Tour de France 2012

Well folks, it's that time of year when Griff and I shave our legs, put on the bright lycra pants and don some weird headgear. No, we're not going to the shadier parts of Glasgow, but are joining the ‘worldwide peloton’ of cycling buffs, to immerse ourselves in all things French, and tune into this years Tour de France.

‘Le Tour’ is the premier event for cycling, and once you see the beautiful landscapes, the ribbon of brightly-coloured cyclists flowing majestically through it, and then the fierce determination needed to tackle the overwhelming height of the mountains, you can't help but be inspired by the beauty of the French countryside and the dedication of the athletes as they seek to test themselves against it.

“From Paris to the blue waves of the Mediterranean,

 From Marseille to Bordeaux, passing along the roseate

 And dreaming roads sleeping under the sun,

 Across the calm of the fields of the Vendée,

 following the Loire, 

Which flows on still and silent, 

Our men are going to race madly, unflaggingly.” 

-  Henri Desgrange (creator of Le Tour).

Today's Tour is nothing like the early race, which began back in 1903. At that time, riders themselves would fix punctures, drink brandy during the race, and would be required to ride through the night. Some were accused of cheating by hopping in cars, others took trains and riders were occasionally beaten up by rival fans. But one thing was sure, the unique atmosphere of Le Tour is such that it caught everyone's imagination and its popularity has continued to grow each year.

Didi Senft who, in a red devil costume, has been the Tour devil since 1993.

The Tour has inspired several popular songs in France, notably P'tit gars du Tour (1932), Les Tours de France (1936) and Faire le Tour de France (1950). More recently,  Kraftwerk had a hit with Tour de France in 1983 (covered 'here' previously on The Streetlamp) and produced an album, Tour de France Soundtracks in 2003, on the occasion of the centenary of the Tour.

In films, the Tour was background for Cinq Tulipes Rouges (1949) by Jean Stelli, in which five riders are murdered. It next fetured in the burlesque Les Cracks (1967) by Alex Joffé. Patrick Le Gall made Chacun son Tour (1996) and the comedy, Le Vélo de Ghislain Lambert (2001), featured the Tour of 1974.

I find it a little surprising that there aren't more cultural references to le Tour, especially given the massive significance of the event in France. Perhaps the insane, grandiose spectacle of le Tour is such that any artist considering it finds themself overwhelmed by its sheer scale and opts instead to just sit back and enjoy its unique giddy whirl. I know that's how I tend to react to it all.


Given the sad absence of modern songs associated with le Tour I've decided instead to end this piece with a video by an important French musician from the 1960s whose work is sadly under-appreciated in the English speaking world. I'm referring to Jacques Dutronc a musician whose rough and energetic garage-style rock  surely served as a template for the British punk bands who sprang up a decade after his heyday. Have a listen below:

Jacques Dutronc - Et moi, et moi, et moi

Hope that shook away the cobwebs and left you suitably invigorated for three solid weeks of nerve-shredding, energy-sapping, top class cycling. See you all on the other side.

Ray

Fear And Loathing In Coco Beach

This is not a look at the book Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas, nor an overview of the writings of Hunter S Thompson, both of which are covered in great detail all over the Internet. This is merely my own personal look at the phenomenon of Fear & Loathing, particularly Terry Gilliam's cinematic version of the book, and about it's effect and influence on my own life.

I first became aware of Fear & Loathing, and of Hunter S Thompson, back in 1987 after an NME writer mentioned both the book and the author in a caustic slagging of the then latest book by the American writer P.J O'Rourke. That weekend I bought Fear & Loathing but have to confess that on first read I simply didn't get it. I found the book had the same effect as being shouted at by a boorish drunk who insisted on telling you how good a time he had just had. I found parts of the book funny, but overall found it too garbled a narrative to enjoy fully, so put it away after the first read.
Jump five years to 1992 and I've just ended a relationship and find myself at a loose end. So I head in to the local Waterstones where a display of Hunter S Thompson's new writing collection, The Great Shark Hunt, attracts my attention. The Great Shark Hunt is a collection of Hunter's more political writings, especially from around the Watergate era. I find the book captivating, funny and fierce and it makes me want to read Fear & Loathing again. This time the book makes sense! Beneath all the drug induced psychobabble is a story of the search for the American Dream and how Las Vegas, (alleged) 'Fun' capital of the world is a festering pit of plastic smiles, easy sin and soulless inertia. It's also where Hunter, chronicler of the counter culture, realises that the great revolution of hope that started in the mid-60s has failed....that his generation failed to paint it black!

