posts

I have now been writing decent length articles on this site for about a year. I have learned a lot in this time, mostly about writing but also how to express your feelings and how to marshal your ideas and passions into action. For this month’s “five on the fifth”, I would like to share with you some of the things I have learned.

Quite a mixed bag this month.

“I read the news today, oh boy” (The Beatles, A Day In The Life.)

Reading a few articles about the recent launch of Google+, a few things hit home. Google tends to launch a product that works and not always one that is perfect or finished (like, say, Apple). Sometimes it takes them several iterations to get right. They love the beta tag. In fact, I think it was Google (or possibly Flickr) that made me aware of the concept of beta software.

Just as with the understated classics I want to set out my stall early on that good movies are good enough. Both Betty Blue and today’s choice The Jungle Book are never going to win any sort of consensus prize for the best movies ever made but they are really good. They also have a personal history attached that makes them worth writing about.

When I was growing up a framed print of a map hung on the wall in the hallway. It was one of my favourite things, littered with strange latin names and with Vs where Us should have been. The outlines of the continents and countries were all familiar and yet slightly distorted, becoming more recognisable around the shores of western Europe.

I have had the sort of month that is not conducive to listening to much new music. Therefore this month’s post is only going to consider two new albums and two albums that I have bought behind time. Because of various bits of stress and poor mood, I have ended up going back and taking refuge in some old favourites and not listening to new stuff. At other points I have also gone back to the Fleet Foxes’ album that I wrote about last month, which has grown on me even more since. Sometimes I think that I should writing about these albums on a two month delay. Meanwhile, I even have new music that I haven’t listened to at all, namely Bon Iver’s self-titled album. It has received so many good reviews that I have been too intimidated to listen to it. I will try to write about it next month.

It was the artwork that got me interested in Tubular Bells II. Rendering Trevor Key’s wonderful icon of the twisted tubular bell in yellow and blue made it all the more mysterious. Seeing it one day in Woolworth’s in Leigh Park back in 1992 aroused my curiosity. The huge display must have been part of the massive publicity drive for the album. Despite dwindling sales for his albums at that time, a sequel to Tubular Bells represented a huge potential for sales. This is why Oldfield had been lured from his previous home at Virgin records over to Warner Music. At that point Oldfield had not made a good album since his soundtrack to the movie The Killing Fields in 1985, the end of a hot streak (perhaps 1980’s QE2 aside) that had lasted since the original Tubular Bells back in 1973.

What’s your favourite number?

Four albums this month:

1. Kate Bush Director’s Cut
2. Africa Hitech 93 Million Miles
3. Fleet Foxes Helplessness Blues
4. TV On The Radio Nine Types of Light