short and maybe 15lbs heavier than the Hollywood norm.  As a fellow shortarse, this makes me cross.

2. Singles.   Worth a watch, if only for the amusingly bad acting by Eddie, Stone & Jeff from Pearl Jam as members of Matt Dillon's character's band.  A great soundtrack and some surprisingly sweet romantic moments make this a good one to revisit. 

3. Last Days.  Directed by Gus Van Sant (Milk, My Own Private Idaho), this was an interesting film that I didn't exactly love, but enjoyed watching nonetheless.  Dreamy and soporific, it moves slowly through the last days of musician 'Blake' (a thinly-veiled Kurt Cobain) as he wanders around Seattle avoiding friends and family, before killing himself.

Music Monday: Dev Hynes

Not just one band and one video this week, instead three bands with one man linking them all: the mighty Devonte Hynes.  "Who he?" I hear you ask.  First appearing on the UK music scene as one of thrash/electronica/indie band Test Icicles, Dev then went on to a solo project influenced by folk and country under the Lightspeed Champion moniker, and more recently has been recording and performing electronica as Blood Orange.  He is also rather beautiful and in possession of a good line of hats. 

SO hard to choose just one Lightspeed Champion track.  His first album, Falling Off The Lavender Bridge, is one of my favourite of the last decade and packed with lovely songs.  Midnight Surprise is incredible, with a great steel guitar intro and twisted lyrics like, "wake up and smell the semen," but at almost 10 minutes long like I felt it might not be the ideal introduction to Dev.  In the end I went for Dry Lips, which is one of those songs that grabs me by the guts and twists.  In a good way.  For a miserable track about heartbreak ("tell her/I give up/He's won/And I have lost all") I find it really uplifting, and it will forever remind me of the moment it came onto my iPod as I was walking across the Millenium bridge in London one windy summer's day and gave me one of those perfect, movie moments where you feel like you have a soundtrack to your life.

Circle Square Triangle by Test Icicles: best friend to all indie disco DJs for the way it mixes perfectly with The Rapture's House Of Jealous Lovers, and a massive tune to boot.  Makes me want to leap around the dancefloor like I'm 18 instead of well into my 30s.

And finally Blood Orange, his newest project, and a video for Forget It that looks like it cost about 32p to make.  I love his vocals, not to mention the pretty guitar arpeggios just after he sings "I am not your saviour".   I am SO excited about seeing Blood Orange at Field Day festival in June.