Firing the Canon

Recently I’ve been engaged in a discussion with David Didau regarding the blog he wrote about redesigning the English curriculum for KS3 and beyond, and utilising the ‘Literary Canon’. David is someone for whom I have a huge amount of respect (his blog on Slow Writing for example was an absolute game-changer for my year 8 creative writing lessons recently) and I consider him an important and relevant voice in the endless debates about how best to do this most wonderful of jobs.

I read his blog with interest, because I think the KS3 curriculum could do with looking at, and in the schools I’ve worked in it has been a constant source of debate and discussion. That’s not to say that I think our current KS3 curriculum is fundamentally flawed, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be improved.

One thing on which David and I seem to agree and disagree at the same time (somehow) is the idea of increasing the students’ cultural capital – exposing them to a cultural understanding of the world that they would otherwise be denied if only taught simple modern literature. If we’re going to teach English, shouldn’t we give the students access to the best of English Literature? It’s hard to argue with that, and as David says on his blog, “Knowledge is power. This isn’t really a debate: the more you know, the better equipped you are to think, and no one is seriously arguing against the idea that pupils should be taught to think.”

While I think this curriculum is inspired, and the ideals behind it are both realistic and commendable, I think we disagree fundamentally on the merits of the canon itself. I am all for cultural capital, and think it's vital if we're going to be considered 'proper' English teachers, but my worry with the canon is that works of great merit would not be considered 'worthy' for a number of reasons.

I'd like to preface this rather long-winded diatribe with the assertion that I think students should be exposed to the ‘classics’. For some people, the books they read at school will be the only books they ever read, so they may as well be good ones, and ones that give them some insight into the wonderful history of our subject. As for 'Literary Canon', it's a term that screams elitism to me, although I don't think for a second David is applying it with a pejorative nature. I don't deny the need for students to be immersed in the great texts; my issue comes with what those texts are. After all, ‘great’ is a relative term. Wasn’t Dickens the soap-opera of his day, serialised in the newspapers telling grim stories about life in London as if he somehow predicted Eastenders’ arrival? I don’t worry about which texts are in the canon, but which are left out, and how to balance a need for retrospection with a need to move forward, as Literature does.

David’s curriculum finishes in the 1940s with ‘1984’ and ‘Animal Farm’. On a personal note, if I never teach that particular book again then it'll be too soon, but that's by the by. If you're teaching Dystopia though, what's wrong with ‘The Hunger Games'? Yes, it’s of its time, and yes it’s arguably a children’s book, but then we are teaching children, and it’s not simple sentences and immature concepts by any stretch. Come to think of it, what’s wrong with ‘Fahrenheit 451’ or several other texts published in more recent decades that speak to similar themes? If you're teaching the Gothic tradition, why not an exploration of how it has continued in modern times through 'The Woman in Black'? On that same Gothic note, if you want to teach about the dark forces at work when man plays God, is ‘Frankenstein’ really better than ‘Jurassic Park’?  The instinctive 'literary' answer to this is "Yes, of course it is" - but on what grounds? I've read both books several times, and while I don't deny that 'Frankenstein' is a brilliant piece of work, it didn't change my life. ‘Jurassic Park’ opened my eyes to a whole new way of cognitive reflection, chaos theory, hubris and the perils of man's arrogance in the face of nature. Admittedly, one of the reasons I enjoyed it so much the first time was because there were dinosaurs and gory deaths in it, but is that so bad? I was 12 years old and I would never have dreamed of going near a text like Frankenstein at that age. However, once I'd read ‘Jurassic Park’, I began to explore Shelley off my own back, and found it an enjoyable read, albeit not one that particularly made me feel like I had more culturally relevant references at my fingertips.

Similarly at A-Level, I was amazed by the cultural impact that 'Captain Corelli's Mandolin' had on me - and found Thomas Hardy's 'Return of the Native' one of the most genuinely painful experiences of my education. I never went near Hardy for a good 5 years after that. Now, that's not entirely Hardy's fault, nor is it necessarily a good point to apply to the majority of people who study English Lit, and perhaps with better teaching, I would have enjoyed it more (though I doubt it) but in terms of which text I'm more culturally rewarded by having read, Corelli wins every time. There are many other times when a ‘classic’ has left me cold (not least my battle with Middlemarch at University) but I won't list them now!

At my last school getting students to read was a monumental challenge. Year 7,8 and 9 students should be shown that Literature is not just a relic from the past - that great stories that can enrich their lives still exist and are being written right now. David and I had this debate briefly on Twitter before regarding 'kids' books vs 'proper' literature, and I still don't think the gap is as wide as some would suggest. What is culturally irrelevant about the Harry Potter novels? Are they really a weaker allegory for the Jesus story than ‘The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe’? If we judge the canon on what we as a society have judged worthwhile, then surely sales of 450 million over 8 years must go some way towards suggesting that Rowling’s stories were no flash in the pan? Mind you, the Sweet Valley High books have sold nearly 300 million, so maybe that’s not the best criteria on which to judge. It’s all very subjective, I suppose. Or is it?

David’s blog says not:

“Personal preference doesn’t come into these decisions. Just because you might not happen to like a particular text and would like instead to propose one of your favourite novels for inclusion misses the point.”

Even with the caveat that there ought to be enough in the canon to make substituting one text for another, and the fact that there are ways in which a prescribed list of texts could be extremely helpful, there's no getting around the fact that by its nature the canon is exclusive. I don't think the students we teach ‘should be given a diet of transient but appealing modern texts because that is what is most relevant to their foreshortened little lives’ but surely there's a middle ground?

At the end of all this - fundamentally, I agree with damn near every word of David’s blog - but I'm always concerned about a tendency to black-and-white situations in education, which is an impossibility. We all need to understand the nuances of the students we teach and the contexts in which we teach them, and they should be challenged by great works of Literature, but I don't think we should be too prescriptive about what those works are.

