Proms 53 & 54 (RAH)

"I could tell everyone thought it was great, but I just didn't get it."

Well, Bruckner's like that, and it took me years to get him. Once I've got something, though, I tend to forget how much work it took to find my way in, so it was a salutary reminder when my companion at Prom 54, at which Bernard Haitink and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra performed his Eighth Symphony, came out with this conclusion. Bruckner is hard work, especially when you're stuck in a hall for an hour and a half, and it's a credit to him that although she was left bemused, she was also surprised that it had been that long. My first impressions of Bruckner as a lad were that nothing happened, and it didn't happen for a very long time. My mature impressions are actually pretty much the same, only now I think that this is a Good thing. It seems superfluous to say that the performance was superb, but I shall say so nonetheless, because it was.

It's not often I have the luxury of going to a late-night Prom, so it was especially fortunate that one of the few occasions when circumstances allowed me to stay for the late shift that we should be treated to the wonderful Pierre-Laurent Aimard performing some of Ligeti's wonderful Piano Studies. These works are real gems, mind-bending in their complexity, yet also generous in their approachability, and I can never tire of hearing them, especially in the hands of such a wonderful player as Aimard. Before this, he took on the role of conductor for a romp through Haydn's 102nd Symphony with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. This juxtaposition emphasised the generosity and humanity of both composers. Next to these, Beethoven, whose 2nd Piano Concerto finished the concert, seemed overbearing, though this may have been down to the fact that we were tiring rapidly by this point. They played it beautifully though, and those parts where Beethoven wasn't intent on showing off were beautiful. These two concerts constituted a marathon, and we struggled to stay awake on the train home, though our exhaustion was tempered with a sense of worlds traversed.

Slint (Koko's, Camden)

Slint aren't big ones for showmanship. They barely say a word during this gig, which is mostly a presentation of their neglected classic Spiderland for the Don't Look Back series. "We love you!", shouts the odd punter every now and then. It puts me in mind strangely of Robbie Williams.

I say neglected - it was neglected in 1991 when it was released. It's accrued a following since then, and Koko's is absolutely rammed full. When we entered, there was a sign at the door saying that tickets were available, but god knows how that was possible given the crush inside. Maybe there were a lot of people who turned up on the off chance.

I wonder what it must be like for the band, to reconvene after the best part of 20 years and revisit their songs? When I look back at things I wrote in 1991 they seem the product almost of a different person, and I've remained active since then.

It's a strange atmosphere - even more so than when we saw Low here, and heard audience members calling out for them to play their favourite song: "Whore!". On the one hand there's an air of reverence, as though we're hearing some long-lost Beethoven quartet. On the other hand, as a song begins, there'll be a smatter of applause and cheering, much as you might encounter at a Barry Mannilow concert.

It feels odd to be standing in a packed hall listening to music that seems designed to be listened to alone. Which is not to say it's not a powerful experience. Fragments of rock 'n' roll hang in the air, like the tattered curtains in Miss Haversham's house. Innocuous, insignificant meanderings slowly build to thundering, relentless climaxes. This sort of thing gets described as "post-rock", and you can see the meaning of that - it sometimes has the feel of looking at an archaeological find, of a long lost and forgotten thing called rock music. There's a strange combination of intensity and distance, sometimes seeming almost like Led Zeppelin playing Kraftwerk (or should that be the other way around?).

Slint only made two albums, so they've a limited repertoire to follow on after they've taken us through "Spiderland". They do play a new song though, a haunting, majestic beast that's hugely impressive. Rumour has it they may work themselves up to a new album. If they can match what we heard here tonight, it'll be well worth waiting for.

A Wing and a Prayer

Reading this post made me think about some of the ideas I've been having lately about what music and/or composition is actually for. Especially this bit:

"it's a tremendous loss that nowadays most people solely consume music,

rather than try to make music themselves. "

I'm reminded of something Ives said: "Can there be any such thing as bad music?" There's such a huge amount of judgmentalism in music, especially classical music. People who sit around comparing different recordings of the same piece, rather than thinking about the piece itself. Who go to a live performance and compare it to an old recording (always unfavourably, of course). I feel sorry for such people. They are missing the point in a spectacular manner, dwelling in the tombs of their recordings when they could be out with the living.

An old colleague of mine used to say, "Professionalism is the enemy of music." And the more I dwell on this sentiment, the truer it seems. I've nothing against professional performing groups, but it seems very unhealthy that the audience is increasingly regarded as a passive absorber of product. Music should be something you do, not something you consume.

Take a stand. Buy a cheap instrument (you can pick up a ukulele for about 20 quid, and they're very easy to play) and make a noise with it. Sing along to your records. tap out a rhythm on your table. it doesn't matter what it sounds like. It just matters that it's a sound you're making.

Prom 50: Copland/Adams

John Adams, with his white jacket, bow tie and white beard, looks like an old Southern gentleman, possibly Mark Twain or something like that. This is what I keep telling myself in an attempt to drown out the other thought: that he looks a bit like Colonel Sanders. The ploy almost works.

I remember playing Copland's Billy the Kid Suite at school, and quite enjoying it. With more years' experience, I now realise it's not one of his better pieces. In fact, in all honesty, it's pretty dull, something a slightly scrappy performance by the BBC Symphony Orchestra does nothing to belie.

My companion remarks that Billy the Kid is the sort of piece that gets played to children to make them like classical music. She's right, and it's a shame. What we should be playing The Kids is something like John Adams' Century Rolls, which follows. It takes me a while to get into this, possibly because I'm slightly jaded from the Copland (I find myself wondering if I'm suffering Proms fatigue), but soloist Olli Mustonen and the band win me over. In the slow movement there's hints of Satie and Rachmaninov, while the driving, angular finale has echoes of Nancarrow and even Ligeti. Which is obviously a Good Thing.

The other Adams work in this prom, his new "Doctor Atomic Symphony" derived from his recent opera about Robert Oppenheimer, is, I fear, not on the same level. The ideas are thin, and spread thinly, the whole thing waffles on without really going anywhere, it's bitty and fussy and frequently sounds like second rate John Williams or Ennio Morricone. There are some nice enough moments, but to paraphrase Rossini, too many bad quarter hours. We find ourselves struggling not to fidget, and when the end finally comes after what seems like an interminable age, we clap politely and make our way out without waiting for the inevitable curtain calls.

It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness

If you didn't see the Simón Bolívar National Youth Orchestra of Venezuela at the Proms last night, you missed a treat, and you should hunt down the TV and Radio broadcasts on your internet without delay. They're an astonishingly accomplished bunch, and play with a verve and enthusiasm that's truly inspiring.

Of course, life's rarely that simple. As an excellent post by the estimable Pliable explains, the orchestra and their conductor Gustavo Dudamel find themselves in an unfortunate political position as representatives of a country ruled by Hugo Chávez, and some accuse them of being de facto apologists for his regime, particularly when they performed the national anthem at the launch of the state-controlled TVes channel, following the closure of RCTV.

it's very easy for the likes of us in Europe to criticize, and I wonder what any of us would do in the same situation. I think of those who condemn Shostakovich for not being openly dissident enough for their liking, and wonder how they'd last in the sort of totalitarian terror he had to endure. I also wonder if, in his choice of Shostakovich, as well as the unapologetically American Bernstein, for their prom, Dudamel is perhaps sending a more ambivalent message about his homeland than we're giving him credit for.

Sound vs. Noise (7)

Article on today's Grauniad blogs debating noise pollution. For myself, what the neighbours are playing is largely irrelevant, I want to get some fucking sleep, thank you. And no, plugging into an iPod isn't a solution. I don't want to listen to music while I'm asleep. I'm quite lucky, in that while the kids next door do occasionally pump up the volume, they generally bring it down again before I reach the point of banging on their door. I'm a very tolerant neighbour, y'know.

