Lisnaholic

I can recommend Joseph Piercy’s book, The Story of English. At 180-odd pages, he has kept his historical overview short enough to stay interesting throughout, and either he or his publishers have given it the enticing subtitle: “How an Obscure Dialect Became the World’s Most-Spoken Language.” From Celts to Romans to a section titled "The Great Vowel Shift" it looks at how English developed and spread, ending up with the language seen on MB: lol, gr8 and milf.

Among the must-mention literature (Beowulf, Chaucer, Shakespeare, etc.) John Milton turns up. As I'm sure we all know , he wrote in Early Modern English, in the 1650s:

Here are the two opening tracks of Damnation and a Day, an album with an hour and a quarter running time, so CoF can’t be faulted for effort, which, to judge from the second video is true of their live performances too:-



My opinion: Heavy metal is too noisy and insistent for my liking, so I was pleasantly surprised by the first part of "A Bruise Apon The Silent Moon" - that is until I realized that it was building into a piece of OTT musical drama which I also didn’t like. On the next track we have the barrage of guitars that I expected from this genre, together with the routinely “evil” voice that goes with. Nothing here that encourages me to continue listening, so no analysis of how their lyrics relate to the original poem, I'm afraid.
In fairness to the band I should mention that this is rated (allmusic.com) as one of their weaker albums – although actually, they seem to have quite a few weaker albums. Sorry guys!

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"Am I enjoying this moment? I know of it and perhaps that is enough." - Sybille Bedford, 1953

Lisnaholic

J.D.Salinger has a special place in modern literature. Who else is so famous for one book and for being so reclusive? That’s why I can totally recommend Ian Hamilton’s attempt to puncture the myth, In Search of J.D, Salinger. To do justice to it, I’ll quote what they say on the back cover: “… a sophisticated exploration of JDS’s life and writing and a sustained debate about the nature of literary biography, it’s ethical legitimacy..” The book’s title is very accurate: it’s not just about JDS, but is also about the detective-work that Hamilton did to write it, and how he ended up fighting JDS in court, wrestling with ethical questions about research and “fair use”.
As for the JDS content, this was new to me:
Hamilton goes on to say that “the film was a travesty, even by Hollywood standards….the shamelessly lachrymose screenplay is barely polite to the original.” If any reader of The Catcher In The Rye wonders why Holden Caulfield rants so bitterly against Hollywood phonies – well, look no further than the treatment given to JDS's short story a year or so previously.

This version of My Foolish Heart from 1955 has the advantage of giving Ethel Ennis her MB debut, afaik:-



My verdict: I’d like to say, “Let’s have a round of applause for Ethel!” because she does a great job with the singing, but personally I find this kind of languid rumination about love all but unbearable. And perhaps not entirely by chance, it’s a mood that reminds me of those old movies: the sophisticated, sentimental couple leaving the dance floor for the verandah, where they revel in (or agonise about) their relationship, blowing their cigarette smoke into the night air with oh such casual elegance.

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"Am I enjoying this moment? I know of it and perhaps that is enough." - Sybille Bedford, 1953

Lisnaholic

However passionately we might issue death threats to each other in the Beatles vs Beach Boys threads, one thing's for sure: music isn't actually a matter of life and death for us.

Sadly, it could become so in Nazi-occupied Poland. Thomas Keneally's Schindler's List is a kind of novelized history based on 50 survivors' interviews that TK collected in 1980/81. For the pedantically minded, his book is catalogued as fiction, though it's full of facts and accounts that are uncontested afaik.

One anecdote is about 16-year-old Haubenstock, who "had been heard singing Volga, Volga and other banned Russian songs with the intention, according to his death sentence, of winning the Ukranian guards over to Bolshevism." (At the time, Ukranian guards, like other police/army units were implementing orders coming, ultimately, from Berlin.)
It's hard to read the details of how this innocent boy, after begging for his life, was shot by SS officer Amon Goeth, the camp commander made infamous by Spielberg's excellent movie.



My Opinion: A robust, moving song, clearly full of pride and yearning for the Volga region: a classic, apparently, of Russian folk music. If it sounds familiar, that may be because it was turned into "The Carnival Is Over" by Tom Springfield of The Seekers.
Good song, and R.I.P. poor Haubenstock (1927- 1943), shot for taking solace in music.

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"Am I enjoying this moment? I know of it and perhaps that is enough." - Sybille Bedford, 1953

The Batlord

16-year-old communist with 16 pound balls.

