Ooh, I've been a bad, bad boy again, haven't I? STEW pledge #3, breached again...well spotted, Lintott-Simon.

I suppose you all want me to take more clothes off, do you? [puts little finger in mouth and chews on it, questioningly yet suggestively]

Okay then. Cue the David Rose orchestra, one more time...

Tell me what you want. What you (banned word) (banned word) want.

All through this week, a kind of mental fog has been hanging over me, making me listless, restless and cranky. Although I have finally been given a small piece of work to do (nothing crucial, generous deadline), I’m finding it hard to apply myself after such a long period of enforced inactivity. Blogging hasn’t come easily, either – I’ve either been searching for inspiration, or searching for the right words (and I miss my stylistic tics more than I ever thought I would). At home, I have been wandering round in a state of mild, unfocussed irritation, which is all the more irritating on account of its unreasonableness. In other words, there is nothing to feel irritated about.

I think I know where all this is coming from. Too many idle weeks spent aimlessly farting about, instead of applying myself to something. A vacuum created by the arrival of freedom, and the possibilities it seems to offer. Sometimes, I can be my own worst enemy.

I’ll tell you what I want. What I (banned word) (banned word) want. I want this fog to lift now, please.

---

Is it love you’re after, or just a good time?

Twenty years ago, the answer would have been loud, unequivocal and sustained. Love. I want love. I want a boyfriend. Give me a boyfriend. My longing for “love” - wrapped up as it was in a wispy romantic idealism that was wholly untested by experience – was all-consuming and suffocating. By this stage, I was either leaning on my friends heavily (endless maudlin post-pub conversations, testing their friendships to the limit with my self-obsession) or else sitting alone in my room, wallowing in self-pity and playing the same “Oh God, it’s me!” records over and over again.

-oOo-

Ten years ago, with love long since found and joyfully reciprocated, my answer would have been just as immediate. A good time, that’s what I was after.

Good times, better times, the best time ever.
Gimme gimme gimme those good times. Yeah.
Can’t get enough of those good times. Mm-hmm.

The original good time boy, that was me. King of the good times. The good time had by all. Dancing, laughing, drinking, loving (as they say). Fun was my mantra, my very reason to be.

Floundering in the shallows, unwilling to risk the depths.

-oOo-

Today, my answer would be different again.

I have love. I give it out, and I receive it back. Love is my foundation for life. The whole love thing - sorted.

As for those good times: these days, I merely go with the flow. Sure, if the situation arises, then I don’t shut myself off to the opportunity. Nevertheless, I don’t go chasing for my thrills. I’m not “after” a good time. My pleasures are more general, more diffused than that.

In fact, I’m not “after” anything much, now I come to think about it. The days of actively chasing emotions and experiences are behind me now. That’s one of the joys of getting a little bit older - trust me.

-oOo-

Today, my answer would be: a) neither, and b) what a profoundly silly question to ask me in the first place.

---

Please tell me why, do we build castles in the sky? Oh tell me why, all the castles way up high?

They have just got to be singing about weblogs, haven’t they? For if Troubled Diva isn’t a castle in the sky, then I don’t know what is.

Of course, there aren’t just castles floating around up here in the Blogosphere – far from it. There are cottages. There are leisure centres. There are little red boats. There are plastic bags. There is ethereal space dust, sprinkled from a distant sun. Why, there are even whole worlds...

Why, though? Why do we build them, maintain them, extend them, lovingly twiddle about with them till the cows come home?

It’s a boring question, isn’t it?

Still, here’s my answer, such as it is. Because maintaining this weblog is the most personally fulfilling activity I have indulged in for many a long year. It's as simple as that.

---

If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands.

Clap clap.

...clap your hands.

Oh tell me why, all the castles way up high...

...or just a good time?

What you really, really want.

Suppose you see someone you know quite well walking up the street towards you. As they draw closer, they still haven’t noticed you. As they walk past, you look them straight in the eye – but they are still looking in another direction. At this point, you have a choice. Do you call out their name, or do you let them walk on by?

The normal, sensible, socially functional option is, of course, to call out their name, so you can both stop and have a cheery little chat. Be honest, though. Are there ever occasions where you suddenly find yourself struck with an intense desire not to make cheery small talk with anyone, however nice? On these occasions, do you let your friend walk straight on past? If so, then how do you feel about it, seconds later? Relieved, guilty or both?

This lunchtime, within the space of a minute, I let two separate people who I know quite well walk straight past me. I felt relieved, I felt guilty – but most of all, I felt invisible. Who needs charisma, anyway?

