Too Good To Be True?

Too good to be true?

The Riace Bronzes

A recent episode of the Bettany Hughes series, The Ancient World, entitled ‘Athens: The Truth About Democracy’, covered the history and development of that unprecedented experiment in direct, representational democracy in 5th-century Athens. As expected, the show covered the astonishing achievements the Greeks made in art, drama and philosophy. Interestingly, Hughes pointed out that these achievements actually coincided with the period in which pure democracy was beginning to decline, eroded by the dominance of Pericles and the dragged-out nightmare of the Peloponnesian War.

Among the most notable achievements was the abrupt evolution of Greek sculpture from the stiff, Egyptian-like figures of the kouroi to the astonishing dynamism and realism of the Discobolus and the Riace Bronzes. The suddenness of this evolution and the perfection of the resulting art seems to be in keeping with the rest of the ‘Greek Achievement’, but an English sculptor has a different theory. Nigel Konstam, interviewed by Hughes in the programme, thinks that the lifelikeness of these sculptures is just that – namely that they were made using plaster casts of live models. He demonstrated how this could be done in his workshop, where a number of sculptors smeared plaster over a carefully positioned, suitably muscled male model.

Konstam didn’t stop there, though. His ultimate piece of evidence was the soles of some of the Riace sculpture’s feet. The underside of the sculpted toes and soles are flattened at exactly the same point a live standing model’s would be – a detail unnecessary for verisimilitude, since the soles are invisible. It’s a persuasive argument, though it could just as easily be argued that Greek sculptors paid the same attention to detail on the invisible as the visible in their work. A more convincing proof for the argument came to me as I looked at the images of various statues, something that has often occurred to me while looking at Greek sculpture – namely, that the heads and bodies often seem notably different to each other., Even when the proportions are perfect, as they usually are, the bodies are so life-like as to seem to be breathing, while the faces are oddly generic – both male and female faces have the same long noses, pursed lips and round cheeks (incidentally the young Elvis had a perfectly ‘Greek’ face). It’s less conclusive than the soles-of-the-feet evidence, but this disparity strongly indicates, from an aesthetic point of view at least, that models with perfect bodies were used as moulds for both male and female Greek sculptures, while the faces were created from imagination. It’s not implausible that such ripped torsos would be plentiful among Athenian citizens – soldiers in the triremes spent up to 8 hours a day solidly rowing.

If true, this theory rather takes away from the idea that the Greeks were innovators in sculpture, but the thought doesn’t bother me. Their myriad achievements in just about every other field more than make up for it.

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1 week ago
I Was Looking Through Editions Of My Local Newspaper For Mentions Of The Beatles And I Thought This Piece
I Was Looking Through Editions Of My Local Newspaper For Mentions Of The Beatles And I Thought This Piece

I was looking through editions of my local newspaper for mentions of The Beatles and I thought this piece in the Bristol Evening Post was so interesting that I typed the whole thing out. I'm such a sucker for these early-ish interviews when they're all still so chatty and relatively excited by the fame and money.

Source: The Bristol Evening Post, 10 November 1964 (they played a concert in the city that day).

Transcript below the cut...

A distant volley of screams penetrated the quiet upstairs foyer of the theatre.  

“Oops, here we go,” said a middle-aged reporter.  “They’re here.  Can somebody tell me which one is which?”

The television men switched on their lights, the photographers squinted through their viewfinders and the journalists juggled with notebooks and pencils.

“I know one of them’s called Ringo,” said the middle aged reporter.  “Could somebody point him out?”

There was a clatter of feet on the stairs, and the Beatles appeared in single file through a doorway, grinning all over their faces, and made straight for the bar.

Everybody instantly forgot all their pungent, searching questions they had been thinking up for weeks, and started firing away with fairly idiotic queries like: “How do you feel?” and “What are you doing these days?”

The television people grabbed John and Paul, who happened to be in the front, and I grabbed George, who started telling me about his new airgun.

“I spend my spare time shooting potatoes off trees in the garden,” said George. “I started with bits of cardboard on the clothesline, but cardboard doesn’t do anything very spectacular when you hit it.  So now I balance spuds on the trees and blast them to bits.”

