audblog audio post

audblog audio post

...RIGA HERE WE COME! (1.8mb)

Full report when I get back on Monday, and maybe a few pissed-up Audblogs between now and then. Happy Eurovision everybody - and please, cast your votes for Song Number 2: Austria. The man is a star.

ISH {i} - ISH {ii}

(Shit, no time left, and I promised Zed as well. OK, sod the literary pretensions and give them the facts...)

The fog started to lift on Monday morning, when the borderline impossible task was re-assigned to someone else.

It lifted further when I realised that the 24 hour French transport strike on Tuesday would mean an extra night in Paris, and the chance to see Goldfrapp at the Elysee Montmartre.

It lifted further when I checked into my nice, comfy, welcoming, distinctly non-boutique hotel, and further still when presented with my lapin terrine at the friendly local bar next door.

It disappeared entirely on Tuesday morning, when the much dreaded one-day meeting turned out to be a great success, setting me up with interesting, challenging-but-in-a-good-way work for the next few months (and also necessitating a few return visits to Paris along the way).

Transport strike? Pah! With half of Paris electing to stay at home for the day, getting taxis wasn't too difficult at all. I even managed to bag a cab within ten minutes of the end of the Goldfrapp gig, in the middle of Montmarte, having been fully prepared for more than an hour's walk back to the hotel.

And Goldfrapp were just amazing. See Jonathan's review of their London gig for more info. Oh, and the surprise encore? Yes Sir I Can Boogie, done heavy electroclash style. The venue couldn't have been more perfect either - all fin-de-siecle-stucco-rococo-original-features-faded-grandeur, in true Moulin Rouge style as I had hoped. Alison herself came on like a kind of Weimar Biba Andrews Sister, and put on a stunning performance to a rapt crowd.

On Wednesday, my luck deserted me. The sneaky buggers had decided to extend the strike without telling anyone. The planes were running - but as all of Paris had decided to try and get back to work, there was a) gridlock and b) no taxis, anywhere, for love nor money. I should know - I spent two hours trying.

In the end, having missed the flight, I plodded down to Montmartre (40 minutes, with suitcase, boo-hoo), caught one of the two remaining metro lines (driverless trains; no-one to go on strike) up to the Gare Du Nord, and came back on Eurostar instead, arriving back in Nottingham only 5 hours later than planned, which wasn't too bad actually, and saved me going into the office for the afternoon.

Paris au printemps, though...lovely, no matter what the traffic conditions. I'd forgotten how much I loved the place.

Puff. Pant. Publish. Phew.

Jump straight to Part One.

Supplementary Madonna-related posts:
· Live review (2006).
· Confessions on a Dancefloor: review.
· Up For Grabs: theatre review.
· Live review (2001).

Yes, track 11 is where we stop the survey. Granted, Erotica has 14 tracks and Ray Of Light has 13, but the other three only have 11, so that's where the line is drawn. Which is bad news for Erotica (In This Life is strong, and I've always loved Secret Garden), but better news for Ray Of Light (I've never thought much of Little Star or Mer Girl).

Here goes then, for the very last time.

Why's It So Hard. (from Erotica)

More tepid, inconsequential dreariness, I'm afraid. Poor old Erotica. It's not without its moments; it's just that there aren't enough of them.

Good - I can now finally allow myself to re-read Marcello Carlin's considerably more positive assessment of the album ("her one great album"), which I have deliberately stayed away from until now, in case it exerted an undue influence. He's a persuasive writer, that Marcello Carlin.

Take A Bow. (from Bedtime Stories)

If Bedtime Stories is the ultimate seduction album, then Take A Bow is the ultimate plot-twist-of-the-knife kiss-off at the end. You might have been acting out your part, mate - but I actually meant it, all along, from the bottom of my heart. And now you've broken me with your oh-so-skilful performance skills, I'd be grateful if you could just piss off now, please. All set to one of the sweetest, most beguiling melodies she has ever put her name to. Curiously enough, although this was her first UK single in years to miss the Top 10, it was also her biggest US single in years, staying at #1 for several weeks. I'm not sure what, if anything, this says about the respective psycho-sexual make-ups of our respective nations.

