This is an extended version of the review that appeared in yesterday’s Nottingham Post, (the headline for the edited version wouldn’t have been my choice!) with added personal reflections. Over at the Playhouse, they’re reviving ‘Forever Young’, about a home for retired panto players. Each of tonight’s frontmen is in their early 80’s, yet none is ready to hang up his wind instrument yet. They can’t need the money, but is it love, or habit? A very full house came to find out. I’ve never reviewed a jazz show before, since I know my limitations and, while I go to several jazz gigs every year, I don’t have the breadth of musical knowledge to write well about them, so would rather fork out a few…
I don’t write many Amazon reviews, but this great novel by John Lucas needed reviewing and I may as well repeat what I had to say here. It’s currently out of stock on Amazon, but you can buy it online from the publishers or The Bookcase. This is a first novel by a well known academic, poet and memoirist, best known for the prize-winning 92 Acharnon Street and the fine 50’s memoir Next Year Will be Better: A Memoir of England in the 1950s. ‘Waterdrops’ moves adroitly between the Second World War and the mid-90’s, building a mystery about the fate of the central character’s father. At times, the reader worries that they are being cheated of some necessary, vital detail, only for the answer…
Not had time to blog much recently: lots of marking combined with working on a very complex first draft. And, let’s face it, blogs are over and have been for years. If you want to find out what I’m reading or thinking, follow me on Twitter (there’s a box on the left, which always shows my latest tweets and retweets). Don’t friend me on facebook, where I rarely post (and please don’t like me on facebook, I have nothing to do with the automatically generated David Belbin page on there). If I had got round to blogging this month, here’s what I would have written about. The terrific Jackie Leven complilation compiled by Paul Du Noyer, who writes a lovely accompanying article in the March…
Only a week to go before the new Leonard Cohen album, ‘Old Ideas’, but in the meantime, here’s a track from an album that I didn’t hear last year (or it would have been high on my list below) but got for my birthday this week. I’ve been a fan of Meshell Ndegeocello since buying her classic break-up album Bitter in Portland, Maine on a road trip round the US in 1999. Her work moves between rock, jazz and soul and is consistently absorbing. She writes everything she performs, so I was surprised to find Leonard Cohen’s Chelsea Hotel on the new record. I’m not much of a fan of Cohen cover versions. A few are OK. Jennifer Warnes Famous Blue Raincoat is pretty good.…
Have to confess that I still haven’t got round to watching The Killing. Managed the first few minutes of both the Danish and US versions, but neither looked worth a 20 episode commitment. I expect I’ll get round to the Danish version in time, but don’t hold your breath. There’s a glut of good TV at the moment and long may it last. This is a time when a four star funny series like Bored To Death gets cancelled after its second series and the best drama on television (for my money, were I allowed to pay for it) Breaking Bad doesn’t have a UK taker for its fantastic third series, or, at the time of writing, a scheduled dvd release. Mad. Meantime, backed up…