Prom 45: Schoenberg, Knussen, Henze, Stravinsky

A great bear of a man with a proudly bushy beard, Oliver Knussen reminds me more and more of Brahms. He and the BBC Symphony Orchestra open this concert with Schoenberg's Five Pieces for Orchestra, once the future of music, now almost a century old. Schoenberg is one of those blamed by those who think it all went wrong at the turn of the last century, although if they bothered to listen properly they'd notice the Viennese part of the Second Viennese School. Nostalgic memories of older Austrian music is an integral part of Schoenberg's aesthetic, and Knussen and the BBC SO brought this out beautifully in a delicate, poised performance.This is wonderful music, passionate, urgent and beautiful (yes, beautiful). It's probably too much to hope at this stage that Schoenberg will ever be popular, but isn't it about time people stopped being scared of him?

It's obviously a day for lookalikes, as with her long blonde hair and blue and white dress, violinist Leila Josefowicz reminds me of no-one so much as Alice. Quite appropriate, as it turns out, as Knussen's Violin Concerto (as all his music) is filled with a quicksilver wit that seems to breathe much the same air as Lewis Carroll. I've long admired Knussen as a composer; he's far from prolific, but everything he produces seems so beautifully judged, expertly crafted and heartfelt without ever becoming overwrought.

I've only started really listening to Henze's music recently, so this was a welcome part of the programme. Sebastian im Traum has the same Tippett-ish feel to some of it as I've previously noted (though considerably more tautly argued than that composer's somewhat more diffuse music), and for a brief moment there even seems to be a hint of Elgarian wistfulness there, which leaves me to reflect on how curious it should be that a composer so much in his own tradition should sound so English.

What can be said about The Rite of Spring? Everything and nothing. It's one of the lodestones of the past century, the last piece that everyone agrees about, as someone wiser than me said, and casts a shadow over anyone who wants to write this stuff we inaccurately call classical music. But really, in the face of it, it's better to shut up, as a good performance leaves discussion unnecessary. This was one of those performances, rugged, rough, violent, full of that contradictory sense that this is the birth of Modern Music, and also a monument that defies all who stand before it.

Last Orders

Nitin Sawhney, in his notes to his Prom last week, makes reference to "images of exuberant flag-waving at the Proms... unnervingly imperious". Does this matter? If you're a regular patron of the Albert Hall of a summer, you'll know that this sort of image is unrepresentative of the Proms, that it's only the Last Night where the flags come out. It's only one night out of 70-odd, what harm is there?

Well, there's a lot of harm, because Sawhney is exactly the sort of intelligent, open-minded person the Proms should be attracting, and if his overriding impression of the season is one of an orgy of jingoism, then it's fair to say there's a major image problem here. It's not just the cringe-worthy sight of socially inadequate persons of questionable personal hygiene dressing up in tails and bawling along like the chinless wonders they are to Rule Britannia while draped in the Union flag, it's not that even someone with a classical background like Sawhney takes that as the image of the entire Proms season. It's that for the vast majority of people, this bunch of idiots represent the entire classical music world. This is the harm - all the talk of elitism, dumbing down, accessibility, artistic integrity, etc etc, is a side show to the real problem. The rot spreads beyond the actual event - look up listings at this time of year and you'll see a plethora of "Last Night of the Proms" events advertised, that strip the model of even the limited integrity it has and plump wholesale for the flags and rampant nationalism. If this is most people's only experience of classical music, no wonder they don't want to experience any more of it.

Tradition? Sloppy habits, as Mahler defined it. All this guff about the sacred tradition of the Last Night is just that, guff. The whole thing dates back no further than Malcolm Sergeant's tenure after the war, and the timing of its introduction tells you all you need to know about why it is as it is, and why it is so purely awful. This sorry sight of a nation in decline, drunk on nostalgia for its imperial past is an affront to all human dignity, and the most poisonous cup from which all classical music drinks. Why else was it such an affront to the Daily Mail and their like to introduce Harrison Birtwistle into the pantomime 10 years ago? Because for a moment they were confronted with the Now, a real Dionysian moment that showed up the moth-eaten pomp and that peculiarly stilted, forced "party" atmosphere so unique to the British in public around it as the shabby rot that it is. The single act that could do more than anything else to restore the reputation of concert-going would be to get rid of it. But that, alas, is only slightly less likely to happen than getting rid of the monarchy. And like that similarly archaic institution, it keeps us retarded, in thrall to an imaginary past and unable to grasp a future. We need to put the Last Night behind us, and face the dawn.

Thangyuhvurrmush

30 years since Elvis died (or did he?). Here's a picture of him with a ukulele.
Elvis ate a million cheeseburgers and died on the toilet, the one true rock 'n' roll death. I salute you, Elvis.

One day since Tikhon Khrennikov died. Good riddance.

Prom 42: Sibelius (RAH)

Sometimes, it's all about context.

Listening to incidental music in a concert setting is in many ways a frustrating experience. In this case we had over a hour's worth of Sibelius' music for The Tempest, and while there was much beautiful music in it, ideas tended to flit by briefly, and overall the whole thing would be better heard with the play around it. As the evening progresses I become aware of a strange background noise which, it gradually dawns on me, is the sound of rain pummeling the Albert Hall's roof - a tempest outside becoming part of the Tempest within. Sometimes you need something like that to transport you to where you need to be, and allow the magic of Shakespeare's island to take you.

Sibelius wrote many songs, and the selection we hear after the interval demonstrate how good he was at it, the miniaturist in him coming to the fore in these exquisite jewels, evoking worlds with a few brushstrokes.

We finish with his Seventh Symphony, a piece whose tragic nobility rarely fails to affect me. Some conductors like to squeeze every drop out of the last bar, to wrench a triumphant peroration from it, but Osmo Vänskä (surely the best living conductor of Sibelius) and the Lahti Symphony Orchestra are better than that, and allow it to do what Sibelius intended - to evaporate, leaving an aching sense of loss and leave-taking hanging in the air.

Sometimes context creeps up on you.

Prom 41: Gershwin (BBC4)

What a fascinating, if flawed, experiment this was. The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra joined forces with the Marcus Roberts Trio for Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, with the trio contributing extensive improvised passages.

As the talking heads before noted, Rhapsody in Blue is itself a clash between jazz and "classical" styles, so on the face of it it's entirely natural to bring a jazz trio into the mix. The problem is that the excellent Roberts and his cohorts play in a post-Coltrane, post-Monk idiom, so what we ended up with was a three-way clash between classicism, pre-war and post-war jazz, with none emerging unscathed. Roberts' solos were wonderful, and when his rhythm section of Roland Guerin and Jason Marsalis kicked in things really took flight, but when they played along with the orchestra in the "composed" bits the result was oddly stilted, the stiffer '20s rhythms jarring against the more fluid post-bop element. I'd love to hear the trio alone improvise on the Rhapsody, as what they gave us tonight was exquisite, but I'm not convinced the middle of a "conventional" reading really works as the place to do it. Having said that, all involved acquitted themselves well, and this was an imaginative piece of programming, so full marks to the Proms for bringing it to us.

Roberts, Guerin and Marsalis gave us an encore, a delicious take on "I Got Rhythm" that had me hungering to hear more of them.


(Sorry, I can't comment on the rest of this show as I was watching Jamie Oliver on the other side, who showed me some excellent ways with courgettes.)

The aesthetics of strumming

I've been aware of the therapeutic qualities of the humble ukulele for some time now, so it was marvellous to be given one as a birthday present. Really, it doesn't even feel necessary to learn songs, or even proper chords - just strumming randomly brings a great peace.

It seems to fit with ideas that have been brewing in my mind for some time now - something to do with music as something that can happen spontaneously, that should be a product of friends coming together rather than some encrusted ritual, that shouldn't be restricted by the sort of thing we're seeing being enacted in law (which seems to me to be all part and parcel of the creeping erosion of our liberties). This is partly why there hasn't been much music posted up here recently. it's not down to laziness*, it's to do with thinking about what I want to do and how what I put up here might fit in with that. There may be some concrete result from this nebulous musing eventually.


*Well, only partly; But also, sometimes when you can't think of something to say it's best to say nothing.

The out sound from way in

We go to the seaside, eat fish and chips and paddle in the sea. I try to capture the place, but as my companion points out, it's an impossible task, because there's so much more than sight - all the sense are involved. And particularly for me, hearing. I've always loved the sound of the sea, whether from land or on board ships. My attempts to conjure up soundscapes seem so tiny and insignificant compared to this natural symphony.