A television man sneaked up behind me and shoved a microphone in between me and George. George clinked his glass on it and shouted “Cheers” down the mike.

“What are you going to do when the Beatles finish?” asked the television man.

“I’m going to be an engine driver,” said George.  “If they won’t let me have a train, I’ll drive a fire engine.”

Ringo, meanwhile, had retired to a corner for a quiet smoke.

The middle-aged journalist was busy interviewing Paul, whom he thought was Ringo. 

 “Press conferences can be quite a laugh,” said Ringo.  “Have a ciggie.”

We lit our ciggies and talked about Ringo’s New Image.

“Since the film, people seem to notice me a bit more,” said Ringo.  “They used to talk to the others and leave me out because I was supposed to be the quiet one.  Actually I can be quite noisy.  I used to feel rather out of it, but I feel like a proper Beatle now.  It’s amazing though how many people still can’t tell us apart.  Reporters still ask me, “How are you, John?”

The Beatles’ road manager, Neil Aspinall, came over and led Ringo off to have his picture taken.  The Aspinall rescued Paul from a bunch of reporters and the Beatles wandered off to inspect the stage in the A.B.C. theatre.

On stage, Paul was doodling on an electronic organ, and Ringo was doing a violent drum duet with the drummer of one of their supporting groups.

Neil Aspinall had promised me half an hour in the Beatles’ dressing room - the pop equivalent of a pass to the Kremlin.

“I can’t disturb the others for a minute,” he said, “but John’s upstairs.  You can start with him.”

John was chatting with two old school friends from Liverpool.  In the corner of the dressing room a TV set was showing a children’s programme with the sound turned off.

John jumped up, shook hands, and insisted on me taking his armchair. “You look as if you need it, Rog,” he said.

We talked about the allegations that the Beatles are slipping.

“Last year,” said John. “Beatlemania was news. Now No Beatlemania is news. The press have gone to town on the places where there have only been a couple of hundred kids outside of theatres instead of a couple of thousand.  They haven’t bothered to report things like Leeds, where there were 15 of the kids on the stage at one point.”

“Last year that would have been news.  It doesn’t bother us.  We’re sold out pretty well everywhere.  Can you think of another group that is filling halls at the moment? The Stones aren’t.  Maybe we should have done this tour earlier.  We all wanted to do England again before America this year. But Brian said no. And what Eppy says goes. He literally plans our careers.”

“I think we’re better organised now, anyway.  The police are marvellous.  They get us stowed away in the theatres before the kids come out of school, so obviously there aren’t so many riotous scenes.”

The idea of the Beatles breaking up still seems unthinkable. But I asked John if they ever considered adding any extra musicians.

“We’ve thought about it — yes,” said John. “We were once a five-strong group, before Stuart Sutcliffe died.  We’ve toyed with the idea of adding a piano or organ in the past. And for our last disc, we did think of bringing in an orchestra.  But we always rejected the idea in the end.  You see, for the kind of music we play, any more musicians would be superfluous.  I suppose we might have a couple of guest people on the odd occasion, but they wouldn’t be real Beatles.  I’d turn round at the end and say: “Ta very much to Arthur on the organ and Harry on the flute” and that would be that.  I just don’t think anyone else could fit in with us now. We’re a sort of closed shop, the four of us.  An outsider just wouldn’t be accepted, if you see what I mean.”

Before the Beatles’ Christmas show in London and the shooting of their next film — “which is going to be a bit madder than the last one” said John — they are taking a fortnight’s break.

“I’ll just stay home with the wife, Cynthia, and play records,” said John.

Home is his £20,000 Surrey country house, purchased in July as a retreat from the fans.

“Cyn and I are living on the second floor with the cooks and people,” said John. “The rest of the place is like a battlefield.  It’s swarming with electricians and plumbers and odd job men, all trying to get it straight for us before Christmas. I keep on bumping into these strange blokes on the stairs.  I haven’t a clue who they are, but Cyn seems to have them organised.  I’m not sticking my nose into that side of things, except to say vaguely how I want the house to look. Can’t even put a plug on myself.”