Paul McCartney – New

Paul McCartney has done a lot with his 71 years. For 50 of them, he’s been recording music, and for 42 of those 50, he’s been doing it as an ex-Beatle. This has led to some issues. The first of these is that The Beatles were quite a decent band, who made quite a splash. This is not going to be yet another blog where I bang on about them, but I do want to touch on the seemingly crippling legacy that was left to their members after 1970. McCartney has only spent 16% of his recording career as a Beatle, and yet those 10 hours of music that the band left us have loomed large ever since. The main reason for this, in my opinion, is that his best work in The Beatles represents his best work. Reined and harnessed by John Lennon and George Martin, aided by a relentless drive, fierce work ethic and the unchained creativity of youth, McCartney either wrote or co-wrote some of the greatest pop music ever committed to tape. Add that to the zeitgeist-defining social and cultural impact of the band and you have a period of his career that couldn’t really be topped. 1970 arrived and The Beatles separated, leaving four musicians of incredible talent with the steepest possible mountain to climb.

Then McCartney climbed it.  Or at least seemed to. The list of accomplishments under his belt since his most famous chapter closed is quite mind boggling. While I could list it here, it would be simpler to look it up and so I will skip to the point: it’s unusually difficult to try and work out what there is left to achieve for Sir Thumbs-aloft.

One thing that is left, in my opinion, is to record a ‘great’ album without the other Beatles. McCartney’s musical decision making has often been questioned and has frequently been the subject of criticism from those both inside and outside his immediate circle. When he gets it right, there are few who can do it better, but too often his natural gift for melody is spoiled by what seems to be a propensity for lazy lyricism. After the Beatles split in 1970, there are plenty of examples of just why McCartney is so revered among songwriters, with genuinely inspired moments shining through on every album – but they are diluted by a complete lack of restraint and the kind of indulgence that seems to invade the mind of a genius if left unchecked. Michael Jackson, Prince, Brian Wilson, David Bowie, Noel Gallagher, Johnny Cash, Elvis, and indeed John Lennon, all suffered from it, and while most were able to eventually re-focus their compass, they all suffered badly from it. McCartney’s output in the 1970s and 80s is perhaps more polluted than others in this manner. For every ‘Jet’ there is a ‘Country Dreamer’, for every ‘Tug of War’ there’s a ‘Frog Chorus’ and for every decent album (Band on the Run, Ram, or Venus and Mars) there’s a ‘Press to Play’. McCartney has never lost his incredible ability to write a good melody (for all the criticism the Frog Chorus has rightly attracted, the melody is actually lovely) but his post-Beatles output has never scaled the heights of greatness because he hasn’t put the effort in to make sure his lyrics match his melodies. I say ‘hasn’t put the effort in’ because it smacks of laziness. There’s no doubt he can write great lyrics; the evidence is plentiful, but just because he can, doesn’t mean he does. Even John Lennon knew that McCartney could be a great lyricist:

“Paul is quite a capable lyricist who doesn't think he is. So he doesn't go for it. Rather than face the problem, he would avoid it. 'Hey Jude' is a damn good set of lyrics. I made no contribution to the lyrics there. And a couple of lines he has come up with show indications of a good lyricist. But he just hasn't taken it anywhere.”

-          John Lennon, Playboy Magazine, 1980.

With 1997’s ‘Flaming Pie’, McCartney began a period of releasing critically acclaimed albums that seemed to represent an entirely new chapter in his career, but in fact the albums are very much in the mould of his earlier work. Great tunes, hit-and-miss lyrics. The closest he has ever come to a ‘great’ album is still 2005’s ‘Chaos and Creation in the Backyard’. Faced with a producer who refused to defer to his artist’s legendary status, McCartney was forced into a corner and came out swinging, writing songs of genuinely artistic relevance, and painting a sonic landscape that reminded us all that he has earned his place at the top of music’s pantheon. Still, the old failings were there at moments, but overall the album remains a testament to what he can do when he’s pushed. After that though came more of the same. ‘Memory Almost Full’ is perfectly pleasant, as was last year’s covers album, ‘Kisses on the Bottom’ – but there is an unshakeable feeling that McCartney has made things just a bit too easy for himself. So, is ‘New’ actually anything new?

Sadly, not really. When the album is good, it’s very very good, and two or three of the tracks prove that he’s still an artist in transition, constantly pushing to create something unusual and to tread previously untrodden ground. The opening track ‘Save Us’ is a tightly packed high-octane number that doesn’t necessarily re-invent the wheel but is massively effective, and the title track is classic McCartney – catchy beyond belief, without ever challenging its listener. The rest of the album is much of a muchness. It’s not bad, by any stretch – there are no songs that I’d describe as actually being unpleasant to listen to, but there aren’t any others that make me sit up and take notice.

And so we return to The Beatles. ‘New’ suffers most from being the latest output from someone who has been here before. How does Paul McCartney write something that’s actually new? Apparently, “Everybody Out There” was written as a song “to get the crowd singing along”. Ok, that’s fine, but we’re talking about someone who wrote ‘Hey Jude’. Does he really need a new song to get people singing along? There are some decent pop moments on there, but he already wrote ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ and ‘All my Loving’ – he’s done pop. New wife Nancy gets a few mentions on some touching ballads, but he already wrote ‘Yesterday’ and ‘Here, There and Everywhere’ – there is no musical direction in which he can travel without his work being compared (probably unfavourably) to what’s gone before. This is why the songs that are good are SO good. ‘Appreciate’ and ‘Looking at Her’ particularly impress, the former sounding less like a Paul McCartney song than arguably anything before it that has been released under his name, and the latter combining a Beatles-esque subject with beautifully ethereal guitars and sonic ambition that surprises and delights in equal measure.

A friend of mine once pointed out that every single McCartney release has always contained something worth listening to. I think that’s true; even on the most dirge-like releases of his colourful solo career, McCartney has never failed to turn up at least one gem. This album certainly continues that pattern, but is unlikely to win over any new fans. But then, there’s the benefit of having been a Beatle – he doesn’t really need to. In a solo career spanning over 40 years, we fans should be grateful that he still has any drive or creativity still left – and both seem in ample supply here, so it’s nice to see him enjoying his music, and it’s nice to still be enjoying it.