It sharpens my ears, though, and returning to work I find myself listening afresh to the sounds surrounding me as I travel - something I've drawn on in the past for my own music - the angular, crippled clattering of the tube rails a stark contrast to the smooth rush of the sea and shingle.

This is part of why it pains me that people fill their ears with tinny distorted sounds from their i-pods and phones. What a shame to reduce music to something with which to smother the world. There's music all around, if you want to hear it.

It's all about me

Normally I wouldn't approve of blatant whoring for comments, but sod it, it's my birthday, so tell me how great I am. I'm off to the seaside. Here's a video including George Formby's little known version of Subterranean Homesick Blues, in celebration of the fact that I got a ukulele*:





*Although as any fule kno, George Formby didn't play the uke, he played the banjolele.

Fun for social pariahs

fun hats
Originally uploaded by petemaskreplica.

Regular readers will be aware of my passion for the medium of comics, a medium I will stand up and shout for in the face of its reputation as an interest for sad freaks. I feel much the same about real ale, and the Great British Beer Festival reminds me somewhat of the Bristol Comics Con, for many of the same reasons; largely that when you go, the crowd there is a lot less freakish than your prejudice might lead you to believe, but this doesn't mean the freaks aren't there. But as a freak myself, I salute them.

There's been a bit of talk about the introduction of 1/3 pint glasses, apparently in an attempt to attract more women. I can see the advantage in having the smaller measure,. but for myself I prefer the pint glass (despite drinking largely halves) as it's more likely to find use at home. Interestingly, many of the 1/3 pint glasses I see are in the hands of men, in the afternoon, and as evening approaches they become a rarer sight. There are plenty of women there, but thy seem largely to hold half or pint glasses.

We wound up going on Thursday this year, something we've previously avoided, as for one thing the earlier days in the week tend to be more selective (i.e. less full of twats in suits getting pissed) but also because Thursday is Fun Hat Day, the mere thought of which fills me with unspeakable horror. Fortunately we went in the afternoon so avoided the worst of the twattery.

As ever, there were many delicious and unusual beers to try, as well as some excellent food stalls to help keep the stomach lined. As the afternoon wears on, the place begins to seem less like a large barn and more like a large pub, until at about 8.00 we consider one more beer, then realise that the place is now packed and resembles a very busy pub that we don't really want to be in (I'm not queueing for 3/4 of an hour to buy a half). We retire to a real pub for one for the road, and then stagger our separate ways.

This year I especially enjoyed a Scottish stout called "Black Gold" (which tastes very little like Guinness), a Finnish Dark Lager (which tastes a bit like mild, although it smells just like lager), some lovely milds ( a mild won the Beer of the Year award for the first time this year, which I hope will lead to a more general availability of this fine beer), and the fruit wines and meads, which stand I left laden with bottles.

There's a whole lot of nice booze beyond the normal fare awaiting your discovery, so if you're in London, pop down to Earl's Court between now and Saturday and sample some of it, and in any case hunt it out wherever you may find it. Why should we settle for the bland and predictable when we can have nice stuff, eh?

Songs for Swingin' Tyrants

Everyone and his dog is talking about Hitler's record collection, but I'm not going to join in this pathetic... oh, hang on, I just did. There seems to be some surprise that Hitler owned records involving composers and musicians officially prohibited by his regime. What, you mean Hitler was a hypocrite? Well, he's gone down in my estimation, then.

It's a sure sign of the silly season, I guess, that otherwise sensible people such as Stephen Isserlis feel bound to express surprise that someone responsible for the deaths of millions had some quite good records. I thought we'd established long ago that listening to classical music doesn't, in fact, make you a good person. Not least from the evidence of Camp Commandants who sent Jews to their deaths to the strains of Bach and Beethoven.

Which major work of Alban Berg are you?

I'm this one, apparently:

What major work of Alban Berg are you!?!?!

You are Berg's ridiculously complicated Chamber Concerto. No one will ever figure you out and when they do, it probably won't be right. Take this quiz! Quizilla | Join | Make A Quiz | More Quizzes | Grab Code

The 'wood life

Exciting news for fans of Garth Marenghi's Torchwood! The excellent Behind the Sofa reveals that sit-com legend Richard Briers is to appear in the new series. Briers describes the script as "terrifying", which could be taken more than one way, of course. Still, it does look as if they're getting some names in for the cast, so I continue to nurse the hope that it may turn out not to be complete shit. Hell, it can't be worse than the first series... can it?

In other, actually exciting Whoniverse news, I see that British comics legend Pat Mills is scripting one of Big Finish's upcoming 8th Doctor stories. A friend of mine opined on top sci-fi loony forum Outpost Gallifrey that Mills would be an ideal writer for Torchwood, and you know what, he's right. They'd never allow it on screen, mind.

No direction home

We rouse ourselves from our heat-induced torpor (what greater pleasure is there than a hot sunny Sunday morning, drinking coffee and languidly contemplating the crossword?) and go to an exhibition, How We Are at Tate Britain. It's a collection of photographs showing how this island has documented itself through the camera, and it's fascinating and well worth a visit. It begins with the dawn of photography, and the excitement of this new medium is vivid, pictures of the construction of Nelson's Column that turn my perceptions all over (I mean, hasn't Nelson's Column always been there? Certainly too long to be photographed half-finished?). Pictures of Pit Girls in the 1890s that give the lie to the idea that women at work is a post-war phenomenon (that's only true if you're middle class), and women at work during the war, true pioneers of female equality. Images of folk traditions you thought were a distant memory, being played out as living and vital within the memory of my grandparents.

Images vivid and startling in their feeling of contemporaneity, some great pictures, some not, bu all with a palpable sense of an era. As I look at the pictures from the Second World War, I am jolted by the realisation that I am seeing things that are within the experience of my parents. From then on there is paradoxically a growing sense of distance, and as we reach the 1970s and 1980s I feel a melancholy as I look at these scenes that resonate with personal memories, but which suddenly seem as ancient and lost as the 1950s. The time is passing and falling behind us rapidly, as we scramble vainly to grasp and keep moments. By the final gallery we are in our own century, but the scenes and portraits from within a few years of now seem as self-conscious, stiff and formal as anything from the Victorians, who now seem almost more real than the contemporary faces before us. Time runs on and on, indifferent to us, slipping through our hands like water as I sit here, clumsily trying to capture memories already fading, unable to return.

Provisional thoughts on Ulysses

What they rarely seem to tell you about Ulysses is how funny it is.

We all know about the literary canon - very large books by very eminent authors (usually dead white European men) that time and academia have declared Great. They are books you're quite likely to find in a school or university syllabus, books that everyone's heard of, but nobody's actually read, and you suspect that those who claim they have are lying. Ulysses is such a book - perhaps the quintessential Great Book. Only the other day I heard Will Self on the radio relating the experience of siting next to an Eminent Professor of English Literature at a dinner, who told him quite happily that he'd never read Ulysses.

Because why bother actually reading it? We all know about it, don't we? We know that it's hardcore Modernist writing, that it's some kind of meta-textural comment on Homer, that it's got some rude bits in it and ends with a Very Long Sentence. It is the Book Everybody Should Read, But Almost Nobody Has. Well, I don't know anyone who's actually read it, do you?

I've always had an awkward streak, the kind that seeks out those things that are generally considered difficult. It's why when I wanted to hear Captain Beefheart I went past the earlier easier albums and dived straight into Trout Mask Replica. So an author with such an obscuritan reputation as James Joyce was something that in a way I'm surprised I hadn't attempted before.

So I began to read out of a combination of duty and bloody-mindedness. But I didn't carry on that way.

Because (and now I come to type this, it seems to read as an awful example of stating the obvious) Ulysses is a fantastic book. Sitting on a train into work first thing in the morning, half asleep, I found the rambling half-sentences that represent Leopold Bloom's internal thoughts as he goes about his business early in the morning on June 16th, 1904 coincided very closely with my own frame of mind, which certainly helped - a bit of personal recognition is often all you need to find your way into something be it a book or painting or piece of music - and I rapidly discovered that if you imagine the whole thing in an Irish accent, it suddenly starts to make a lot more sense. I might even suggest that Joyce's comic element has a direct parallel with that other masterpiece of Irish-logical humour, Father Ted.