An absolute classic. Bittersweet, in the fullest sense of the word.

To Have And Not To Hold. (from Ray Of Light)

With lyrics such as these (you're this unattainable ideal of perfection, and all I can do is worship you from afar), Madonna can only be assuming a character which is, quite manifestly, far from her own. (The very idea!) OK, so she might be a mediocre-at-best screen actress - but as an interpretive singer, she is not without talent. What a pity that, in her latter-day quest for this-is-the-real-me authenticity, she has turned her back on this talent. And is this the right time to drop in that well-worn old truism: being natural is the biggest pose of all?

American Pie. (from Music)

Why does everyone hate this so? The way I've always understood it is this: Madonna and Rupert Everett were shooting some film together (probably shit, but I've never seen it), where they played best friends - but they were also good friends in real life, so they were hanging out a lot together. Then one day Rupert said, in that eagerly blundering public-schoolboy way of his: look here Madge old fruit, I'd love it if you sang good old American Pie for me, I mean why not, it's a great tune, wouldn't it be fun? So she said: oh, OK then Rupert, since you're a friend, and since you've asked so nicely. So they sang it together, with Rupert doing some really rather scrunchy harmonies throughout, and it just sounds like a thoroughly pleasant relaxed singalong session, almost like a home demo, except with some nice extra touches along the way. It's sweet, it's charming, it's not pretending to be a Great Statement, it doesn't fit into anybody's strategic masterplan, and so they just bunged it on the end of the album for good measure. Two good mates having a bit of a sing-song in the studio, except that one of them happens to be Madonna.

I've always absolutely loved this version, and it's taking all my objectivity not to award it full marks. And yah boo sucks to anyone who disagrees.

Easy Ride. (from American Life)

I want, I want, I want. She says that nine times in the course of the song, you know. Ooh, you should have heard K and I taking the piss out of this in the car at the weekend. We were merciless. I want the good life, but I don't want an easy ride, what I want is to work for it, feel the blood and sweat on my fingertips... yeah, yeah, yeah, pull the other one missy. Blood and sweat? You'd run shrieking to your manicurist, and don't try and tell us otherwise.

5 points: Take A Bow
4 points: American Pie
3 points: To Have And Not To Hold
2 points: Easy Ride
1 points: Why's It So Hard

37 37 32 32 27

Well, would you look at that! Bedtime Stories and Music are tied in first position, and so must share the title of Best Madonna Album. Meanwhile, American Life and Ray Of Light also tie for third position, with Erotica trailing behind in last position. Ugh, and I hate namby-pamby, everyone's-a-winner, everyone-can-go-home-happy dead heats, as well. Boo! Fix! Recount!

Thanks to Trixie for being one of the very few people to have left votes - and extra-special thanks to the lovely Janne, who has diligently voted on every single track. If I get time before going away, then I'll also calculate Janne's final score, to see whether or not he came to the same conclusions as I did.

And finally, extra-extra-special thanks go to a certain Mrs. Madonna Ritchie, just for being....Madonna. You may now clap.

Update: Janne's final votes are as follows:

39 36 33 30 28

Labels: whichmadonna

Waiting for Buni in the pub last week, I found myself involuntarily tuning in to the conversation at the next table. A boy and a girl, very early 20s, almost certainly students, were attempting to discuss Madonna's recent appearance on the Jonathan Ross show. I say attempting to discuss, as their respective linguistic tics made the coherent interchange of ideas almost impossible. Like, he was like, y'know, really really, like trying to be nice? And she was like, oh, y'know, really really kinda like: I go to the pub? Take away like, kinda, y'know, and the increasingly ubiquitous really really, flatten the upward inflections at the end of every sentence, and you were left with almost nothing. In particular, his likes were seriously out of control - so much so that I started to count them with my fingers underneath the table. No exaggeration: they were coming at the rate of about one a second. I couldn't help myself; ducking my head down towards my lap, I flinched my shoulders and winced, hard, as if in physical pain.

