there are about fifteen albums worth listening to in this world. will tell you about them later. not one of those is tonight's the night. neil young wrote the songs on this album for his friend and former crazy horse bandmate danny whitten and his former roadie, bruce berry. note former. opening track tells us that they both died out on the mainline. in order to make this set of depressing numbers even less appealing, he proceeded to haul the rest of crazy horse into the studio and get completely smashed, and then start recording. which is ok, coz he can't sing anyway. are you still reading?
Well, tell me more, tell me more, tell me more. I mean was he a heavy doper, or was he just a loser? He was a friend of yours...
one small problem. in addition to being entirely and completely unlistenable, it is the best distillation of pain ever to be found on a rock record. pain like the old blues, not clapton. pain like someone is dead. pain not like she left me, pain like she now likes someone else. pain like trying to keep your tired eyes open when you know sleep will bring you no peace.
Please take my advice
Please take my advice
Please take my advice
Open up the tired eyes
Open up the tired eyes
man walks into a bar. mumbles the same lines over and over. he's drunk, but no one's laughing.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Monday, October 13, 2008
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Revolution!
They advanced slowly. The clouds loomed behind them, as if summoned by the ghost of Sergio Leone to add a dash of doom to the proceedings. There were no smiles on their faces. There were no scowls either, which was sort of unnerving in its own way. As they walked slowly towards the quivering posse, they reached into the right hand side pockets over their long weathered leather beige overcoats. The onlookers flinched but stood their ground, like brave extras in a bad movie. They watched the hands withdrawing from the coats, they saw the shine of gleaming metal, and questioned their purpose for the first, and ironically, probably the last time in their lives.
Meanwhile, the petrified posse could do nothing but look on in disbelief. Their main weapons were more psychological than anything else; they only used the real ones on unarmed bystanders and defenseless women and children. Their strength radiated in their conviction in their own ideology, a strength that became diamond-hard when used in oppostion to a conflicting viewpoint. But these ones were different. They could tell.
When they reached close enough to see the shaking knees and the unshaven faces losing colour, they stopped. One of them stepped forward.
'I speak for both of us', he said.
'Believe me...'
'We know what's going on'
Meanwhile, the petrified posse could do nothing but look on in disbelief. Their main weapons were more psychological than anything else; they only used the real ones on unarmed bystanders and defenseless women and children. Their strength radiated in their conviction in their own ideology, a strength that became diamond-hard when used in oppostion to a conflicting viewpoint. But these ones were different. They could tell.
When they reached close enough to see the shaking knees and the unshaven faces losing colour, they stopped. One of them stepped forward.
'I speak for both of us', he said.
'Believe me...'
'We know what's going on'
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Boom!
The most positive thing one could say about the annual elocution competitions at my school was that they were consistently strange. Reduced to basics, it was a gathering of unfortunate sods bound by honour and loyalty to their house colours, parroting texts ranging from the 16th to the 21st century, tested by a crowd which could go from expectant to bored to hostile within the space of a single speech. Like all expositions, it was also an expose – of one’s memory, of pitch and timbre, and more revealingly, of one’s origins and ambitions. And if you think you can’t get all this from a stuttering 16 year old’s reciting ‘To be or not to be’ then you haven’t tried to fill the vastness of Spence Hall with a voice that hasn’t broken yet, you haven’t seen the fear in the eyes of a contestant when that slow hand clap begins, the one where the contestant forgets his lines and the audience tests his will to ever set foot on that stage again.
And then there were those moments which no one will ever forget. Like how every year someone would take a crack at Rebecca, but never quite match up to Gautam Bajaj’s original performance, authentic, sneering, spitting out the lines ‘You think I loved Rebecca? I HATED her”. There was the inspired and oft-repeated choice of The Odessa File by Fredrick Forsyth as speech material. There was Rana Pahwa doing a note-perfect Rex Harrison with ‘Let a woman in your life’. There was Udayan who had the temerity to read out, amidst all that Shakespeare and Shaw, a self-composition. And most memorable of all was that afternoon when we first heard the words boomalay boomalay boomalay boom…
‘The Congo’, a 1914 poem by Vachel Lindsay, is set in colonial Africa and is a sort of tribal chant in both form and spirit. The fact that Lindsay wrote his poems to be spoken out loud brings the material thrillingly close to the arena of rapping. I would have loved to see Public Enemy go at it, 'Tusk' by Fleetwood Mac playing in the background. Or maybe just the guy who recited it on that fateful day. I forgot who he was, but he went at it like a crazy preacher.
Fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room
Barrel-house kings, with feet unstable
Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table
‘Huh’ went his audience. At least it didn’t sound British.