And it can't be stressed enough, a lot of Ulysses is very funny. Whether it's Bloom's Pooterish thoughts, the drunken ramblings and rantings of men in a pub, a scene in a newspaper office rendered in the style of a tabloid, there's a great deal of pure fun involved, and it was all a lot less frightening than its reputation might suggest (as I often find is the case with reputedly "difficult" work). Why this should come as a surprise, I don't know - is it because we expect modernism to be dour, scowling stuff, do we somehow think that comedy and Art are incompatible?

Now, this is not to say that it's an easy read. It needs a lot more effort than Harry Potter, and there are moments when, like a roller coaster, you have to hang on and hope you're still in your seat at the end, and just plough through. This is particularly true in the later parts of the book, in which our protagonists are heavily under the influence of beer and absinthe, with all the woozy hallucinatory quality that implies. But it's extraordinary how effectively Joyce manages to make his themes emerge from the swirl of the language, the deluge of word-play and allusion that characterises so much of the writing. You almost certainly won't pick up on every reference first time round, but it doesn't matter, pay attention and you'll find your way through (and Joyce helpfully recapitulates at certain points to help you keep track) - and of course, you can always read the book again - and it's very obviously a book that will repay repeated reading.

There's an immense emotional scope through the course of the book, through the dazed fug of early morning through to the drink-fuelled madness of evening, and the final clearing of the mind, and finally the rapid wakeful cascade of thoughts in bed that form the final soliloquy of Bloom's wife Molly. I compared Bloom to Pooter earlier, but that's only the start of his story. Through the course of his day, as we gradually learn more about him and his life, he evolves from a comic anal-retentive to a figure of pity, tragedy, integrity, and finally even hope. The closing sequences, after all that has gone before, are as moving as anything you're ever likely to read.

What people always ask you when you mention you're reading a book (especially a well-known but hardly read one) is, "What's it about?" Well, one one level, it's about what happens to a group of people on one day in Dublin. On another it's about Ireland past, present and future. On another level it's about literature, and what it's for, and what it might be capable of. Then again, it's about Life, what it means and how we might live it. In some ways it's about nothing, and in others it's about Everything.

The point is, it is Great Literature. But it's not because someone high in an ivory tower has decided that it is, it's great because it just is. And I could sit you down and tell you for hours all the things that make it great, but really the only way to understand is to read it.

How strange, that it should be a revelation that a Great Book is a book you'd actually want to read. What does this say about our culture, I wonder.

You should read this book. Not because it appears on lists of Great Books, or because it's studied in universities, or because it's "challenging" (although it undoubtedly is). You should read this book because it has something to say, and it says it with force and elegance and poetry. And it is worth the effort.

Prom 25: Boulez/Birtwistle (Radio 3/ online)

Pierre Boulez is a composer notorious for reworking his music, sometimes over many decades, and never quite reaching a conclusion (he has commented that works of art are never finished, only abandoned), with the result that his catalogue is full of torsos and "works in progress". Ironic then, that due to the late running of the earlier prom and the vagaries of London's public transport network this late-night offering from the London Sinfonietta and the BBC Singers was already up and running by the time I got home and turned on the radio, so I only heard his recent completion of Dérive 2 as a fragment. I shall certainly be taking advantage of the excellent BBC Radio player to listen to the full work, though, as it was an extraordinary and beautiful work. Boulez is the man fingered by many of those who oppose all avant-garde music since 1900 who ruined it all, and I'll admit I have issues with parts of his aesthetic*, but you'd have to be fairly cloth-eared not to be able to revel in the luxurious sounds he conjures up here. I wonder how the fact that I shall hear the opening of his piece after the close relates to his ideas challenging the idea of a "complete" work?

Coupled with this sensuous, glowing music was another of the bogeymen of contemporary music, Harrison Birtwistle. Again, Birtwistle is a man much misunderstood, as the frequent extreme complexity of his textures belies a thoroughly direct, even blunt, approach. Neruda Madrigals is one of his gentler works, and its more austere sound world, conjuring up thoughts of the Northern landscapes that he inhabits, made an excellent pairing with the Boulez, and made me regret that it was impracticable for me to stay and hear it live. What a shame this sort of thing gets increasingly and timidly relegated to late night slots. One hopes that this is a trend that will not continue when Roger Wright takes over the Proms from Nicholas Kenyon (aka the Doctor out of Star Trek Voyager) next year.

Players and singers were as good as you'd expect, and isn't it good to see in Susanna Mälkki a woman at the forefront of was is still largely a male domain?

* Maybe I'll get round to writing a post about this eventually.

Prom 24: Sibelius/Britten/Varese/Debussy (RAH)

A strange one, this. Four pieces, all well played by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. First up is Sibelius' last major work, Tapiola, which Ilan Volkov took at a fair speed that emphasised the driving wind through the forest rather than the brooding stillness that I find difficult to contemplate without thinking of Sibelius' 30-year compositional silence that followed it. There does seem to be something very monumental and absolute about it that precludes the possibility of anything after. Considering he spent many years attempting to write an eighth symphony, it seems to have a very strong sense of a final word, after which nothing more can be said.

There is plenty more to be said in this concert, however, and the next is Britten's Piano Concerto. Again, the orchestra dispatches it with aplomb, and soloist Steven Osborne plays beautifully and engagingly, but, as with quite a number of Britten's pieces, I find that my attention keeps wandering, then is dragged back by something arresting, then wanders again.

The second half also features two pieces. Varèse's Ecuatorial features retro-chic electronics in the form of two ondes martenots, to evoke an ancient past. it's a strange and powerful piece, the swooping of the ondes contrasting with the guttural sounds of brass and percussion, as well as the strange alien chanting of the male singers. There's really nothing very much to compare it with, even in Varèse's own output, and it lingers in the mind long after it finishes, an unsettling presence.

Finally, we hear La Mer by Debussy, a performance that evokes foam flecked, salty air.

So, four works, four good performances... and yet I leave feeling slightly dissatisfied. It's something to do with the two major stage shifts, one in each half, that inevitably drain the momentum from a concert (I work on a theory that one should always try and avoid such things, one large move is manageable, more disrupts proceedings too much). It's also to do with the choice of repertoire. These are all pieces I either know and love, or would be more than happy to hear again, yet I am left with a feeling that I don't really know why they were programmed together. Four big-ish pieces leave a lack of a sense of a core, so that the whole is less than the sum of its parts. It's a shame, because each of these performances deserve to be remembered fondly. But they won't be remembered as one concert, which is the difference between good playing and good programming.

Prom 19: Strauss/Britten/Nielsen (RAH)

Richard Strauss' Macbeth is exactly the sort of piece that only gets performed in long concert seasons that feature a Shakespearean theme. There is no other reason to play, or listen to, this dreary tosh.

Next up we were supposed to hear a rare outing for Britten's Our Hunting Fathers, but unfortunately singer Lisa Milne fell ill and no-one else was available who knew the piece well enough to do it at short notice, so instead we hear another vocal work of Britten's, Les Illuminations. Joan Rodgers steps into the breach wonderfully (as apparently she did at Aldeburgh last year, when Milne cried off sick at the last minute from the very same work...), as do the Hallé, and Britten's settings of Rimbaud are wonderful, but it's a bit of a shame to sacrifice something I and probably many others in the ausience have never heard for a piece (albeit a great one) that's far more commonly heard; not to mention the nonsense it makes of the other Prom theme supposedly being represented, the centenary of the birth of Auden.

In the second half we hear the wonderful fourth symphony of Nielsen, a piece I have long loved, in which the Hallé under Mark Elder catch fire to produce possibly the single best performance I've heard so far at this year's Proms.What a shame the hall was half empty. I've never been able to fathom why Nielsen isn't massively popular, but on this showing he simply isn't a box office draw. Well, all those of us who were there experienced something quite magical, and all those of you who weren't missed out. I was transported into another world, and ( a sure sign of a fine performance) couldn't quite believe it was over so soon. One day, I hope, Nielsen will reach his rightful place at the forefront of the average concert-goer's consciousness.