“The gardens? Well, there are an awful lot of them, I’ve seen a bloke sort of digging around the place. He smiles and waves, and I smile and wave back. I suppose he must be the gardener. His name is probably Fred.”

John said occasionally Beatle fans manage to find the house.

“They’re usually so exhausted by that time that they haven’t got the strength to actually battle their way in and pull my hair.  Though, the other morning when I was asleep, Cyn found some of them crawling up the stairs.”

Paul and George came in.  Paul sat on the windowsill and George read out an interview with P.J. Proby in a pop paper, in which Proby claimed to have been the first to introduce a certain sound to pop.

“He’s fantastic, isn’t he?” said Paul. “He really believes he’s the greatest. We must tell him some time.”

I asked Paul if he could think of anything which the Beatles hadn’t already been asked.

“There isn’t anything,” said Paul. “But we don’t mind answering the same questions all over again. We like talking to people.”

He enthused about his new Aston Martin. “I did 120 up the M1 and died of fright.”

And he talked about the Beatles futures.

“Whatever happens, I think John and I will carry on writing songs. And I think George, Ringo and I will all get married eventually. But not yet. We haven’t got time.”

Ringo came in with a musical paper carrying a feature article about Paul.

“Don’t like the picture,” said Paul. “They had a much better one of John last week.”

“It made me look like a fat idiot,” said John.

“Exactly,” said George.

A picture of the Beatles suddenly flashed on to the television screen.  

“Quick, turn up the sound, Rog,” said John.

“Don’t bother,” said George. “It’s only that ugly old Beatle lot. I thought they were all dead.”


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10 years ago
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14 years ago

Empire builder

  HBO are pulling out all the stops for their new series, the 1920s-set Boardwalk Empire, starring Steve Buscemi. The feature-length pilot episode was directed by Martin Scorsese and is said to have cost over $18 million, with the first series overall running to over $70 million. Jazz Age-era Atlantic City was recreated to exacting detail on a huge set in Brooklyn, and it seems no expense has been spared in evoking the look and feel of the 1920s, down to the last detail. It’s clear that HBO are hoping Boardwalk Empire will be the next Sopranos or The Wire, a huge, complex, involving series that draws the viewer in and hooks them for multiple episodes. Perhaps taking a leaf from AMC’s book, Boardwalk Empire appears to be trying to recreate an entire era and mindset in the same way the much-loved Mad Men does for the early 1960s.

The show revolves around the chief treasurer of Atlantic City, Enoch ‘Nucky’ Thompson (loosely based on the real-life Nucky Johnson) and his role as the public face of respectable Prohibition-era temperance – a face built on his private criminal empire that keeps the city, in his words, ‘wet as a mermaid’s twat’ (You gotta love flapper-era obscenity). The pilot episode was an epic combination of classic gangster themes, beautifully exact period detail and intense characterisation and was pretty much a movie in itself. The question is; can Boardwalk Empire live up to its own expectations?

I haven’t yet managed to get into The Wire – not for lack of interest, more that it seems too huge to embark on – but I’m a fan of both shows that Boardwalk Empire can be said to be referencing: The Sopranos and Mad Men (and, to a lesser extent, Rome). The twelve years of Prohibition are a fascinating and oddly ignored period of American history. From the very moment alcohol was outlawed in 1920, it not only remained widely available, but was even more intensely sought out than it was before. The criminal empires of such legendary figures of Arnold Rothstein, Lucky Luciano and Al Capone (all of whom appear in Boardwalk Empire) were built on illegal alcohol, and set in motion the terrifying, compelling gangster world that in some ways defined 20th-century America. Boardwalk Empire depicts the beginning of a world that the real-life Tony Soprano caught the drug-addled tail-end of. Not only that, but the 1920s were a period of intense social change in America and worldwide – women finally got the vote in all states, the First World War challenged the myth of loyalty to king and nation and black people began to place their stake in society and culture in a major way with the emigrations from the South and the development of jazz. This was a period when films about homosexuality were being freely made in Weimar Germany and even the relatively prudish United States was infinitely more liberated in its popular culture than it would be after the Hollywood Production Code.

