Not everyone grows up to be an astronaut, Not everyone was born to be a king, Not everyone can be Freddie Mercury, But everyone can raise their glass and sing. Well I haven't always been a perfect person, Well I haven't done what mum and dad had dreamed, But on the day I die, I'll say at least I fucking tried. That's the only eulogy I need, That's the only eulogy I need.
I could have saved this for one of my mid-life crisis posts...
Will I dig the same things that turn me on as a kid? Will I look back and say that I wish I hadn't done what I did? Will I joke around and still dig those sounds When I grow up to be a man? Will my kids be proud or think their old man is really a square? When they're out having fun yeah, will I still wanna have my share? Won't last forever It's kind of sad Won't last forever It's kind of sad
While dad was in hospital over Christmas, I drove mum into hospital to see him. Due to failing eyesight, she hasn't been able to drive for about 20 years now. We joke that this is a blessing to road users everywhere. The stories about when she was a driver are legendary. The time she drove up a one way street the wrong way. The time she nearly drove my grandma and me off a cliff. The time she drove over an open manhole just as the workman ducked his head back under the ground...
I have so much respect for how my mum has coped with her failing senses. She can't read anymore. Can't do crosswords or jigsaws. Sees faces mostly as blurs. Her hearing's going too (it's a family trait) and her hearing aid is even bigger than my dad's. But I've never once heard her complain about it. That generation, they went through the war as kids... they just get on with it.
Coming out of the hospital after visiting dad, it was starting to get dark.
"You'll have to help me," she said. "I can't see too well in this light."
I took her hand and walked her back to the car.
"It doesn't seem two minutes," she said, "since I was was holiding your hand as a little boy to keep you safe. It goes so quickly..."
(*"Local" as in "from our neck of the blogosphere".)
After reading the aforementioned Morrissey Autobiography, for a little light relief over the Christmas period, I splashed out on a copy of Drawn To The Deep End by Martin - yes, that Martin - Pond. I've got to say it cheered me up no end...
Martin will no doubt think I mean that sarcastically, but it really did, despite (or maybe because of) the rather downbeat subject matter. DTTDE is a novel Martin serialised while he was writing it on one of his old blogs a few years back , getting feedback as he went along. I remember reading parts of it there and always looked forward to seeing the finished novel. Well, it turned out Martin had stealth-published it a few months ago via Amazon, both digitally and in paper. And because I'm old-fashioned and always prefer to read books on paper (if god had wanted us to read books on kindles, he'd have made tree trunks out of microchips), I jumped at the chance to hold an actual copy in my hands for the ten minutes of reading I manage each night before nodding into unconsciousness.
Except... it actually turned out that Martin's book was so good I didn't nod off at all, and raced through it faster than I've read a book in ages. (Ah, how I remember those days when I used to read a book a week. Before I got a life.)
Drawn To The Deep End is an intense character study of Peter, a man driven to the verge of depression by the death of his girlfriend, trying desperately to claw his way out, grasping at any straw (often straw women) that bends his way. It's a book that has a lot to say about being a lonely 30-something man in this day and age... and as someone who was just that ten or so years ago (and maybe only my age has changed, in some ways), I related to it very much. It's also very funny - shot through with dark observational humour that makes you wince and nod and wish you'd written it yourself. You may end up screaming at Peter. He does make some very unwise decisions. But you'll understand why, every step of the way. What is "happiness", anyway?
Anyway, go read it. Find out more at Martin's other website, here.
Oh, yes, and obviously it goes without saying this book is named after one of the best albums of the 90s. Here's a truly great track from that...
There have been rather a lot of Morrissey posts on this blog over the last few months for one reason or another. Thanks for putting up with them. This should be the last one for awhile, unless he announces he's going to be performing at Harry & Meghan's wedding or joining the cast of Eastenders as Dot Cotton's long lost son (a role that was apparently offered to him in years gone by).