They play an encore, something I'd not normally welcome after such a charged experience, but it's beautifully judged: a new orchestration by Colin Matthews of Debussy's last, long lost piano work, "Les soirs illuminée par l'ardeur du charbon", a delicate and refined couple of minutes that soothes our ears and readies us to return to the dark, wet night of London. We retire to a pub and revel in what we have heard.

The vinyl word

In between all this highfalutin Promming, I've been very much enjoying this series of articles in the Guardian by Joe Queenan looking at the origins of pop songs, full of the kind of inconsequential trivia that I find fascinating.

Prom 18: Delius/Tippett/Vaughan Williams (RAH)

Ah, Delius, the syphilitic old fascist. There are those who go into raptures about his music, but I'm afraid I'm not one of them. " A Song of Summer" meandered along in a turn of the century, sub-Debussy sort of way, all very lush and ripe but lacking in much substance. A nagging thought kept knocking in my skull that I'd heard it somewhere before, which coalesced into a realisation that what it really reminded me of was "By the Sleepy Lagoon" without the tune. So, Delius: a poor man's Eric Coates.

I mentioned Tippett yesterday in comparison to Henze, and, serendipitously, here is his Triple Concerto. Tippett's an idiosyncratic composer, to put it mildly; depending on whether you're in the mood for him he can seem luxuriantly rhapsodic or rambling; there are many gestures that sound appealingly knotty when you're feeling sympathetic, and clumsy when you're not. And then he floors you with something of such breathtaking beauty that you have to forgive him. But in a time when so many composers are turning out expertly crafted, glowingly orchestrated and timidly empty scores, Tippett stands against the cult of fetishistic surface perfection and insists on music as a social force that can attempt to say something.

And so to Vaughan Williams' Fifth Symphony. It's such a shame that such transcendentally beautiful music as this gets dismissed as "cowpat music", and it makes me wonder what it is about the English that makes them unable to believe that one of their own might produce something worthy to stand alongside the greats, which this symphony undoubtedly does, in my view. It's elegant pastoral skin conceals an underlying muscular system that is as steely as the tumultuous fourth and sixth symphonies that stand either side of it. And in Andrew Davies you couldn't hope for a better guide through this music. In fact the experience reminds me just how good the BBC Symphony Orchestra were when he was their principal conductor, before he left and they fell into a dreadful slump (I recall a performance they gave a few years ago at the Proms under Jukka-Pekka Saraste of Lutoslawski's Concerto for Orchestra that I still remember as the worst performance I have ever heard a professional orchestra give). They have turned the corner, and Jiri Belohlavek has certainly raised their game, but they still have more work to do to return to their former heights. They played wonderfully tonight, and they should always play this well.

Henze

There are some things that just seem to pass you by, and Hans Werner Henze has been one of them. I've long been aware of his existence, of course, and his position as one of the few significant composers to emerge from Germany since the war, as well as one not afraid to confront his homeland's past, but somehow his actual music has failed sink into my consciousness. So coming across a score of his Seventh Symphony while engaged in cataloguing the oversized score shelves in the library where I work* seemed to be a sign that I should have a listen, and I now wish I'd paid attention earlier. It's something of a shock to come across something so recent (he wrote it in 1983-4) that engages so directly and seriously, and without any ironic distancing, with the European symphonic tradition that stems from Haydn and Beethoven. All the more remarkable coming from a German composer, who must I suppose feel the weight of such a history even more than most of the rest of us. It's an immediately engaging piece, that's nevertheless clearly a weighty, meaty beast. If you like the sort of eclectic, not-quite-tonal style of such composers as Tippett (whose politics also find an echo in Henze), this is well worth a listen, and I shall certainly be hunting down more of his music.

One thing though: the CD cover is a truly horrible design. I know the sort of person most likely to buy a Henze CD probably isn't going to be put off or attracted by the cover, but really, couldn't they have made the effort?

* A startling number of these scores seem to come from the same two or three publishers, and be composed by people born within a few years of each other. A monument to a certain era in 20th century music...

Prom 14: The Seasons (RAH)

Is there a better composer than Haydn?

I have long harboured the suspicion that most, if not all, of music, or indeed of anything is either underrated or overrated, almost nothing being rated generally at its exact worth. Haydn is clearly underrated, as sadly was attested by a half empty Royal Albert Hall for this performance of his oratorio The Seasons. This is a work that lies very much in the shadow of The Creation, not least because Haydn himself was less than happy with the circumstances of its genesis, complaining that the libretto was inadequate, and ultimately that the effort of writing it had worn him out (he composed little after its completion in 1802). I have to confess I know it hardly at all compared to its more famous companion, so Roger Norrington's appearance at the Proms seemed a good opportunity to redress the balance.

Now, it's true to say that it's not as great as The Creation, but then again, to paraphrase Joseph Heller, what is? In fact I wonder if, in a way, it counts as a more remarkable achievement and testament to Haydn's genius that he produced something so good from such unpromising materials. If it's true that he resorts to word-painting more here than before, the fact is that what he paints is far more interesting than the words that he illustrates. The raucous natural horns and growling trombones of the Handel and Haydn Society of Boston's period band depicting the hunt in "Autumn" were only one highlight among many in this performance that reminded one that for all the cosy image of "Papa Haydn", he was much closer to his sometime pupil Beethoven than is often acknowledged. And Haydn has a natural humane warmth that the younger composer often struggled to produce. The triteness of the words becomes irrelevant when you're faced with such spirituality, such craft, such inventiveness as the 70-year-old composer shows here. Genius is a word that gets (mis)used so often nowadays that it hardly means anything anymore; but Haydn is one of a very small number of artists who genuinely deserves the description. It pains me deeply that he's thought of as staid, or boring, or shallow, because he's none of these things, as a careful listen to almost anything he wrote will reveal. He may not have the glamour of dying young and having a play written implying he was murdered by another composer, but I can't think of anyone else who sustained such a level of originality, inventiveness and sheer quality over such a long and prolific career. And yes, dammit, profundity too.If you can't hear the deep, heartfelt emotion and spirituality in his music, then you're simply not listening.

Is there a better composer than Haydn? Well, no.

Damo Suzuki/ Vialka

How do I describe Vialka? If I tell you they're a duo, he on guitar, she on drums, both on vocals, you'll probably think "ah, White Stripes", but they're nothing like that, although they share a certain aesthetic that might be described as primitivist (although not primitive). Maybe if Jack and Meg had grown up listening to Magma instead of Led Zeppelin they might have turned out something like this, although it's impossible to imagine Vialka ever writing a song for a Coke ad. If I tell you their music spans genres from Eastern European folk through punk, jazz and Beefheartesque avant-blues, with the odd bit of reggae thrown in, you might imagine some sort of polystylist sound; but they never really sound like anything other than themselves. If I tell you that Marylise Frecheville wears a fantastically unconvincing blond wig and occasionally jumps out from behind her drum kit to dance in the audience while Eric Boros remains in half-shadow on the stage, encouraging us all to clap, you might have the idea that they're a "wacky" band; but there's a forceful sense of purpose behind what they do that is utterly compelling and has no trace of novelty (which doesn't preclude a wry humour coming through). The only category I feel the need to put them in (although they describe themselves as "nomadic turbo-folk") is "good music". They're one of the most distinctive and engrossing acts I've seen recently, and I commend them to you.


Having left the stage at the Spitz, Vialka come back, as this evening they, augmented by a flautist, are acting as Damo Suzuki's band for his latest appearance in London. It's a different atmosphere tonight to the last time I saw him; It's Sunday night, the audience is a sitting one rather than a dancing one, and there's the small matter of the curfew. So tonight's show is perhaps a more cerebral affair than that November night, which pushes towards a more reflective mood. What's remarkable about Damo's performances is the way that the musicians he plays with seem to absorb entirely into his vision, without ever losing their own voices, so that here we hear the sound of Vialka subtly altered to become something that is clearly of a piece with his previous performances, yet also unique. And next time, it'll be different again, an unpredictable, unrepeatable event with Damo at its centre, acting as the focus that draws it all together. What you can't fail to take away from any of his performances is a sense of the sheer generosity of his spirit.