Of course, they may just have chosen to ignore me because I haven’t changed my clothes all week, and because I was walking around in my socks. STEW is turning out to be a tougher challenge than I could ever have imagined.

(You’ve got to try these things, haven’t you?)

We had mixed feelings about the new Shane Meadows film, Once Upon A Time In The Midlands. Once again, the film is set in the working class suburbs of Meadows’ home town of Nottingham (hooray!) – but this time round, you will have to search long and hard to detect anything resembling a Nottingham accent. Instead, the lead characters are Welsh (Rhys Ifans), Scottish (Robert Carlyle), Liverpudlian (Ricky Tomlinson) and from London (Kathy Burke). The fifth lead (Shirley Henderson) does however make a valiant attempt at our fine local argot, with a reasonable degree of success (those harsh "o" sounds at the ends of words were spot on, Shirl).

After two previous films which cast largely unknown local actors (TwentyFourSeven and A Room For Romeo Brass), Meadows now appears to have entered the “I know lots of famous people” stage of his career. Why, there are even celebrity cameos from Vanessa Feltz and…nope, better not spoil the surprise. However, it would be unseemly to cry “sell out” too quickly, as hometown audiences are always so eager to do. Basically, Meadows has cast bankable stars in a last-ditch attempt to recoup more than his initial budget for once (and it can’t have been much of a budget, as Carlyle’s front door in “Glasgow” can actually be found in Wellington Square in the middle of Nottingham) . Nevertheless, this has all come too late to save the film’s distributors, the dear departed Film Four.

The trouble with this particular bunch of bankable stars is that three of them (Burke, Carlyle and Tomlinson) are cast completely to type. Burke is a tough, no-nonsense, loveably hard-bitten old bird in a nasty shell-suit; Carlyle is a dangerous, threatening eminence noir, a potential psycho who dabbles in petty crime; Tomlinson is an eccentric Scouser scruffbag with an essentially passive nature and a “heart of gold”. All three of them could play these characters with their eyes shut. Having said that, it looks as if they have also been given plenty of freedom to develop their characters in their own ways; in fact, many of the film’s strongest and truest scenes are the clear results of improvisation between the actors. Some of Tomlinson’s lines in particular could only have been dreamt up by Jim Royle himself.

The movie aims for gritty-yet-bittersweet kitchen-sink drama, mixed with knockabout comedy and lashings of pathos. It feels more like an old-fashioned BBC Play For Today than a “proper” film – except, of course, that nobody in television is producing one-off dramas like Play For Today any more. The overall effect is patchy and uneven; a sometimes disjointed collection of scenes which work with varying degrees of success.

The drama pulls together best of all in the last half hour or so, as the story focuses more on the issues faced by Henderson and Carlyle’s young daughter Marlene (played to perfection by the unknown newcomer Finn Atkins, whose understated and moving performance completely steals the show). Marlene’s determinedly sensible emotional self-control, as her mother vacillates helplessly between her two lovers, struck a major chord with me. There is one particular scene (Marlene sitting on her bed, silently staring into the middle distance as she struggles to suppress her own needs for the sake of keeping the peace) which I watched with a shudder of grim recognition. This is a scene which is probably being played out in upstairs bedrooms all over the country, shut away from adult eyes. It is, therefore, something of a shame that the rest of this well-intentioned but ultimately flawed film couldn’t maintain such a level of emotional truth and intensity throughout.

After some heavy prompting in my comments box, Alan eventually spotted my deliberate breach of this week's STEW pledges (see below) in yesterday's Mudhoney live review. I had broken pledge #3 by using the first of the banned adverbs, just to see whether any of you were paying attention. Which you weren't, it would seem. Come on class - you can do better than that, surely?

Are you sitting comfortably, Alan? This one is for you. Cue music...

Da-da daa, da da-da daaa,
Da-da daa, da DA DA da-da,
DA (duh duh)
DA (duh duh)
DA (duh duh)
DA (duh duh)
Da-da-da daa, da da-da-da daaa...



Note: For the first very time in the entire history of this blog, K completely freaked out at what I was about to do, and insisted I make an alteration. Was he appalled at my wanton exhibitionism? No - he was appalled that I was about to reveal to the world that I had a hole in one of my socks. The picture has been duly re-touched in order to spare his blushes.

Joy of joys...Radio One are hosting an entire week of gigs in Nottingham at the end of October. Full details are here.

