As the summer goes into overdrive just as peoples' thoughts start to turn to going back to work, and the Olympics retreat into what already feels like distant memory, so the TV channels unveil their autumn line-ups.
The most eye-catching of what has been announced so far is undoubtedly the BBC's adaptation of the Parade's End tetralogy, which starts on BBC 2 on Friday. The Sunday papers have pushed this heaily today, as the BBC's answer to the Downton Abbey behemoth, but I do hope that people aren't going to get too excited, as, unless Tom Stoppard has ripped tha heart out of it, Parade's End is a much more difficult and involving proposition than its ITV rival. You can almost feel the slight anxiety that this adaptation has caused amongst the litterati in their pre-screening articles. "Waugh we're ok with, we know where we are with Waugh - 500 words by tomorrow morning?" "Ah yes, Greene again - Catholicism, tortured soul, affairs" "Ford Madox Ford- ???"
Poor old Ford Madox Ford is little read these days, although he really deserves to be more mainstream. In part, I think it's a question of style. I've never really gone overboard on modernist writing, but his prose has a far greater clarity than Virginia Woolf, say, and his dialogue is better than Henry Green's (whom I think he probably most resembles). Persevere with the first 50 or so of the well over 800 pages of Parade's End, and once you "get" the narrative voice it's really absorbing stuff.
It would be unfair of me to blow the lid on the plot so I'll restrain myself, but I hope the cast are up to their roles. Benedict Cumberbatch has a tricky job to pull of as the lead, Tietjens is quite a difficult hero for the early 21st century. Even in the social milieu of pre Great War England his 18th century Tory attitudes mark him out from the crowd, and there are several occasions when you want to do nothing so much as give him a damn good shake. The problem of course is that he tends to just roll with whatever punches life throws at him; which, given the scheming of his ludicrous wife, and his (chaste) love for the young suffragette Valentine Wannop, are legion.
Where Ford succeeds is in exposing the destructive effects of the war on the class system and the rigid certainties of the Edwardian age. By offering Christopher Tietjens up as a saintly every man, we can observe the conflict as it deconstructs his personality and very sense of self, before rebuilding him anew.
I'll withold judgment for now (and the previews of the adaptation have been uniformly positive), but if they get Parade's End right, we could be looking at landmark television that can stand alongside Brideshead Revisited or The Jewel in the Crown. If they miss the mark, then perhaps the book is truly, as I suspect it might be, unfilmable.
Watch this space.
Sunday, 19 August 2012
Thursday, 16 August 2012
Fun in the Sun - Or Cropredy for those who couldn't quite make it this year
Being the fine upstanding folk rock obsessive that I am, I thought I'd take myself off to the Cropredy Festival so that none of you had to go...
Blessed with astonishingly good weather this year, the scene was set for what I hoped was going to be 3 days of top quality folk. Was it? We'll come to Fairport in a bit. Read on....
The Highs:
Bellowhead - I've always been a bit ambivalent about them, but this was the weekend where I finally got the point. An absolutely storming set, and looked like they were enjoying themselves more than anyone else on the bill. Several albums purchased.
Calan - really good Welsh folk; sort of sound like 9/Jewel era Fairport (unsurprising maybe given the involvement of Maart), they even managed to work in a bit of clog dancing. Would have purchased the album, but it had sold out by the time I got to the tent.
Tarras - nice to see them back, after so nearly making it big round the turn of the last decade. Line-up's a bit different, but they make a good big sound!
Richard Thompson - he was a bit naughty really. It was billed as a solo set, second headlining on Friday, but then he brought on Mattacks, Pegg, Nicol, and blew the site away. We had some Bright Lights, a bit of Sandy, and the whole thing was a bit emotional.
The Middling:
Larkin Poe - just about got what they did, but they were probably a bit too "mainstream" for Cropredy.
Ellen and the Escapades - bland, inoffensive, nothing further to say...