Looking back up again, I realised that Buni and his mate were now standing over at the bar, looking directly at me, with somewhat quizzical expressions on their faces. Suddenly, I felt like the mad loony in the corner that everyone cautiously avoids. It's the curse of having an over-expressive face, I think - for I never can maintain that Impassive Mask look for too long. For the most part, you can read me like a book - no, not like a book, that takes too much sustained effort and concentration. Like a magazine, then. A celebrity gossip magazine. With big pictures.

They sat down, and I launched straight into my explanatory Tut Tut, The Lamentable State Of Youth Today riff. Which is just one way of looking at things, of course. The Quentin Crisp way:But then, there's a different, more charitable view. All those likes, kindas, y'knows and upward inflections - they confer a sense of hesitancy onto what is being said. The effect is: I'm not altogether certain of what I'm saying here. I'm still in the process of formulating my point of view. I might be wrong. What do you think? Feel free to disagree. And I actually find that, for all its linguistic annoyance, a rather pleasingly well mannered attitude to adopt. It's the sort of laidback, down-played, not-trying-to-impress humility which would actively encourage me to contribute to the conversation.

---

Compare and contrast the above with the Ordeal By Dinner Party which I endured two Saturdays ago, two nights after the Glorified Travelodge experience (see below). Now, there are all sorts of mitigating factors to consider here. I was still processing the after-effects of two exceptionally boozy late nights during the previous week. I had picked up some sort of cold/hay fever thing, leaving me feeling feeble and snuffly. An ear infection had sent me stone deaf on my left hand side. At work, I had just been given a borderline impossible assignment, which was undermining my confidence and stressing me badly. I was dreading my trip to Paris in two days time. (Was I up to the job? Would I make a total arse of myself with the client?) And here I was, in a social situation which required - at least as I saw it - all my best conversational skills. There were no comforting likes, kindas and y'knows to fall back on here. This was conversation as entertainment (everyone was "interesting"), as performance (everyone was "on"), as a highly articulate exchange of facts, rather than a laidback discussion of emotions and experiences. Contribution followed contribution seamlessly, with no pauses for breath, no short companionable silences. You had to seize the split-second, and jump straight into the breach, talking over the end of the previous speaker's sentence if needs be, without giving the appearance of interrupting too rudely either. There were unstated but definite conventions to follow, one of them being the requirement to contribute to the general success of the evening. The conversational performance bar was high - not to any ridiculously lofty intellectual setting, but higher than I am generally used to in the general course of things.

It was a proper Grown-Up's evening, almost like the dinner parties which my parents' generation would have thrown. Like the dinner parties at which I used to sit quietly, all those years ago, the archetypal neurotic, misunderstood adolescent, inwardly squirming with self-consciousness. Unfortunately, I was all too aware of the echo. Slowly, unstoppably, a strange sort of mist started to envelop me, as I begain to retreat further and further back inside myself. As the mist grew thicker, and as the internal diaologue grew louder, and as the voices of the people around me grew fainter, and harder to latch onto for any longer than a few seconds at a time, so I found myself increasingly desperately trying to claw my way back out.

Come on. Stop being so bloody self-obsessed. It's sheer self-indulgent rudeness, and you know it. Snap yourself back into focus. Concentrate. What are they talking about? Is there any contribution you can make? No, there isn't. This isn't your subject area at all. Well, try the conversation on the other side. And at least try to look interested. Come on, smile, nod, don't look so gormlessly bored out of your skull. That's better. Look, it's been at least ten minutes since you said anything. People will be noticing, and you don't want that. You have got to say something.