Becoming Charlotte: AS Recreative Writing tips

As part of the English Literature AS Coursework, students will have to produce a piece of recreative writing in the voice of a character from their set text. Our students will be choosing a character from Charlotte Brontë’s ‘Jane Eyre’. This is an ostensibly ‘simple’ task, in that it sounds a lot easier than a more traditional analytical task with a novel of this complexity. However, it is of course in the apparent simplicity of this task that students find themselves caught making the same mistakes over and over again. Creative Writing is deceptively difficult already, and it’s made no easier by having to accurately capture Charlotte Brontë’s writing style, but this blog will hopefully provide some handy tips to help you avoid falling into the traditional traps.

Loquacious Verbosity and Garrulous Mellifluence.
Writing like someone else can be a challenge at the best of times, and the first problem is the belief that the biggest difference between ‘the past’ (and this goes right back to Shakespeare) and the present is that writers (in the words of a former student of mine) ‘used a lot of long words back then’. Actually, they didn’t. The obstacles to understanding Shakespeare or Brontë’s writing come not in their lexical grandiose but rather in their syntax and sentence complexity. Consider the following extract from ‘Jane Eyre’:

His guest had been outraged, his own life on a former occasion had been hideously plotted against; and both attempts he smothered in secrecy and sank in oblivion! Lastly, I saw Mr. Mason was submissive to Mr. Rochester; that the impetuous will of the latter held complete sway over the inertness of the former: the few words which had passed between them assured me of this. It was evident that in their former intercourse, the passive disposition of the one had been habitually influenced by the active energy of the other: whence then had arisen Mr. Rochester’s dismay when he heard of Mr. Mason’s arrival?

Even a quick scan of this paragraph from Chapter 20 of the novel will reveal little in the way of complex or incomprehensible vocabulary. Perhaps people are less familiar with words like ‘impetuous’ and certainly ‘intercourse’ has taken on a considerably different meaning in today’s society, while ‘whence’ has fallen out of use almost entirely. That’s three words in 105 that could count as stumbling blocks; even then, we can only really point to one that has become obsolete. So why is it difficult to read? Don’t get me wrong – it is difficult to read to a modern audience, but not because of its difficult lexis. I’ll go into more detail about what does make it difficult in short order, but first of all, let’s make this point clear. In order to capture the voice of Charlotte Brontë, you do not need to devour a thesaurus in an attempt to sound as clever as possible...unless you want to end up sounding like this.

So what’s the trick?
Well, first of all, there is no one trick (more on that later) but the most prevalent technical way into the voice of Charlotte Brontë is the syntax of the Victorian era. The inherent problem with this is that you are not looking at monumental shifts in word order as you might be with earlier works, but rather subtle differences in the way the sentences are constructed. Take the earlier example from ‘Jane Eyre’:

His guest had been outraged, his own life on a former occasion had been hideously plotted against; and both attempts he smothered in secrecy and sank in oblivion!

The only real difference in syntax between Charlotte Brontë in 1847 and modern standard English is in clausal positioning on two occasions: ‘his own life on a former occasion had been’ (which we would write today as ‘his own life had been, on a former occasion’) and ‘both attempts he smothered’ (which today would read ‘he smothered both attempts’). These aren’t indecipherable but can cause a 21st century reader to pause for thought. So when you’re completing your work, this is a subtle but sophisticated way to make your writing sound more authentically Victorian. It will require you to stop and think carefully about how you construct your work, but then that’s the point of this task!

No need to rush
We live in an age of distraction, where information is disseminated at high speed and high intensity, and Charlotte Brontë simply didn’t have to fit into these restrictions. Like so many of the great Victorian writers, she has the time to develop her ideas in genuine detail, safe in the knowledge that her audience had the time to languidly digest them. This is what has given rise to the utterly inaccurate belief that writers like Dickens, Austen and Brontë are ‘boring’. They’re not boring, but they are, by any modern standard, slow.  

Lastly, I saw Mr. Mason was submissive to Mr. Rochester; that the impetuous will of the latter held complete sway over the inertness of the former: the few words which had passed between them assured me of this. It was evident that in their former intercourse, the passive disposition of the one had been habitually influenced by the active energy of the other.

Here Brontë effectively tells us the same thing three times. Rochester is in charge. This is a long way from being the only time in the novel that she does this – but it’s important to realise that she isn’t simply repeating herself, she is layering levels of meaning on top of one another to give us more information about these characters. The descriptive ingenuity of contrasting Rochester’s “impetuous will”, and “active energy” with Mason’s “inertness” and “passive disposition” is an important structural trick that highlights Rochester’s confidence and self-assurance and helps to (along with many other such moments) formally position him as the hero of the piece. In your writing, you will be taking on the voice of a character, not the author herself, and so will have to transpose this skill somewhat, but it is worth noting the steady pace at which Brontë builds her points, and the effectiveness of employing such a trick.  

Lengthy Sentences

“The consequence was, that when the moon, which was full and bright (for the night was fine), came in her course to that space in the sky opposite my casement, and looked in at me through the unveiled panes, her glorious gaze roused me.”

This isn’t a difficult sentence, it’s just a long one. It’s multi-clausal, and almost tangential but fundamentally, it’s simple enough to understand. It’s not, however, simple to write. Again, as a character from the novel and not its omniscient narrator, you may find yourself without the need to write like this, but remember that Charlotte’s characters inevitably take on some aspect of her voice, and this is a particularly commonplace one. See Mrs Reed in Chapter Four of the novel:  

“Mr. Brocklehurst, I believe I intimated in the letter which I wrote to you three weeks ago, that this little girl has not quite the character and disposition I could wish: should you admit her into Lowood school, I should be glad if the superintendent and teachers were requested to keep a strict eye on her, and, above all, to guard against her worst fault, a tendency to deceit.”

