Gerhard Richter at the Tate Modern

Posted on January 6, 2012 by John S

On 23 December, the Friday, I had a half day, and amazingly I had for once done all my Christmas shopping. So I headed to the Tate Modern to have another look at the Gerhard Richter exhibition.  I’d been there before, raced around, been amused by the war planes and the “grey period” (which was very grey – in fact nothing but grey) and loved the bright anarchy of some of the abstracts. I’d thought, very German.  Serious and absurd at the same time.  A bit like listening to Kraftwerk. But I felt that I should give it more, immerse myself and try to understand.

What follows are my reflections on the journey through the exhibition second time around.  Headphones on to help me understand where he was coming from, but most importantly, plenty of time to absorb and interpret – and feel.  I took notes on my iPad as I went through through the gallery – how modern is that? – and this is what I found.

There’s a theme, especially at the start, of the clash between the figurative and the abstract. Richter paints real objects, often from photographs, and then distorts them.  The most blatant is his table, which is obscured by a whirl of grey – the application of solvent I believe. It seems like wanton destruction of the painting, but enough remains to match the faithful and the vandalistic.

We move on to some eerie representations of the second world war. From photos, Richter paints the bombers that destroyed his home city of Dresden. The British and the Americans both get a look in. Then he portrays relatives who had a Nazi past.  His Uncle Rudi in military coat, his Aunt Marianne holding him as a baby. They are all blurred somewhat – murky, imprecise.  Representing the vagueness with which the memories were still held. These pictures were painted in the sixties and confronted a past that people didn’t want to confront. That is the bravery of art.  The picture before you doesn’t tell the whole story.

Richter was very taken with the French cubist painter Duchamp, who declared the end of art, or something like that. Of course it never ends – you see it everywhere.  Go into any secondary school and look at the fantastic work that the pupils are producing and then say art is finished.  Never! But anyway, Richter’s response was some hazy works that paid tribute to Duchamp.  His wife, Ema, descending a staircase, nude.  Two couples,  smiling, disintegrating. It made me think of the Velvet Underground, musically. Heroin, European Son. Vague, disorientating.

Then there were some panes of glass… which were panes of glass.  Which you could rearrange (well, if you were the curator). So they would look different each time. OK, I liked the audacity, but they were still just panes of glass. I like the explanations though.  It’s art, maan…

The first of the blocks of colour was next. Just 192 this time. Fascinating. A simple concept- the juxtaposition of the colours available in the paintshop. Your eyes wonder over the whole, checking, blurring, wandering.  For Richter it was about everyday life, but he took it further – see later.

In stark contrast with the colours were a series of paintings of townscapes, again from photographs.  They were again in greys and blacks and whites and looked like the towns and cities had been flattened. As far as I understand that wasn’t the original intention, but Richter himself agreed later that that was what they looked like.  Subliminal?  The war again?

And now into the grey period!  Lots of canvasses which were very grey.  The end of art? The era of depression? The victory of the factory, the motorway? Der Autobahn? When you have such a blank, spare canvass, it’s up to your imagination.  There are textures, crenellations, but essentially they are just grey. My children would say: I could do that. They are just grey. But just being grey says all sorts of things.  Depression, hopelessness, inertness, impersonality.  These, I imagine, were the emotions, or non-emotions, that Richter was trying to convey. The end of art. But in fact not the end, because so much is left to the imagination.

Then we had the ultimate in colour configuration. 4096 squares. Three primary colours and grey. Built, multiplied ,mixed, re-ordered, replicated. A really fascinating canvass that plays tricks with the eye, invites you to see patterns and outbursts, endlessly intriguing. One of the highlights. And so basic. The story of colour.

It was then time for the abstracts.  The blurb tells us that this was a time of happiness in Richter’s life.  A new relationship.  Colours, excitement, the banishment of grey. Hurrah to that! It began with some distorted photo works – strange flowers and artefacts.  Pinks and greens.  But then my favourite room. A set of paintings which were just really bright – greens, yellows, slashes of red, wedges of blue. They appealed to my primal sense. Lovely, exciting colours.  I didn’t care what they were about. On close inspection, I could see the intricacies of the painting, the early use of the squeegie, layers upon layers of paint. Some then scratched away, supplanted.  A riot. Fantastic. At times I thought I was seeing an underwater scenario, with weird fishes – cue Radiohead. Or a wild summer scene. There was so much left to the imagination in the swirl of colours and shapes. And on the end wall a vast mirror. Just there. Reflecting back on you. Altering your perspective, adding a touch of self-consciousness. Brilliant.

In later rooms the abstracts became denser, darker. More use of the squeegee.  A sense of dark forest and the shafts of orange and white light disturbing the sullen hue. A sense of reflections on the surface of a morbid lake.  Foreboding, claustrophobic.  OK, I was letting my imagination run riot here, but that is the glory of the abstract.  It sets you up for some real speculation if you are ready to to play the game.

There were a series of eight small abstracts in a row, the last a different shape to the rest, which intrigued. They invited you to see a flow from one to the next.  Again, giving you, the viewer, the power to invent a story, concoct a dream.  In the middle paintings there were shards of colour, scraped from the surface to reveal the underlying paint that looked like flying drones in an Iain M Banks sci-fi novel, carving their way through the atmosphere of a gas giant. That was where I was going as I re-examined the paintings.

Elsewhere there were more specific items.  A series of grey, blurred paintings depicted the Baader-Meinhof gang in prison. They were 1970s terrorists in Germany, or freedom fighters, depending on your take. There was an ambiguity, verging on sympathy, for the gang, many of whom died in custody, in the hazy grey paintings.