In 1998, Ray, myself and a few others went on holiday to Florida. We promised ourselves that we would go and see a film or two while we were there (this was back in the days when films were released in America a good few months before they opened in the UK). We had already decided upon the recent big budget remake of Godzilla, but I was even more surprised to see that Terry Gilliam's imagining of Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas was opening that week too. I suggested to Ray that we check that film out as well, but he seemed confused (naturally) when I tried to explain what it was all about.
Catching Fear & Loathing on the big screen, in Florida, on holiday, is something that I am forever glad we did. It not only altered the viewing of the film, it changed our attitude to the rest of the holiday. For the rest of our time there we felt like we were Raoul Duke and Dr Gonzo on a mad quest to dissect 'The World's Happiest Place' albeit without the mass drug consumption, although we pushed the alcohol boat out waaaay beyond it's usual mooring, culminating in a night of revelry in a bar called The Cattleman's which has gone down in local folklore, especially as we were continually asked if we were sure we could cover the bar tab!
Watching a cabaret band fronted by a weird Steve Wright/Timmy Mallet frontman massacre Smells Like Teen Spirit, or watching some overenthusiastic dance troupe pretend it was New Year's Eve (in the middle of May) while gyrating to Been Caught Stealing, driving all the way to Coco Beach only to sit in the RV because the air-con was salvation against the lunacy of the mid-day sun, being asked to remove my shades by a nervous storekeeper before he would sell me a six-pack of beer, suddenly having a moment of blissful inner tranquillity before I plummeted 200 feet on the Skydive in old town Kissimee, I could feel the spirit of Raoul Duke coarse through me as my cynicism-tinted spectacles practically melted on my face. Gilliam's interpretation of Thompson was a meeting of unnatural minds and we were wearing its influence like a layer of hypercritical sunscreen....

Plans had been underway since the mid-70s to bring Fear & Loathing to the big screen. The earliest treatment had seen Jack Nicholson become involved with the intention of playing Raoul Duke. Almost unbelievably, Marlon Brando was pencilled in to play Dr Gonzo! Of course none of this ever materialised. Later adaptations saw John Malkovich in line to play Duke, as well as Alex Cox being set to direct, even completing his own screenplay for his version. This allegedly fell apart when Cox found Thompson an unreliable and truculent presence in the project.