But I don't know anything! These people are all so well-informed, so confident, so articulate...so how could anything I say be of interest to them? Look how well the conversation is flowing without me. I'm not needed here. I'm superfluous. I could just fade away, and it would make no difference. Everything about me is based on bluff, and front, and fluke, and it might be enough to get me by most of the time, but not here. I am utterly exposed. I have no value. I have no useful contribution to make. It's K who's the interesting, successful, well connected, socially functional one. It's K who they want to know. They're just humouring me, tolerating me. I can see it in their polite smiles. I mean, it's not as if anyone wants to know about the Four Tet & Manitoba gig last Tuesday, or the Eurovision night at the Retro Bar on Thursday, or the crap hotel I stayed at, or the blog getting into Web User magazine...

Oh please, don't start talking about the bloody blog, whatever you do. It always sounds so pathetic when you refer to it, like some sort of feeble attempt to impress. Because that's your root problem, isn't it? You're only comfortable when there are people around who you think you can impress, and it takes a damn sight more than your tired old rackets to impress this bunch. They're worth more than you are - you with your misunderstood sulky adolescent routine. They can all cope perfectly well - so why can't you? What's wrong with you?

And so on, and so on, all the way through the evening, trapped in a spiral, in danger of swirling down the plughole entirely, unless I kept what remained of my wits about me. Every time I did manage to speak, it felt like the result of an almost superhuman effort to re-engage with reality, however briefly.

This emotional tailspin lasted all the way through Sunday, rendering me monosyllabically uncommunicative for the entire duration. (A pub lunch had to be called off, on the pretext that I was "a little bit under the weather".) It wasn't just a spiritual feeling, either - I could physically feel it. A throbbing in the head, an aching in the limbs, a thick, woolly torpor. And I was due for a critical all-day meeting in Paris in two days' time. How the hell was I going to get myself into shape?

In honour of the Big Day in Riga this Saturday, (oh God, he's off again) here are four of my favourite songs which failed to qualify for the Eurovision finals. I am slightly surprised to discover that three of them date from 1998, but there you go...

Item 122. Avundsjuk - Nanne (Sweden, 1998) (lyrics, with English translation: scroll down)

NinaHagenLeneLovich-tastic! Memorably, Nanne performed this song at the Swedish national finals wearing pointy green ears. Go figure...

Item 123. Herzensschöner - Rosenstolz (Germany, 1998) (lyrics)

Pipped at the post by the unforgettable Guildo Horn and his Orthopaedic Stockings, this is a lovely ballad from a duo who have also recorded a stonking track (Total Eclipse) with none other than Marc Almond, so they must be alright then. Tell them your Peter-out-of-Rosenstolz Gran Canaria story, Chig!

Item 124. I'll Never Be Lonely Again - Sapphire (UK, 1998)

...and this one got remixed by the late Tony "God" De Vit, so it can't be all bad, can it?

Item 125. Club "Kung-Fu" - Vanilla Ninja (Estonia, 2003) (lyrics & pictures)

Goddesses. Robbed. Would have walked this year's contest, if it had only been selected. Still haven't tired of playing it. Have I made my point yet?

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!

Rain. (from Erotica)

Sometimes, I like it best when she forgets all that trying-to-be-edgy stuff, and instead delivers a straight-up, no-messing, radio-friendly, big old sentimental AOR ballad like this one. It's a strand of Madonna's music which has all but been abandoned these days, and I think that's a bit of a shame. She should know where her strengths lie by now.

Bedtime Stories. (from Bedtime Stories)

On the other hand, I'm not about to argue with her trying-to-be-edgy side when the results are as great as this slice of Bjork-penned atmospheric daftness. Let's get unconscious on E! we all trilled, subversively. Happy days!

The Power Of Goodbye. (from Ray Of Light)

A somewhat over-mannered "operatic" delivery aside (the voice was changing big-time back then, from "Girl" to "Woman" or something, and I think she was overdoing the studied singing-lesson technique a bit too much on occasion), this is essentially another of those big-hearted radio-friendly classic ballads, and a particularly lovely one at that. Note also one of the first appearances of that acoustic strum which came to dominate so much of the next two albums.

Gone. (from Music)

Well well, if it isn't yet another BHRFCB - the only track on Music that can properly lay claim to the title. Very nice indeed, but the bar has been raised particularly high on this round.