Richter also took the works of classical artists and delivered a modern depiction. In this exhibition there was a blurred take on a Titian painting about the annunciation.  And a copy of a Vermeer in which a young woman read a book under a bright light.  And there was a stark, beautifully-lit portrayal of his daughter with her back turned, in a red dress.

Towards the end there were paintings of 9/11, hugely blurred, inexplicit, no flames or thunder, but just a scraping of colour which might have been a plane. Mysterious, confusing. The dust cloud rather than the explosion. As ever, obscuring, but also leaving everything to the viewer’s imagination. Chilling.

Aside from the main exhibition there was a “Cage Room”. A whole series of  wild abstracts on huge canvasses. Apparently painted while listening to the abstract music of John Cage. That seemed right. Richter’s painting, with its blurred images, abstraction, gloom and ambivalence, conjured up for me the sounds of the Velvet Underground, Bowie in Berlin, early Roxy Music, Kraftwerk.  Lost and found.  Hopeless and yet with space for the imagination and colour and even celebration.  Glorying in the decadence and the rock’n’roll.

Gerhard Richter would probably be shocked at the the thought, but his art rocked!

In a very abstract way…

The paintings in this blog are taken from a Gerhard Richter art site. There are loads more paintings, but not everything that was in the exhibition.

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England’s green and pleasant land – Yarpole, Herefordshire

Posted on January 5, 2012 by John S

Spent the new year with family and friends in Yarpole, Herefordshire. A lovely part of the world, a few miles south of Ludlow, Shropshire, and north of Leominster (pronounced Lem-ster). Herefordshire and Shropshire don’t attract the attention of the West Country or the Peak District, say, but they are equally beautiful.  That classic English country scenery: the rolling hills, in various blends of green, maybe some purple-brown heather, to offset the verdant hues.  In winter I love the skeletons of the leafless trees, unceasingly intricate. Set against the sun they form awesome silhouettes in photographs. Nature as art.

This part of the world is somewhat forgotten territory, but in the Middle Ages it was of strategic importance as battles ebbed and flowed.  The Norman invasion, the conquering of Wales, later the English civil war. I picked up snippets of history as we went on walks and visited towns and villages. The area is known as Mortimer country – and a National Trust trail with the same name weaves its way through the hills and woodland. The Mortimers were Norman warriors originally.  Like so much of our countryside, there are roots going back to at least the 11th century. In the civil war of the 17th century the local gentry, the Crofts, owners of nearby Croft Castle,  sided with King Charles.  Lost!

We walked through the woods around Croft castle up to the Mortimer trail one day. The trail weaves in and out of the woods and at one point goes along a ridge overlooking the lower ground.   I loved the views – as the title of this piece says, this is England’s green and pleasant land, even if they were carving each other up in the battle of Mortimer’s Cross in 1641! One of the shots here shows a quarry, still working.  A blight on the landscape or just another feature of the living countryside? I prefer the latter.

Yarpole village is, like most settlements, a mixture of the pretty and the mundane. I’ve  two shots below of those lovely beamed exteriors that feature heavily in this area; but there were just as many modern and rather nondescript bungalows.  People have to to live.

The church features a separate bell tower that dates back to the 12th century. The church is very much the centre of the local community.  It houses a shop, selling a bit of everything, including some local produce. There is a post office too.  It is run by volunteers. So you don’t have to run off to Tesco in Ludlow all the time. A little piece of the so-called Big Society.

One day we went for a walk around Wigmore, a few miles from Yarpole.  The blurb in the map of a circular walk told us that the town used to be a major centre in the Middle Ages. There was a strategically important castle, guarding the Welsh border. It was part of the Mortimer family’s centre of power. In the 14th century they relocated to Ludlow castle and Wigmore entered a slow decline.  The blurb, rather poignantly, marks the loss of the magistrates court in 1970, as the final nail in the coffin for any regional influence. It made me think about the symbolic importance of courts even when they hardly do anything. Inevitably, over the past few years, many have closed, and many more will, all in the name of efficiency and tax payers’ money. But each time there is a closure, something departs from the spirit of a community, never to be restored.

After an enjoyable pub lunch, we launched into the surrounding hills. The peacefulness was punctuated by the sound of gunshot.  It echoed through the valleys – it almost sounded like missiles being fired. Pheasants were the quarry. Eventually we had to give up the circular walk and double back, as our route would have taken us into the firing line.  We glimpsed a bit of the action.  A man with a large orange flag disturbed the birds and the shooting began.  We saw one pheasant escape, gliding like an arrow into a cabbage field near us. Some of of our kids were spooked by this and wanted to turn back as quickly as possible. This sort of thing doesn’t happen in Ealing! Mind you, we did have a riot last summer.

Brutal, but part of country life, I guess.  And I enjoyed some very nice pheasant from a butchers in Ludlow, perhaps the best I have ever tasted.  So I will not complain!

I like the shot of synchronised yomping below. All at the same angle.

I just like the magnificence of this tree, Lord of the manor.

Can’t resist the shots into the sun for some dramatic skies and silhouettes.

The trees almost seem to dance. In the background of the photo on the right are a whole load of coops. We wondered whether they were chickens or maybe pheasants, bred for shooting.  No idea whether that happens. But it felt possible that day.

The detail of this gnarled tree is exquisite – I think.

A moody sky and the trees in mid ground seem brushed somehow – maybe by the wind.

A half moon lurked in the daylight, about half past three. A counterpoint to the tree’s naked branches.

Nature as art, again and again.

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Sportsthoughts (7) – well done Cav!