In 1980 a movie called 'Where The Buffalo Roam' was released to virtually complete indifference. The film starred Bill Murray in the role of Hunter S Thompson. Murray, like Jack Nicholson before him, was a friend of Thompson and it was his star power (huge at the time) that got the film made. The film covers the Fear & Loathing episode, but it is not the central tract of the movie. It's interesting to see a more straightforward, less visually flashy interpretation of the events in Las Vegas, and Where The Buffalo Roam is probably closer in reality to what happened, as opposed to the Fear & Loathing which pretty much happens in Raoul Duke's head.
Which brings us to Terry Gilliam's vision....
Hallucinatory, opulent, visceral and eye-popping on one hand; deranged, babbling, impenetrable and migraine-inducing on the other, Gilliam's version of Fear & Loathing is probably the greatest interpretation of an unfilmable book in Hollywood's history.
The film follows the narrative of the book down pat, dropping straight into a speeding convertible in the Nevada desert. We then work backwards, finding out who these people are, where they're going, what they're up to, and why they need such a gargantuan stash of drugs. Then we follow them into the dark heart of Las Vegas where Duke and his lawyer Dr Gonzo have been sent to report on the Mint 400 bike race. Instead of that, however, they go searching for the American Dream in the streets of Las Vegas, only to find that it doesn't exist.
Gilliam uses many curveballs to keep us on our toes and to create a fevered mindscape detached from reality. These include animation, animatronic puppets, optical morphing, and the fact that there is never a straight horizon in the whole film; the camera is always at a slight angle so the viewer is constantly aware that something is off-kilter. The film stars Johnny Depp as Raoul Duke and Benicio Del Toro as Dr Gonzo, and both Hollywood hunks 'ugly up' for their roles; Depp shaving his head to a bald pate, and Del Toro gaining 40 pounds in weight. It's interesting also to see the difference in acting styles clash; Del Toro's fearless method approach to Depp's mannered mimicry. The actors also insisted in playing the roles dead straight claiming any sense of insobriety would have rendered the performances impossible.
For the first hour the film plays almost at fever pitch until the scene where Gonzo begs Duke to kill him in the bathtub when the song White Rabbit peaks....at this point the film, like the book, has become so frantic it threatens to fall in on itself. This is where Thompson, Duke, Gilliam and Depp take a breather and we settle down to hear what has become known as 'the wave speech'. Here, Duke looking out from his hotel window over Las Vegas reminisces back to San Francisco in the mid-60s when it felt that that the youth and the counter culture were going to win; they were going to destroy the war-mongering conservatives with a sense of peace and togetherness. But they chose to believe Timothy Leary's acid preaching without for one second understanding the consequences of opening their minds so radically. And now, five years later, he looks out over Las Vegas and sees that it was all a hopeless pipe dream...

Anyone who finds the film unwatchable and a horrid mess, I would ask them to do one thing....try watching the film with the sound off! Once you remove the psychotic chatter and (deliberately) impenetrable dialogue and no longer try to follow the narrative the film will blossom into one of the most beautiful films ever committed to celluloid. I mean it! Bereft of the white noise skreeeeee, this is a breathtakingly gorgeous looking film. Even the scenes of utter carnage, like the morning after the Adrenachrome binge look like a collaboration between Bosch and Carravaggio. This is another of my favourite scenes even if it did mean I'd never be able to hear 'Tammy' by Debbie Reynolds in the same light again. 'Tammy' was one of a clump of singles that my parents had in the house when I was an infant, and this collection of Del Shannon, Roy Orbison, Eddie Cochran and Neil Sedaka records shaped my early listening, and because of their drama and romanticism, led me on the path I still choose to walk. 'Tammy' is almost too melodic, too gushing, but it's combination of lush dynamism couple with the yearnings of a teenage girl for her first love have kept it at the forefront of my musical heart for my entire life. So its use to soundtrack the debauched squalor of Duke and Gonzo's hotel room cold have been fatal, but if anything adds an odd and surrealistic poignancy to what is up there on screen.

As usual, the studio heads didn't know what to do with Fear & Loathing and the film was dumped into a few cinemas and peppered with a few lousy reviews. Likewise when it opened a few months later in the UK, it was again shot down and hamstrung by reviewers who simply didn't get it...."No Fear, I Loathed It" screamed the Daily Record's film review of the time. But, as usual, the film has gone on to achieve cult adulation and is now regarded as one of the greatest Hollywood releases of the 1990s. In fact, it is now considered the most expensive Midnight Movie of all time.

It is now impossible for me to read Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas without thinking of Terry Gilliam's visuals; and it is also impossible for Ray and I to reminisce about that time in Florida without mentioning Fear & Loathing and how it shaped that holiday.
Even today, when writing these Blogs, I still feel a sense of 'what would Hunter do?' in my approach to them. Especially in the Blogs that cover the ~Streetlamp~'s days out, I still feel that touch on my shoulder....take the last one where we went to the Tramway; I finished by reporting that Griff set off through the backstreets of Glasgow while we headed back on to the motorway back to Stirling....this is a deliberate and direct mirroring of the end of Fear & Loathing where Dr Gonzo disappears off on the plane, and Duke heads back onto the highway...

"There he goes! One of God's own prototypes - a high powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live and too rare to die...."