Die Another Day. (from American Life)

When it comes to selecting singles with which to promote this new album, Madonna has done herself no favours. American Life and the forthcoming Hollywood are all stark angularity, harsh attitude, and a sentiment which begs to be dismissed as the poor-ickle-me bleatings of a self-obsessed superstar. (Not only that: as the first two tracks on the album, they cannot help but set certain preconceptions for the material which follows.) And as for Die Another Day: stark angularity, cut-up treated vocals and those infernal Mirwais bleeps and bloops combine with a lousy, unmemorable song to produce, as everyone has said, one of the weakest James Bond theme tunes ever. (Could they give the gig to Goldfrapp next time, please?)

If only she had released Love Profusion, Intervention and (especially) Nothing Fails instead. We'd all be viewing things quite differently.

5 points: The Power Of Goodbye
4 points: Rain
3 points: Bedtime Stories
2 points: Gone
1 points: Die Another Day

With one more day left to run, Music is still ahead by a whisker, as Bedtime Stories challenges it for first place. American Life drops back to third, with a late-rallying Ray Of Light threatening to knock it back into fourth. Meanwhile, it looks like curtains for poor old Erotica...

33 32 30 29 26

Jump to next part.

Labels: whichmadonna

Note: A recital of this post, with a musical soundtrack, is also available for download. More details here.

Last summer, after a thoroughly disillusioning stay at the Hempel, you might recall that I made a solemn vow: never again would I allow myself to be seduced by the spurious, superficial charm of the Boutique Hotel. Reader, I lapsed.

It was like this, see: K had brought home this cool looking guide to cool looking hotels around the world. Beautifully photographed, all uncluttered gleaming surfaces, shafts of light throwing artful shadows over elegant geometric compositions, a joyous synthesis of function and form, and…yeah, that hoary old shtick, basically. And there was this hotel in Bloomsbury which caught the eye, and as I was spending the night in London the following week, and as K was still on the lookout for a good place to put his Americans when they came over…well, it was all in the name of Field Research, wasn’t it? Added to which, K had so much fun sweet-talking the guy on the other end of the phone (“We were being so flirty! You’ve got to find out whether he’s cute!”), and negotiating the room rate steadily downwards, and the photos really did look lovely, and the room rate wasn’t…well, it wasn’t cheap, but you know, it wasn’t too bad considering, and so convenient for St. Pancras and the West End, and the web site looked kinda…

Actually, the web site rang faint alarm bells. Alarm bells which I could have heeded, had I not been dazzled by all the Clear Surfaces and the Joyous Synthesis Of The Blahdiblah. Guests leave feeling they have had an experience they themselves "owned". The sonorous tones of a stylish Boutique Hotel, or the dead croak of corporate management wankspeak? As a guest, what you see, smell, taste, touch and hear will surprise and delight you. Phew, tall order or what? And isn’t that just the sort of Mission Statement which simply screams danger: shattered expectations ahead?

---

Sensory receptors duly set to max, I entered the lobby. Ooh, just like the book. Fookin’ lush, that is. Mmm, and the reception desk is covered with such a lovely dark chocolate leather. That's so tactile, that is. Feel the smoothness, baby. Let that Surprise and Delight wash over you. Ohhh yeahh. Next, check those jumbo-sized scented candles behind you on the Occasional Low Table. In-two-three-four, hold-two-three-four, out-two-three-four. Woah, I’m coming up already. Digging on that groovily tinkling jazzbient loungetronica, too. Check out the channel separation on that! What's that? Complimentary freshly-squeezed Welcome Juice, you say? Yeah, bring it on, bring it on, let’s knock it up another notch on that Joyous Synthesiser! See/smell/taste/touch/hear! Surprise! Delight! Shock! Awwww!