As previously mentioned, I finally finished reading Autobiography before Christmas and it was an interesting, if frustrating (naturally) read. The early section involved Moz trying too hard to write about his childhood in cod-James Joyce prose, and while this was entertaining in places, it also aggravated me no end. (It was the reason I'd packed in reading this book when I originally bought it in 2013.) After this though, things became more enjoyable. His years with The Smiths felt rushed through - I'm sure many readers would have loved to read more about those days, but Moz obviously wanted to make the point that it was a very small part of his life and he's actually achieved far more success (and wealth) as a solo artist. The court case, on the other hand, went on and on and on... and, yes, we get the point, Morrissey, there's been no greater travesty of justice since they nailed that carpenter to the cross. And the judge was a bit of a wanker. Let's move on, shall we?
(Oh, and the less said about the beyond vicious attack on Julie Burchill, the better. It would be hilarious if it wasn't so juvenile. God knows what she wrote about him to deserve that!)
Despite all this, there are some surprising passages within Autobiography that are more than worth the price of admission. As is usually the case with any Morrissey enterprise. Moments - no, whole sections - where we get to see behind the mask and... whisper it... Morrissey honestly comes across as a real human being with hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections and passions. Prick him and he does actually bleed! The section which stood out the most for me is the night in the summer of 1989 when Morrissey goes for a drive on Saddleworth moor with his friends (yes, Morrissey has friends!) Linder, Tim Broad and James O'Brien. This is a part of the world I know very well as I've lived most of my life just a couple of miles away and spent a great many happy hours in my youth walking around the hills and reservoirs up there, so I was shocked to see Moz spend so long describing this one eventful night...
It's a story I've heard before, but not in Morrissey's own words. Always fascinated by the area because its where Myra Hindle & Ian Brady buried many of their victims, Moz and his friends end up turning off the A635 in their car near Black Hill, just above the village of Holme. They subsequently get lost in the fog, and then see a "ghost": a semi-naked young man (around 18 years old), wearing only an anorak, who throws up his arms and screams in horror at their car. Moz and his pals screech away and spend many a long hour afterwards pondering whether it was actually a ghost... or just some kids mucking about. They drive until they reach the nearby village of Marsden, which Moz amusingly describes as being closed at 8pm, "its inhabitants pulling their chairs closer to the glow of a low fire" where they find a phone box on Wessendenhead Road and call the local police. The police tell them to "keep an open mind" and that "a lot of strange things have been reported" up there... which is all very League of Gentleman (appropriate, really, since the exterior scenes of The Local Shop For Local People were shot just a mile or so's walk away from where Morrissey had his gruesome sighting).
However, one thing puzzled me... how the hell did Morrissey get from Black Hill above Holme to Wessenden Road in Marsden... without coming through the village of Meltham (where I currently live) and then driving past the farm my mum and dad have lived on for the past 60 years which lies on the only main road connecting the two places? The map below shows what I mean. The arrow at the bottom shows the A635. The one at the top shows Marsden. The only road between them involves going through Meltham in the upper right corner... yet Meltham does not feature in Morrissey's story at all.
But then I thought a little harder. As I've said, I've walked these hill many a time... particularly when I was a younger man. And there is another road which links the two places... but it's not the kind of road you'd normally drive on... you wouldn't be able to these days since it's been gated off to all but walkers. Back in 1989, however, maybe that gate wasn't there. Or perhaps someone had left it open...
Morrissey and his pals returned to the scene of their terrifying experience the following day and found only "a pair of y-front
underpants, discoloured with dirt, but certainly of the type which an
18-year-old might wear". They consider all the options, including the dark possibility that "the boy had possibly broken free and fled from a nearby farmhouse where he had been subjected to either violence or rape... and saw our Mercedes as his only hope". (At no point does anyone suggest doggers. Just saying.) But Moz inevitably concludes the whole event was even more scary than that...