~Gordon~

~Tales Of The Momii~#2: The Early E.Ps

The second in my own personal overview of Momus' recorded career. Once again, I must point out that the interpretations of the lyrics are mine alone, and may not be entirely what the author intended.

In 1983, Nick Currie split up his band The Happy Family, citing differences with label 4AD as the main cause. A catch-all of unreleased tracks was assembled under the name 'The Business Of Living' and released on cassette only by label Les Temps in early 1984. No matter how hard I've scoured the Internet, I simply cannot find a recording of this anywhere, so as it stands I can offer no opinion on it.
In the meantime, Nick moved to London and began putting some new songs together, songs that would see the light of day in July of 1985. Songs that would be released under the moniker, which he would from then on be identified with....Momus; the Greek god of Mockery...

Momus' debut release was a 12", 3-track e.p entitled 'The Beast With Three Backs'. Opening track 'Ballad Of The Barrel Organist' immediately sees a shift away from the angular post-Punk jangle of his previous band and sets out the stall with a predominantly acoustic musical backing, seeming to consist of guitar and autoharp over which Momus details that first night of passion between new lovers. Momus' sexual frankness coupled with his overwrought romanticism have set him apart from almost all other songwriters, even contemporaries like Morrissey or Jarvis Cocker, and the blueprint from which all his subsequent work evolves is found right here.

With 'Third Party, Fire & Theft', the key word seems to be 'sparsity'....over a very basic rhythm that doesn't appear to have been created on anything resembling a drum-kit, the music jitters and jars with recurring gaps of silence as Momus reveals that men may well insure themselves up to the hilt against all kinds of physical damage, but no premium policy can ever protect against the psychological fuck-up of their suburban wives' infidelities at the hands of a serial womaniser..."Any day now the adulterer will arrive in our suburbs//Knock at the door with a Durex to enter our Laura Ashley wives"...
 
Third track, and probably my favourite, is 'Hotel Marquis De Sade' in which Momus paints a vivid picture of a pre-package holiday era Mediterranean hotel in which, in a single room on a single bed, two middle class English boys and an middle class English girl make 'the beast with three backs'. There's an early indication of Momus' genius in the way he conveys naivete with raw sexuality...."And Colin loves Alice// And Alice loves me// And I love the stains on the ceiling// And pump like the sea"...

These "three tracks about threesomes" as Momus himself put it, were released on the él Record label, a label which seemed to suit Momus' early career perfectly, being aesthetically stylish, predominantly European, and very arch and arty. The songs were recorded in Brussels, and it was to Belgium that Momus would look for inspiration for his next release....another three track e.p entitled 'Nicky' which consisted of three interpretations of the songs of Jacques Brel.....

The 'Nicky' e.p was the first record of Momus that I ever purchased, having seen it reviewed in the short-lived music magazine Underground. Released in June of 1986, again on él Records, the three tracks saw Momus take the basic lyrical and musical ideas of Brel and adapt them to suit his own persona. He also dispensed with Brel's orchestral bluster and applied a more minimalist lounge-pop approach, more in the style of  Serge Gainsbourg than Brel himself. At this point in time, all I knew about Jacques Brel is that he was a big influence on Scott Walker, whose altar I worshipped at. It was handy that two of the tracks that Momus covered were also two of Scott's best interpretations; 'Jacky' and 'If You Go Away'.
Lead track 'Nicky' sees Momus adopt a rather different disguise than that of both Brel and Walker, in this tale in which Satan walks among us in various camouflage. In Brel's version the Devil walks the earth as a Spanish Lothario and an opium addicted pimp before ascending to Heaven to reclaim his name of Lucifer. In Momus' version he's a down at heel cabaret artist living in Bromley, Kent and singing to bored housewives. In the finalé he still ends up in Heaven but as a washed up entertainer, 'prancing and Cliff Richard-ing' for bored Angels.....