Dead Flamingoes - I really wanted to like them, what with Kami Thompson being the singer (and sounding an awful lot like her mother), but even by the standards of folk the lyrics were bleak. If they cheer up a bit, they might be rather wonderful, but they're not there yet.
Big Country - sort of got it, but not my scene, and the new vocalist is a bit too different.
Legend - fun reggae covers band with some impressive session pedigree.
The Lows:
Joan Armatrading - I like her, I really do, but I'm not sure what she was doing at Cropredy. There was a hard core in front of the stage who were obviously enjoying themselves, but also a steady stream for the exits (she was the Friday headline), and lost me after about 20 minutes. In some ways I think it was through poor choice of material, but admittedly she wasn't helped by having to follow Richard Thompson.
Squeeze - why? Just why?
And so to Fairport, who came on at 2030 on Saturday night and played until midnight. Before we go any further, let me just list the personnel involved over the 3.5 hours so you get some idea of why this was one of the strongest Cropredy sets for a while:
Ashley Hutchings, Dave Swarbrick, Dave Mattacks, Dave Pegg, Simon Nicol, Richard Thompson, Judy Dyble, Maartin Allcock, Gerry Conway, Jerry Donahue, Chris Leslie, Ric Sanders, Blair Dunlop, Kami Thompson, the excellent Kristina Donahue, and the two singers from Larkin Poe.
Given the above wouldn't it have been nice if they'd cobbled together the "Full House" era lineup and gone heavy on that? It would? Lucky they did then.
Set list (copied from Andy at talkawhile's post with due attribution as my own notes were illegible thanks to a combination of darkness, alcohol and emotion):
1. Mercy Bay 2. Albert & Ted 3. Fotheringay 4. I'll Keep It With Mine 5. Percy's Song 6. Lark In The Morning 7. Come All Ye 8. The Deserter 9. Walk Awhile 10. Poor Will and the Jolly Hangman 11. Sloth 12. Bring 'Em Down 13. White Dress 14. Night Time Girl 15. One More Chance 16. The Gas Almost Works, Cat On The Mixer, Three Left Feet (instr.) 17. Red Tide (by Rob Beattie) 18. Jewel In The Crown 19. Honor And Praise 20. Dangerous 21. Portmeirion 22. The Hiring Fair 23. The Brilliancy Method & The Cherokee Shuffle (instrumental) 24. The Hexamshire Lass 25. My Love Is In America 26. John Gaudie 27. Danny Jack's Reward 28. Farewell, Farewell 29. Matty Groves
Encore:
30. Meet On The Ledge
Well, where do you start? Swarb was excellent, stood up for most of it, and looked a lot better than he had at the Barbican during the Sandy tour earlier this year. Jerry D has always been one of my favourite guitarists and did little to disappoint here. Kami Thompson did a bit of a Sandy impression, Richard Thompson picked up where he'd left off the night before, and the whole field was singing bethankit (to horribly mangle PG Wodehouse).
Interesting use of the younger generation, which might point the future direction for the Fairport slot (at this rate, they'll have perfected the creation of a perpetual band!) Must stop rambling now, but Fairport alone made the festival one not to have missed - certainly the best set they've done for a decade I'd have said.
Oh, also enjoyed (and bought) the excellent 45th anniversary t-shirt they've produced which helpfully shows a lego character of each of the 25 people who have so far been member of the band!
Hopefully, if I can link the two for a moment, it's the start of an upswing for both Fairport and this blog.....
Blessed with astonishingly good weather this year, the scene was set for what I hoped was going to be 3 days of top quality folk. Was it? We'll come to Fairport in a bit. Read on....
The Highs:
Bellowhead - I've always been a bit ambivalent about them, but this was the weekend where I finally got the point. An absolutely storming set, and looked like they were enjoying themselves more than anyone else on the bill. Several albums purchased.
Calan - really good Welsh folk; sort of sound like 9/Jewel era Fairport (unsurprising maybe given the involvement of Maart), they even managed to work in a bit of clog dancing. Would have purchased the album, but it had sold out by the time I got to the tent.