The Deller Quartet and friends

Schubert's Octet was written for a clarinetist to play with friends, like much of Schubert's music - if he'd lived to anything like a reasonable age he'd doubtless have left behind more big, "public" works, but as it is most of his music is like this - small scale (in forces if not in length), intimate, informal. It initially seems an unlikely situation, to be sat in a chapel drinking while listening to a concert, but it's a nice change of pace. There's a rarity in the Five Pieces for string quartet by Schulhoff ( a composer who should be better known) and Webern's early "Langsamer Satz", luxuriant and lush, if lacking in the emotional depth of his mature work. The Deller Quartet (all members of KSO) perform both with aplomb, before being joined by some of the KSO wind section for the Schubert. This is surely how he meant this music to be heard - friends playing together for friends; listening, drinking, enjoying. Afterwards we all decamp to the pub up the road. It's not the best pub in the world, but it doesn't matter - it's good company that makes an evening enjoyable.

Proms 6&7 (Radio 3)

I dashed home after Ives and caught the first Late-Night Prom on Radio 3 (I might have stayed, but I'd never have got home). This was notable as it had made the news bulletins the previous day, featuring as it did the first modern performance of a Mass by Alessandro Striggio, a composer at the court of the Medicis, in which the choir divides into 40, and later 60, parts. If you know your early music this will sound familiar, as it was this mass, as well as a motet in 40 parts by Striggo, that inspired the Duke of Norfolk to ask aloud if there was an English composer who could match this feat, to which the answer was yes - Thomas Tallis stepped up to the challenge and composed his own 40-part motet, Spem in alium. All three of these works were performed here, and there's no denying that the sheer gloss of sound in so many independent voices sounding together is overwhelming. It should also be noted that Tallis comes out on top as the better composer (to these ears, at least), but the Striggio works were very much worth hearing, and the final Agnus Dei of the mass, where the choir divides into 60, was an extraordinary and special moment, a shimmering, gossamer texture that wafted the scent of the divine even into this embittered atheist's soul.

Last night's concert was equally special, the combined forces of the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the Orchestre national de France coming together under the baton of Kurt Masur (celebrating his 80th birthday) to perform Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings and Bruckner's Symphony No.7. Tchaikovsky has such a reputation as a Russian misreablist that it's refreshing to hear a piece like this, all light and joy. At the risk of sounding like a Classic FM DJ, this really is music to soothe the soul. Bruckner is a composer I've taken a long time to appreciate - as a shallow youth I dismissed him as long-winded and dull, but I've come to realise how wrong I was, and that he's a unique composer of almost transcendental qualities, whose occupation of space-time chimes strongly with Tallis and Striggio's clouds of sound.

Prom 5: Hayden/Bernstein/Ives (Royal Albert Hall)

Is there a longer stretch of urban road in the world without a bin than Kensington Gore? that's how it feels, anyway. Eventually I find one skulking by the Royal College of Art like a Dalek left behind after the invasion was aborted. Such things that a new Proms season brings to mind.

They like to make a big deal of the fact that you can get into the proms for a fiver, but that's somewhat negated by the extortionate bar prices - £3.90 for a 335ml bottle of beer! Arrive early and go to the pub, is my advice.

The old routine comes back quickly once I'm in the hall, many of those strange faces that have become familiar over the years are present - that ageing hippy who sadly seems no longer to have his "Proms 78" t-shirt, that man who looks, frankly, like a paedophile... The announcement telling us to turn off our phones. I am so paranoid about this that I check my phone, despite knowing full well that its battery is flat and it's currently dead as a doornail.

it's not particularly full tonight, but it's not an unrespectable crowd - pretty good for a concert with no conventional warhorse, I guess.

First up is tonight's premiere - Substratum by Sam Hayden (who, I discovered at the weekend, is a relation by marriage. Small world). I seem to recall that a few years ago Sam talked a lot about politics and the composer's role in society. Tonight's programme note talks about "exploring the fundamental and essential characteristics of its material through highly formalist means". One should never put too much store by programme notes - I remain convinced that Stockhausen wouldn't have half such a fearsome reputation if it weren't for the well-meaning but obfuscating waffle that's been written about him - but one does wonder if there's a danger of him being dragged down into the mire of the establishment. The piece itself is OK (it's refreshing to hear a new piece these days that's so apologetically "modern"), but lacks a certain spark for me. Maybe it needs to be listened to a few times, something that if you're played on Radio 3 you have the advantage over most new works in that this is quite easily done.

Anyhow, whatever my reservations, it's certainly a better experience than hearting the next piece in the programme, Bernstein's Second Symphony, the Age of Anxiety. This uneasy blend of pastiches of Rachmaninov, Copland, Shostakovich and Bartok, to name a few, is a seemingly endless parade of cliches, drenched in pretentious portentousness. I wanted to wish it well, really I did, but it was tedious almost beyond endurance, and it was a wonder that I made it to the end. Who'd have though that the flamboyant, extravagant, voraciously bisexual raving egotist Bernstein could come up with something so dull? I suppose this is what happens when you chase respectability. Sam Hayden take note.

Thank god, then, for Charles Ives, who was certainly never troubled by notions of respectability. I last heard his Fourth Symphony a few years ago at the Proms, performed by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. This performance didn't quite scale the heights of that one - in particular it lacked the clarity that the CBSO brought to the riotous second movement - but this is a piece that sweeps all before it. It is an assertive, unapologetic and thoroughly necessary work that exists on a higher plane than what went before it, and in its closing bars you hear a glimpse of infinity. There are many works that it is interesting to hear, and a few that are a pleasure, but to hear this symphony is a privilege.

Prom 4: Berio/Rossini (Radio3)

Now that the new taste fascists have taken Modernism as their whipping boy, I worry that there will be a comprehensive purge of large swathes of musical history between roughly 1910 and 1980. Now of course there's an awful lot of modernist rubbish that deserves to be forgotten, but there's a lot of rubbish in any era that deserves to be forgotten, and it would be a terrible shame if some very fine composers were to be buried purely due to their use of a style that is now outdated. Berio is one such composer, and his Sinfonia, which forms the first half of tonight's prom, is a case in point, a highpoint of Modernist music (and indeed Post-Modernist) whose glowing textures and warm wit speak of a humanity that current received wisdom would deny could be present in this sort of music, as well as a determination to say something that is certainly becoming rarer. I wonder how much one could get out of it if one did not get the various references and quotations that it contains (in particular the extensive "commentary" on the scherzo of Mahler's Second Symphony), whether it's enough to hear the surreal clash of the tonal and non-tonal. But this isn't something I can answer, although it seems Berio takes for granted in this a certain level of musical knowledge that you simply couldn't assume these days if you were aiming at anything beyond a vanishingly small group of people. Will this, rather than any stylistic fashion, be the death of this piece? I can only hope not, because it's a wonderful experience, and it's ably performed here by the Swingle Singers and the Chorus and Orchestra of the Academy of Santa Cecilia, Rome under conductor Antonio Pappano.

The second half was an Italian classic from an earlier age, Rossini's Stabat Mater. This is one of those pieces I never enjoy as much as I think I'm going to, and so proved the case here, although the players did a very fine job and there were many lovely things on the way.

First Night of the Proms (BBC2)

I don't mind Charles Hazlewood, I've met him and he's a nice bloke. So I can put down his slightly patronising irritatingness on telly events such as this to the autocue and the patronising, irritating script it's delivering him. His guests in the box are Gillian Moore, late of the London Sinfonietta and now of the South bank, and Philip Sheppard, cellist and composer. Both are intelligent, knowledgeable people, and yet in the context of a television event neither has anything interesting to say. I put this down to the inherently asinine nature of television.

The BBC Symphony Orchestra despatches Walton's "Portsmouth point" with efficiency. It's good to hear them on much better form than a couple of years ago, when their performance under Jukka-Pekka Saraste of Lutoslawski's Concerto for Orchestra was possibly the worst performance I have ever heard a professional orchestra give.

