Song for Sunday

Oh-oh. Loving this album at the moment. This tune is great as well ...

Song(s) for Sunday

Who says that Low don't have a sense of humour?

If that is too rowdy for you try this or this. And try this for a couple of live tracks, including one of my all time favourites – Last Snowstorm of the Year.

Cosmonaut Robbie

You can tell that the author studied Theoretical Physics to doctorate level. But don't let that put you off.

The first section is a beautifully rendered depiction of Scotland in the 1970s, where young Robbie Coyle is just beginning to get to grips with socialism, Top of the Pops, Dr Who, girls and The Meaning of Relativity by Einstein. Terrifically funny and achingly sad by turns, the first section ends with Robbie's first snog in the church hall storeroom.

Part two takes off into a parallel universe; recognisably still Scotland but bizarrely different, an alternative reality in which Robbie is suddenly ten years older and on the short list for a space mission planned to explore an approaching black hole.

The dislocation and night-marish qualities of this section echoed Alasdair Gray's Unthank, and the world Andrew Crumey creates is just as completely realised, deeply detailed and surprisingly tangible as that which Duncan Thaw inhabits.

Then we are back in the present-day and what seems to be normal life. Robbie has vanished from the narrative and it is not until near the end of the book that we discover what has happened to him. There are hints about the middle section and more puzzles to come, leaving the reader to tease out their own interpretation of events. I suspect this may frustrate some readers, but I have a feeling that Sputnik Caledonia will come to be regarded as one of the essentials of Scottish literature.

Song for Sunday

Barack Hussein Obama, 44th President of the United States

President-elect of the USA: a skinny black man with brains. (See Jonathan Raban's article for the details.) I guess if you are going to break down barriers you might as well tear them all down at once.

There haven't been many occasions in my lifetime that you could say well done the American electorate, but credit where it's due – thank you.

Over the next few months I presume the Republicans will be looking for new leadership and direction, so my modest contribution is some advice for Sarah Palin – before running for elected office again here are some books that might prove useful:

And, before you all write in, I know the Tim Flannery one is the children's version. Other suggestions gratefully received.

Song for Sunday

Looks like it was filmed on CCTV ...

I still feel a bit nervous about the result on Tuesday, and am pretty sure it will be way tighter than the polls are saying, but a bit of Bruce always makes me feel optimistic.

Monkey

Eleven quotes from an article in The Observer Music Monthly by Paul Morley and about 'the musician, realist and fantasist Damon Albarn and fellow conspirator, the graphic artist Jamie Hewlett'.

1 how since everything is a reflection of our minds everything can be changed with our minds

2 There were 30 Mali musicians playing very loud music [on the roof of Damon and Jamie's west London studio] and whenever a train came past we all waved. People must have thought, did I actually see that, or have I had a long and tiring day. No one waved back, though.

3 I remember the moment when I became a little bit more political when I spliced on tape some of my Dad's Arabic recordings over the Human League's 'The Lebanon'

4 fifteen lotus maidens in pyramid formation, some doing the splits and spinning plates in front of the all-knowing Buddha

5 Damon arrives carrying coffee and cake for three. 'That's not easy on a bicycle,' he boasts.

6 your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart give yourself to it

7 Opera magazine host an informal discussion, exploring for a classical readership unfamiliar with Albarn's pop music the possibility that Journey to the West might actually not just be hyperbolically called an opera but might actually be an opera.

8 There are in fact three Monkeys in all this – the cuddlier cartoon BBC Monkey, the slightly more sinister rascally Monkey in the Opera and the much more menacing Monkey of the record.

9 Chen Shi-Zheng has taught us about the Buddhist principle that you must not mourn for the past, or worry about the future, or anticipate problems, but live in the present moment wisely and earnestly. That's why we call him Chairman Now.

10 He wonders if perhaps it's from the 1940s, and is therefore a Nazi typewriter. The thought perversely pleases him.

11 Damon dances to his music, unashamedly lost in the thoughts he's having about how three years of thoughts – about the history and future of China, about how to follow up Blur, Gorillaz, his Mali music, his film soundtracks, the decaying London of The Good, the Bad and the Queen, his own perfectionist craving for newness that honours oldness, for strangeness that emphasies romance – have turned into an electric music that is clearly by the musician responsible for the above, and yet by a new kind of musician.