So does Boardwalk Empire do this febrile period in history justice? Rather like the epic times it’s set in, it tends to succeed and fail on grandiose terms. Firstly, I have to comment on the ear-wrenching horror that is Kelly MacDonald’s attempt at an Irish accent. It probably isn’t the most dramatic failure of the series, but it is certainly the most audible. MacDonald plays an Irish immigrant named Margaret Schroeder, whose abusive husband comes to a sticky end in the pilot and whose subtly combative relationship with Nucky Thompson is the key dramatic fulcrum of the early episodes. Margaret is an interesting character; almost impossibly meek and virginal in early episodes; she reveals a will of steel and appealing sense of wickedness as the series unfolds. But that accent! Imagine Julia Roberts in Far and Away and you’re halfway there. Considering MacDonald is Scottish and a talented actor, one would expect her to do better. However a radio interview I caught once with an accent coach may provide an explanation, not only for MacDonald’s accent, but for all the hideous ‘brogues’ that are inflicted upon viewers of US movies and TV. According to the coach, when an American actor is taught an ‘Irish’ accent, s/he is encouraged to speak in a ridiculous ‘begorrah’ voice because apparently American viewers cannot tell the difference between an average Irish voice and an English one, and cannot understand a genuinely thick Irish accent. I’m inclined to believe this, if only because it explains why otherwise competent actors seem to consistently fall so spectacularly at the hurdle of the brogue. Left to her own devices, I’m confident Kelly MacDonald could sound convincingly Irish, but since HBO’s audiences are largely from the States (except for those who watch its programmes from various dubious streaming sources….ahem) she has been instructed to speak like Chris O’Donnell in Circle of Friends. The theory is backed up by the fact that not a single review of the show on Slate, Vanity Fair, Time Magazine and any number of US blogs has commented on her accent. Terrifyingly, she must sound genuinely Irish to them!

It’s a credit to MacDonald’s acting skills that Margaret is an interesting character despite her voice being less pleasant to listen to than nails on a blackboard. But she’s taken a while to establish herself, which leads into one of the other problems of the series – the use of lazy shorthand in defining some of the female characters. The other woman in Nucky’s life is the cartoonishly slutty Lucy, who is ‘acted’ by Paz de la Huerta as some weird combination of a sleep-walking crack whore and an extra from ‘Chicago’. She’s an utterly ridiculous character, and seems to exist purely to be the whore to Margaret’s madonna, even though Margaret develops into a far more complex character than her Temperance League goody-two-shoes persona in the pilot. There’s plenty of scenes involving Nucky and his ‘business associates’ living it up with good-time girls, but these don’t feel gratuitous in the way scenes involving Lucy do. She might as well have big red arrows pointing at her saying ‘Scarlet Woman!’. Other characters are written in a subtle and intelligent way, so there’s no excuse for this nonsense. Another female character, the mother of Nucky’s young protégé-turned-bad, Jimmy Darmody, is well-acted by Gretchen Mol but horribly miscast. Anne Bancroft as a woman who could be Dustin Hoffman’s mother in The Graduate is more plausible casting than Mol as Jillian Darmody. As the reviewer Paul Martinovic on Den of Geek has been saying: ‘And, as for Gretchen Mol, the only interest I have in her character is once more getting the answer to this question: just how did you give birth when you were nine years old?’. Unlike Martinovic, I think that Jillian is an interesting character, but her appearance compared to her ‘son’ is as jarring as Margaret’s accent. It yet again seems to confirm 21st-century TV’s mortal fear of casting a woman over 40 in a leading role.