Boys: ever had that moment, halfway through some ingenious and concentrated auto-erotic scenario of your own devising, when the ground suddenly falls away beneath your feet, and the supporting layers of hyped-up fantasy melt away into thin air, and, with nothing left to sustain it, your libido goes into free-fall, and the prosaic reality of your situation snaps back into focus and you realise, with a shudder, that you’re just standing in front of the bathroom cabinet with your dick in your hand at six o’clock in the evening, and what, pray, is remotely sexy about that?

No, me neither. But I should imagine that it would make a pretty good metaphor for what was to follow.

In the long, narrow corridor leading down to my room, I experienced the first few twinges of aesthetic detumescence. Was that red and black stripey carpet a witty nod to early 1980s retro chic - or was it just a hideous stripey carpet, which clashed horribly with everything around it? And the artwork: didn’t it bear a worrying similarity to picture postcards of London tourist scenes, jammed into cheap clip frames? Or was this a wry post-modernist conceptual take on our received notions of the picture postcard? Did they surprise? Did they delight? Did I own my experience of them?

The room, then. Now, there’s a thin line between Minimal and Bare. Minimal: an all-encompassing aesthetic unity, the seamless elimination of extraneous clutter in favour of a less-is-more ideal of pure form. Bare: chucking as little as you can get away with into an empty room, plonking it down any old how, and hoping that people will be gullible enough to be taken in. Minimal necessitates a huge amount of time and effort on the part of the designer, in pursuit of that harmonious ideal. Bare means penny-pinching, cost-cutting, no-point-in-giving-them-anything-but-the-basics. There’s minimal bareness, and then there’s Bare Minimum. There’s Zen Shui, and there’s Glorified Travelodge. And this gloomy, ill-proportioned, poky, charmless little cell, looking out not into leafy Bloomsbury as expected, but to the din of Tottenham Court Road instead, was the very distilled essence of Glorified Travelodge.

Boutique Hotel Dickwilt Syndrome: an altogether dispiriting business. Never be taken in by those swish lobbies down below, or by those nicely lit pics of the best suite in the joint. It’s the oldest trick in the book, duh-brain. Slap. Thud.

Still, in the light of subsequent events that night, it was a good job they upgraded me to a double room. Hur hur.

---

Why is it that – with the occasional noble and glorious exception – most gay male bloggers fight so shy of writing about one of our supposedly key obsessions? For (to generalise wildly for a moment) detailed sexual discussions, even with the slightest of acquaintances, form our default conversational backdrop. How big was he // what was he into // who did what? are our versions of which exit did you take off the M1 // do you know the best way of avoiding the roadworks on the inner ring road // what do you think of that new contraflow system on the A453?

No, silly. I’m not about to buck the trend, either. (Not that this hasn’t happened in the past, mind.) But perhaps the events of the Thursday night before last do warrant a mention, for reasons which should become clear.

It was like this, see. Walking back up Charing Cross Road from Eurovision night at the Retro Bar (as blogged previously), on my way back to the Glorified Travelodge in question, I found it impossible to walk past G.A.Y. at the Astoria without at least popping my head round the door.

Goodness, aren’t young people young these days? Never mind being 41: I felt like I was the only person on the premises over thirty. Oh hooray, there’s another one. Naturally, we turned to each other.

“Sorry, did you say you were thirty-one? What, you're forty-one? No, you can’t be. I don’t believe it!”

“I’m staying in a Boutique Hotel just up the road. It’s quite a nice place, actually.”

The shit we come out with when we’re on the pull, eh?

