More to report on this week than in recent weeks, including multiple video clips, so will just get into it!
Music
This week I have been on a bit of a Cure binge, having bought the Disintegration special edition on CD (looked like too nice a package to yield to download), although I haven't got to listen to the extras yet. I do love much of the album, particularly 'Lovesong', seen live below:
This tempts me of course to rant a little about the Cure, as I did in my very first post on this blog here. For now, I will just confine myself to commenting that not only does 'Inbetween days' remain my favourite song ever, but it actually has 2 of my other favourite Cure songs, making it quite possibly my single favourite cultural artefact: 3 songs, around 9 minutes of pop perfection in one perfect package. The first b-side is 'The exploding boy', quite the cousin to its A-side in feel and percussion, but with some cool sax at the start and a great tumbling rolling pace:
The second b-side is 'A few hours after this', which features quite possibly my favourite use of strings in the pursuit of lightness in pop ever:
In other musical acquisitions, I just tonight downloaded from eMusic the new albums by Tracy Thorn and Stornaway (curious from reviews of the latter, and having a soft spot for the former since one my my favourite lines ever appeared in 'Come home' - 'every day's like Christmas day without you, it's cold and there's nothing to do'). I was also surprised to find David McAlmont and Michael Nyman's collaboration on eMusic, which had perked my interest when it came out (I liked the McAlmont/Bernard Butler album, particularly 'Yes' and 'You'll lose a good thing', seen below), so I downloaded that too.
Lots to listen to, reviews to follow.
Books
As well as continuing to work my way through the weighty biography of Francis Crick, I have been reading on Kindle a really interesting book called 'Evolution versus creationism' by Eugenie Scott, which is a highly readable and comprehensive overview of a debate which, to me as a scientist, is almost incredibly straightforward in its lopsidedness, but the book helps lay out clearly the sheer absurdity of the creationist arguments and literature.
I had a birthday during the week, and among my presents was a very unusual book called 'My brain on music' (see below) which I immediately added to my parallel book processing activities and from which I have already got more of a feel for concepts like pitch, tone, chords and timbre than I honeestly ever had. I have always been a complete illiterate in the actual science of music, and found it completely impenetrable, but this enjoyable and accessible book gives me new hope that I may actually come to some sort of passing terms with this stuff:
I also bought a compilation of interviews, transcripts of shows and articles about Bill Hicks, of whom more below (for €3.50 in HMV) and downloaded 'The girl with the dragon tattoo' onto Kindle for around the same price. Movies
Purchased 'Sherlock Holmes' from iTunes, copied the movie file to my laptop, and watched in part-screeen while working on a train to Dublin. It really is a very good and clever movie, and I just love Downey Jrs voice and script, and interplay with Jude Law. On the completely trashy front, I as interested to see the trailer for 'Predators' (below), and was sad to hear last night that Dennis Hopper died, although I would not have been a huge fan, barring his role in 'Speed', for which I always had a huge soft spot:
Other stuff
During a busy cultural week, I managed to listen to three great American alternative comedians, Bill Hicks (on a DVD I bought cheap ages ago), Emo Philips and Steven Wright (both of which albums I downloaded from eMusic); I must admit none of them blew my socks off as I expected they would, but I will talk more about them next week. I also got the second series of 'Terminator chronicles' for my birthday (enjoyed the first) and bought myself 'The road' on DVD.
Also, Uncut had a cover CD which looks kind of interesting....
All in all, lots of acquisitions to work through over the coming weeks!
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