Posted on December 24, 2011 by John S

I was pleased to see Mark Cavendish win BBC Sports Personality of the year yesterday. I even voted for him. He has been an outstanding athlete for many years, in one of the toughest of sports. Cycling is something that Britain is actually very good at – witness all the golds at the last Olympics.  Getting tickets for the events at the 2012 Olympics was well nigh impossible. Chris Hoy got a knighthood. But still the recognition in previous years of Sports Personality was lower than it should have been, especially for the road racing, as opposed to the indoor events.

The Tour de France must be the ultimate sporting test. A month of cycling around 150-200km a day. Sometimes reasonably flat routes, but other times up the most tortuous mountains imaginable.  Going up a hill in Ealing is hard enough.  Doing it over miles and miles, and then descending at high speed, where any miscalculation leads to a hideous crash, has to be one of the most demanding sporting challenges.

I love the Tour de France.  I love it for the challenge, the atmosphere, for the team work and for the beauty and variety of the French landscapes. It is a fantastic annual advert for the wonders of France.  And yet, in the UK, it is shown only on digital channels: ITV 4 and Eurosport. What a waste!

Mark Cavendish has been the supreme sprinter for a while, but it was only this year that he won the green jersey for the overall points winner, which should reward the person who wins the most stages of the competition.  Except, in previous years it didn’t, as there were all sorts of intermediate sprints during stages that racked up the points when no-one except the experts even noticed. Maybe that’s one of the reasons why the Tour is still exiled on ITV4 and Eurosport. Same applies to King of the Mountains, owner of the spotted jersey.  How can that be anyone other than the overall winner, as you cannot win the Tour without being the best in the mountains? It is always won or lost there. But it is always someone else who gets to wear the polka dots.

Anyway, the rules were tweaked this year, and Cav, with five stage wins, won the green jersey.  It is a wonder to watch him and his team, HTC Highroad, dominate the stages for the sprinters.  They work as a team, cycling in line, near the front, moving steadily forward, Cavendish cruising near the rear of the team formation, keeping the pace, readying himself.  Gradually they move to the head of the race, marshalled by Bernhard Eisel. Different riders hit the front and then near to the finish, the fast man, Mark Renshaw,  makes a burst, stretching the field.  Cav goes with him and then, like a slingshot releasing its ammunition, he shoots forward, devastating.  Others attempt to go with him, but usually it is futile. He wins again.  He takes the glory, but really, as he always acknowledges, it is a fantastic team effort.

The Highroad website has some good photos of the experience.

The Tour is endlessly fascinating.  Most days there will be a break by two or three riders.  They shoot off and build up quite a lead.  The peleton, the mass of riders, stay calm, riding at the required pace, protecting the stars. And then, as the race draws to a close, they creep up, inexorably, and the breakaway riders fall back and are consumed, before the real battle for supremacy begins.  The only exception to this is in the Alpine and Pyrenean stages, when the top riders may break away and establish the leads that win the top places in the grand Tour – the overall classification.

And those mountain stages are what make Mark Cavendish a true sports personality of the year. He’s a sprinter, a roadrunner.  But for five or six stages of the Tour, he has to go up and down the most incredibly difficult mountain stages.  He just has to survive, to live to fight another day.  It’s like asking Usain Bolt to slip in a couple of 10,000 km races in between his 100m heats and the final. How would he perform then?

Yes, the Tour has been besmirched by drugs over the years, though to be honest, it is hardly surprising, given the endurance required of the riders. Winning the Tour de France, the yellow jersey, I think, may be the ultimate sporting achievement.  Hopefully Bradley Wiggins may do it one day – sadly, this year, he came down in one of the many crashes and had to retire with a dislocated shoulder. Winning the green jersey is the next best thing and seeing Mark Cavendish do it this year was undoubtedly my highlight of the sporting year – notwithstanding my joy at seeing Harlequins win the Amlin Cup in Cardiff.

Cav has now joined Team Sky. Who knows, maybe he and Bradley could make it a clean sweep at the Tour before going on to Olympic glory. Fingers crossed!

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Have You Heard ?… (5) Grace Jones, with Sly and Robbie, 80s style

Posted on December 23, 2011 by John S

I was tubing it into to work today, on the Piccadilly Line, a bit weary.  Nearly Christmas, time for a break.  Reading the Guardian on my iPad, I felt like something upbeat, but not too raucous.  I flipped through my playlists and settled on ten from Grace Jones.  From the early eighties, funky, strident, a little robotic. Unusual.

She has had her spats over the years. Confrontations with the media. But do I care?  No.  What I care about is the music.

She’s still going, still entertaining, still provoking; but for me it was when she teamed up with the great reggae rhythm team, Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare, in the early eighties, that she struck gold.  Three outstanding albums on the Island label: ‘Warm Leatherette” in 1980, “Nightclubbing” in 1981 and “Living My Life” in 1982.

“Warm Leatherette”, the title track of that first album, was a sharp cover of a rather sleazy electro thing by a band called The Normal. Which they absolutely weren’t.  Grace turned it into something funky and bass heavy that sounded a bit like the Talking Heads.  That is a very good thing. Roxy Music’s “Love Is The Drug” was turned into a frantic dance with Grace’s straining voice giving it a sense of angst and edginess as opposed to the loucheness of the original.  And, best of all, “Private Life” was a lazy electro-funk that worked perfectly with Grace’s mechanical voice.  I can’t help but feel she could be the woman on the Sat Nav if it had a musical accompaniment.  When I first heard “Private Life” on “Warm Leatherette” I didn’t realise that the original was by the Pretenders, from their first album.  It’s good there too – a bit more tender.  Grace turns it into something quite different, something quite dark and sleazy – Roxy Music would understand. With Sly and Robbie giving it a bit of the reggae-rock-rhythm in the background.  So all sorts of ways of appreciating it. It’s a masterpiece.