Brel's 'Ne Me Quitte Pas' aka 'If You Go Away' is one of the greatest doomed love songs of all time, as I already claimed and covered in a previous Blog on Brel. Scott Walker's version remains pretty much the definitive cover version, but Momus' version, retitled 'Don't Leave' (which is actually a closer translation) is still strong stuff. Sticking closer to Brel's own musical palette for this one, Momus conjures up his own imagery of a man knowing his great love is about to end, rather than stick to the translation that Scott (and virtually every one else who has covered the song) have used. Marc Almond, on his own album of Brel covers, also applied this approach....

The third track, 'See A Friend In Tears', I'm afraid is not a song of Brel's that I know at all. Even of the many Jaques Brel albums and CDs that I have, this track never seems to surface, so I can't offer any comparison. However, this is still a fantastic song, and Momus delivers what I feel is one of his best vocals ever, and a style of singing he would move away from as his songs became less chansonnier and more electro-minimalist....

In March of 1987, having left él for Creation Records, Momus delivered a third three track, 12" e.p, this time with all the songs seeming to be about death; 'Murderers, The Hope of Women'.

The title track is one of Momus' most brilliant songs and one that has remained a huge favourite amongst his fanbase. Despite the initially misogynistic appearance of the title, the song's meaning couldn't be further from that. Momus sees women's free, creative and productive lives slowly destroyed by the soul-sapping dependence men inflict upon on them in the name of love and marriage...."In my pipe and slippers// Do I look like Jack the Ripper?" he asks. In a later interview, Momus admitted that such imagery came from the slow dragging down of independent women as they involve themselves in dull, stifling marriages or relationships, parallelling the slow motion death Louise Brooks suffers at the hands of Jack The Ripper at the end of 'Pandora's Box'. Some may find this fatalistic view of relationships a tad OTT, but I'm sure there must have been some women who knew exactly what he was getting at...

Now, middle track 'Eleven Executioners', I have to confess is not one of my favourite songs of his. I just find it a bit too arch and contrived. Plus despite using imagery from Borges and Proust, the lyric remains a little too oblique and uninvolving for me. I'll include it anyway and let you make up your own mind....

Final track, 'What Will Death Be Like?' however, is another classic. Pretty much a list song, Momus decides not to answer his own question and tell us what death will be like, but to rhyme off a huge list of things that make life such a thing of wonder and complexity to be cherished, enjoyed and even feared. Every line of the song begins with the words, "Death will be unlike....", after which Momus lists things as diverse as a garden in Autumn, the paintings of Holbein, roller coasters, Jean Paul Sartre, Narnia, moths flying into flames, 2001: A Space Odyssey, the last day of Summer, Edgar Allen Poe, strippers, Ian Curtis, glimpsing the sea through the boardwalk, the tractatus of Wittgenstein etc etc....

Songs from the 'Beast With Three Backs' and 'Murderers' e.ps were collected on a strange and eclectic album called 'Monsters Of Love' that Creation put out in early 1990, along with a remix of his most successful single 'The Hairstyle Of the Devil', and three 'new' tracks. 

 I don't know if there was anything dodgy or suspect about the album, but when Momus made his Creation albums available for free download, he didn't include this one! Also, on his own very thorough website, he writes revisionary liner notes for every album in his career, again except 'Monsters Of Love'.
Of the three new tracks; 'Monsters Of Love', 'Gilda' and 'Morality Is Vanity', only the last one, I feel, is worthy of appearing amidst some of his finest work. The song evokes early twentieth century bohemian cabaret and contains one of my favourite lines of his, "The ugly, given flattery, grow vain". The song is about fiddling while Rome burns, about having a good time as the world goes to Hell on a handcart, and perhaps that's every bit as relevant now....

These three e.ps were bold and brilliant works at a time when Pop music, even some Indie Pop music, was becoming insufferably synthetic, glib and worthless. Songs of quality musicianship, timeless in their delivery and containing some of the most breathtaking lyrics in Pop's English lexicon. The greatest tragedy of course is that it didn't outsell U2!!

Awake Ye Heathens!!