Tarras - nice to see them back, after so nearly making it big round the turn of the last decade. Line-up's a bit different, but they make a good big sound!
Richard Thompson - he was a bit naughty really. It was billed as a solo set, second headlining on Friday, but then he brought on Mattacks, Pegg, Nicol, and blew the site away. We had some Bright Lights, a bit of Sandy, and the whole thing was a bit emotional.
The Middling:
Larkin Poe - just about got what they did, but they were probably a bit too "mainstream" for Cropredy.
Ellen and the Escapades - bland, inoffensive, nothing further to say...
Dead Flamingoes - I really wanted to like them, what with Kami Thompson being the singer (and sounding an awful lot like her mother), but even by the standards of folk the lyrics were bleak. If they cheer up a bit, they might be rather wonderful, but they're not there yet.
Big Country - sort of got it, but not my scene, and the new vocalist is a bit too different.
Legend - fun reggae covers band with some impressive session pedigree.
The Lows:
Joan Armatrading - I like her, I really do, but I'm not sure what she was doing at Cropredy. There was a hard core in front of the stage who were obviously enjoying themselves, but also a steady stream for the exits (she was the Friday headline), and lost me after about 20 minutes. In some ways I think it was through poor choice of material, but admittedly she wasn't helped by having to follow Richard Thompson.
Squeeze - why? Just why?
And so to Fairport, who came on at 2030 on Saturday night and played until midnight. Before we go any further, let me just list the personnel involved over the 3.5 hours so you get some idea of why this was one of the strongest Cropredy sets for a while:
Ashley Hutchings, Dave Swarbrick, Dave Mattacks, Dave Pegg, Simon Nicol, Richard Thompson, Judy Dyble, Maartin Allcock, Gerry Conway, Jerry Donahue, Chris Leslie, Ric Sanders, Blair Dunlop, Kami Thompson, the excellent Kristina Donahue, and the two singers from Larkin Poe.
Given the above wouldn't it have been nice if they'd cobbled together the "Full House" era lineup and gone heavy on that? It would? Lucky they did then.
Set list (copied from Andy at talkawhile's post with due attribution as my own notes were illegible thanks to a combination of darkness, alcohol and emotion):
1. Mercy Bay 2. Albert & Ted 3. Fotheringay 4. I'll Keep It With Mine 5. Percy's Song 6. Lark In The Morning 7. Come All Ye 8. The Deserter 9. Walk Awhile 10. Poor Will and the Jolly Hangman 11. Sloth 12. Bring 'Em Down 13. White Dress 14. Night Time Girl 15. One More Chance 16. The Gas Almost Works, Cat On The Mixer, Three Left Feet (instr.) 17. Red Tide (by Rob Beattie) 18. Jewel In The Crown 19. Honor And Praise 20. Dangerous 21. Portmeirion 22. The Hiring Fair 23. The Brilliancy Method & The Cherokee Shuffle (instrumental) 24. The Hexamshire Lass 25. My Love Is In America 26. John Gaudie 27. Danny Jack's Reward 28. Farewell, Farewell 29. Matty Groves
Encore:
30. Meet On The Ledge
Well, where do you start? Swarb was excellent, stood up for most of it, and looked a lot better than he had at the Barbican during the Sandy tour earlier this year. Jerry D has always been one of my favourite guitarists and did little to disappoint here. Kami Thompson did a bit of a Sandy impression, Richard Thompson picked up where he'd left off the night before, and the whole field was singing bethankit (to horribly mangle PG Wodehouse).
Interesting use of the younger generation, which might point the future direction for the Fairport slot (at this rate, they'll have perfected the creation of a perpetual band!) Must stop rambling now, but Fairport alone made the festival one not to have missed - certainly the best set they've done for a decade I'd have said.
Oh, also enjoyed (and bought) the excellent 45th anniversary t-shirt they've produced which helpfully shows a lego character of each of the 25 people who have so far been member of the band!
Hopefully, if I can link the two for a moment, it's the start of an upswing for both Fairport and this blog.....
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