Mrs Reed’s 69 word sentence here follows a similar pattern to Charlotte’s narrative voice – and there are countless other examples throughout the text. This is perhaps the most difficult skill of all to perfect, so completely contrary does it feel to a modern reader; however it is not, with practice and revision, beyond even the most basic of writers to construct a sentence which, while verbose and possibly even consciously overlong, makes grammatical sense while never resorting to deliberately bemusing its reader through the application of those irritating tactics so common in the writing of children, or even adults, who wish to sound more intelligent than they are, and whose desire to over exaggerate their own perceived intelligence outweighs their clarity of expression.

One’s Formal Diction
Charlotte Brontë writes in a formal manner, but people’s grasp on what is and isn’t formal has been warped in recent times. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve asked a class what ‘informal’ means, and they have simply answered with “slang”. It’s not that slang isn’t informal, but written formality is a long and complicated spectrum. Slang is one far end of that spectrum, and this occasionally forces people who have been asked to write a ‘formal’ piece to go to the other end, and overdo it horribly. The area I want to focus on here is the use of supposedly ‘casual’ pronoun use. With one class, a number of early attempts at ‘Brontë-esque’ writing featured the use of ‘one’ instead of ‘I’. In some cases, it featured the use of ‘one’ instead of ‘my’, which is even less accurate. Charlotte understood something of which many people seem ignorant these days. The word ‘myself’ isn’t always a ‘better’ way to say ‘me’, or ‘my’. Charlotte uses ‘my’ over two thousand times in Jane Eyre, and ‘me’ over six thousand times, so these can’t have been all that sloppy a way to express oneself. Not a single student in the class used contractions either. Every time a character couldn’t express their feelings, they ‘could not’ express them. Every time they didn’t say something, they ‘did not’ say it, and every time they weren’t in control of their emotions, they ‘were not’ in control of them. Charlotte Brontë has no such qualms about using contractions. For example, the word ‘don’t’ appears 155 times in ‘Jane Eyre’. However, it is worth noting that while Brontë employs contractions at will, she doesn’t do it as often as we might expect today. In your writing, don’t feel as though you cannot mix the two together in order to reflect her style. Predictably the pattern runs that the more formal the character, the more formal the language – which should be reflected in your eventual piece. Put simply, don’t overcomplicate things as you write. Saying ‘I’ doesn’t make you sound informal. Admittedly, if you find yourself writing, “OMG, Rochester is totes fit” then you may have gone too far. The distance between those two poles, however, is considerable!

Charlotte Brontë – Gourmet Chef
Although personally I can’t see anything wrong with this as the definitive way to be a chef, in actual fact the art of gastric wizardry is a delicate balancing act. Anyone can cook chicken, for example, but in order to really elevate that basic dish to something approaching art, you need to add the right extras at the right time. As you are probably aware, English teachers are not above the occasional strained analogy and this is a particular favourite of mine. Imagine your writing as a culinary delight just waiting to be taken from the oven. The basics are just that: basic. Anyone writing at this level should be able to find their way around a few lengthy sentences, spellings and occasional semi-colons. What you need to do in order to really capture the subtleties of Charlotte Brontë’s writing is to find the key ingredients that she sprinkles across her writing without ever overdoing any of them. If you put too much of one spice into a dish, you will ruin it. Likewise, if you (correctly) identify that Charlotte occasionally uses alliteration but proceed to pepper your prose with pointless prolixity, the effect will be lost. So what are some of Brontë’s most effective ingredients? The first is personification to aid description. All the Brontës, especially the sisters, were particularly keen on extended metaphor and personification in their poetry. Charlotte continued this into her prose, and it is extremely common in ‘Jane Eyre’. In the extract we looked at earlier, the moon is personified. It isn’t over done, it isn’t particularly unusual even (the femininity of the moon is hardly an unusual literary trope) but it is effectively deployed. There is also the use of exotic references to foreign climes. This one is unusual, in that Charlotte rarely travelled outside Haworth, and when she did she never once saw the ‘ruby red’ of an ‘Italian sky, where clouds of sunset lingering lie’, nor did she ever (as far as we know) see the ‘widest-winged condor on the Andes’. Yet still, she refers to these far-off (and remember that to someone in her position in the 1840s, she may as well have been talking about visiting Mars) locations to add yet more depth to her point. Finally (although this is far from the end of the list) we have the occasional ‘giveaway’ obsolete word that will contextualise your writing and set it firmly in the right century. These final two ideas are demonstrated well in this extract, again from chapter 20 of ‘Jane Eyre’:

My pulse stopped: my heart stood still; my stretched arm was paralysed. The cry died, and was not renewed. Indeed, whatever being uttered that fearful shriek could not soon repeat it: not the widest-winged condor on the Andes could, twice in succession, send out such a yell from the cloud shrouding his eyrie. The thing delivering such utterance must rest ere it could repeat the effort.

We have here the mix of the exotic (the reference to the Condor) and occasional (sprinkled, remember, carefully into the dish) archaic words (‘ere’) and Charlotte’s usual complexity of sentence construction in practice. The effect? We are left with a wonderfully descriptive, artfully constructed mental image which creates tension and suspense while giving a clear and precise picture to the audience in less than 70 words.

Hopefully this little guide has helped as you seek the voice of Howarth’s finest...now go forth and write!

Mr Staveley

The Good Gatsby

When it comes to trying to find a film director who can harness a sense of mad abandon in one of the most hedonistic periods of American history, you’d be hard pressed to think of someone better suited for the job than Baz Luhrmann, surely? After all, he’s got form. Moulin Rouge and Strictly Ballroom were so unique,  creatively stimulating, and off-the-wall bonkers that the idea of someone else being chosen to create a sense of devil-may-care party antics seems almost absurd. Added to this, he can do tragedy too. Luhrmann’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ is, in my opinion, the best Shakespeare adaptation ever made. I’m not just saying that because I’m an English teacher either, although I’m professionally grateful to Luhrmann for giving a young generation a new way into a classic. That being said, I’m equally professionally annoyed at him for giving me (admittedly not personally) an awful lot of essays that discuss Shakespeare’s use of language in ‘the petrol station scene’. Still, it trumps any other Shakespeare adaptation I’ve ever seen.

So, instead of Shakespeare’s classic, which (thanks to the fact it’s a play) gives an awful lot of narrative scope to a director to one of America’s most beloved novels, which doesn’t. How does he do? It’s not an easy question to answer.

Like all Luhrmann’s films, the real star is Baz Luhrmann. There’s nothing wrong with a director being the real star, (see Reservoir Dogs, Duel, Jaws, The Godfather, etc) but when you’re up against stylised repetition, the shine is lost somewhat (see Django Unchained, Face/Off, Transformers etc) and it begins to impede one’s enjoyment of the story. And in Gatsby, the story and the characters who make it breathe, are everything. So it’s not a good idea to take the focus from them.

That being said, there are chances for Luhrmann to shine, and at least he doesn’t disappoint for the most part. The film looks beautiful. Even if you see it in 3D, which adds nothing but a sense of detatchment from characters you’re supposed to get close to, there’s no denying the HD uber-gloss that dominates the entire pallet of the film. It’s basically everything turned up to 12 (from Baz Luhrmann? Who would have guessed) with the colours primary and vivid, the sounds bold and swirling, the costumes absolutely gorgeous, and the thematic imagery about as subtle as a brick to the face. Considering this is a tale of woe, there is certainly no sense of impending doom for the first third of the film. There isn’t time or room for any, because they’re too busy cutting a nifty rug at 1920s parties, and here is where the first of the problems kick in. Now, we know that Luhrmann knows how to film a party, because we’ve seen it before. And therein lies the rub. We’ve seen it before. Deja Vu is one thing, but there’s a certain sense of having deja-vued every single moment of every single party before, which becomes problematic a lot quicker than I was expecting. In an era where the clichéd soirees involved an almost gluttonous degree of bacchanalian debauchery, surface sheen with no moral scaffolding, the film seems to be determined to follow suit. And like those parties, ultimately there’s no satisfaction come closing time.

With so much surface glitz and glamour, it’s a wonder that there’s any character depth at all, and this is where we have the actors to thank for occasionally solid, mostly quietly spectacular performances. Although all the main cast underplay their roles, in so far as you never feel like you’re watching the kind of genre-defining performance that John Leguizamo and Harold Perrineau gave in ‘Romeo and Juliet’, it’s a nice balance to the feel and look of the film to have some class and depth added by the human element. Leonardo DiCaprio, although not given the kind of emotional journey he had in his last outing with the director is excellent as always, and is ably supported by everyone with whom he finds himself sharing West Egg. There isn’t a single let-down in terms of performance here, even Isla Fisher (not known for her dramatic chops) does a fine job as Myrtle. It’s these performances that keep the film on something of an even keel and avoid it becoming less style-over-substance and just pure style.

So, what’s not to like? Well, like so many cinematic adaptations of novels, if you’re a hardcore fan of the novel the chances are you’re going to hate this. That’s not to say it isn’t good, but when was the last time you saw an adaptation of a book you loved and liked it? One of the great touches in Gatsby lies in Fitzgerald’s prose, describing some aspects of life in West Egg as well as anyone has ever described anything, and of course that’s lost in the film, despite Luhrmann’s best efforts to use the original text where he can. The 3D is a waste of time, which adds more to your ticket price while adding nothing to your experience, and there are several moments where the sheer force of the film feels somewhat oppressive. It is literally such a sensory blitzkrieg that it occasionally feels like it’s taken you to a speakeasy, forced your throat open and poured itself down you. That might be thematically relevant, given the subject matter, but it doesn’t help you really experience the more emotionally fraught moments of the film, which are what give it such a timeless quality. Some people have complained about Carey Mulligan’s accent, although I thought she was great, and there will be those who feel the film is simply too polished to look at, and there’s certainly an argument that at time you feel like you’re watching a cartoon. Finally, there is a sense that at times you’re watching a rehash of some old films, namely Moulin Rouge, Romeo and Juliet, The Aviator, and Citizen Kane, with an occasional scene from Bugsy Malone thrown in.

So, does the good outweigh the bad? Well, yes it does, but the problems with it are numerous enough that whether you love Luhrmann’s other work (I do) or the beauty of the original story (I do) you will find enough wrong here to stop you feeling as though you have truly been immersed in The great American cautionary tale.

Is it The Great Gatsby? No, but it’s certainly a decent effort, and for you English teachers out there, at least the scenes at the petrol station actually take place in a petrol station this time.

Between Me and You: How The Beatles aged.

 The qualities of truly great pop music are as constant as the laws of physics, and just as complex. It seems that some songs, artists, albums or even moments in musical history are destined to be elevated to the realm of legend, when some are not – but in fact music that was great in the 1700s is still great today, as is the best music from every generation since up to about 1999 when music became rubbish and then Justin Bieber and collapse of civilisation and all that.

So, why does some music age well, and some not so well? It’s hard to say but there doesn’t fundamentally need to be an anecdotal reason for a song to become legendary, and there doesn’t need to be a direct tap into the listener’s deepest psychological corridors. It helps, but it’s not a necessity. But it’s there, somehow. Legend seeps into the sounds, and flows back out in droves. The ominous foreshadowing of Mozart’s Requiem, or the emotional passion of Beethoven’s 9^th Symphony are there for all to see, and their legend is cemented. This also applies to rock and roll and pop. Who can listen to Otis Redding’s ‘Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay’ without adding to it a tragedy that Redding could never have felt as he sang it? Or in a more subtle way, is it possible to listen to the grinding sneer of ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ without hearing the roots of the social uproar of the 1960s leave its calling card? Songs like Elvis’ Sun Records albums, or Buddy Holly’s best moments survive with a kind of archaic charm that conjures up nostalgia even in the minds of those who were born long after, and far from the “golden age” of late 1950s America. They are basic, primitive even, but what they lack in technical gloss, they more than make up for with crackling energy and raw power. And therein lies the secret. For art that transcends the moment in which it was created must truly capture the essence of that moment, without relying on it for its fundamental merit. Bohemian Rhapsody has elevated itself to legendary, game-changing status, but it’s not the only 5-minute-plus, heavily guitarred operatic genre-mixing smorgasbord that Queen released. It’s not even the only one on that album. But, it’s the one that doesn’t sound like it’s still stuck in 1975 when you listen in 2013. Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ may be the biggest selling album of all time, but it’s hard to hear it as a piece of work that would stand up in today’s charts, so saturated is it in the musical, lyrical and studio production tropes of the early 1980s. Except, of course, for the songs that have truly stood the test of time. Billie Jean, Thriller and Beat It don’t sound out of date. Yes, there are touches of the decade that bore them, but the songs sound as alive and fresh today as they did then. Can anyone really say that about PYT? I recently bought some “Hits of the 90s” in a mad nostalgia rush, but was left disappointed in the end. The songs hadn’t aged at all well, and I struggled to really marry my memories of the songs with the tired old generic cliché that seemed to be squirming out of my iPod. That doesn’t happen when I revisit ‘Definitely Maybe’, parts of ‘Nevermind’ (not least the incredible opening of ‘Teen Spirit’) and the better moments of U2’s late 80s/early 90s output.

The list goes on; Billy Joel’s greatest hits are those that don’t depend on the lyrical minefields of the singer-songwriter genre, Carole King’s Tapestry album is at its finest when dealing with themes that go beyond the San Franciscan haze of the late 60s, and the Rolling Stones stopped making great records the day that they decided to adapt their style to the times, not the other way around. Prince’s finest achievements sound now like homages to their genre, not slaves to it, and as a final piece of proof, look at how many bands who seemed to represent the times in which they operated still get airplay in today’s market. Anything that piggybacks on a zeitgeist is going to be dropped in the sandbox when the generation who “loved” it move on.

So, what’s the point of this? Well, it’s the song “From Me To You” by those Beatles that I like. One of the reasons I appreciate their contribution to music so much is that when you listen back to so many of those songs, you don’t feel as though you have to make allowances for the era in which they were produced. Abbey Road is a particularly strong piece of evidence for this. ‘Come Together’ doesn’t sound like a record stuck in the 60s. The intricacies of the interplay between the guitars and the other-worldly stream of consciousness lyrics don’t sound hackneyed after 40 years, nor do the harmonies of ‘Because’ become any less spine-tingling with the passing of time. Even Sgt Pepper, the album that (to many people) defined the entire decade, doesn’t sound (for the most part) like it’s trapped there, the occasional acid-drenched moment notwithstanding.

The Beatles, though, do represent to many the definitive sound of the 1960s in British music. This, of course, is a remarkably myopic view of a decade that had as much variety and high quality output as it did badly dressed tree-hugging flower children. But, somehow, in our collective consciousness, the sound of 60s Britain came from Liverpool. Some of their earlier output does manage to get away from the clichés they helped to create, (‘In My Life’, ‘Yesterday’, ‘Norwegian Wood’) but it takes until 1965 and ‘Rubber Soul’ before you can start to say the band created truly great music. Many songs before that album have got touches of genius in their fabric, but it’s hard to think of a Beatles song released before 1965 that doesn’t sound heavily entrenched in the generic stylings of ‘60s music’. Maybe there’s a case to be made for ‘Not a Second Time’ from ‘With The Beatles’, perhaps ‘Baby’s in Black’ but it’s tenuous at best. So how come their early 60s songs have reached the highest echelons of people’s consciousness? No matter what your personal feelings about The Beatles, it’s still hard to reach the age of 10 without having been made aware, somehow, of who they were and the songs they sang. So why are they still so present, and do they deserve it? Well, for me (as detailed in an earlier couple of blogs about ‘Long Tall Sally’ and ‘Twist and Shout’) the key is in the power and energy of those early songs.

The best early Beatles songs are the ones that have that frenetic pace and energy that drives them along so wonderfully. These are the songs that rise above the pitfalls of recording in 1960s Britain. For example, shoddy quality of the recording (particularly evident on b-side songs like ‘Thank You Girl’ or ‘I’ll Get You’) or the poor technical musicianship (hear the guitar tunings on ‘I’m Down’ or ‘Don’t Bother Me, not to mention McCartney’s questionable handling of some of the low vocals on ‘Hold Me Tight’) or just the lack of quality in the songwriting (‘PS I Love You’ and ‘Love Me Do’ amongst others). Many songs from those early albums fall into at least one, and in some cases more, of these traps, but their best work escapes them because of its consistent energy, enthusiasm and power. See ‘I Saw Her Standing There’, ‘All My Loving’, ‘A Hard Day’s Night’, ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’, and many others for examples of how good songs are elevated to greatness by the conviction of their delivery. And, of course, The Beatles were a great singles band. Look at the list of singles they put out in their first 5 years alone – it’s almost the Bhagavad Gita of genius pop songwriting. Except, for me, their 1963 mis-step, ‘From Me To You’.

Only their second number 1 hit, it’s hard to escape a feeling that the song was ensnared by some of their other failings, while simultaneously benefitting from their burgeoning popularity, therefore entering the folklore of great Beatles songs somewhat unconvincingly, almost shuffling to the back, knowing full well it doesn’t quite merit its place on that particular pedestal. The harmonica (never John Lennon’s forte) is unimpressive, the melody, while not unpalatable, isn’t much to write home about, the lyrics are functional and the chords are unimaginative for the most part. There’s a nice change to Gm7 in the middle 8, which is enjoyable, although not prominent enough on the record, and it’s a good natured sort of romp, but when you stand it up against their other ‘great’ work from that era, it doesn’t come anywhere near the musical sophistication of ‘This Boy’ or ‘Ask Me Why’, the lyrical intrigue of ‘If I Fell’ or ‘Not a Second Time’, the harmonic triumph of ‘Tell me Why’ or ‘She Loves You’, or the sheer steam-train excitement of ‘Boys’ or ‘I Saw Her Standing There’, or countless others. It just sits there in the Beatles canon as the runt of the litter. It’s charming, but its greatest strength is simultaneously its biggest weakness, which is that it harks back to a time of innocent charm, collarless suits, moptop haircuts and holding hands with a girl, and it singularly fails to thrill, sneer, seduce or threaten in the way that the Beatles could do so comprehensively. It’s not that there aren’t other songs from this time that suffer from the same problems, but this is the most high-profile, and in a career that was based on innovation and invention, it stands out as something of a blot on an otherwise seemingly immaculate canvas.