Elgar's Cello Concerto is a tricky beast. It's skewed by the influence of Jacqueline du Pre, who created the self-indulgent template that most cellists have copied since for their interpretation. Elgar is all about passionate emotion held in check, and Paul Watkins doesn't quite manage to escape the gushing influence of du Pre, although he gives a pretty fine account. I'm more disturbed by the appalling mix in the TV sound, which pushes the soloist to the top in a ludicrous and utterly unrealistic (and unmusical) manner. Halfway through I switch to Radio 3 to compare. but of course telly is showing with a delay of half an hour and Radio is already onto the interval talk. This misbalancing has the effect of robbing the final moments of all the subtlety and poignancy they should have, that I'm sure Mr Watkins gave them if you were in the hall. The audience clap wildly. Charles Hazlewood gushes. But that's what he's paid to do, of course.

Here's Nicholas Kenyon to gush a bit more. Nicholas Kenyon has run the Proms for the past decade, and has taken it from John Drummond's daring to a cosy safeness that has gone from feeling like a reconciliation to an unimaginative bland consensus.

Charlie wants to know what Nick's favourite moment is in the time he's been running it. Nick waffles on in a generalising way that says nothing. Well, no-one's ever going to say anything thoughtful or intelligent on telly, are they? Only self-congratulatory mush. Blah blah themes and anniversaries [the laziest programming devices]. Blah blah international visitors. Youth Orchestras. Christ, this is turning into something like a speech at a political party conference. Being a bit of a nerd, I can't quite get over the fact that Nick looks quite a lot like the Doctor out of Star Trek: Voyager.

Charles now talks to Paul Watkins, and an intelligent discussion threatens to break out. Here we have two intelligent musicians discussing an important piece, and it's wonderful. it's over too soon, of course, but then we have a nice little film profiling Jiri Belohlavek, who isn't given enough screen time, as he clearly has lots of interesting things to say. But overall I must give thumbs up to BBC 2 for this bit of the interval.

Now the talking heads return, and it's back to bland nonsense. Oh well. That's TV for you.

Actually, I'm being unfair. They're saying some interesting stuff about Beethoven here. But they're talking against the clock, and a conversation that should last hours is over in minutes.

Personally, I've always thought that Beethoven's 9th Symphony's opening 30 seconds are brilliant, and then it's all downhill from there. Belohlavek takes a very steady speed in the first movement, putting himself closer to Klemperer than Norrington in the speed stakes. But in sacrificing the urgency of the faster speed, he doesn't quite achieve the gravity necessary to make the slower speed work.

The second movement's more successful, with an understated quality that brings out the dance element of the music.

I was worried that the solo singers not coming on stage until this point would distract, but fortunately this proves not to be the case, and after a brief respite the orchestra moves into the slow movement, a difficult one to bring off. There's a balance between repose and movement to be struck, and thy don't quite bring that off, although there are many moments to savour.

the finale bursts in-ish. It seems curiously lacking in electricity, and the cello/bass recitatives are rather lumpen and slow for my tastes. And when the "Ode to Joy" theme emerges, it sounds curiously sleepy, which I suppose is a valid interpretation, but it seems to lack the innocence that I want to hear at that point. Maybe that's something impossible to achieve after all these years.

Once the singers come in, of course, it's all about joy and humanity coming together, and critical comment is redundant, because how can you not respond to such a sentiment? It is music that stands beyond any reasonable comment.

Church of Trane

Good article in the Grauniad today marking the 40th anniversary of the death of the great John Coltrane. Coltrane's music has an obsessive edge to it, as I suppose all great art does to some extent - he frequently played "My Favourite things" from the Sound of Music, and would happily improvise on the tune for half an hour or more. I remember a story I was told of an occasion when he was playing with Miles Davis, and when his turn came, let rip with a blistering and very long solo. Davis sidled up to him after he finally finished and asked why he'd gone on so long. "I couldn't think of a way to finish", replied Trane. Miles responded, "Try taking the motherfucking horn out of your mouth."

if you haven't listened to Coltrane, it's time to put that right. this is music of such intensity that some people set up a church in his name.

A heart for any fate

Freedom is on two wheels. As the days pass distances seem less, unconquerable Everests become gentle inclines. Irritants remain, of course, but suddenly seem to matter less, because within a few hours you'll be free again, playing chess with the traffic, and then gliding past water, wind in your hair, glad to be able to forego the rat's underground existence and instead enjoy the thrill of movement, the life of it.

Remember those online petitions the government was making such a fuss of encouraging recently? Did you feel cynical, like me, dismiss thm as a cheap publicity stunt that would be filed away and forgotten? Well, sometimes they work!

The Mules

Ed Seed is really too skinny to be anything other than in a band. He drums and sings, a combination with a noble lineage (we'll forget about Phil Collins). The Mules also consists of guitar, bass, violin and squelchy moog-type keyboards. If Madness had come from the Weimar Republic they might have sounded like this. They're sharp, but also agreeably slapdash, skittering around Ed's tight drumming. They're rather wonderful, and so is their album. You could buy it online, but it would be better if you went to a gig and bought it off them there. They're playing every Monday at the Big Chill House until the end of August. Entry is free. Go and hear them.

Rasputina: Oh Perilous World

Having pre-ordered this album from the states some time ago I was very excited to find it on my doormat this weekend. And even more pleased that it lives up to all expectations.

Chances are, if you're in the U.K. you won't have heard Rasputina, although you may have heard a track of theirs that appeared in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. When I try to describe them to anyone, I struggle beyond "goth-pop cello band", which does them a great disservice, suggesting both a limited genre palette and a novelty element, neither of which is remotely true. Rather I should say that Rasputina mainstay Melora Creager has an idiosyncratic and singular vision, which she has pursued and refined through the course of five albums (plus an excellent solo mini-album last year).
Their last album, 2004's Frustration Plantation marked a breakthrough for these ears, with an expanded palette and refined songwriting producing Rasputina's most rounded work to date. Oh Perilous World builds on that fine album's sound world, as well as Melora's solo outing Perplexions last year. Many of the lyrics this time have been constructed using "found" sources, but the result seems to be pretty much the same as ever, namely oblique, mordant and witty. Rasputina offer a skewed, abstract take on the world around us that seems simultaneously to be entirely of its time and yet independent of any discernible trend. And in these days of identikit indie posers, that's something to be thankful for.

I am famous!

I may be overestimating what constitutes fame. Nevertheless, I feel very chuffed to see a photo of mine appear in top capital blog The Londonist!

Thanks for the ether

So, that is that. You can no longer light up in public without the full force of the law coming down on you like Two Ton Tony Tubbs and banging you up and throwing away the key. Or something.

I feel very uncomfortable about this. Let me lay my stall out: I smoked for many years until I gave up for the last time about 2 years ago. The last place I am likely to tempted to indulge was the pub. This means I will, as certainly as I can say, never smoke again. I will return from the pub not smelling of stale smoke. In terms of my own personal well-being, this ban is all to my benefit.

And yet... on Saturday I stood on platform 1 of London Bridge Station, looking at a large sign that informed me that as of July 1, smoking on this platform, or anywhere in this station (and all stations) would be AGAINST THE LAW.

Smoking is a vile habit, and if you smoke you ought to stop, really you should. But it's your choice to. Who benefits from this draconian law? Who is harmed if someone smokes on a platform, in the open air, other than the smoker?

I will doubtless find a smoke free pub a more comfortable place to sit. But I can't applaud a piece of legislation on the grounds that it suits me personally. That seems an attitude brimming with sanctimonious selfishness.

Most people I know don't smoke these days. But there are still some. Am I to cast them from my presence until they forego the perilous weed?

What happened to tolerance? What happened to taking responsibility for oneself? This law is attacking both these things. This comes from the same mindset that is slowly chipping away at our civil liberties, turning us into a nation of suspects.

What is this toss?

The literal answer is that this toss is the pilot for a resurrection of ancient telly music quiz Face The Music on BBC4, but the literal answer doesn't really answer the question, what is this toss?