These are the two most glaring problems in the show, but when they are laid aside, there’s a lot to like. Chiefly Steve Buscemi, in his first TV leading role, who pulls the show together as the enigmatic, subtle and nattily-dressed Nucky Thompson. Nucky, as Jimmy Darmody puts it, is trying to be ‘half a gangster’ – living the high life on the proceeds of bribery and kickbacks, supplying Atlantic City with booze through deals with Italian gangsters, but trying to keep his hands clean and his head above the murderous violence that Prohibition is helping to engender. Nucky is the go-to man in Atlantic City when anyone has a problem, yet despite his double life he hasn’t lost his true human side; as the show unfolds his complex nature becomes apparent. It helps that Steve Buscemi is such a compelling actor – he packs more narrative into a single glance than most would with reams of dialogue. This is the biggest leading role he has taken on to date, and it’s great to see him finally shaking off the constraints of being a ‘character actor’.

The opening episode shows Nucky’s tendency to try and have his cake and eat it, as he strikes a deal to provide Arnold Rothstein with oceans of booze, only for Jimmy and Rothstein’s driver, one Al Capone, to secretly plot the hijacking and robbery of the consignment. The smoothly-planned operation goes awry and ends in bloodshed. To protect his reputation, Nucky arranges for Margaret’s husband to be framed and killed (helped by his knowledge that he beats her), the booze to be dumped and pays Jimmy off to make himself scarce. This leads Jimmy to set up camp with Al in Chicago. Despite Nucky’s attempts at damage-limitation Rothstein doesn’t take kindly to being deprived of his end of the deal, and the incident sets in motion a slow-burning feud between Nucky and Rothstein and his crew of thugs, including Lucky Luciano. The action moves between Atlantic City, New York and Chicago, as the family tree of the big gangs is traced and their evolution explained. A recurring theme is the shock experienced by the nineteenth-century surviving gang bosses, mostly of Irish, Greek and Jewish extraction, at the levels of random violence used by the new, mostly Italian generation – embodied in the person of Al Capone, played with a scary viciousness by English actor Stephen Graham. African-Americans feature too – one of Nucky’s bootlegging associates is the grimly commanding Chalky White, played by Michael K. Williams of The Wire fame.

Michael Pitt, an actor I’d never heard of before, is a revelation as Jimmy Darmody. Some blogs have unkindly intimated that he’s the ‘poor man’s diCaprio’, but while he shares some of the same intense qualities as Leonardo, he is more than able to make the role his own. Jimmy is a war veteran who’s had his humanity blunted by the horrors of Verdun, yet his fierce intelligence and philosophical nature have saved him from the depraved depths the other Chicago gangsters he works with sink to. He is exacting in his revenge, but knows that as an Irish-American he will always be an outsider with the Italians, and needs, like Nucky, to decide once and for all if he is ‘fully a gangster’. As an aside, the various ethnicities cheerfully use now-unacceptable derogatory terms to refer to each other – terms like ‘dumb Mick’, ‘fucking kike’ and ‘filthy Hun’ abound.

The anti-gangster is as alarming and unappealing as Al Capone and Lucky Luciano at their worst. Nelson van Aldren, Fed agent and head of the anti-Prohibition drive in Atlantic City, is a man so repressed as to be barely human. He recites Bible passages while torturing a man for information, and whips himself rather than admit to his passion for Margaret. Van Aldren is on a mission: to gather enough evidence to bring down Nucky Thompson, and will stop at nothing to get it. He could be cartoonish but Michael Shannon imbues the character with a surprising humanity, as well as being possessed of the most compelling voice I’ve heard in a long time. The unhealthy puritanism that drove much of Prohibition is personified in van Aldren, but at the same time the show avoids simplifying the issue – Prohibition was not inspired merely by prudes, but by many who genuinely believed banning alcohol would help working-class people rise out of the terrible conditions they suffered in the late 19th and early 20th century. It was a popular cause with suffragettes too, who had valid reason to believe that alcohol made more women’s lives a misery than men’s. This aspect of the movement perhaps explains why the independent-thinking Margaret becomes involved in the Women’s Temperance League in the first place. These women were not just the schoolmistress-y prudes of popular cliché, but fighters for the good cause.