In Another Light

Bollocks. I think I am going to end up buying a book about golf.


I finished In Another Light a couple of weeks ago and for a few days after I was loath to start reading anything new. I wanted to savour the characters and the world that Andrew Greig created, and for them to stay fresh in my mind for as long as possible.

Greig alternates between two story lines – one set in Orkney a few years ago about a middle-aged engineer who is recovering from some sort of brain seizure, while the other delves into his family history and the time his father spent as an obstetrician seventy years earlier in Penang.

I had read that Andrew also survived a serious brain disorder at around the same age, but until today couldn't find much information about what happened. In my lunchbreak, catching-up on a back issue of the Scottish Review of Books I found a review of Andrew's latest novel Romanno Bridge, by Douglas Gifford. It's the sort of review I love because it not only covers the title that is being reviewed, but it also discusses virtually all his other books and unearths clues about how they all came into being. Anyway, well into the review, long after we have finished the discussion of Romanno Bridge, I discovered that:

Around the turn of the century things went terribly wrong. He tells the story in his moving account of recovery, a unique spiritual autobiography-cum-golfing adventure, Preferred Lies (2006) ... He tells how he was saved from death by the guess of a clever neurosurgeon, who realised that a colloid cyst was crushing Greig's brain. A drain which he implanted to take off the fluid killing the writer saved him; nonetheless, throughout Preferred Lies Greig feels the slight bulge in his head as reminder of time and death.

'Autobiography-cum-golfing adventure'! In anyone else's hands it would be too ghastly to contemplate, but now it has gone straight onto my list of essential purchases.

Needless to say In Another Light is a beautiful, fascinating read. The depiction of Penang in 1930 is wonderful, the Scottish sections have glorious descriptions of the human and natural landscapes and above all his characters, the subtleties of their relationships and the ebbs and flows of love and friendship.

Many of the same themes run through his novels Where they Lay Bare and Electric Brae (one of the all-time great Scottish novels and as Douglas Gifford notes '... takes its place in the line of novels that includes Docherty, Lanark, The Bridge, The Crow Road, Looking for the Possible Dance and The Trick is to Keep Breathing, the defining Scottish novels of the last quarter century').

I reckon Greig is one of the finest Scottish novelists ever and it has always puzzled me that his books don't seem to get the recognition they deserve. The reviews are pretty much always excellent, but you would be hard pushed to find his name on the bestseller lists or a major literary award shortlist (although In Another Light did win the 2004 Saltire Book of the Year Award) and most people look blank when I mention his name. Maybe I just need to hang out with golfers a bit more ...

Song for Sunday

Not sure why, and for some reason I feel I shouldn't, but I love this ...



Clip from RocKwiz. Still the best show on Australian TV. Easily.

My iPod loves the Pixies

It really does. Which is fine if you have the headphones in, not so good on the loudspeakers at work.

Especially as it has also decided that the Pixies should be played twice as loud as anything else in my music collection. Anyone who knows the intro to I'm Amazed will understand ...

Song for Sunday

And after last week's post we had to have a tribute to the mighty Blue Aeroplanes.

De Niro's Game

Living in the Christian half of Beirut during the civil war, Bassam is a young man who has grown-up with random violence, adjusting to the loss of family and friends and developing a cynical, hard-boiled outlook on life.

Unlike his friend George, Bassam avoids the militias and as he gradually becomes more alone, losing the last of his family and girlfriend, he makes plans to get of the country. Eventually a combination of small-time crimes and smuggling gives him enough funds to get himself onto a cargo ship heading for Marseille.

Just before his departure Bassam comes dangerously close to losing everything when he is picked up by the militia and accused of killing an old man. Inexplicably he is released and on the day that he is due to leave George picks him up and drives him to a deserted construction site. George seems to understand that Bassam is leaving and their waning friendship is over. He has orders to arrest him again, but first he wants a confessor for the terrible things he has seen and done. Initially it is unclear what transpires at his final meeting with George, but by the end of the book we understand.

