He knew, of course, throughout the writing and recording of this album, that it would be his last. So many songs about death, the afterlife, such generosity of spirit. I haven’t fallen for a Bowie album as heavily since Scary Monsters, 35 years ago. He made a handful of good albums after that, Outside and Heathen probably the best of them, but none as brave or consistent as this. I’m glad I had time to come to love Blackstar before it became so inexorably associated with his death. Bowie made his death a work of art, as his producer Tony Visconti pointed out earlier today, but none of us spotted it. Even the (now unbearably poignant) video for Lazarus was taken as related to the…
I don’t have books of the year, as I don’t read books by year. I read a handful of new books, especially poetry, as soon as they come out but, mostly, they pile up. I buy hardbacks that I know I’ll want to hold onto (eg the new Frantzen and Elvis Costello’s autobiography), but their high price doesn’t include the biggest expense involved in a thorough read: my time. As often I’ll wait for the paperback to come out or buy it on Kindle when I see a good deal. I don’t like reading to feel like a duty (except when it is a duty because I’m marking it or reading for other professional reasons). And I like to be partially guided by serendipity. For…
Last week my friend Giles asked how many albums I’d listened to this year and I guessed at a hundred. In putting together a list of albums that I’d listened to properly (as against tried and discarded) it came to almost exactly a hundred. Many (Kamasi Washington’s three disc opus The Epic, for instance) I haven’t had time to form a considered opinion of. The number keeps growing, even as last year’s releases are pushed aside by leaks of this year’s (Bowie’s Blackstar is very good in part). Anyway, usual drill, I cut off my list at the point where it feels like there’s serious competition to get in. The 41 is based on how much I enjoyed the album over the year, not seeking…
We didn’t think we’d done it. And we were OK with that. The eighteen months we spent working on our bid to become a UNESCO city of literature made so many things happen that, in a way, we’d already won. We encouraged so much creativity and civic pride, engineered numerous events and several publications. The process of putting together the bid in itself helped the city’s literature scene to become more joined up. And we made a start on the biggest task of all, using Nottingham literature to improve the city’s literacy. But UNESCO accreditation – a permanent honour – is a big ask. We knew from the start that the odds were against us. We were told that UNESCO wanted to reach into continents…
This year’s sleeve-notes are a little late, for reasons suggested by the post above, so I shall be posting the tracks slightly more frequently than once a day in order to catch up. For those of you new to this, my partner Sue and I have been making best of year CDs (or cassettes!) for our friends since 1988. In recent years, I’ve written about the songs chosen on this blog (MP3s are low bit-rate and only up for a while. They will be removed at copyright holder’s request). The title of this year’s CD, the cover of which (forced rhubarb in our allotment, by Sue) is above, may need explaining. ‘Bitter’, because a few weeks ago my closest friend, Mike Russell, died after a…