There are endless other narrative threads in this programme, but they can’t all be contained in one blog post! Boardwalk Empire is not perfect – it suffers occasionally from heavy-handedness and there are a few too many characters and stories running simultaneously – but the richness of the plotting and acting makes up for this. Its production values are glossily gorgeous too, only let down by the rather obviously CGI-generated ocean in the boardwalk scenes. Like Mad Men, it succeeds in evoking the period with little, well-observed details. The full ferment of the early 1920s, the period where the 19th and 20th centuries clashed resoundingly, is called up in the clothes, conversation and rooms of the characters.

One of the best episodes so far is ‘Nights in Ballygran’ where the self-delusions and sentimentality of Irish-Americans is brilliantly exposed. The spectre of a largely imaginary Ireland looms heavily over the lives of many of the characters, informing actions and lifestyles that would be unrecognisable ‘back home’. Yet some of the attendees at Nucky Thompson’s St Patrick’s Day dinner reminded me unnervingly of the sickenly complacent Fianna Fail TDs that have recently been exposed for the criminals they are. That’s the kind of programme Boardwalk Empire is – by holding up a mirror to the past, it tells us a lot about the present.

14 years ago

Gotta work it out

An interesting report in Saturday’s Irish Times examined the phenomenon of Irish graduates’ unwillingness to work at low-skilled jobs, and how the gap is being plugged by foreign workers. The overall impression was that many in Ireland would prefer not to work at low-skilled jobs when they receive the equivalent money from the dole, as many of the foreign interviewees noted. The information  was presented neutrally, and could be interpreted in any way, but the response of one of the interviewees indicated what response is expected from the public. Andrew, a postgraduate economics student, commented ‘Personally, I didn’t study for five years to work in McDonald’s’, and at the interview’s end requested that his last name not be printed. When asked why, he said: ‘I don’t want to be portrayed as a student stereotype who’d prefer to bum around rather than work.’ A later interviewee stated: ‘I’d rather be cleaning toilets than on the dole,’ indicating what is likely to be the commonest media and public reaction to the piece – that people should always work, in whatever jobs are available, rather than take social welfare.

The problem with this reaction is that it assumes that work – any kind of work – has intrinsic moral value. It can be argued that a job keeps people focused and helps maintain a healthy timetable – but it’s a bit of a jump from that to assert that cleaning toilets and flipping burgers is morally superior to staring at the wall. It seems strange that educated graduates should feel guilty for admitting that they think themselves too good for certain jobs. From an educational and experience point of view, they are too good – yet that is not the assessment they are perceived to be making. Instead, it’s seen as a moral question – do you think yourself too good for work, which in all its forms is inherently good? Such moralising seems to lose sight of the real issue – that a First World economy with a small population such as Ireland cannot provide jobs for its graduates.

It’s over 70 years old, but Bertrand Russell’s In Praise Of Idleness still has highly relevant things to say on this matter. The social rigidity of his England has loosened up somewhat, so it’s not the case anymore that the idle landowners preach the validity of ‘the Slave State’, but his statement that ‘….the necessity of keeping the poor contented…..has led the rich, for thousands of years, to preach the dignity of labour, while taking care themselves to remain undignified in this respect’ still rings true. Opinion makers and business people (and it’s not just the usual-suspect loudmouths like Bill Cullen and Michael O’Leary that pass judgement based on their own experience) may have spent the requisite years waiting tables and cleaning toilets, but nobody with aspirations to influence is prepared to make an unskilled job his or her career. The work experience of the currently well-employed does not validate their arguments in favour of the morality of work, because for them, low-skilled work was always a means to an end, while in the current climate it is the only option for the foreseeable future for too many people.

The argument that we are ‘palming off’ our menial jobs on foreigners because we’re too lazy and immoral to do them ourselves doesn’t carry any great weight outside of simplistic moralising. It avoids the key, difficult question – why do we still live in a world where there a yawning chasm between skilled and unskilled work, between the professions and the trades? Carpenters and painters often made big money during the Celtic Tiger, but without the advantages of higher education and connections many of them have come crashing back to square one. Foreign workers from poorer countries tolerate working in monotonous, uninspiring and difficult jobs here because they’ll make more money and enjoy a better quality of life than they do back home. Much is said about certain groups’ unwillingness to go on the dole and it’s implied that this makes them morally better than other groups. Yet surely the fact that trained accountants and lawyers from abroad work in Irish hotels and shops should be seen as a worldwide injustice, rather than a reason to celebrate moral worth?

