All entries for Monday 07 February 2005

Skin as Canvas

The World Body Painting Festival website has a page devoted to its Photos of the Month.

Isn't this really what Warwick needs to brighten up a dreary February Reading Week. I am sure that bloggers like James and hundreds of others would want to get down to self-adorning with the brush, and who knows what the History of Art and Theatre Studies people would be able to contribute.

If you would like to form an English speaking event as a companion to the wonderful German exercise say so now!

Charles Bourne : 07 Feb 2005 04:38 |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Top of the Classics

20 Things about Me in 20 Days - No. 4

Classical music is a really important part of my life. It always has been. A list of the composers who mean most to me would always include some of the same names, but others go in and out of "favour", and if they had to be in order, there would be risers and fallers, quite frequently (except that J S Bach has been at number 1 for about 15 years now!). Anyway, as of today, this is my top ten:

1 Johann Sebastian Bach (Ger)
2 Franz Schubert (Aus)
3 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Aus)
4 Béla Bartók (Hungary)
5 Carl Nielsen (Denmark)
6 Claude Debussy (Fr)
7 Ralph Vaughan Williams (Eng)
8 Frédéric Chopin (Poland/Fr)
9 Tomás Luis de Victoria (Sp)
10 John Adams (USA)

I also have a current list for composers who only/mainly wrote opera:

1 Richard Wagner (Ger)
2 Benjamin Britten (Eng) #
3 Giacomo Puccini (It)
4 Giuseppe Verdi (It)
5 Georg Frederick Händel (Ger/It/Eng) #
6 Gioachino Rossini (It)
7 Jean-Philippe Rameau (Fr)
8 Vincenzo Bellini (It)
9 Modest Mussorgsky (Rus)
10 Claudio Monteverdi (It) #

# Not really mainly opera composers, but it gets them into a top ten without causing a lot of problems making choices for the other list!

Charles Bourne : 07 Feb 2005 03:39 |  Comments (4) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

(bad, bad, Pete Doherty–esque) Adam Green

Adam Green's new single (from the Gemstones album) comes out yesterday. It's called "Emily" and is a sweet pastiche of those '50s/'60s songs dedicated to distinctly underage passions. Melodically charming and smoothly rendered, but with utterly subversive and nasty lyrics, it's a song to which you can stick your tongue in your cheek (or wherever) and give a sly smile.

(The Drowned in Sound review completely misreads both the lyrics and the music, and labels the cleverest lines in the song - highlighted below - "non-sensical" !)

There's an mp3 download of a live version of "Emily" on the Adam Green fansite (fansofmine.tk) and a video on the Tiscali Music site (link from here - it's very slow downloading).

Emily, sweet baby, won't you be my wife
Cutting me wide open with a kitchen knife
Everybody said that she is underage
Honey tried to shoot me with a seven gauge

Now, I got the cookies that your momma sent
I got permission from the government
Someone should mention to the minister
Now I gotta dance with Jennifer

Jenny's got a mousehole full of pigeon scum
On top a mountain made of bubble gum
Don't understand what all the grief is for
Now I gotta dance with Eleanor

Eleanor, I wonder if we grew too slow
Straight down the hatch beneath the streetlight's glow
Baby when I get you on that persian rug
That's the kind of movies I've been dreaming of...

Lyrics extract thanks to Erics Weblog

In case anyone's asking "who is Adam Green?" I like this thumb-nail portrait on the Tiscali Music site:

As a solo artist the 23 year old New Yorker Adam Green (formely of Moldy Peaches and touring the UK in Jan and Feb '05) combines the clever wit of Beck, the melancholy of Leonard Cohen and Lou Reed with the vocal sound of Jim Morrisson and Julian Casablancas. Anti folk, indie rock, pop, you name it, he's got it. He's toured with the Strokes, Badly Drawn Boy and Babyshambles and seems to appeal to 11 through 60 year olds.

Charles Bourne : 07 Feb 2005 02:34 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem