Monday long song: Mercy Street

So was huge for Peter Gabriel, wasn't it, on both sides of the Atlantic, powered along at first by the video-friendly hits Sledgehammer and Big Time, and then by the collaborations (Kate Bush on Don't Give Up and Youssou N’Dour on In Your Eyes). But this is tucked away on there too, and reminds me that Peter is worth revisiting when I have more time.

Sunday shorts: This Is Why You Love Me

Sounds older than it is.

Blue Friday: The World Is Not Enough

"A Bond theme for Blue Friday?" I hear you ask. Well, yes. Partly to address the lack of Shirley Manson on this blog over the years but also, just take a butcher's at some of these lyrics:

I know how to hurt. I know how to heal.
I know what to show and what to conceal.
I know when to talk, and I know when to touch.
No one ever died from wanting too much.

[...]

People like us know how to survive.
There's no point in living if you can't feel alive.
We know when to kiss and we know when to kill.
If we can't have it all then nobody will.

[...]

I feel sick, I feel scared, I feel ready and yet unprepared.

The world is not enough but it is such a perfect place to start, my love,
And if you're strong enough, together we can take the world apart, my love...

Anyway, enough talk. Here's Shirley and co indulging all their Bond fantasies in a video that unkinder critics might describe as better than the film it accompanied... even if the idea of an exploding fembot is straight out of Austin Powers.

Королева Не Померла

You'd think, with pandemics and climate change providing enough existential threat already thank you very much, that war would not be something anyone would want. Yet here we are, with the barrel-chested Soviet throwback doing exactly what he wants and the West seemingly unable to do anything about it other than warn it was going to happen. Certainly our government, up to its grime-encrusted neck in oligarch donations, seems entirely powerless, immaterial and without purpose: neither use nor ornament, as my parents might say.

Whilst I hope for a swift return to peace in the Donbas, I don't see that happening, sadly. I thought war in Europe was consigned to the history books, but no. Awful, awful, awful.

I don't know how to end this post other than with a song from Peter Solowka's Ukrainians. You might recognise it.

Twenty-two in '22: Fallout

I've set myself modest reading targets in each of the last three years and failed every time (I managed 17 in '19, 11 in '20 and 18 in '21), so I'm determined to read 22 books in '22. I'll review them all here.

3/22: Fallout by Sadie Jones

The blurb: London 1972. Luke is dazzled by the city. It seems a world away from the provincial town he has fled along with his own troubled past, and his new life is unrecognisable – one of friendships forged in pubs, candlelit power cuts, and smoky late-night parties.

When Nina, a fragile and damaged actress, strays into his path, Luke is immediately drawn to her and the delicate balance of his new life is threatened. Unable to stay away from her, Luke is torn between loyalty, desire and his own painful past, until everything he values, even the promise of the future, is in danger…

The review: I'm trying to think when I last finished a book and had such a strong feeling of "God, I wish I'd written this." It hasn't happened for a long time - I think maybe Cormac McCarthy was the last author to prompt that sort of reaction in me, when I read No Country For Old Men. Anyway, I guess that's the TLDR: this book is so bloody good, I wish I'd written it myself. Or, at the very least, that I could write like this.

You've read the blurb, so let me add to it that Luke's "new life" is on the fringe of London's theatre scene, and Fallout is a rich evocation of that world, from the sex-comedy farce of Soho, through the serious theatre of the West End and on to what would now be called start-ups, theatre in the margins. It's in the latter that Luke and his friends operate. Understandably, Luke's friends are not mentioned in the brief blurb, but Paul and Leigh, a couple who are themselves embedded in the theatre, are so important to the story. The changing nature of the triangle between these three is delicately played out by Jones over the course of the book; that all three remain sympathetic throughout is testament to the storytelling prowess on display here.

Luke's relationship with Nina is cleverly teased from the outset too; they come so close to meeting before they eventually do, it is almost like they are star-crossed, destined to irreversibly change each other's lives. But are they destined to be together? Well, I want to avoid spoilers, as ever, but let's just say that this is a Sadie Jones novel, and she doesn't deal in the obvious or pat endings. Make of that what you will. What I will say is that the actual ending, which plays out like an epilogue, is very satisfying. Beyond that, you'll just have to read it all for yourself.