The man explained - ‘THEN I SAW THE CONGO, CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK
CUTTING THROUGH THE FOREST WITH A GOLDEN TRACK’
‘Ah’ went everyone. Now it made sense.
‘Death is an Elephant
Torch-eyed and horrible
Foam-flanked and terrible.
BOOM, steal the pygmies
BOOM, kill the Arabs
BOOM, kill the white men’
‘Boom’ responded his audience. In one of those moments that came rarely on that hallowed stage, speaker and spoken to were both flying.
‘Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you. Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you. Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you’ he ended. There was nothing left to say.
And then there were those moments which no one will ever forget. Like how every year someone would take a crack at Rebecca, but never quite match up to Gautam Bajaj’s original performance, authentic, sneering, spitting out the lines ‘You think I loved Rebecca? I HATED her”. There was the inspired and oft-repeated choice of The Odessa File by Fredrick Forsyth as speech material. There was Rana Pahwa doing a note-perfect Rex Harrison with ‘Let a woman in your life’. There was Udayan who had the temerity to read out, amidst all that Shakespeare and Shaw, a self-composition. And most memorable of all was that afternoon when we first heard the words boomalay boomalay boomalay boom…
‘The Congo’, a 1914 poem by Vachel Lindsay, is set in colonial Africa and is a sort of tribal chant in both form and spirit. The fact that Lindsay wrote his poems to be spoken out loud brings the material thrillingly close to the arena of rapping. I would have loved to see Public Enemy go at it, 'Tusk' by Fleetwood Mac playing in the background. Or maybe just the guy who recited it on that fateful day. I forgot who he was, but he went at it like a crazy preacher.
Fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room
Barrel-house kings, with feet unstable
Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table
‘Huh’ went his audience. At least it didn’t sound British.
The man explained - ‘THEN I SAW THE CONGO, CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK
CUTTING THROUGH THE FOREST WITH A GOLDEN TRACK’
‘Ah’ went everyone. Now it made sense.
‘Death is an Elephant
Torch-eyed and horrible
Foam-flanked and terrible.
BOOM, steal the pygmies
BOOM, kill the Arabs
BOOM, kill the white men’
‘Boom’ responded his audience. In one of those moments that came rarely on that hallowed stage, speaker and spoken to were both flying.
‘Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you. Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you. Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you’ he ended. There was nothing left to say.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Part III: Every office has a quiet guy
He finally reached home. The taxi asked for extra because of the traffic they had fought their way through, the fact that it was evening and the part of town they were in would yield him no more passengers for the day, and because that little bit extra didn't really make a difference to him now, did it? He in turn paid the man without arguing because he saw it as buying some peace for himself, and one didn't get many opportunities to buy peace these days.
He reached home, mumbled a hello to whoever was sitting or not sitting in the living room, and headed for the bathroom. He locked the door behind him and stood there for a while, staring at his shoes. A strange light-headedness overtook him and he wondered whether it had anything to do with the fact that he hadn’t eaten anything since he had heard the news. Finally, he gathered enough courage to look up. And like that, he was transfixed.
The advantage of looking at your own reflection is that you know exactly where your flaws lie. It gives you the chance to pretend you can’t see them. So he ignored the unruly hair. He noticed the beginnings of a double chin but rationalized it by saying it gave him an air of gravity. He saw instead a pair of brown eyes, which seduced but did not threaten. He smiled, and was struck by how minimal the movement of his lips was, and how it genrated so much quiet warmth. He took off his shirt. He realised he had put on weight, but it could have been worse. His arms were just the right length - they complemented his height without reaching ape-like proportions; he also knew they made him look thinner but couldn’t explain why.
And like that, he was done with kidding himself. He had become his own fan club. Suddenly he was looking at his shoes again. Words came to him like echoes in a dream sequence from some low-budget movie. You’re fine, nothing’s wrong with you, you’re normal.
Ordinary.
He took off all his clothes. Looked around for an object sharp enough to cause pain, and finally picked up the comb. He then took a deep breath and raised his head. He took a hard look at his unremarkable eyes, his ungainly form. Pressed the comb to his chest so that the points dug into his skin and made him grit his teeth, and started repeating the same line over and over until it became a mantra, a string of words whose powers of sustenance seem to derive more from repetition than from the intrinsic healing power of the words themselves.
“There’s no design, your flaws are fine. There’s no design, your flaws are fine. There’s no design, your flaws are fine…”
He reached home, mumbled a hello to whoever was sitting or not sitting in the living room, and headed for the bathroom. He locked the door behind him and stood there for a while, staring at his shoes. A strange light-headedness overtook him and he wondered whether it had anything to do with the fact that he hadn’t eaten anything since he had heard the news. Finally, he gathered enough courage to look up. And like that, he was transfixed.