Too many humans all over the world, even in 2010, still labour endlessly just to survive. Thousands flee the Indian countryside every year to live in the hellish atmosphere of city slums, just for a chance to escape the grind of subsistence living. Those people would consider western fetishising of work insane. Of course, the plight of Indian slum-dwellers and that of European graduates facing into a career making coffee are not the same at all; the latter is still infinitely more fortunate, but it’s objectionable to dismiss today’s graduates’ unhappiness with the current lack of work as expressions of their ‘pampered’ nature. Supposedly ‘pampered’ students often work two or more part-time jobs to put themselves through college, and university in Ireland and England has broadened immensely over the last couple of decades to include a wider cross-section of society than at any time in history. Graduates today are not the Daddy-fleecing sybaritic stereotypes of old.

The budget will probably see a cut in social welfare, which many comfortably employed people will welcome as an ‘incentive’ to get people back to work. The delusion that depriving people of welfare leads to a magic upsurge in employment shows no sign of dying out since the days of Norman ‘Get on your bikes’ Tebbitt. The dole needs some overhaul and savings could certainly be made by limiting the amount given to single people under 25, for example. But debate on unemployment and welfare, in the media and the public echo chamber at least, seems to be short on sense, compassion and practicality, and high on moralising. The government is frantically drawing up a budget which will improve the country’s standing in the eyes of the unelected speculators that control the international financial market, whose morality is rarely questioned, while on the ground easy answers are sought by passing judgement on what isn’t,. nor should ever be, a moral matter.

Ask anyone who works in a menial or low-skilled job, and they will not tell you that they think their work has moral worth. The foreign people interviewed in the Irish Times article had varying opinions on the issue of the Irish and work, but none indicated that they enjoyed the work they have to do to survive. Perhaps Russell summed it up best when he described how a menial worker should describe their work according to the morality of the rich, and added his own response:“’I enjoy manual work because it makes me feel that I am fulfilling man’s noblest task, and because I like to think how much man can transform his planet. It is true that my body demands periods of rest, which I have to fill in as best I may, but I am never so happy as when the morning comes and I can return to the toil from which my contentment springs.’ I have never heard working men say this sort of thing. They consider work, as it should be considered, a necessary means to a livelihood, and it is from their leisure that they derive whatever happiness they may enjoy.”

1 month ago

what is it with dezo hoffman and taking the most erotic photos imaginable of beatles. see also: the smoky hazy sleepy paul in paris 64 pics that john supposedly owned. also a p hot one of george from the same shoot

John Lennon Backstage At Stowe School In Buckinghamshire, England | 4 April 1963 © Dezo Hoffmann

John Lennon backstage at Stowe School in Buckinghamshire, England | 4 April 1963 © Dezo Hoffmann

"At first neither John nor I liked this picture because it was contradictory to his tidy image. But his expression and the lighting were so good that we ended up liking it. It seems to sum up John at that time." ~ Dezo Hoffmann


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4 days ago

The dash of Beatles magic comes as they reach the end of the verse and bounce together on the strung-out “pleeeeeeease . . .” answered by Paul’s solo “ . . . love me do.” The spirit in the harmony and the expectant silence that follows heightens the sense of anticipation...

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In the drawn-out “plee-ee-ease” of “Love Me Do” the lilting harmonies yearn politely—in “Please Please Me” it’s dirty and polite all at the same time. John and Paul’s verse duet gains on the Everly formula: Paul stays on the initial high note as John pulls away beneath him (“Last night I said these words to my girl”), putting the Everlys’ “Cathy’s Clown” lilt to a brighter beat. The rasp in Lennon’s voice on the repeated “come on”s is far from innocent—he wants this woman to do more than just hold his hand. As they hit the second “please,” Paul and John leap away from the pleasantry of the first, soaring up to convey a real adolescent sexual frustration. Even the sound of the band has more rough edges than the thunking bass of “Love Me Do.” Where the first single is genuinely coy, the second makes a “polite” demand on the female, and Lennon deliberately tries to stir up a reaction.