Also worthy of note is Jones's treatment of Luke's parents; they are scarcely in the book as active characters, especially his mother, who is basically only in the opening scene ... and yet they are there throughout, a brooding presence in Luke's life, a permanent blurring of his worldview. Not once does this feel repetitious, or clichéd, or a trope, so deftly is it written.

Talking of deft writing, the evocation of the early 70s feels spot on - I could see the cigarette smoke in every pub and bar, I could feel the damp on the walls, I was braced for unexpected power cuts. No WhatsApp messages or Facebook alerts for these characters - the book totally immerses you in a world where illicit liaisons were reliant on landline phonecalls, even having some change for the phone box. So complete is this evocation of the recent past that it became increasingly easy for me, as a contemporary reader, to turn off my phone, shut my laptop and go back to the early 1970s - how hard I found it to put the book down suggests I wanted to stay there too...

But of course the real story here, beyond the setting and the supporting cast, is that of love in all its many forms: idealised, platonic, lustful, doomed, familial, illicit, forbidden and destructive; love of a person, a place, a thing; and the most potent love of all, that which endures despite everything else. Is there anything that can be more dramatic, ecstatic or tragic than the fallout from such diverse, unplanned, unique loves?

I must also highlight the author's uncanny ability to say more in a sentence than some writers do in a paragraph, or even a page. You know that concept of le mot juste? Well Sadie has that nailed. Example, you say? Well, here's one character (I won't say who, for fear of spoilers) describing their partner's feelings for them: "Whose love was like someone completing a task they had set themselves." It's perfect, isn't it? You know exactly how person A sees B's love for them, how B sees it, and the sad resignation and defeat it all evokes in A. All from one line, twelve words, sixteen syllables. That's all it takes, if you can write with the economy, concision and accuracy of the prose on display here.

The bottom line: supremely well-written tale of love, lust, lies and liaisons, set against a beautifully-realised evocation of early 70s theatreland, and the best book I've read in an absolute age.

Since everything online is rated these days: ★★★★★★

Just seventeen

As of today, this blog is legally old enough to drive. So here's a car song from before it was born. Video's worth watching for the last forty seconds alone.

No longer thinking of her back on the bonnet, Justine Frischmann lives in the US now, where she earns a crust as an award-winning artist of a different sort.

Monday long song: Paninaro

I'm not a huge Pet Shop Boys fan, but it's easy to overlook just how many hits they had, back in the day. And then there's this, Paninaro, originally a B-side to Suburbia. This remix, apparently released as a single in Italy, appeared on compilation Disco, which I had on cassette, way back when.

It's not hard to imagine that if, say, New Order had released this in 1986 it would be lionised now. As it is, I chiefly remember it for Chris Lowe's spoken ramble, mid-way through, in which he opines:

I don't like country & western.
I don't like rock music.
Erm, I don't like, I don't like rockabilly.
Rock'n'roll in particular.
I don't like much, really, do I?
But what I do like, I love passionately.

New Amusements Minor and I have adopted those last two lines as something of a mantra, of late. Anyway, here's the song:

Sunday shorts: Far Out

Sun, sun, sun, sun, sun ... son.

Blue Friday: Sad Eyes (live)

This is a very effective slice of melancholia from Natasha, aka Bat For Lashes.

Tube Tuesday: Bangles

Following on from my earlier post enthusing about the YouTubing of The Tube, here's another in an occasional series plucking gems from the back catalogue.

Today it's from episode 20 of series 3, broadcast 15th February 1985, and a live performance from The Bangles. Or just Bangles, as they were then. And yes, this is because I still have a bit of a thing for Susanna Hoffs, all these years later - no-one, no-one does microphone side-eye better than Susanna. But I digress. Here's the band before they got really famous, showing that they could rock a bit with three songs from their (excellent, since you ask) debut album All Over The Place: Hero Takes A Fall, Going Down To Liverpool and Tell Me.