The advantage of looking at your own reflection is that you know exactly where your flaws lie. It gives you the chance to pretend you can’t see them. So he ignored the unruly hair. He noticed the beginnings of a double chin but rationalized it by saying it gave him an air of gravity. He saw instead a pair of brown eyes, which seduced but did not threaten. He smiled, and was struck by how minimal the movement of his lips was, and how it genrated so much quiet warmth. He took off his shirt. He realised he had put on weight, but it could have been worse. His arms were just the right length - they complemented his height without reaching ape-like proportions; he also knew they made him look thinner but couldn’t explain why.
And like that, he was done with kidding himself. He had become his own fan club. Suddenly he was looking at his shoes again. Words came to him like echoes in a dream sequence from some low-budget movie. You’re fine, nothing’s wrong with you, you’re normal.
Ordinary.
He took off all his clothes. Looked around for an object sharp enough to cause pain, and finally picked up the comb. He then took a deep breath and raised his head. He took a hard look at his unremarkable eyes, his ungainly form. Pressed the comb to his chest so that the points dug into his skin and made him grit his teeth, and started repeating the same line over and over until it became a mantra, a string of words whose powers of sustenance seem to derive more from repetition than from the intrinsic healing power of the words themselves.
“There’s no design, your flaws are fine. There’s no design, your flaws are fine. There’s no design, your flaws are fine…”
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Capsule Review: Rock On
Right away, let me say Rock On was a pleasant surprise. I went in mentally prepared for the bad GIR concert which a friend of mine was convinced this movie would be. Instead, what I saw was something in the Chak De India way - stay within Bollywood’s confines, but do it convincingly. If the girls in Chak De wielded a mean stick, the Rock On boys have you convinced that their air-guitaring and drumming is nothing as airy as one would expect from a genre whose previous cultural reference point in this regard was the soul-scarring image of Rajesh Khanna playing a guitar (in a discotheque!) only to throw it over to that other rock ‘n roll icon Mithun.
The ensemble cast turn in performances ranging from good to surprisingly good. The rhythm section is a great study in contrasts - Kenny, low-key and moving, Kohli, providing a vital comic kick whenever the pace threatens to flag. As leader of the band, Akhtar mostly glares a lot but lights up on stage, and Rampal, who is the real surprise of this movie, inhabits the role of the quiet, moody guitarist as if he had been waiting for it all his life. Its also refreshing to see the role of the free-loving minx go to Koel Puri instead of some bimbette, she takes the bit role and fills it with a knowing sex appeal and dancing eyes and a slow drawl. Only Prachi, pretty but woefully unhip as Akhtar’s wife, can’t quite shake off the soap star inside.
Despite the movie’s premise, its pace is reflective and the director gives his characters time to sort their heads out. In such a situation, had the onstage scenes fallen flat its likely the movie would have too. That doesn’t happen - the band is believable on stage, if slightly pansy by actual rock band standards (but perfect as a sort of English language Euphoria). The build-up to the final concert may be a shower of clichés, but that doesn’t alter its poignance a bit. Another thought struck me later – both this movie as well as Chak De were about chances wasted in youth and grabbed in desperation later. If, as these filmmakers seem to be saying, there are to be second acts in Indian lives, surely the time is due for a second wave, a new wave of movies made in India, with a scything originality and sureness of vision atoning for the sins of the past, and painting a visionary map for the future.
The ensemble cast turn in performances ranging from good to surprisingly good. The rhythm section is a great study in contrasts - Kenny, low-key and moving, Kohli, providing a vital comic kick whenever the pace threatens to flag. As leader of the band, Akhtar mostly glares a lot but lights up on stage, and Rampal, who is the real surprise of this movie, inhabits the role of the quiet, moody guitarist as if he had been waiting for it all his life. Its also refreshing to see the role of the free-loving minx go to Koel Puri instead of some bimbette, she takes the bit role and fills it with a knowing sex appeal and dancing eyes and a slow drawl. Only Prachi, pretty but woefully unhip as Akhtar’s wife, can’t quite shake off the soap star inside.
Despite the movie’s premise, its pace is reflective and the director gives his characters time to sort their heads out. In such a situation, had the onstage scenes fallen flat its likely the movie would have too. That doesn’t happen - the band is believable on stage, if slightly pansy by actual rock band standards (but perfect as a sort of English language Euphoria). The build-up to the final concert may be a shower of clichés, but that doesn’t alter its poignance a bit. Another thought struck me later – both this movie as well as Chak De were about chances wasted in youth and grabbed in desperation later. If, as these filmmakers seem to be saying, there are to be second acts in Indian lives, surely the time is due for a second wave, a new wave of movies made in India, with a scything originality and sureness of vision atoning for the sins of the past, and painting a visionary map for the future.
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