You might be able to find it on the BBC's spanking new i-player, but I really wouldn't recommend it, as it really is shockingly poor and shows just how little anyone in television understands music. John Sergeant, who used to be so authoritative as a political corespondent, has a ponderous, pedantic delivery, his guests all look thoroughly uncomfortable, and the whole thing has an insipid, simpering air that I find utterly repellent. It makes Classic FM look like Hans Keller. Who commissioned this rubbish? If I knew nothing of classical music, I'd think, what a bunch of smarmy tossers. Knowing about it, I find it patronising, unintelligent and embarrassing. Oh, and I still think, what a bunch of smarmy tossers. It sets the cause of classical music back about 50 years.

Da-da-da-dum, da-da-da-dum....

Maybe it's a sign of stress or impending madness (it's been one of those weeks), maybe Rusty Davies has me in the grip of some kind of mind control voodoo, or maybe it's all true and the Master really is in the process of enslaving us all, but over the past week I've kept finding myself tapping out that rhythm. When I was a small lad, Doctor Who was my passion and obsession. It broke my heart to see its decline during the 80s, and I was overjoyed when it came back and made such a success of itself. It's not perfect (the Doctor needs to stop saying sorry and STOP SHOUTING, for a start), but it's still the best thing on telly by miles. Bar a mid-season wobble (that disappointing Dalek story) this has been the best series yet of the reconstituted Who, and I can only hope, as I wait to find out just how he'll get out of this one, and anticipate a return to the unwatchable any-of-big-brother's-x-factor-grease-idol-will-do type rubbish that will undoubtedly swamp the schedules from hereon, that all those rumours that the BBC might actually be stupid enough to cancel it when RTD & co move on (after series 4, allegedly) are the utter nonsense that they must surely be.

da-da-da-dum, da-da-da-dum...

A word from our sponsor

While I'm in plugging mode, if you're in London on Tuesday why not pop along to Kensington Symphony Orchestra's last concert before the summer? There's some Dvorak, the London premiere of a piece by the excellent John Woolrich, and Sibelius's 5th Symphony, which if you grew up in the 80s you'll recognise as the main riff from "Since Yesterday" by Strawberry Switchblade.

Tickets are 12 quid (£9 concessions), and it promises to be an excellent evening.
It all starts at 7.30pm, Tuesday June 26th, at St. John's, Smith Square.

Meaty beaty big and bouncy

I've had an email from Mark out of Meat for a Dark Day, a band from Sheffield of whom regular readers will be aware, telling me about their forthcoming single, which is out on July 2nd.

Now any band that puts stuff out on 7" vinyl in this day and age will always find a place in my heart, and luckily the music's good too, so I can be nice and truthful at the same time. "Vanity Unfair" is a thumping slab of prime garage boogie with a nice line in caustic observation. If it were a person it'd be that louche-looking individual at the other end of the bar eyeing up your girlfriend. The B side, "3 Mallards", couldn't be more different, a folk tinged wisp of a song that lingers in the head. It's a fine single, and you should put your order in for a copy immediately.

Between Roky and a hard place

Roky Erickson is playing in the Royal Festival Hall right now. It's the first time he's played in this country, and frankly it's a miracle that it's happening. I should be there. I should be coming home later to write one of those drunken, gushing, rambling posts about how great he was, how wonderful it was to see him functional and rocking. But I'm not. I'm stuck here with a disgusting cold, barely able to speak and feeling wretched. It sucks, like a big fat sucky thing.

Relative Dimension

There's a certain breed of gay man who sends women of a certain age all of a quiver in a last-ditch hormonal frenzy, and the exemple de nos jours is part time TARDIS occupant, chum of Emperor Palpatine and all-round hunk o' cheese John Barrowman.

I'll be looking forward to seeing him turn up in Doctor Who tomorrow night, seeing how many seconds he lasts without chatting someone up, and hoping for a shock revelation or two. But in the meantime, I feel duty bound to ask, what is going on on this album cover? Is Andrew Lloyd Webber just out of shot, applying his aspects to Captain Jack's Torchwood?

Britain's got attention whores

"The budgie man's on the telly!"

(If you've never wandered along the Thames in the vicinity of Tate Modern, you may not be aware that the budgie man is a bloke who stands about with a row of budgies on a pole and a tape player, singing a terrible song about how he's the "bu-budgie man".)

"really? What's he on?"
"I can't tell you, I'm too ashamed of the rubbish I'm watching."

A couple of days after this exchange, I finally wheedle the information out of her: The budgie man appeared (albeit briefly) on Britain's Got Talent. My curiosity piqued, I turn on and am sucked into an hour and a half of what Dante's Inferno might be like if Dante had been BBC1's light entertainment commissioning editor in 1975.

I'm confronted by a gaggle of small children jumping about dressed as purple witches, which puts me in mind of New Order's True Faith video re-imagined by a crack-head.

The judges are Simon Cowell, Amanda Holden and Piers Morgan. They each have a button that they press when they've had enough of whatever act is in front of them, which lights up an enormous red cross. If all three light their crosses, the act must stop and leave the stage in ignominy and shame. Cowell is playing his usual Nasty shtick, while Holden (a brunette these days, presumably in penance for doing the dirty on Les Dennis) almost visibly melts every time a small child appears. Her role is clearly to be good cop to Cowell's bad. Morgan doesn't appear to be able to decide if he's there to be an honest broker between these extremes or to try and out-bastard Cowell. When he attempts to do the latter, the result is hilarious in its ill-judgement. After a small child has run through "Wouldn't it be luverly" (very well, it must be said), he pronounces "No." there is an uncomfortable silence, it's clear the other two think she's a shoe-in. "No... doubt you're going through," he says. This sort of thing might work if Morgan was a polished performer who knew about comic timing, but he clearly isn't. He's clearly just that idiot who used to edit the Mirror before all that unfortunate business with the share tips.

There's a lot of that false expectation stuff in this show, actually - when the time comes to decide who'll go through to the next round, Cowell habitually uses it ("I'm sorry to tell you... you'll have to do it all over again. You're through!"). They used to use this gag on Neighbours all the time when telling kids their exam results and the like. Still, at least Cowell can pace it properly.

Of course, what we watch this sort of thing for isn't anyone with any actual talent, nor the ocean of mediocrity, but the jaw-droppingly awful, and Britain's Got Talent supplies that in spades. It's interesting that the audience is by now primed to boo Simon Cowell whatever he says, despite the fact that most of the time he's extremely fair in his criticisms. The man on the trampoline did get boring after he'd done the same pratfall about 5 times in the first 30 seconds. The middle aged woman dressed as Madonna was rubbish. Sticking spoons to your face isn't enough to make an act.

What continues to amaze, not only in this but all these talent shows, is the incredible ability of people to delude themselves that they can sing/tell jokes/dance/entertain in any way whatsoever. Surely if one of these people was your friend it'd be kinder to tell them quietly that they're rubbish, than to let them demonstrate it on national television? Or just shoot them. It'd be quick.

What are we here for?

When I started this, I had no real idea where it was going or what it was really intended to achieve, and as time goes by I feel increasingly that I don't really want to reach a definitive answer to those questions. But it occurred to me the other day, as I looked through a few old entries here and they sparked new ideas that might break the deadlock that's stalled a cherished project for a long time, that at least partly what this is is a place for ideas with no home. It's not exactly pieces - they're frequently too brief and unpolished for that - but I can't think of it as exactly sketches either, as that implies (to me, anyway) that they're intended as preparations for some greater plan (and I've written plenty of sketches at least as substantial as anything I've posted here that haven't appeared here as they're specifically intended as work towards a specific goal) . As it is, they sit here, awaiting their moment when light shines on them and their purpose becomes clear.

Sound Vs. Noise (5)

Something I find myself returning to in various guises is the horrible all-pervading noise that surrounds us. I would like to draw your attention to this article, which discusses an increasingly common manifestation of this.

Daemon Days

It's time for another one of these spurious internet personality tests. This one's a tie-in with the imminent film adaptations of Philip Pullman's Dark Materials books. Mine's a gibbon, apparently. A funky one, I hope. What do you think?