So there I was, or there we were, as you do, and it had been a while, because I don’t much any more, although in my day of course, ha-ha yes, so it felt like going back, back to a previous life, and it felt weird, like wearing old clothes from the back of the wardrobe, except we weren’t of course, well not by then, hur hur, and it was fun of course, because I was far-enough-gone-but-not-too-far-gone, and he was alright, well more than alright actually, but then, after a while, after quite a while in fact, this feeling suddenly came over me, where it came from I don’t know, because I really was having fun, but suddenly I looked at him, straight in the eyes, just like I had been doing the whole time, and I smiled my swinging-from-the-chandeliers, woop-di-doo, you’re-fantastic-actually smile and it just froze on my face, and the ground, well it didn’t slip away entirely, but it shifted, it wobbled, I lost my footing, and the frozen smile suddenly seemed wily-coyote false, a pantomime rictus, the studied leer of a seasoned pragmatist who knew how to turn on the charm, and by how much, and he didn’t notice of course, at least I don’t think he did, he just smiled right back, but from that point on it felt like a mere performance, an artful facsimile of passion, a virtual reality wank, not unpleasurable of course, but ultimately without any purpose at all, a note-perfect retread of God knows how many previous nights, but for what, and what need was being fulfilled here, and had there even been a particular need in the first place?

Well, there’s the nub of it. There was just no need any more. Oh, there had been, back in the day, when experiences were still being ticked off against the master list. But thinking back to those full-on days/nights/weekends of excess, all the partying and all the giddy fabulousness, I remember always being fully conscious that I was working through something. I had to go through all of it, every last scrap of it, good or bad or indifferent, to get to where I am now. That period of standard issue thrills-n-pills-n-spills: I always knew it was finite. So why go back? For recreational purposes? But I am already re-created. For nostalgia? To show that I Can Still Do It If I Want To? To rail against the dying of the light? Nay, nay and thrice nay. There was absolutely no need left within me.

Time to squint a little, then. I was having a surprising and delightful time in a coffee-table-book hotel room with a uniquely fantastic guy who, come to think of it, did look quite like Kevin Spacey, if I squinted. So I squinted, and I squinted some more, and then I squinted some more, and a potentially sticky situation was avoided, or maybe I should re-phrase that. Hur hur.

But in the morning, with all done and dusted, and what remained of the spell completely broken, this awful quietness and retreat descended upon the room. A shuffle back from intimacy to cordiality. From "oh yeah, me too, absolutely" to “do you want a shower now, or wait till you get back?” From new best mate, to cipher, to statistic. No phone numbers. No point. Respective little black books already bulging, with page after alphabetised page of half-smile memories, mild accusations, slowly fading obligations. Was that all it was, a way to pass the time, a virtual reality wank in a Glorified Travelodge? Yeah, see ya, take care. He slipped ahead through the lobby, tacitly adhering to the accepted drill for shady interlopers the world over, while I tactfully hung back on the half-landing before striding purposefully on down for breakfast.

Which was crap, natch. No free tables (except out round the back, all on my ownsome), no plates (I plonked my croissant into a cereal bowl), no butter (I asked, they forgot), no jam (I nicked some off another table), nasty coffee (silty grounds drifting back up the cafetiere and into my cup). Feel my woe, people.

OK, perspective time. That little burst of Confessional Blogging (and hey, hasn’t it been ages?) wasn’t supposed to sound too folorn, too dismal, too Shuddering Realisation Of Underlying Futility Of Existence - or, indeed, anything even remotely similar. Neither am I setting out some kind of stall for a new, cleansed life of born-again virginism, either. (What - shut myself off to the potentially heady delights of Riga this weekend? No jolly fear!) Just an extended shrug, and a slightly rueful sigh, and a what-was-that-all-about-then scratching of the head. And we move on. Neither particularly sadder, nor particularly wiser.

Labels: top25

(Don't worry. It will all be over in a week. But until then...)

dot eurovision - the most comprehensive of the bunch.
esctoday - fussy navigation, but plenty of content.
Nick at ESC - on the spot reports from the rehearsals, frequently updated.
OnEurope live from Riga - ditto, also frequently updated.
Eurovision Live - more on the spot reports and photos.
Eurosong.net - diary entries & messageboard (poor signal-to-noise, but worth the odd poke).
World Of Chig - my man!

Three days until I leave for Riga, and three more bundles of Madgetrax to scrutinise. As the ear infection has healed up, I guess I'd better get on with it, then.

Words. (from Erotica)

I'd forgotten just how many songs on this album sound like pale re-treads of Vogue. And here's another. Tepid, pedestrian, forgettable.