“Nightclubbing” was more of the same, and so just as good.  The title track was a cover of an Iggy Pop song from his Bowie/Berlin period. Quite faithful to the original, but with a hint of dub rhythm  in the background. The great track on the album for me was “Pull Up To The Bumper”, a really funky, swampy song which would have been just perfect for the fashion catwalk. Again, you just imagine the Talking Heads doing this one. It’s probably my favourite Grace Jones track.  Made for dance.

“Living My Life” was full of tracks that stretched out into brilliant twelve inch singles.  The best was “My Jamaican Guy”, which had Sly and Robbie banging out the kind of rhythm that powered along so many of the great early eighties reggae dance tunes.  Likewise “Nipple to the Bottle”. “The Apple Stretching” was more languid, closer to reggae, celebrating New York City. All songs for the chill out hours of the night club.

After the three albums  came  “Slave to The Rhythm”. It was the culmination of all that had gone before.  Funky, punchy, with that flighty eighties dance feel.  Tots of treble in amongst the bass rhythms.  The eighties was trebly.  Even tinny. With a yuppie coffee table groove.  “Slave To The Rhythm” was the end of my affair with Grace Jones’s music. But it was good while it lasted.

I couldn’t claim to listen to Grace Jones a lot.  But when I do,  think, wow, these songs are so cool. That fusion of funk, the essence of the reggae rhythm, as delivered by Sly and Robbie, the robo-voice and the eighties shiny pop sheen is really engaging. they are songs very much of their time, but with a musical quality that makes them stand up to today’s standards.  It’s Sly and Robbie – one of the greatest rhythm sections of all time, in any genre of music, who deliver.  While reggae was their day job, Grace Jones was one of their crowning glories. And Grace herself, originally a model, fused the glamour and emotional detachment of the fashion world with the funk and reggae and early eighties electro in a way which was truly distinctive.

There’s never been anyone else quite like Grace Jones. Check those three albums – they are all classics.

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Bryan Ferry at the O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire, 14 December 2011

Posted on December 21, 2011 by John S

Went with my friend Jon to see Bryan Ferry last week.  Great venue, the Shepherds Bush Empire.  Medium size, standing on the ground floor. Plenty of bars. You can see the band close up and enjoy a beer. And the atmosphere is always good.

I’d seen Roxy Music at the O2 – the Dome – in February this year, with Jon and another friend Dave. We are all massive Roxy fans from the seventies.  A time when Roxy were just out there, radical, innovative, unlike anyone else. And the fantastic thing about the O2 concert was that the re-formed band – with Ferry, Manzanera, MacKay, Thompson all there (no Eno) – delved into those classic years.  They even played “In Every Dream Home A Heartache”, which I think must be the greatest Roxy Music song.  And “Amazona”, whose rhythm has been sampled by Ice-T, the rapper, for one of his great tunes,  “That’s How I’m Living”.

The music was brilliantly played, the songs were spot on. Maaaaaan…. they finished with “Virginia Plain”, “Love Is The Drug”, “Editions Of You”, “Do The Strand” and “For Your Pleasure”.  For us fifty-somethings, this was absolutely perfect. The original Roxy classics, brilliantly delivered.

The majority of the crowd at the O2, though, were just a generation below.  This became clear when, after an amazing start when the band worked through some seventies classics, they turned to the eighties. The crowd erupted: “Same Old Scene”, “Avalon”, “Jealous Guy”  (the John Lennon song which Ferry took over, whistling and all).

The set list of that O2 concert is here with a click. Setlist.fm link to the songs as well.  A great service.

The eighties touch was something that Bryan brought into his solo concert.  There was a wonderful range of songs from all eras.  But the eighties provided the bedrock – “The Main Thing”, “Slave To Love”, “Don’t Stop The Dance”, “Oh Yeah” “Avalon”, amongst others. We diehards got some seventies treats, like “If There Is Something” off the first “Roxy Music” album. And we had “Love Is The Drug” towards the end.  I was happy.

Ferry looked great in his black suit and white shirt, which he changed to black half way through. The hair, still jet black, must be dyed, but he remains the epitome of cool.  He always wore a suit better than anyone else, and had the best haircut, and I think he still does. His band were superb musicians. They included Chris Spedding on guitar – the man of whom it is said, he played guitar on the Sex Pistols’ “Never Mind the Bollocks”. He looked uncomfortable, but rocked.  The other guitarist, the younger man, Oliver Thompson, looked good and rocked. The star though was Jorja Chalmers, who did the Andy Mackay thing, with an array of wind instruments.  Played with an acute feel for the spirit of Roxy.  And she looked like a Roxy Music woman, with her smart bob and stylish outfit. Perfect!

The concert ended on a real high. “Love Is The Drug”, a rousing “Let’s Stick Together” and a moving “Jealous Guy”. The encore was ‘Hold On I’m Coming”, an old soul classic, and then a Velvet Underground special, “What Goes On”.  Impeccable choices.

It was all more than I was hoping for.  I thought there’d be loads of new stuff, from the album “Olympia”. It’s not a bad album, and we got a couple from it, but Bryan had figured out his audience and given us a lovely spread from throughout his career.  It really was a joy.

What’s so good about the likes of Bryan Ferry, and Paul McCartney, who I also saw recently, is that they have come to terms with their past, have taken ownership of their back catalogue, and are playing their classic songs with pride and adventure. It is giving new life and texture to those songs.