Highlights:
Sun Oct 27 - DJ Shadow / Death In Vegas
Mon Oct 28 - Doves / The Coral
Tue Oct 29 - Queens Of The Stone Age / Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
Wed Oct 30 - The Vines / The Libertines
Thu Oct 31 - The Streets / Blackalicious

It's great to see that the makers of my two favourite British debut albums of 2002 (The Streets and The Coral) are both coming to town. I can also highly recommend The Libertines and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, both of whom played storming sets in Nottingham earlier in the year.

My diary of forthcoming gigs is now looking exceptionally healthy, with no less than sixteen to look forward to between now and January. For the curious, they currently line up as follows:

• The Bellrays
• Butterflies Of Love/Tompaulin
• Beth Orton/Ed Harcourt
• Bryan Ferry
• Kevin Ayers
• Alicia Keys
• Paul Weller
• Doves/The Coral
• The Streets/Blackalicious
• John Martyn
• Nitin Sawhney
• Richard Ashcroft
• Groove Armada/Dirty Vegas
• Badly Drawn Boy
• Manic Street Preachers/Ian Brown
• Sophie Ellis-Bextor.

Which means, of course, a veritable torrent of live reviews on Troubled Diva...

Shortly after the second plane hit, K called me from his office to find out whether I had heard the news. It was only while we were talking that we both remembered: he had been due to fly into New York that very afternoon. He had only cancelled the flight a couple of days earlier, owing to an ear infection. At this stage, with all the news sites frozen, we still only had scant information as to what was going on. Suddenly, simultaneously, the same awful thought lurched up between us. The thought of what might have been.

“FUCK.”

Long pause.

“FUCK.”

Long pause.

That’s all we could say then. That’s more or less all I can think of to say now. Some subjects are so immense that eventually, all your multiple thoughts collapse back down again into the simplest of emotions.

(Perhaps this would also be the time to raise my puny little voice in total and utter opposition to any "pre-emptive" US/UK military strike against Iraq. Immoral, illogical, reckless and wrong.)

Back to the usual nonsense tomorrow.

Item 43.
Salma & Sabina Agha - Mitha Maze Dar (Dancing Queen) (1981)

Since Bollywood music and Indian pop in general seem to be enjoying a higher profile than ever before, this might be an ideal time to introduce you to the magic of the songs of Abba...in Hindi.

This bizarre album (which has been in my collection since the mid-1980s) contains re-workings of Mamma Mia, Honey Honey, Chiquitita, Super Trouper, Money Money Money, Fernando and The Name Of The Game - but this version of Dancing Queen, which concludes Side 2, has to be the jewel in its crown.

To quote from the sleevenotes:

"This album contains the Hindi versions of the melodies of the World's Number One Pop group - ABBA. Their melodies are magic and their reproduction in any other language is a challenge which only the most talented and versatile singers and musicians can accept..."

"With their stunning personalities, looks and voices the Agha sisters are sure to become a phenomenon on the music scene."

I particularly like the way that the backing track sounds like it was recorded in an entirely different room, down at the end of a long corridor.


Item 44.
Sally Timms & The Drifting Cowgirls (featuring Marc Almond) - This House Is A House Of Trouble (1987)

As the reunited Soft Cell are on the verge of releasing their comeback album (Cruelty Without Beauty), what better time could there be to dig up this Marc Almond rarity from 1987? Having written the song for her, Almond also performs guest vocals with Sally Timms on this single, in a rare show of light-hearted knockabout jollity. As far as I know, this track never actually made it onto an album. Maybe you know better?

Sally Timms is still around, recording and gigging around the place. I saw her perform in Leicester early in 2001, supporting Ryan Adams with a solo acoustic set, and she was in fine fettle. Her ace rendition of Dolly Parton's weepie "Down From Dover" particularly sticks in my memory.

Update: Sorry - you weren't quick enough. These MP3s are no longer on my server. I generally make them available for a week or so (sometimes less) before substituting them for new ones. Better luck next time!

It's all going mental in my comments boxes, I can tell you. I dunno: one whiff of the possibility of exposed 40-year-old manflesh, and you're all on me like a pack of wild dogs on heat. Except that you're all doing it under the spurious guise of "grammar correction". I never thought I would end up having to protect my privates with such sustained pedantry, that's for sure. No doubt I shall be quite exhausted by the end of the week from the sheer effort of it all.

I am now slowly beginning form some sort of understanding of what those poor lap-dancers must have to endure - except that they at least get money shoved down their cleavage into the bargain. Maybe I should have set up a PayPal account...