It was 50 years ago today...

Please Please Me - and its greatest moment.

People adore The Beatles, and even the people who don't adore them mostly don't seem to have a problem admitting their influence and legacy on world music. Since some point in late 1963/early 1964 they have basically reached Apotheosis and been made Gods in the eyes of men, and let's be honest, I'm just as guilty of worshipping them as anyone, and I don't care.

But, 50 years ago to the day, they weren't "The Beatles - musical game-changing most successful band in the history of all time". They were just four young friends coming off the back of a near tortuous regime of playing soul-shredding shifts of rock and roll in a German red light district. Four boys who kept getting told they had no future in music.They were really, some would say, in their own version (albeit not a fully understood one) of the last chance saloon.

So, they recorded their album in 585 minutes on February 11th, 1963. It's been described as a "charming start" rather than a clear sign that the musical landscape was about to be re-shaped, and I think that's right. There are only really three truly "stand-out" moments in my opinion. The first track, the incomparably energetic "I Saw Her Standing There", the hit single, the catchy "Please Please Me" and the genre redefining final scream of "Twist and Shout". The other songs range from charmingly delivered (Anna), catchy but substanceless originals (Misery, Do You Want to Know a Secret, Ask Me Why) through to fairly dire renditions of clumsily chosen covers (A Taste of Honey, Baby It's You) and finally, their first "hit", a slightly bored sounding skiffle dirge in 'Love Me Do', which hasn't aged at all well.. It's solid, if unspectacular.

My love for the Beatles isn't one that knows no bounds, and nor is it unconditional, but it is huge and all encompassing. My favourite aspect of The Beatles story though is not all that musical development, amazing though some of it was, it's not the Shea stadium gig, groundbreaking though it was, it's not the films, charming though they are (mostly) and it's not the cool-dude, bohemian drug taking 60s icons that they became.

No. What I love about The Beatles is that for all their sharp-suit wearing moptoppage once they broke onto the scene, they knew how to knock out rock and roll so powerfully it could leave people breathless. The stories you hear about their times at the Cavern and in Hamburg are thrilling, powerful, youthful, raw, dirty and magical.

Proper rock and roll has always enthralled me ever since I was a kid and heard The Beatles music mixed with Elvis, Little Richard, Buddy Holly and all of the great names in the genre. The same feeling came over me when I first heard Oasis in the early 90s. It was something almost primeval that spoke to a part of me I didn't understand. Growing up in a nice middle-class house in a nice part of Leeds in a relatively economically prosperous historical period, going to an expensive and not always particularly eye-opening school doesn't exactly prep you to truly understand the real guts behind a rock and roll band. Still, if music was my church, rock and roll was my denomination, and The Beatles were my prophets.

When I listen to the Beatles later work, I can always appreciate the genius in it. It's beautiful, but in the same way that I love listening to Rachmaninov or Beethoven. When I REALLY love The Beatles is when they are playing something that sounds like it was produced by the grime of northern England mixed with the excitement of a dawning sexual revolution in America. Dizzy Miss Lizzy, Long Tall Sally, Kansas City, Slow Down, Money, there are so many recordings that make my hair stand on end, and they are always the true rock and roll numbers.

So I do love the Please Please Me album, in part because there's nothing truly awful on there, well, except for Love Me Do, PS I Love You, and Baby It's You, which I've never cared for. But mostly, I love it because of the energy and raw power of the songs which do hit the note. And, capturing a special place in the heart of all Beatles fans, and particularly this one, is Twist and Shout.

The stories are famous now. The band played for about 10 hours, and had to record one more song. Lennon's voice was ruined, having already been suffering from a cold (very audible on some of the songs) and having been sung into the ground almost, so George Martin knew they wouldn't get many takes. The idea of the four Beatles putting their tired voices, and bodies to one side to give everything one last time to a song that was so familiar to them it must have felt like an old friend is a thing of beauty to me. Lennon, in an act of rebellion against Brian Epstein's "cleaning up" of the band, took his shirt off, slung his guitar on, and got on with it.

One take. Live.

At the end, it's reported that the engineers said that nothing like that had ever been recorded in a British studio before, and it's not hard to believe. The effect is unbelievable. You can tell they all know it is their one shot at this song, and Lennon's vocal sums it up perfectly. He has no voice left. There's no technical brilliance on display, no vibrato, no training, no incredible breath control, just a raw shell of a man still somehow brimming with power, ambition and (in this author's humble opinion) a desire to set the record straight.

He must have known. Nobody was more proud of the band's early work than Lennon. He publicly stated on more than one occasion that their best work was never recorded, the nights on Preludin in Hamburg, reaching places they didn't realise they had, rocking and rolling at full speed, reaching extremes other bands didn't reach, achieving a tightness that other bands didn't achieve. Lennon once said that "when we played straight rock and roll, there was nobody to touch us. Not in Liverpool, not in London, not anywhere." This song is the only really true remaining evidence that he probably had a point.

Up to this point in the recording, this kind of spirit, this kind of raw, sticking your fingers up to everyone, passionate, blood-curdling rock and roll just hadn't been present. Lennon MUST have known it, and he must have realised that in the heat of trying to fit one more song onto the record, here was the band's chance to show what they were really made of. For me, the song is the musical equivalent of a shot from the half-way line in the 90th minute, or the half-court shot, hail mary in basketball that sinks through the net with no hint of backboard and sends the crowd into a frenzy. You're not just listening to a band play a song. You're listening to four people throw everything at the wall...and it all sticks. You can hear Lennon cough at the end, as McCartney almost cheers a job well done, and they were finished. How could they have topped that?