It’s giving nostalgia a good name!

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Sportsthoughts (6) – the immensity of the Heineken Cup

Posted on December 19, 2011 by John S

Winter’s drawing in, the darkness comes early, there’s a deep chill in the air.  A perfect excuse for staying at home all Saturday afternoon and watching Sky Sports’ rugby coverage, with a dip in and out to check the football.

And then on Sunday, the big one, Quins at Toulouse, having been taught a lesson at the Stoop the previous weekend. Lose and that’s it as far as the Heineken is concerned this season.

I did a bit of shopping Saturday lunch time, enjoyed a bacon sandwich in the Poco Loco in Ealing Broadway and made my way back for a triple header.  Some Christmas decorations to put up, but otherwise, rugby, rugby, rugby until we went out to a party in the evening. The kids all out and about, so no competition for the telly.  Sky Sports HD here I come!

First up was Leicester vs Clermont Auvergne.  The previous week the French team had beaten Leicester emphatically, 30-12. I watched the game, saw the array of international players in Clermont’s team, after seeing Toulouse beat Quins, and thought, we can’t cope with the money in French rugby. But back at Leicester it was always going to be different.  The game was intense, brutal, the lead changing hands, some good running rugby, but mostly an epic forward battle.  My lasting image of the game is Leicester’s hirsute Italian, Martin Castrogiovanni (great name), front row forward,  piling into the Clermont defence again and again with no regard for personal safety.  It’s the role of the forward ball carrier.  The day job.  But it seemed mighty, heroic.  Leicester took their cue from him and scraped through, 23-19.

Next was the other game in Quins’ group, Gloucester vs Connacht.   The Irish team are regarded as one of the weaker teams in the competition, but they gave Quins a fright at the Stoop, and they did the same at Gloucester. In fact they were ahead for most of the game, looking good. But then, what was it, fitness, nerve, ability? All three?  Gloucester got back into the game and edged through.  23-19, same as the Leicester-Clermont game.

And then it was Leinster vs Bath in Dublin.  Leinster are the best team in Europe at the moment. And it showed.  They tore Bath to pieces. Every aspect of their game was awesome. They won 52-27. Bath got some late points when Leinster took their foot off the gas. It was as comprehensive a victory as you will get between teams from the top leagues. It’s hard to see who can stop Leinster winning another Heineken Cup.  Quins? Let’s dream on.

And so on to today’s game.  After the defeat at home last week, it didn’t seem that likely that Quins could get a result in Toulouse.  But a bit of me felt, Quins will learn, Toulouse may get complacent, the French are always capable of falling apart (national stereotype comment)… and Quins are very good. 100% win record before the Toulouse game.  You don’t lose that overnight.

I didn’t watch the game live.  I wanted to go for a cycle while the weather was good  and then had to do the Waitrose run. But I managed to avoid the result and settled down to watch the game at 7pm.

It was amazing.  Quins were under the cosh for so much of the time. Toulouse are big and brutal. Their scrum is more powerful. But Quins held on and were incredibly sharp every time an opportunity arose.  Their defence was astounding. Tries were prevented at the last gasp, tackles forced potential try scorers into touch, bodies somehow put themselves in the way of touchdowns in the try line pile ups. It was the stuff that will enter into Quins’ folklore.

And Quins scored three tries, all grasping the opportunity, great passing, sharp lines of running, chasing down the high balls.  The latter featured Tom Williams, on as a sub, having not featured much in the team this year, great player though he is. There was anger in the energy that he showed when he came on, and he made a couple of interventions which helped to win the game, including the chase down on Vincent Clerc, after a kick off from Nev.

Who were the heroes? Well the whole team.  But every time we won a turnover, Chris Robshaw seemed to be at the heart of it. As he always is. George Robson made an unbelievable tackle to stop Servat getting a try, Nick Easter was doing all sorts of clever things, some probably not legal, and he did eventually get a yellow card. But I’d probably make full back Mike Brown man of the match, as he has been so often this season. Not only did he score two superb tries, appearing in the line at the perfect moment, but he made an outstanding try-saving tackle on Vincent Clerc, who looked like he was through in the second half.

And Nick Evans was amazing, as ever. In the objective points discussion, he would be the man of the match. Kicked almost everything, whereas Toulouse missed a number of sitters, McAlister and then Doussain. In fact, Quins were a bit lucky, because Toulouse had enough penalties to win the game quite easily.  But they blew them.  The intensity of the game at Heineken level exposes any weaknesses in temperament.

So come on you Quins!

But also, four immense games of rugby.  Intense, physical, twisting and turning, the different cultures coming together.  Magnificent competition.  And played in a spirit that football could really learn from, if it wanted to.

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Music – my best of 2011

Posted on December 14, 2011 by John S

As we approach Christmas, music nerds everywhere feel the urge to compile their lists of the best albums, tracks, events and so on.  The magazines and papers lead the way.  I love it. I like to check whether I’m in with the zeitgeist or whether there’s anything good that I’ve missed.  There usually is, but no harm in catching up.

The benchmark, still, is the NME top 50 albums. As I’ve said before, they do tend to get it right. In the past I’ve usually had seven or eight of the top ten, twenty or so of the top thirty already.  Not surprising when the NME  is my guide throughout the year.  But this year it’s different.  I seem to have lost touch.  I have only bought three of the top ten: “Let England Shake” by PJ Harvey, “Skying” by the Horrors and “Suck It And See” by the Arctic Monkeys”. Numbers 1, 3 and 6, respectively.