Some of the descriptions of Beirut and the surrounding Lebanese countryside are oddly delicate amongst the brutal violence and the writing strikes a satisfying balance between the thriller elements and something more literary and intelligent. When Bassam reaches Paris and needs a book to read in his cheap hotel it is no surprise that the concierge digs out a copy of The Outsider for him.

Song for Sunday

R.E.M. Glasgow Barrowlands May 24, 1989. Think I still have the ticket somewhere. They played this song, almost exactly as it's done here. Still gives me goosebumps ...

reach out for me/and hold me tight/hold that memory ...

I was studying at Edinburgh University and the concert was days before our end of second year exams. Did we think twice? No chance. They were also playing in Edinburgh, but I am pretty sure it was at the Usher Hall, so there was never really any doubt that we would be going through to Glasgow ...

5am wake-up a few months before to get near the front of the queue at Ripping (Rip-off) Records on South Bridge. Sold-out that day ...

Support was the Blue Aeroplanes, who played like they knew this was there one big shot at stardom. Then R.E.M. came on. And it is still the best gig I have ever seen (I will post the full top ten sometime soon). Michael Stipe had the black eye make-up same as here, but he also had the word CAT written on his forehead. We found out later that he had been sick as a dog last time they played in Glasgow ...

This song was one of my favourites from the album and it was absolutely amazing live. I remember reading an interview with Michael Stipe around this time and, if I remember correctly, he noted that it was the pivotal song on Green, a way into the album and a key to unlock the all the other songs. Sounds like something we would have discussed endlessly on the trip over in our late-teenage earnestness ...

Last encore was a beautiful rendition of Perfect Circle, which Mr Stipe claimed was only the 36th time they had played that song live. Bet that didn't happen in Edinburgh ...

Where do typesetters go on holiday?

Gill Sands!

The always interesting Strange Maps reprises the story of one of my all time favourite hoaxes accompanied by a scan of the original map.

Song for Sunday

Still the best band ever to come out of East Kilbride ...

Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living

I wasn't sure about this novel when I started reading, but it had been on my to-read pile for over a year and I needed something that would contrast the bleakness of Riddley Walker. Not that this was the gentle rural tale I was half-expecting.

The sense of place and atmosphere is beautifully conjured, the story is compelling and the period detail is superbly woven in ... But for me it still seemed too slight, the characters not fully rounded and their actions too opaque for me to believe in them. There are moments when it all jelled perfectly (like the passages about Jean's dad), but for the most part there just seemed to be too much of the story missing, just out of reach; as if some crucial parts had been scattered by the torrid winds blasting across the Mallee.

Riddley Walker

'Intensely ponderable.' So says one of the review quotes on the back cover. That's for sure.

Narrated by Riddley in an imagined dialect, set in a post-nuclear holocaust distant future, it demands full concentration and rewards it with a stunning evocation of a world returned to the dark ages. The language is amazing and I constantly found myself re-reading paragraphs, puzzling out the meanings and turning over the implications. It isn't like Trainspotting where your brain suddenly clicks into the dialect and you suddenly know exactly what Renton is talking about, but Riddley's voice still works its way into your head and you begin to piece together the meanings and build up a picture of the myths and history.

I have always been fascinated by books set in post-apocalyptic futures (something to do with growing up at the height of the Cold War) and this is one the best. Other favourites would include The Road, The Drowned World and In the Country of Last Things.

Song for Sunday

Alasdair Gray

In Australia the National Trust administers a list of 100 Australian Living Treasures. It is a slightly strange honour (and a number of the current living treasures are deceased) and an interesting mixture of personalities, but does recognise many important figures that the nation should, well, treasure.

If Scotland ever decides to adopt a similar scheme, then Alasdair Gray will surely be on the list.

As Alasdair himself notes he is 'a hard-working, happily married, sometimes short of money, occasionally drunk* old writer'. His biographer, Rodge Glass, fleshes out this description and memorably sums up his writing with the observation that 'the quality of Alasdair's output is limited by his need to pre-empt criticism, and bring socialism and Scottish nationalism into everything' he writes.

Rodge's biography sounds wonderful (review in Saturday's Grauniad), but with a subject like Alasdair it would be difficult for it not to be ...