"How many unfortunate souls have Saddleworth Moor as their final resting place? Or are there still people so disfigured that they cannot live at society's lack of mercy, and can only find solace in dark places? There may very well be spirits of 1780 who still roam, begging for release by prayer - buried without ceremony, out of the way, beyond gaze, blotted out of creation just for knowing too much, or for saying too much, or for being witness to some dark crime; rent boys and runaways, troubled teens and latchkey kids, motherless druggies and hastily pregnant Carol Annes, now silenced good and proper, deliberately dumped so far from their homes that even a most determined spirit could not find its way back."
The whole story makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end,
particularly as I know that lonely track above so well, having walked it
many times, especially when I was a teenager...
I was 17 in 1989, Morrissey... and do you know what? I'd like my underpants back, please.
I've been very much enjoying the series Feud: Bette & Joan which ran on TV over Christmas. Great to see 60s America recreated so faithfully and the performances by Susan Sarandon, Jessica Lange and Alfred Molina were terrific. Stanley Tucci was hilarious as Jack Warner too. Of the two, Sarandon's Bette Davis probably comes out best, being shown as both the better actress and the more sympathetic human being (most of the time).
Not done an Actory Top Ten for awhile, so here's ten songs about Bette and her films...
Well, we've got to start with this one, haven't we? As seen in Feud, Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? was the film that cemented the rivalry between Bette and Joan.
Some debate on t'internet as to whether Rod's song has anything to do with the movie... and quite a lot of old Rod The Mod fans bemoaning his 80s ouvre, of which this is seen as a particularly irksome entry. You can have the Belle & Sebastian version if you prefer. Or perhaps a completely different Baby Jane from Dr. Feelgood.
There's an argument to be had that Brian Fallon hasn't had an original idea in his life, but everybody loves Noel Gallagher for the same crime, so cut The Gaslight Anthem a break...
Stay the same, don’t ever change 'Cause I’d miss your ways With your Bette Davis eyes And your mama's party dress
Not the first time Al has cropped up here name-dropping famous actresses. Probably won't be the last.
When you were just a kid you loved To go to movies in the afternoon And so you left the factory And got a job in the projection-room Bette Davis plays Ran away with the passing days You'll be a movie-star Next time
You're my Bette Davis I'm your Cary Grant Let's make love all night don't get up at the prohibition The big depression's over lets have a drink to them We'll stay young forever living in our silver screen romance
(It's gonna be harder to do my Cary Grant Top Ten now.)
Turns out Iggy was part of the whole #metoo movement almost 40 years before the rest of the world. This is from 1980!
I'm wondering fellas if you've heard the news The chicks are sick and tired of being abused Now I saw all this on the wide screen You know that chick Bette Davis split right out of the scene
Leave your Dire Straits prejudices at the door, please.
Sociologists invent words that mean 'Industrial Disease' Doctor Parkinson declared 'I'm not surprised to see you here You've got smokers cough from smoking, brewer's droop from drinking beer I don't know how you came to get the Bette Davis knees But worst of all young man you've got Industrial Disease
Nothing to do with the movie, more about the year Davd Gedge spent in South Africa as a child and his memories of Apartheid. Of course, All About Eve also gave its name to these guys. Bette's legacy lives on!
Cinderella, she seems so easy "It takes one to know one," she smiles And puts her hands in her back pockets Bette Davis style And in comes Romeo, he's moaning, "You belong to Me I Believe" And someone says, "You're in the wrong place, my friend.
You better leave" And the only sound that's left After the ambulances go Is Cinderella sweeping up On Desolation Row.
1. Kim Carnes - Bette Davis Eyes
The obvious #1, though I'm sure it'll be shunned as "too 80s" by many. You may prefer Jackie DeShannon's original... though it's a VERY different song. For a hipper "indie" version, try the Sexton Blake cover or this rather over-produced version by My Gold Mask. I'm sure it's been covered by a dozen other people, but those are the only ones to make it into my collection.
Kim Carnes is worth another post sometime though. Known to most people in the UK as a one hit wonder, her career actually stretches from the late 60s through to the present day, and her Best Of collection shows a lot of interesting work over that time. Try Gypsy Honeymoon as a taster, it might change your idea of her.
Think I can't follow that with a Joan Crawford Top Ten. Go on, dare me!