Sanctuary. (from Bedtime Stories)

The key thing to bear in mind about Bedtime Stories: it's a Seduction Album, pure and simple. It's one flowing mood from start to finish, with the whole adding up to rather more than the sum of its parts. This means that any separate track-by-track scrutiny is therefore bound to mark the album down, somewhat unfairly.

As a part within the whole, Sanctuary works wonderfully well. It's steamy, breathy, put-that-coffee-down-and-get-your-arse-over-here music, which segues perfectly into the more, uh, energetic title track with follows. Basically - and here's the rub - Bedtime Stories is a damn sight more erotic than Erotica ever was.

Frozen. (from Ray Of Light)

I don't mean to be sacriligeous, but...well...I've always thought that this was a bit of a portentous plodder. Overblown, overlong, overrated. There, I've said it. Although the actual tune itself is cute enough, I grant you.

Paradise (Not For Me). (from Music)

...whereas this track - despite being nothing more than a simple, languid, drooping four bar progression, endlessly repeated, with only the flimsiest of songs laid over the top of it - works for me in a way that the more elaborately constructed Frozen fails to do. It's still about a minute and a half too long, though.

Mother And Father. (from American Life)

In stark contrast to Bedtime Stories, American Life is an album which possibly works best of all when listened to in short bursts, track by track. This has the effect of reducing the slightly irksome similarity - in mood, key, pace, instrumentation - of many of the songs on offer. It is an album which begins shakily, with the three self-pitying "millionaire blues" tracks all grouped together, before blossoming into life with a wonderful run of warm, expressive love songs which form the heart of the album. With a return to the more abrasive starkness of before, Mother And Father now brings this run to an abrupt close.

For a lot of people, this is apparently one of the standout tracks - a companion piece to Oh Father, in the same way as Nothing Fails can be set alongside Like A Prayer. As for me: there's something about it which jars, badly. I don't want a return to that abrasive starkness - we've moved on from that now, haven't we? - and Madonna's squeaky little-girl delivery strikes me as too mannered, too knowing, and just plain irritating if truth be told. Also, the nursery-rhyme rap is, not to put too fine a point on it, just plain crap.

5 points: Sanctuary
4 points: Paradise (Not For Me)
3 points: Frozen
2 points: Words
1 points: Mother And Father

What excitement! Music pulls ahead of American Life, which now ties with a strongly resurgent Bedtime Stories. Ray Of Light and Erotica are now lagging some distance behind, with scant chance of recovery.

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Labels: whichmadonna

Yeesh. So much Real Life, all of a sudden. Life feels full, and involving, and exciting, and challenging, and forward-moving, and really rather glamorous in its own sweet way, and there's so much to say, but no time, no sodding time, in which to do it all justice.

(Saturday, just after lunch, whole afternoon earmarked, muses summoned, juices flowing, brain in gear...
"Do you know where the laptop is?"
"I thought you'd packed it."
"I thought you'd packed it."
Oh, the frustration.)

So, instead...it's a week overdue, but I've updated the We Listen chart on the sidebar at long last. (This normally gets updated every fortnight, on a Monday or a Tuesday.) There is something of a scrum at the top, with very little to choose between any of the top five albums, but Blur's Think Tank just about scrapes ahead on airtime points.

However, from this point forth it's non-stop Eurovision all the way, I'm afraid. Chig is already over there, press-accredited and blogging live from Riga. In fact, he'll be sitting in on the first day's rehearsals and press conferences even as I type. The rest of us will be joining him on Thursday, no doubt hot-footing it straight out to Club XXL as soon as we get there. (Well, just look what they get up to on a Thursday night...wouldn't you be intrigued?)

Actually, Club XXL sounds utterly filthy, and quite clearly Not Suitable At All for someone of my refined sensibilities. So you'll be hearing nothing further about it from me, that's for sure. Oh no.

But then, when the other big gay club in town rejoices in the name of Purvs, exactly which way is a boy to turn?

(And will there be, erm, Voidable Minges?)