*I can vouch for the authenticity of this observation, having worked at a certain UK chain bookseller when Michael Jackson's (not that Michael Jackson!) book about whisky was launched with a tasting session in the Assembly Rooms. Alasdair was enthusiastic about the tasting and at the end of a jovial evening had to be helped (i.e. carried) to a waiting taxi.

Slicing the Silence

Slicing the Silence is one of the best books I have read about Antarctica.

The main chapters are interleaved with diary entries from a voyage Tom Griffiths took to Antarctica in the summer of 2002-03 on the Polar Bird, a supply ship for the Australian Antarctic Division.

Presented as a history of human encounters with Antarctica, he covers a lot of ground between Cook's expeditions to the Southern Ocean in the latter half of the eighteenth century all the way to the current scientific programs and burgeoning tourist industry. As an Australian historian traveling to an Australian base many of his stories have a different perspective to those I have encountered before.

The early expeditions of what he calls the 'heroic era' will be familiar to most readers, but it is an excellent introduction to anyone who doesn't know the stories of the likes of Scott, Amundsen, Shackleton and Mawson. However Griffiths has also uncovered a lot of less well-known, but no-less fascinating characters like Robert Cushman Murphy – a young curator from the Brooklyn Museum of Natural History – who was so desperate to see penguins that he voyaged south on a whaling boat.

Griffiths is also particularly good on the absurdities of the flag planting and territorial claims that followed this initial exploration. But where the book became totally absorbing for me was when we entered the post-War era and Cold War geopolitics started to impinge on Antarctic exploration and science. This is a story that I haven't heard before and fills in the gap between the early explorers and the late twentieth century which are both covered extensively in many other places. (Edwin Mickleburgh's excellent Beyond the Frozen Sea does touch on this, but doesn't fill in the detail as well as Griffith does.)

Also fascinating is his history of the Australian researchers, base personnel and the bases themselves and how – in the 1980s – science and research suffered as the lions share of the ANARE budget was spent on building and maintaining the bases.

Finishing with the story of Captain Scott's biscuit he returns to the heroic age and seems to be suggesting that the most important lessons from man's experience of Antarctica still come from this time.

Song for Sunday

Nearer than Heaven ...



Also lots of good things here. Including songs from the new album which I didn't even know had been released ...

Mellow Johnny rides again?

Intriguing announcement this week from Lance Armstrong about his planned comeback to professional cycling next season. The video on his website is short on detail, but the one definite piece of information is that his return to racing is linked to the launch of an international cancer strategy.

I will be interested to see how he might make this work in practice – I feel that he could accomplish much the same thing with his current influence and through his existing foundation. How racing the 2009 Tour de France could add much to this is not clear to me.

If he wants to raise awareness of why cancer rates have increased so drastically in western, developed countries and to try and tackle the multi-national food and chemical industries then great. I am totally behind him. If it is going to be a international marketing opportunity for some large pharmaceutical company that's different.

If you were being cynical you could say he misses being the centre of attention or the camaraderie of the pro-cycling team or feels unfulfilled with his current role as bike-shop owner and cancer activist.

So is the motivation personal or does he genuinely have more altruistic goals? His contributions to cycling and the fight against cancer are undeniable and immense, and I have always loved watching him race, so at the moment I will give him the benefit of the doubt. We'll see come September 24 ...

And of course the big question is: could he win an eighth Tour at the age of 37? Logically I feel that the three years he has been retired will make it almost impossible to get back to the level required in ten months. But I also know that Lance does his homework and he won't be lining-up next July unless there is a good probability of winning.

Song for Sunday

Thanks to Kate for the movie recommendation. With bonus Spanish subtitles ...

Addition

I have fallen a bit behind on the book reviews lately – there is a large teetering pile of books near the computer, but high up out of range of small hands ...

So, in an effort to catch-up I will try to write brief comments about some of the more notable recent titles. First up Addition by Toni Jordan. Very enjoyable, even if not totally believable depiction of mental illness (Grace is a compulsive counter, hence the title), which reads like it was written as a film script (not necessarily a bad thing in this case).

It is compulsively readable, a bit like a Melburnian Kate Atkinson, but has plenty of wit and intelligence and is hilariously funny in places. It is a first novel and it will be interesting to see what direction she takes in future novels.

Song for Sunday

RiP Delgados. Long live Emma.

(Paper and Glue is also excellent ...)