Why is this?  The main reason, I think, is that I’ve been preoccupied with my book about my musical journey.  As I write I listen to the bands and singers I am writing about. I’ve been on a voyage of rediscovery.  Eurythmics, Tom Waits, John Martyn, Van Morrison, Prince, are just a few of the artists that I’ve really delved back into, as part of my writing.  And Bob Dylan reasserted himself as the poet, the master. That didn’t leave too much room for new sounds or new artists, who were always going to pale by comparison.

And yeah, I do think, indie – the NME staple – is going through a lean patch. It’s all a bit indistinct, a bit wimpy, veering towards pop.  Nothing wrong with pop. Love it.  But indie needs to rock a bit more.  The Vaccines did a decent Strokes impression (better than the Strokes in fact) but that was about as good as it got for me.  The Arctic Monkeys I haven’t really listened to properly yet, but it didn’t demand that I did.  Likewise Kasabian with “Velociraptor”.  And I really wanted to like Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds album, but I just found it pleasant.  There wasn’t a track that leapt out and hit me on the head. Reports suggest he does a great live show, and I’m sure that’s true. But the album was Oasis-lite.

I’m left with two albums that I really did love.  The first is the PJ Harvey album. When it came out I bought it, liked it, admired the concept.  A kind of striving for the essence of England.  Who are we, who were we, how do we resolve our inner conflicts? I didn’t linger initially.  But seeing the NME put it number one made me listen again.  And I started to get the intensity of the music, the shards of melody, the sense of an English folk history interspersed with sounds from around the world.  And Polly’s voice, distinctive, frail and assertive all at once. I feel her sound is rooted in the West Country – there’s a spirituality about it which isn’t London or urban. (And yes, it is where she is from).  I’ve spent a bit of time in Dorset and Glastonbury and I can feel the essence of those places in the music.  The essence of England. Old England. These days we jump more than ever at individual songs.  “Let England Shake” needs to be appreciated as a whole piece.  Dare I say it… a concept album?

The second album, and my album of the year, is “The King Of Limbs” by Radiohead.  In some ways it’s a slight piece.  Eight songs, no big riffs or stadium choruses. Similar, on first listening,  to Thom Yorke’s solo album, “The Eraser”.  Much keyboard noodling and warps.  Low key, downbeat.  Yes, all those things, but beautiful, intriguing, uplifting too. Like PJ Harvey’s album, it’s one that works really well as a whole.  The sounds drift and swirl, seep into your consciousness, like the fog in T.S.Eliot’s “The Love Song Of Alfred J Prufrock”, that licked its tongue into the corners of the evening.

The two songs which for me make a good album great are towards the end: “Codex” and “Give Up The Ghost”. Both just sound incredibly sad.  Thom Yorke’s voice is so fragile, yearning.  The music simple and haunting. I play those two songs again and again. Here’s a video of “Give Up The Ghost”. Fast forward one minute to skip the chat, if you want to get straight to the music.

But it’s all about tracks now. Well, it always was – it’s just easier to pick them out now.  A Steve Jobs legacy: you don’t have to buy an album to get a favourite track.

There are five tracks that really stand out for me this year.  Four mark an important development for me – songs where I find myself liking the same thing as my children, who got there first.  Whether they are so pleased is another matter!

The outstanding example is “The A Team” by Ed Sheeran.  Yeah, I knew who he was.  Friends told me he was really good at Latitude.  But it was only when my son asked me if  knew how to play the song that my interest awoke. I went on the internet and found the chords and discovered it was a lovely song to play.  A similar chord progression to that used a lot by the likes of Oasis and Coldplay – and Robbie Williams. But subtle and wistful in its delivery. I played it again and again on guitar and the iPod.  It’s a sad song – a teenage breakdown basically.  Sad but beautiful – a classic pop combination.  It is my song of 2011.

The next is a dance track, the best I’ve heard for ages.  It may have come out in 2010, but for me it’s 2011.  “Beautiful People” by Chris Brown.  A multitude of mixes, but one of the most rousing House tunes I’ve heard for a very long time.  That’s it. Nothing profound, just a air punching anthem.  And you can reduce it to a rather lovely minor key acoustic piece on guitar as well.  It has melody as well as rhythm.

When I take the girls in the car these days, it has to be Capital Radio. My ancient cassettes (in our ancient car) are firmly rejected.  It was on one such journey that I first heard what seemed like a radical electro tune by Capital’s bland soul-pop day time standards. The song seemed to be about the G6.  I thought, it can’t be the G6, the economic superpowers. It wasn’t.  I’m still not sure what it was about, but “Like a G6” by   Far East Movement had a great warped electro beat and some silly lyrics about drinking.   It was the beat that did it for me.

Tinie Tempah’s “Pass Out” came out in 2010, but Capital keeps playing the top songs for months and I caught up with it this year.  What I love about this song is its fusion of sounds: dance to the fore with some rapid BPMs, but also some serious dub reggae interventions.  It is the dub echoes aligned to the dubstep and TT’s humorous lyrics – I’ve been to Southampton but I’ve never been to Scunthorpe –  that makes the song special for me.

And that leaves Cornershop with “United Provinces Of India”. It has the perfect combination of Indian song and dance with a funky Western electro beat. It is truly infectious.  Cornershop have been making great, inventive, eclectic music for years.  This is one of their best.