~Gordon~

The album 'Monsters Of Love' which contains many of the tracks covered in this Blog can be found here
And the EP 'Nicky' can be downloaded here

GREECE: Our Present is Your Future

I'm just back from a march and rally in Glasgow today, jointly organised by the Glasgow Campaign to Welcome Refugees, Positive Action on Housing, Unity and NCADC, the whole event supported by the STUC. I have written recently about the ongoing fight in Glasgow to stop the UK ConDem government and their proxy Serco's vicious attacks on refugees in Glasgow who are seeking asylum (see 'here'). I was interested to note a placard brought by a guy who'd travelled all the way from Sheffield to attend, which simply stated; "First They Come for the Asylum Seekers".

The paraphrasing of Pastor Niemöller's famous warning to history seemed appropriate on a day where our rally had to break up early and we were ushered off to safety by the police, who were  concerned that we were about to be attacked by fascist thugs. As the world sleepwalks into fascism, the parallels with Nazi Germany couldn't have been clearer. There we were, hundreds of concerned people, commited to social justice and extending the hand of friendship to our brothers and sisters from around the world, most of whom have been forced to flee to us for sanctuary because of the machinations of Western governments and corporations. Who is so concerned with what we had to say that they would seek to attack us? What is so dangerous about our message of peace, love and friendship that there are people in Scotland who will try to physically intimidate us to stop us spreading it? Our cause is supported by the major churches in Scotland, we were being addressed by an elderly Bishop of the Catholic Church, for God's sake. Will the forces of fascism physically attack a dignified old gentleman because he dares to oppose their message of racial hatred? As I have already stated, the annals of history have recorded this sort of thing before and we can not, must not, allow it to happen again. The people of Scotland, the people of all the World, must stand up for what they know is right. As one of the speakers commented;  
"There are some causes that you just know, deep down in your soul, and with every fibre in your body, are right".
Hate cannot win - we must not let it win.

With these thoughts fresh in my mind, I was pleased to see that the Reel News film 'GREECE: Our Present Is Your Future' is currently on tour in the UK. A visit to the Reel News site will bring you up to date with the rise of the fascist right in Greece. Their film will also let you see the front line of the social war that’s engulfing Europe, and allow you to join in the discussions on how to deliver practical solidarity and build a Europe wide movement against austerity too.
What are you waiting for?

The UK Tour dates are:

Friday June 22nd 7pm HACKNEY Halkevi Centre 31 – 33 Dalston Lane, London E8 3DF (with Hackney Trades Council; part of Turkish Kurdish International Labor Film Festival)

Saturday June 23rd 11am-4:30pm LONDON UNITE THE RESISTANCE CONFERENCE Bloomsbury Baptist Church, 235 Shaftesbury Avenue, WC2H 8EP

Thursday June 24th: 7pm Stroud Transition monthly film screening @ The Exchange, Brick Row, Stroud GL5 1DF (selection of Reel News films and Debtocracy)

Wednesday June 27th LANCASTER time and venue tbc

 Thursday June 28th 6pm GLASGOW The Albany Learning and Conference Centre, 44 Ashley Street G3 6DS (with Camcorder Guerillas and Woodlands Community Garden)

Also Thursday June 28th: 7:30pm HARINGEY Chestnut Community & Community Arts Centre, 280 St. Ann’s Road, N15 5BN (with UNISON North London Mental Health & Community branch)

Friday June 29th 6:30pm BRIGHTON The Cowley Club 12 London Road BN1 4JA (with live bands from Spain)

Tuesday July 3rd BRISTOL time and venue tbc

Thursday July 12th BRIDPORT 7:30pm (day before Tolpuddle festival starts) St John’s ambulance hall, Rax Lane DT6 3JJ (with Autonomy Films)

Friday July 20th – Sunday July 22nd GLOBALISE RESISTANCE FESTIVAL Tapeley Park, Devon

Wednesday July 25th NEWCASTLE 7:30pm The Star and Shadow cinema, Stepney Bank (opp. Tanners Pub)

 The Streetlamp will be at the screening in Glasgow, if you fancy attending this free event you can find details 'here'.
Hope to see you there!

Griff
xx