K rolls in late (around 4am) from the Tam Tam Bar, where he has been getting royally plastered with Leonardo De Caprio and Terry-Thomas. Something about his demeanour tells me to be vigilant for the next few hours. Sure enough: between 4am and 7am, he makes no less than four separate attempts to leave our room. Still asleep, you understand. It’s the old, familiar equation: large amounts of alcohol + unfamiliar surroundings = sleepwalking, out of the room and away into the night. This wouldn’t be so bad if he owned a pair of pyjamas, or slept in his boxers. Thankfully, I am able on each occasion to steer him away from the main door, thus saving him from the harsh glare of full public exposure.

Today is a quiet day in Hoi An; a chance for the group to recharge their batteries prior to the long days of travel to come. K and some of the others are booked in for a cookery lesson at the Hong Phuc restaurant; after an idle morning, I roll up around lunchtime and help them polish off the fruits of their labours. They have all been attentive and enthusiastic students, meaning that today's lunch tastes almost as good as last night's dinner in the same restaurant.

Hoi An is drenched in heavy rain today, but this has something of a beneficial effect, driving many of the tourists from the streets and allowing more of the natural charm of the old fishing port to emerge. Down at the waterfront, the covered market is looking particularly wonderful, especially the fish market. There don’t appear to be many insects in this country (we are even on the point of ditching the malaria tablets), which means that the raw cuts of meat and fish can sit out on open slabs, without getting covered in flies. Everything looks fresh and wholesome and succulent and delicious.

There are Internet cafés everywhere you go in this country. They are all full, with nearly all the screens seemingly opened to Hotmail. The Vietnamese love their Hotmail. Finally, and despite my best intentions, my will cracks. A few e-mails are sent home, and a quick message posted onto the Tag Board at Naked Blog. Blogger remains resolutely unopened, though – for that way madness lies.

Spotting a particularly facially hirsute backpacker, earnestly plodding down the rain-soaked streets in a hopeless quest for unspoilt authenticity, I mutter seditiously to K.

- See that? The ostentatious beard of the independent traveller. A classic example.
- That’s not a nice way to talk about Fraulein Dings-Bums’ lady friend, is it?

We collapse in giggles. Fraulein Dings-Bums and his partner are accompanied everywhere by a rather smart, well-groomed female companion, who never seems to say anything. Dear me; we can be nasty little madams at times. Especially when K has an almighty hangover, and I am coming down with some sort of mild stomach bug. In times of trial, it’s being nasty little madams that keeps us going...

In the evening, with the group left to its own devices for once, we have our first disappointing meal, consisting mainly of flavourless stodge floating in vast amounts of grease. As we have already become accustomed to tip-top cuisine at all times, this comes as a considerable disappointment. Luckily, my incipient stomach bug has already destroyed most of my appetite, which makes it easier for me to leave my food floating on its plate.

Hang on: who has just walked into the restaurant? Not…not…Fraulein Dings-Bums, transmitting the Secret Gay Signal with a significantly lesser degree of secrecy? Very well, then. K and I finally permit ourselves watery smiles and slightly raised hands, as Fraulein Dings-Bums, the partner and the “ostentatious beard” all swish upstairs. If things carry on like this, we may actually be talking to them by the time we reach Saigon...

Jump to next day.

Labels: vietnam

1. The Catheters. As they come from the same town (Seattle) and record for the same label (Sub Pop) as the headliners, The Catheters should be an ideal support act. We duly wander into the venue (and yes, it really is a boat club) to be confronted by some very intense shouty young men thrashing about the stage with copious amounts of gusto (and, indeed, brio). It’s all very Punk Rock. Ooh, this looks good, we think.

Unfortunately, The Catheters turn out to be playing their last number. A shame, but we’ve still got two more bands to watch. In any case, two bands are plenty; more than that, and one might start to suffer from cultural indigestion.

2. The Alchemysts. I am full of initial goodwill for The Alchemysts (tonight’s token English band). “Psychedelic garage pop”, the reviews had said, and I could do with some of that tonight.

Nope, sorry. What follows is stolid, stodgy and dull. Various classic rock licks are unimaginatively re-hashed and served up cold, like yesterday's lumpy porridge. The chord changes are teeth-grindingly predictable. The fake New York / mid-70s / CBGB’s singing voices quickly start to grate. Influences remain resolutely un-transcended. The crowd’s reaction dips from encouraging through to polite. Along with a large chunk of the audience, we eventually drift back to the bar.