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Lisnaholic

Yeah, thanks for the comment, Batlord, but quite possibly he was neither a communist nor brave: just a scared 16-year-old kid trying to keep his courage up by singing a song from his childhood.
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David Aaronovitch, author of Voodoo Histories devotes one chapter to the mysterious death of Hilda Murrell in 1984. Entitled "A Very British Plot", the chapter describes the murder of this 78-year-old expert on roses who lived alone in a Shropshire suburb. Conspiracies abound because of the strange circumstances of her death and the fact that she was actively engaged in anti-nuclear activities. Did she die because she interrupted a clumsy search of her house by British Security Forces? That's what many think, including, presumably the band Attaco Decente:

Maybe it hit the charts in Shropshire, but I don't think the song has had much impact elsewhere. I've certainly never heard of it until today:



My opinion: Just based on the band name, I was expecting a completely different genre, so the gentle plucking of the intro came as an agreeable surprise. Some nice flute in the song too, but a "story song" stands or falls by the way it tells its story.
The vocals strike me as a bit weak, failing to deliver on the anger inherent in the lines "they abducted her, knifed her to death" or "we will get the bastards" In fact, the topic of the song makes the flute interlude sound a little inappropriate, and the line "Roses growers beware" is right on the edge of laughable imo.
In all, this is a very British song about a very British plot: despite the violence of her death, the song seems at pains not to offend, reluctant to intrude on the gentle rural harmony that has been the norm of Shropshire life for hundreds of years I suspect.

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"Am I enjoying this moment? I know of it and perhaps that is enough." - Sybille Bedford, 1953

Lisnaholic

A lot of writers, both published and unpublished, start out with that semi-autobiographical novel that looks at a young persons coming of age or their early adult years. Colin Wilson, who went on to write some extraordinary books, did that too, with Adrift In Soho. Set in London in 1950, he describes the adventures of a young man who falls in with various beggars, artists, drunks in the pubs and cafés of a very specific part of London. One afternoon walking from the National Gallery to a rendezvous in a café, "I crossed the square, where a four-piece street band was playing Tin Roof Blues, and turned up Charing Cross Road."

The earliest Tin Roof Blues I saw on Youtube was from 1923, but this version is a bit closer to the time CW would have heard it. Usually, if CW mentions music at all, it's to make an intellectual point but that isn't the case here - which actually points to the charm of this book: we see CW as straight-forward guy absorbing the bohemian haunts of London and wondering what to do with his life.



My opinion: For once in this thread, a piece of music from a genre I like. This strikes me as agreeable rather than outstanding, but it's interesting to think that this was a tune CW could recognize in the street and that, presumably, he expected at least some readers to recognize the title.

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"Am I enjoying this moment? I know of it and perhaps that is enough." - Sybille Bedford, 1953

Lisnaholic

When she was 36, Monica Ali's first novel, Brick Lane, was published to great critical acclaim. Her novel is most notable for its subject matter: exploring the often hum-drum life of a Bangladeshi family living in a block of Council flats near central London. (Council flats = British version of America's "projects")
The book does a good job of shining some light on a type of person who is often overlooked: Muslim women in Western cities. It's easy enough to read, has a couple of interesting characters, but has some limitations too. Within four years the book had been turned into a movie, but along with its outward success came a fair amount of controversy as well: the community Monica A was describing felt that they were being caricatured, and in truth this Bengali/British group of Muslims might well feel defensive. They are ostracized by many other Londoners for being so foreign, and criticized by other Muslims for being impure and too Westernised.

One Bangladeshi rock band that gets a mention in Brick Lane is called "Miles". Led by Shafin Ahmed, they are a pop-rock band living and recording in Bangladesh and Jala Jala was one of their bigger hits. It was released in 1996 and so falls exactly into the time period described by Monica Ali:



My verdict: This starts strong with a great guitar riff and it has the kind of easy-to-remember title that used to dominate the Eurovision Song Contest at one time.(Remember these classics of international baby-talk: La La La, Boom Bang-a-Bang, Ding-a-Dong and Diggi-Loo, Diggi-Ley? All Eurovision Song Contest winners.) I like the short interludes of synth and guitar, but for me, Miles never move far enough away from the pop format to be really interesting.

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"Am I enjoying this moment? I know of it and perhaps that is enough." - Sybille Bedford, 1953

Ayn Marx

A fascinating thread. Has me again wondering why contemporary classical music so frequently ignores the state of the world today.

Ayn Marx

Some Marxists are turned on by the kinkiest things.

Ayn Marx

There’s a difference between noise meaning volume and noise meaning distortion.
The distorted noise often swamping heavy metal has a big market, usually teenagers who delight in locking themselves into their bedroom, turning up the volume on their crappy ghetto blasters and sandpapering mummy and daddies eardrums.
However, heavy metal doesn’t always need to be a form of aural torture. Some of the most powerful political criticism of where our species has placed itself can be heard in heavy metal. Shame most of todays classical music has no similar political message.