Last night, someone asked me if I’d heard the Labour Christmas record. “You mean “JC for PM for Me?” I asked. “No, the one Jarvis, Rayner and McDonagh have done about workers rights.” “Oh my God no! I must hear this immediately.” “It’s way worse than you think.” “Worse than “JC for PM for Me”?” […]
On a scale from one to ten, how ridiculous is Bob Dylan winning the Nobel Prize for Literature?
Dylan winning this award from the Nobel crew has divided opinion, with most either deriding it as the end of civilisation or questioning why such a thing took so long to happen. This is clearly part of the reason he got the award – which is part of the problem. Instead of joining the cacophony […]
How the Rambo series of movies plays the Kubler-Ross grief cycle in reverse
“First Blood” is a film that was almost made many times throughout the 1970s before finally being produced for release in 1982. Throughout a tortured decade in turnaround, the names attached to play John Rambo, the main character, are striking: Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, Clint Eastwood, Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, Nick Nolte, Michael Douglas. The […]
Why Jeremy Corbyn is a bit like Slayer
When I was a teenager, I was a devoted fan for several years of the American death metal band known as Slayer. They were loud, they were aggressive sounding, they were sacrilegious – everything I was looking for in a musical act when I was fifteen. They sang about Satan; the lead guitarist had a […]
Why liberals are a bit like George Lucas
All but a few nerds and serial contrarians agree that the “Star Wars” prequels, a trilogy of motion pictures released between 1999 and 2005, were amongst the worst contributions to cinema of all time. There are many reasons why they are so terrible – but I will focus today on only one crucial element as […]
Here a musical suggestion you won’t get elsewhere: look into the works of Birdie Hilltop
A very good friend of mine died less than a year ago in rather tragic circumstances. He was the one who first introduced me to the works of Birdie Hilltop, a singer/songwriter from Pennsylvania who has several albums to his name. I loved Birdie’s music from the very first minute I heard it – somehow languid […]
Why are socially conservative autocrats the ones most obsessed with winning the Eurovision Song Contest?
This evening, the Eurovision Song Song Contest finals take place – as some of you are waiting on tenterhooks for, while others amongst you are no doubt dreading as your social media feed gets filled up with endless commentary on an event you could care less than nothing about (to this latter group: apologies in […]
How Labour’s week has been Ionesco-esque
The word “Kafkaesque” gets overused in politics, often by people who have never read a word of the late Czech genius. Looking back over the week the Labour Party has just had, I can see people reaching for the literary comparisons. I think the giant of letters who would have most likely come up with […]
Prince leaves this plane: a retrospective
The artist born Prince Rogers Nelson died yesterday evening in his Minneapolis studio, at the age of 57, for as yet unknown causes. I would ideally like to add here that it is rare that musical figures of his stature die, but 2016 seems to be a year very much filled with such passings – and […]
Electing Corbyn as leader was Labour’s “Self Portrait” moment
In 1970, Bob Dylan released an album entitled “Self Portrait”. Previously the darling of the international rock press, Dylan was instantly pilloried for what was seen by many as an intentionally awful record. Greil Marcus famously wrote a four word review of the album – “What is this shit?” – and it caused others to […]