3. Mudhoney. The original godfathers of Seattle Grunge are back in the UK for just four nights (this being the first of them), with their first proper new album in four years to promote; accordingly, their initial reception is thunderous.

The band start fantastically well: the whole room is going barmy, the mosh pit’s a-moshing, the head-nodders at the back are a-nodding, and the whole vibe is “return of the conquering heroes”. I am almost entirely unfamiliar with their work (which is one of the reasons I’ve come along to investigate), and I find myself wishing I could join in with the air-punching “OhmygodtheyreplayingTHISone” reaction of ecstatic recognition which greets some of the tunes.

The front man (Mark Arm) has the face of someone who has been to Hell and back, and come up smiling - the sort of face you’ll only find in rock and roll bands. He’s in a good mood, and the whole atmosphere is all very celebratory, very "up". There is precious little of the expected tortured angst on display. It’s not very Grunge at all. At least, not for the first twenty minutes or so…

None of the above, then, has prepared me for the long slow slide which follows, as Mudhoney grind inexorably on, and on, and on. They are skull-crushingly heavy. The songs are getting slower, more angst-ridden, and decidedly Grunge-like. I am soon reminded of why I let the movement largely pass me by in the early 90s. The mosh pit is no longer moshing (much). It has all become something of an endurance test.

Which makes the final encore (two songs) even more of a surprise. Whaddya know? Mudhoney are suddenly completely FANTASTIC all over again – right "out there" – going at it full throttle – blisteringly, intoxicatingly raw and riveting. The crowd are going apeshit, with even some of the head-nodders attempting some last minute mini-moshing of their own. The final tune is something which the band had recorded for a John Peel session the previous night. Apparently, it’s a cover of a song by an British band, which we are all supposed to recognise. The best guess we can come with is latter-day Primal Scream. Anyway, who cares, it’s FANTASTIC.

Our final consensus (all five of us): short sets can be GOOD things. Most of us are still nursing fond memories of The Libertines earlier in the year, who played for not much more than half an hour, and yet delivered a perfect performance. Keep it short, keep it snappy, keep it Punk Rock, and ditch that bloated mid-set sag!

Like just about everyone else who writes on a regular basis, I have a certain number of what Will Self has referred to as “stylistic tics”. Which is fine, except that some of mine have started to bore me now. After all, I should hate to lapse into self-parody.

Therefore, in a bid to purge myself of these tics, I am going to conduct a small experiment on this site. I’m calling it: Stylistic Tic Eradication Week (or STEW for short).

Here then is my STEW pledge, which will apply from now until close of play on Sunday September 15.

Pledge #1. I shall not commence any sentences with the following words: And, But, So, Well, Now, Yes, Oh, Ah, Hey, Right. The effect is too crudely staccato; I shall instead be striving for a smoother flow.

Pledge #2. Neither shall I end any sentences with either of the following expressions: you know? you see? right?

Pledge #3. I shall not use any of the following tiresomely unnecessary adverbs: really, clearly, strangely, obviously, utterly.

Pledge #4. I shall limit myself to no more than one exclamation mark per day. Somebody (I forget who) once described exclamation marks as the “comedy ties” of punctuation. They had a point.

Pledge #5. I shall refrain from unwarranted capitalisations in the middle of sentences. This is the written equivalent of making ironic little “punctuation mark” signs with your fingers while talking, and it Has To Stop. As I have become unduly fond of this particular device over the months, in the belief that it somehow confers me with a Piercingly Original Wit, I would say that this is probably the toughest pledge of them all.

”How can I help?”

Readers! Your vigilance can help me eradicate these tics! If you spot any breaches of the above four pledges, then leave a comment at the end of the offending post. Then guess what? For every breach spotted, I shall remove an article of clothing! Yes, really! I shall also provide accompanying visual evidence, of course.

My current apparel consists of the following: shirt, jeans, shoes, socks and pants (see photo below). I am therefore only five breaches away from complete nudity! Proof reading has never been so thrilling, huh?

Hopefully, the threat of full public exposure should be enough to keep my prose style on the straight and narrow for the next seven days. (Especially full public nudity in front of him-from-The-Guardian and her-from-The-Body-Shop, should they be stopping by to evalaute my oeuvre.)

My STEW pledge officially starts from…

NOW!

You need to be sitting comfortably for this one.
Put that coffee down, well out of arm's reach.
Next, follow me to isabellasteddy.blogspot.com.
Once you're there, scroll down to the entry for September 7th.
I still haven't quite recovered from the shock.
I may never fully recover from the shock.