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Although John and Paul can be worlds apart (as this album [“Please Please Me”] demonstrates), when they harmonize the common brilliance they achieve is breathtaking. The two share a space of musical effervescence that only they know how to reach for, and they hit it with uncommon grace.

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The first and last songs on the album, “I Saw Her Standing There” and “Twist and Shout,” are its bookends: both revolve around the idea of falling in love on the dance floor. But where Paul gets the dance floor jumping, Lennon makes the earth move. It’s as raunchy as anything the Beatles ever recorded, and it stands up beautifully to records with raunchier reputations (like the Stones’ “Satisfaction”). Where the opening tune suggests an adolescent sexuality, “Twist and Shout” conveys a loss of innocence; where Paul’s singing is charged but charming, Lennon’s delivery is nothing short of lustful.

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Throughout rock, and throughout the history of music—from Bach’s French Suites to Ravel’s La Valse—the image of the dance in music has been linked to the act of sex.

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After two verses [“Twist and Shout”], the singers—John with Paul and George in support— back off to play their guitars for a verse, as if resting for the final round. When the voices come back in, the personalities we’ve heard throughout the record stack up one by one for the rave-up, building the chord with mounting excitement. At the top of the ladder, they spill over the edge with hysterical screams, the musical dam breaks, and before we know it they’re into the last verse. It’s the musical equivalent of an orgasm, and it counts among the most exciting moments in all their music.

<...>

It’s not that they’re telling teenagers to dance or have sex: they’re simply enjoying life so much that they can’t contain themselves—they want the beat to seduce the whole world into having fun.

(Tell Me Why by Tim Riley, 1998/2002)


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1 month ago

you can't have a man who's been to workmans playing paul mccartney. a man who knows what wowburger is? playing a beatle? that's not how the world works.

4 weeks ago

A couple of fics I wrote

I got an ao3 account this year and have 2 3 fics in the Beatles fandom that I'm a little proud of. Both character studies focused on late 1970s John in NYC. Have a read if you're so inclined. Username bodhbdearg.

Where I would be: Househusband era John is very depressed and disengaged from music, but is nudged out of it by folksinging lesbians & NYC queer culture.

Singing a song of ruin: Writing DF-era John is no longer depressed, and spends a night trying to talk someone out of jumping off a bridge.

Update, new WIP:

3. Under his carpet: Linda Eastman McCartney reflects on the ups and downs of her marriage to Paul in a series of snapshots between 1968 and 1990.


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2 weeks ago

finished loving john and am turning it around and around in my head. may pang is not without her biases but it's pretty easy to flag where they are and what they're colored by. it is clear to me that she didn't like paul very much, and im not sure whether that's because of the way john presented him to her amidst the business troubles or because she perceived he didn't like her with john. the way may presents the johnandyoko reconciliation, it's entirely caused by yoko's hypnotherapist. but we know that's not entirely true and i dont know if at the time of writing she knew about paul telling john in LA that yoko wanted him back. there's a lot of instances where john and may are conspiring against yoko: keeping secrets and telling lies to pacify her. i dont know if may considered the two of them might have been doing the same to her. it seems easier for her to blame yoko for the whole thing, both the start and end of the relationship, and while she certainly deserves quite a bit of blame it's also john who won't take no for an answer when he first tries to sleep with her and it's john who chose to go back to yoko. yoko knew how to use the deepest parts of his psychology to convince him, but is was still HIS psychology. and honestly as an outside observer even though may had an incredible strength of character at such a young age i dont think anyone was really a match for the depth of trauma john had and it's entirely possible something worse may have happened had he stayed with her longer. and he did almost kill her.

10 years ago
No Wonder It's So Prestigious...

No wonder it's so prestigious...

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slenderfire-blog - a slender fire
a slender fire

Some writing and Beatlemania. The phrase 'slender fire' is a translation of a line in Fragment 31, the remains of a poem by the ancient Greek poet Sappho

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