That reminds me of one of my best musical experiences of the year, which was a visit to the “Mela” music festival in Gunnersbury Park, West London, in August.  Sponsored by O2 and the BBC, it was a huge festival of Indian music, focusing on the modern fusion between Bhangra and the club sounds of London. It was brilliant. The main stage peaked with Jay Sean returning from his success in the US; but for me the best thing was watching the heavy dance sounds being belted out in some of the smaller tents. The music a fascinating fusion of East and West, all being played by blokes with computers. And the young lads from Southall and elsewhere in their gangsta gear going wild. Moving effortlessly between traditional and modern beats. Security guards looking on suspiciously.  Dare I say it, the girls watching from the fringes. Very little dancing together. This for me was an insight into a London culture I just wouldn’t normally see.  I felt privileged to be there.  Excited by the music – fascinated by the action.  The heartbeat of West London. Brilliant.

So, 2011, was heavy on nostalgia for me because of the book; but Capital and the Mela experience sorted me out. Musically, the youth always know best.

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Sportsthoughts (5) – lessons to be learned

Posted on December 11, 2011 by John S

Once again El Clasico – the clash between Barcelona and Real Madrid – showed us how football should be played. People fancied Madrid this time, and they scored in the first minute  But slowly Barca wove their patterns and pounced. First Messi to Alexis, 1-1.  Then Xavi’s tentative shot which went in off Marcelo’s arm. 2-1. And then a fantastic move which was actually quite English.  Alves gets the ball down the right channel, whips in a brilliant low cross and Fabregas is in there with a diving header. Just like watching Spurs! 3-1 to Barca in the cauldron of the Bernabaeu.

Man of the match surely Iniesta. Absolutely everywhere. The golden triangle – Xavi, Iniesta, Messi. There is nothing like it anywhere else.  But all footballers should study what they do and think about what they could learn from the way they play.

It was fascinating to see how Barca are playing Fabregas too.  He is getting a lot of games, but playing in an advanced position.  It looked last night like he was in the David Villa position, wide left in the attacking three – or should I say, the most attacking three. At time it left him a bit peripheral, compared with his central role at Arsenal.  A bit like Villa – never quite at the centre of things. But when he got the ball he was dangerous, and the goal was outstanding.

On a different planet, West Ham were losing 3-0 to Reading.  Lesson:  don’t get two men sent off. It’s hard to get a result with nine men. Fortunately Southampton only drew, as did main pursuers Cardiff.  But it’s looking like the pressure is starting to tell.  Hopefully just a Championship wobble.

In the rugby, Quins finally lost a game and were taught a lesson by one of the masters of Heineken Cup rugby, Toulouse.  21-10 to the French at the Stoop on Friday evening.  Quins’ running rugby just didn’t work against a team that seemed bigger, stronger, faster.  They didn’t try anything too fancy, just snuffed out Quins’ attacks, punched holes through the middle and sent it out wide for a couple of killer tries.  Quins didn’t play badly: they just didn’t seem to have the same know how, the same poise.  Can they absorb some lessons and strike back at Toulouse next weekend?  Hard to imagine, but you never know.

Man Utd learnt a lesson too this week.  Even when you are Man Utd don’t take the Champions League for granted. They were in one of the easiest groups, but clearly did not take Basel seriously enough in the first game.  And so the last game became crucial.  Still shouldn’t have lost, but obviously going through a difficult phase.  There will be acres of print written about the demise of Utd now.  They will probably go and win the Premier League just to spite everyone – if City slip. I like the idea of Utd playing Stoke in the Europa though, should the draw do the dirty.  That will rub the lesson in.

City went out of the Champions League too.  A trifle unlucky, having won ten points. Lesson: play best team in all Euro-games.  They didn’t against Napoli – Aguero and Nasri on the bench. I suspect this season they are happy enough.  Winning the Premier League is the key step. That will give them the credibility, the sense of worth and identity, to move on and conquer all before them.

Just the mighty Barca in their way!

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Paul McCartney at the O2, 5 December

Posted on December 6, 2011 by John S

What an amazing concert. Macca on fantastic form: looking good, singing beautifully, rocking out.  Superb backing band, and, er, decent back catalogue.  The set list speaks for itself.

Hello Goodbye

Junior’s Farm – Wings

All My Loving

Jet – more Wings, off Band On The Run

Drive My Car

Sing the Changes  – a recent Fireman song

The Night Before – one of my all time favourites

Let Me Roll It  – off Band On The Run, another absolute favourite,  with a bit of Hendrix’s Foxy Lady thrown in

Paperback Writer – how good does this get?

The Long and Winding Road

Come And Get It – the number one hit they wrote for Badfinger

Nineteen Hundred and Eight Five – Wings

Maybe I’m Amazed – early solo McCartney, passionate

I’ve Just Seen A Face – off Help

I Will

Blackbird – protest song, apparently; got a huge cheer

Here Today – ode to John

Dance Tonight – recent rock’n’roll song with mandolin – gotta let him play something new!

Mrs Vandebilt – Wings (Oh, eh, oh!)

Eleanor Rigby – yeah, just Eleanor Rigby

Something – started on the ukelele – tribute to George

Band on the Run – loved it!

Ob-La-Di Ob-La-da

Back In The USSR – those Ukraine girls bound to feature in next year’s Euro Championship coverage

I’ve Got A Feeling

A Day In The Life/ Give Peace a Chance – yes, I’ve heard Paul McCartney sing Day In The Life!

Let It Be

Live and Let Die – spectacular – fireworks’n’all

Hey Jude – what to say?  Anthemic

First encore

The Word (from Rubber Soul) and All You Need Is Love and more than a hint of She Loves You

Day Tripper – rocked!

Get Back – Ronnie Wood joined in

Second encore 

Yesterday  – I’ve heard Macca sing Yesterday!

