Wisteria

Wisteria (noun)
The state of being both wistful
And hysterical

1999 by Prince

The early 80s were a scary time to be alive. A gung-ho elderly president in the White House and the imminent threat of nuclear war at any moment - oh, wait, guess things haven’t changed all that much. Anyway, we all lived with dreams of purple skies and people running everywhere, so Prince’s song 1999 was a perfect encapsulation of the zeitgeist of partying in the face of Armageddon.

The follow up single Little Red Corvette similarly caught the spirit of the hedonistic materialism of the era, although there were some lines alluding to casual sex that might have raised a few eyebrows if you listened closely and knew what a packet of Trojans was. 

Anyone who bought the album off the back of the singles without being previously aware of Prince’s oeuvre was in for an extremely rude awakening by the time they got to tracks like “Let’s Pretend We’re Married” which leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination. 

The opening tracks aside, I don’t think that the rest of this album holds up particularly well, at least compared to his later work, with too much reliance on early drum machines and weedy 80s production. This was a double album and too many songs are stretched way too thin and even the remastered version fails to rescue them. 

https://album.link/gb/i/1479564716

Mustard Flowers

Mustard flowers bright
Reaching for the spring sunshine
A promise of warmth

Kick Out the Jams by MC5

This is easily the best 60s album that you’ve never heard before, mainly because there is not a radio station in the world that could play this unbleeped. Most record stores refused to stock this too. As well as the category A swearing, this feels genuinely revolutionary, somewhere between an evangelical revival and a political rally inciting the crowd to riot.

I’m not going to get into the arguments about whether this counts as the first punk record - it’s certainly loud and angry, and shambolic in places, but there’s no lack of musical skill in the guitars and rock solid drumming. The standout track is Kick Out the Jams which never fails to make the hairs stand up on the back of my neck and makes me want to punch the air (or a fascist goon). 

This is what music can be and should be. 

https://album.link/gb/i/1018383064

Spring Mist

Mist hangs like a shroud 
Spring sunshine on dewy grass
New day softly wakes

The Big Sleep

I’m currently reading this for the book club and spotted that this was available for streaming, so I picked it for Saturday night viewing.

It’s a classic tale of hard boiled detectives, blackmail, betrayal, vice and murder from 1946 starring Humphrey Bogart as private eye Philip Marlowe and Lauren Bacall as Mrs Rutledge, the object of both his investigation and affections.

Plotwise Marlowe is employed by the elderly Colonel Sternwood to investigate a letter from a rare book dealer called Geiger asking for money to cover gambling debts supposedly incurred by his younger daughter, the flirtatious and unpredictable Carmen. After accepting the job, Marlowe also encounters Sternwood’s elder daughter, the married but separated Mrs Rutledge who seems keen to know what her father is up to.

Marlowe soon discovers that Geiger’s bookshop is not quite what it seems and tracks him to his house in the Hollywood hills. As he keeps watch, a shot rings out and he breaks in to discover a drugged Carmen in a compromising position, a very dead Geiger and a secret camera with the film missing. Shenanigans ensue.

From this point, things get steadily more confusing and complicated with multiple murders and murky mysteries, explained with a hefty amount of dialogue and people pointing guns at each other. At some points I wished for a detective’s notebook or a murder board with pictures and bits of red string to keep track of who was double crossing who.

The sparky scenes with Bogart and Bacall keep things moving though with some unexpectedly funny bits of business thrown in to lighten the tone. Bogart was 25 years senior to Bacall, but that didn’t stop him from carrying on a very public affair with her whilst divorcing his third wife. The pair married in 1945 and were reportedly happy together until Bogart’s death some 12 years later.

Blossom

Sakura season
As fleeting as life itself
Moment of zanshin