Lantern

Checking the price list
A lantern costs twenty gold
Good for dark dungeons

Olympia 64 (Live) by Jacques Brel

Probably the best export from Belgium since waffles, beer and Tintin the Boy Detective! My French is a little (by which I mean a lot) rusty but the drama and emotion in these songs is unmistakeable. I’ve listened twice today and I’m going for a third listen using the auto-translate on my phone to get a better idea of the lyrics.

It’s clear to see the direct line of influence from Brel to Bowie to Scott Walker to Nick Cave and beyond, not just in the covers of his songs but also in the mesmerising performance style.

Chanson-tastic!

Cold Rain

Counting down the days
Until this damned heat subsides
Waiting for cold rain

Rock Bottom by Robert Wyatt

Robert Wyatt very nearly lost his life to the rock and roll lifestyle when he fell from a fourth floor window at a drunken party in 1973. As it was, he ended up breaking his back and being paralyzed from the waist down. He later credited this accident with saving his life as he stopped drinking from that point on. He was also fortunate that he had a circle of supportive friends who helped him adapt his instruments and studio so he could carry on working on this album.

Whether you like this album or not will very much depend on your tolerance for mid 70s progressive rock noodling with reedy vocals and occasional nonsense lyrics. I found it oddly affecting and he certainly has an all star band backing him on this, including Nick Mason, Mike Oldfield, Ivor Cutler and Fred Frith.

I would recommend looking for his version of ‘I’m a Believer’ on Top of the Pops on YouTube. Apparently the BBC producers didn’t want to show him performing in a wheelchair saying that it “was not suitable for family viewing”. Not surprisingly he told them to get lost and went ahead with the song as planned. The result was absolutely joyous.

Robert Wyatt on Top of the Pops

Pack

Dungeon delver's pack
Stuffed with supples, then emptied
To make room for gold

Fire of Love by The Gun Club

OK, this was an interesting one. The opening title track was fairly standard post-punk, but then the second track added some slide guitars and turned out to be a cover of a Robert Johnson blues number, given considerable energy. The rest of the album continued to surprise, mixing blues, roots and punk, putting me in mind of the energy of stripped down Western Swing but with lyrics about sex, heroin and shooting people.

There is one very inadvisable use of the N word, but front man and writer Jeffrey Pierce was mixed race so we can probably let that one slide, as well as waiving the usual caveats about white people playing the blues. There was enough here to keep me listening and also wanting to explore some more of their albums - Patricia Morrison was part of the band later on, as a bass player pre Sisters of Mercy.

Cowpunk-tastic!

It : Chapter Two

Picking up the story 27 years on from the previous film, we now see the members of the Losers Club as adults, each with apparently successful lives on the surface, except for Mike who stayed behind in Derry as a humble librarian. However, it quickly becomes clear that the memories of It are not buried far beneath the surface and they will have to do battle once more.

Picking up on my thoughts about the first chapter, this is one of Stephen Kings more complex novels, and genuinely scary to read. However, the film adaptation suffers from being over literal in the use of CGI and putting the monsters in full view diminishes their effect. One scene in particular struck me as an example of this - one character is revisiting her childhood home, now inhabited by an apparently sweet little old lady. As she digs into the past we catch disturbing glances of the old lady in the background, moving in ways that are just … wrong.

However, the building tension of the scene is shattered by the hilarious appearance from a darkened kitchen of what can only be described as a ten foot tall zombie gollum creature with pendulous breasts lurching around the apartment, smashing up the furniture. Similarly, the final encounter with the It creature feels like a video game boss battle where you have to run around a central arena looking for a hiding place.

The final act also goes on much too long. There is a running joke about the character of Ben, a successful author, being unable to write a good ending, and Stephen King himself makes a cameo appearance as a junk shop owner to acknowledge the point.

Overall, it was OK, but I think that I have got to stop expecting adaptations of King’s works to be anything other than workmanlike.