Helter Skelter – wild

Golden Slumbers/ Carry That Weight/ The End – that brilliant ending to Abbey Road.  Fantastic conclusion to tonight’s show

A feast, a privilege.

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Sportsthoughts (4)… How did we lose that?

Posted on December 3, 2011 by John S

I went to my first West Ham game of the season today. The visitors mid-table Burnley.  Fellow claret and blue wearers. Favourite team of famed spin doctor, Alastair Campbell. League champions in 1960, still a good side in the early seventies, when I remember them as being good to watch. But mostly lower leagues since then.  West Ham in good form, with an away win against Middlesborough on Tuesday a real sign that they and Southampton might break away from the chasers, and secure those automatic promotion slots.

So it was all set up for a reverse! Which duly arrived…

I don’t go to Upton Park all that much these days because I’m a season ticket holder at Harlequins rugby and the games often clash.  The Stoop doesn’t have the same scale as Upton Park, but it has a great atmosphere, and good beer (which you can take to the seats) and fans from both sides mingle happily.  And we see top quality rugby. And I get there in half an hour rather than an hour an a half.  But I still love going to Upton Park, this strange edifice with a tacky castle at the front, plonked in the middle of a run down bit of the East End, which these days is predominantly Asian in its make up.  Halal butchers nestle with the chip shops that serve the football fans.

We love our history at West Ham, forever celebrating the era of Bobby Moore, Geoff Hurst and Martin Peters, captain and scorers in the 1966 World Cup final victory over West Germany.  We cherish those FA Cup wins in 1975 and 1980, the latter featuring Trevor Brooking’s headed winner against Arsenal, when we were having a spell in the Second Division, as it then was.  We celebrate the “Boys of 86” – MacAvennie, Cottee, Devonshire, Martin, Parkes, Stewart – who secured West Ham’s greatest ever finish: third in the First Division, only four points off the winners, Liverpool. We relish the hard men like Billy Bonds and Julian Dicks who played for West Ham with their hearts and souls. We love the artists: crazy Paolo di Canio, the majestic Brooking, Devo flying down the left wing, the languid Ian Bishop, tricky, unfulfilled Joe Cole. And we enjoyed the recent passionate cameo from Carlos Tevez, good enough to save us from relegation (though costly afterwards).

We love and cherish those good moments and great characters, because the present is usually rather less uplifting.  Recent years have mostly been struggle against relegation from the Premier league, or desperate attempts to get back into it.  Reckless financial decisions have put the club on a precarious footing, although the current owners, Davids Gold and Sullivan, with Karren Brady, seem to be doing a good job to stabilise the club. The controversy over whether West Ham will move into the Olympic Stadium, for me, is a distraction.  It should be fantastic if we do, but if we don’t, hey, Upton Park is pretty good.

So here we are, second in the Championship, playing Burnley.  A nailed-on home win, surely?

It all started well.  We looked so much better in the first half, dominating possession, creating what chances there were. There wasn’t much end product, but it was shaping up for a good push in the second half.  Hopefully like the previous week, when after Derby shaded the first half with West Ham only drawing level just before half time, the second half was West Ham bulldozing their way to a 3-1 victory.

I liked the way it was being played around in midfield.  The West Ham academy boys, Mark Noble and Jack Collinson, were running the show.  It was a mystery why Julian Faubert, the right side midfielder, was playing as a second striker off Carlton Cole – and not very well. But it was OK.  The defence was solid – with Abdoulaye Faye an absolute man mountain.

Burnley had clearly come for the 0-0, but it was only a matter of time…

And so it came to pass – early in the second half, Kevin Nolan took a good through ball from Carlton Cole and lobbed it cleanly into the net.  The start of the deluge.  Celebration time.

Problem was, the team seemed to think that too. They celebrated for way too long for a start. Then they got casual in defence, not moving it forward quickly enough.  A throw in was conceded on the right.  Ex-Hammer Junior Stanislas then swung in a cross and Chris McCann of Burnley headed it in, unopposed. 1-1.

Surely that would wake up the Hammers.  Well it did, but on a rare foray,  Burnley got a corner on the left. Cross came over, again a static West Ham defence, ball nodded in by Sam Vokes. 1-2! Unbelievable.

West Ham huffed and puffed after that, had some near missses, fluffed a couple of absolute sitters, but the atmosphere was strange.  The crowd wasn’t rousing West Ham to a late victory. It wasn’t even moaning that much.  It was as if, after going 2-1 down, so against the run of play, everyone felt that it was just going to be one of those days. It all fizzled out, three points absolutely chucked away.  Any honest Burnley fan would admit they got away with daylight robbery, but then, if you don’t take your chances, it can always happen.

I sense too, especially after reading the admirable fanzine, “OLAS” (Over Land and Sea), that the fans who watch West Ham week in, week out, are not entirely convinced by the Sam Allardyce project.  Fanzines always grumble, but I got the feeling that they can’t quite believe the team is winning so many games with unconvincing performances. So the confidence isn’t there yet, not in the crowd.  They are all still waiting for things to go wrong.  That is the state of most football fans, but West Ham’s recent history gives good cause for such a feeling.

I’m actually quite confident that West Ham will press on and win the Championship this season.  I’m willing to put today down as an aberration, one of those days when the ball just wouldn’t go in the net. I think Sam Allardyce is an impressive manager (and I was a doubter, I admit) and knows what needs to be done to get back into the Premier League.  I think the quality and depth of the squad must be the best in the division, and so it is a matter of making sure the confidence and organisation is there.  Big Sam is a master of that.

And Southampton lost today, too, against bottom side Doncaster. So, looking up, nothing has changed. Just don’t look down!  You can get vertigo.

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