Sinister: The sweetest things I can

[P F]

I think I must have drifted off. Let me start at the end.

Ally96 said:


>>>Deacon Blue's finest moment was undoubtedly the single "I was right
and you were wrong" with the piano version of "Wages Day" on the b-side.
Superb.

Which is really interesting. I often find myself misquoting the title of 'I 
Was Right And You Were Wrong'. I reckon A96 is dead on and it's a pretty 
decent 45 (and I'd play you old 45s), though truth be told I've not heard it 
in donkeys. In 1994 (?) DB were on R1 and were asked what the song was 
about, and Ricky Ross said, 'It's about... me being right and you being 
wrong'. That's almost as witty as his great line about Lorraine and the 
living room. If you've not heard that one, ask A96 about it. It's the way he 
spells 'em.

I didn't know about that piano version. Or did I? I'm pretty sure I've heard 
it - maybe during the same radio session. Anyway, I'm glad *someone* 
remembers that record.


Arantxa Sanchez vicariously said interesting things about Lloyd Cole, and I 
would like one of you cyberkids to tell us more about the stuff she was so 
interestingly on about.


People said things about the Beatles, almost as though they were round Nick 
Dastoor's house and trying to impress him. It won't work, he reads Brecht's 
poetry in his spare time; Lennon In His Own Write no longer gives him the 
stimuli he needs.

About the Beatles, though: Ringo - OK - no problem - distinctive, in his 
way. John vs Paul - I prefer the latter, but think the whole 'problematic' 
(as structuralist analysts of the Western genre used to say, nigh on 30 
years ago) kind of flawed and unnecessary. Both were talented; one, I 
suppose, still is. Preferences for one or the other are fine and 
understandable, but needn't be expressed as intemperately as my outburst vs 
E.M. Forster, or was it Sally MacLennane?, was. That was so vile in diction, 
tone and lack of manners, it was almost as offensive as - as - oh, as 
Forster's appalling and laughable statement itself.


re. the B&S aspect of the question. Again, something like a dialetical 
approach, or just a feebly liberal 'open mind', may tell us that on the one 
hand, yes,

a) great songs are quite often written by lone gunmen and women, working in 
solitude on grassy knolls: and the songs might, in the putative abstract, be 
as great even if the relevant band never existed -in other words, 
suspicious-looking individualistic models of history can be OK as far as 
this particular puff-pastry of a genre ("the pop song") is concerned (but I 
still don't know what 'puff pastry' is);

while at the same time

b) once you give a song to the rest of the band, it won't come out the same: 
and the unpredictable (or even, eventually, predictable) particularities of 
exactly what they do with it are part of the point of being in a band, 
rather than going nowhere, whether fast or slowly, on your own. In fact, you 
can kid yourself about the great songs you've written all the way up the 
Holloway Road and back, but they may never really achieve their potential, 
or - as Nietzsche and Juliana Hatfield would say - become what they are, 
until someone else has rescued them from your abuse (that no doubt thinks 
it's care) and made them worth listening to at last.

(The *real* point of being in a band, of course, is to avoid having to do 
your own cooking.)


And

c) Of course there are such things are bone fide, full-fledged co-writes 
too. I can think of some fantastic pop records (Glo-Worm's?) whose writing 
really was, if I'm not mistaken, split bang down the middle.



The Lad Pennington talked about Autumn too (II). That reminds me, I 
misquoted that autumnal song the other day. It actually goes

"
All the colo[u]rs change
[*]He[*] will see
"
.

I was interested to see that the lad P listens to 'Souvlaki' for autumn: 
that's enterprising, in my book ('I Know The Seasons Change: The Politics of 
Souvlaki'; Ithaca: Cornell UP, forthcoming 2001).

He also said:

>>>On a positive note, I found a nice MP3 of Rhoda on Napster.

Who is Rhoda
Who is Napster (and)
How does he feel about it
and
What is 'MP3'?

And even, well, yes, why not, for no-one can have asked this rhetorical 
question for at least a fortnight,

Has the world changed or have I changed?



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