After this album, things got considerably more user-friendly. Head shaking, suit wearing, hand-shaking, balcony waving, smiling politely, charming press conferences and the rest. Nothing wrong with that, but for me it doesn't come close to explaning why I love The Beatles.

I know I go on about things, and have a tendency to assign more meaning, depth, emotion and analysis to things that don't always need them, but listening to Twist and Shout still sends shivers down my spine. I would go so far as to say those two and a half minutes or so are perhaps the most important in the Beatles' entire career, if not the musical landscape of this country in the 1960s.

Listen to it again. It's less than three minutes of your life, after all. Hear it. Hear Lennon's 22 year old voice summon up depth and power and rawness like you've never heard before. Hear rock and roll.

Enjoy.

Ready for Lift Off...or something

How terrible am I at keeping this blog up? I don’t know, I do keep telling myself that I will write something for it, but then I start and to be honest I think to myself, ‘how boring and egomaniacal of you to think that someone would want to know whether or not you like the White Album, or what your thoughts are on silly social situations.’ It just strikes me that it would not make for particularly interesting reading. Having said that, why do people in shops insist on giving you change back in such an awkward way? Note on the bottom, coins on the top. So you can’t possibly put everything back in your wallet because your hand has become immobilised by having to balance coins on a note. It does my head in. Also, I have a renewed enthusiasm for the While Album. It’s good, in parts.

Right, why a blog now? Well, to be honest the main reason is that I’m sitting with my computer with absolutely nothing to do while my new album tracks upload to the distribution company for the fourth time. Yes, the FOURTH time. There were three other times before this. I wonder whether or not it’s a good sign that the system rejected my album three times; perhaps I should take the hint? Still, musicians are not by nature talented at things like ‘taking the hint’, so bear-like I have stayed the course and am on my 4th attempt to get ‘Since Last Time’ made available to people.

So, I thought I would chronicle my musical plans for the year, and then in 12 months we can all look back and laugh at how wrong I was. The first step is the release of ‘Since Last Time’, which is a totally different album and approach to what Various States of Undress felt like this time last year. That was a hugely collaborative process, on 12 songs that had little in common other than their author, inspired by different things, all written at different times, from ‘Not Tonight’ which I first dabbled with in 2002, right through to ‘Talk No More’ which was written in London after recording had first begun in July 2011. These are different because they are of a mood, of a feeling, and of a time. They were written in a fit of acoustic jollity, not all on the same night or anything, but during a ‘downtime’ period that allowed me to relax in my songwriting a bit and actually just enjoy the songs, rather than trying to create sonic soundscapes that would engage an eclectic audience. I’m tempted to say these songs are more ‘me’ than ‘Various States’ ever was, although perhaps that’s not true. I would say they are a reflection of another side of me, because there was an awful lot of creative ambition and personal feeling on ‘Various States’. These songs are somewhat more distant, more objective almost. They are not about deep meaningful personal issues, (well, mostly) and I haven’t used them for therapy. Those of you who know me well will be both surprised and relieved to hear that this batch is not just my version of saving £40 a week on a shrink. They are fun, light hearted, enjoyable and indicative of a shift in mood as I turn 30.

Turning 30 is odd, except it’s not really because I’m happy. I think that the worries about getting old and past it are probably a lot harder if your 20s were wild, crazy, happy and you’re concerned that you’re in a bad place with your job/love life/personal life as you reach this particular hilltop. Well, I was miserable for a lot of my 20s, so I won’t miss that, career wise it was a wilderness until I turned 27, so it’s not as though I gave up my life dream of sitting in an office doing nothing for a job I now hate. Also, I married my best friend, and that’s got to count for something! So all in all, I’m a happier bunny than I was certainly at 20, when I was no good to man nor beast, and at 25 too. I think it’s reflected in the songs. I hope you like them!

So, the plan is to release Since Last Time on Saturday (if they will let me) and following that, release another EP in February some time. This hasn’t got a title yet, although there are several ideas floating around, and is a more traditional set of songs in their sound and feel, but lyrically more varied than I’ve attempted for a while. I like the songs very much, especially ‘I Read Your Book’, which in some ways details one of the most tortuous and personally traumatic mental battles I’ve ever engaged in. There’s also a rock and roll song, and a song about fancying someone, so it’s not all introspection and navel gazing, don’t worry!

I’m also in discussions with Newcastle Cancer Research to release one of my favourite songs of mine ‘Green Bridge On The River’ as a charity single, and donate all the funds to them. I hope this goes ahead, as I love the song, and the song loves Newcastle, and if there’s anything I can do to contribute to a noble fight against a vicious and unforgiving enemy, I really want to do it. That will hopefully happen between the two EPs, the sooner the better in my view. Don’t worry, I will shamelessly guilt you into buying it.

After that, I’ll be retreating into my studio at home and producing my second full length album for the summer. There are about 24 songs that have either been written or nearly written ready for this project, although none of them have been started yet in terms of recording. There may even be a throwback song to the very first CD I ever made, with my friend Jon back in Leeds. I wrote a song for that called ‘When We’re Sleeping’, and I’ve always wanted to do it again. I don’t usually like re-recording songs, and normally I would never dream of it, but that was 1999 and it’s now 2012, so I’ve probably left it for long enough. The album has got a title, and it will hopefully be out for the start of summer 2013. Of those 24 songs, I imagine I will put 12 onto the album, and then maybe release 6 on another EP at the end of summer, and then the others will probably either never get finished, or won’t be good enough to release. To be honest, at current rate, I’ll probably write another 12 between now and summer anyway, so who knows? It might end up being a double!

Crikey, that’s going to be the best part of 26 new songs from me in the next 12 months...I hope they’re good! (I'm only joking, I know they're good. I just hope you think so too!)

It’s a lot of fun making music. I can still honestly say that I do it for myself more than anything else, but if you do know 25 million people who would like to buy my new EP, please send them my way, it would be ever so nice of you!

I will get better at this bloggage. I (sort of) promise!
Lots of love
Paulo x