Bits & pieces, three

I bumped into someone I hadn't seen for a while the other day. He's an acquaintance, I guess, rather than a friend but I've known him a really long time so those things start to blur a bit.

Anyway, I hadn't seen him for long enough to be surprised when he told me had a two-and-a-half year old daughter. (He's not young, either.)

Her name? 'Clemmie,' he said, then added: 'Well, actually it's Chlamydia.' A beat. 'A memory of how her mother and I met.'

For once in my life, I was silent.

Maybe he was telling the truth. Maybe he was joking. I don't know.

I do know this, though. Years ago, he happened to mention he knew De Niro quite well. I didn't believe him, frankly.

Time passed. He called, late one Saturday. 'Bob's in town,' he said. 'Those two attractive young black women friends of yours . . .' Actually, he didn't say that. He used their names but that's private. The rest was true. His meaning was clear. So was Bob's, of course.

What do you mean? What are you thinking? Nothing happened. Of course, it didn't.

Which, in turn, reminds me of a moment at passport control at JFK in New York. I was with my daughter who was then thirteen or so and, in dress-style terms, passing through — there's no polite way to put this — her 2nd Avenue hooker period. A4 skirt. High stack heels. Boob tube top. Chewing pink bubblegum.

'May I have your wife's passport, too, sir,' said the passport official.

'That's not my wife. It's my daughter,' I said. 'What kind of man do you think I am?'

'We get all sorts here, sir,' he said.

Bits & pieces, two

Interviewer Were you a good violinist?

Interviewee I was very so so. And, that's giving me an edge.

The point of this bit (or piece) is, I guess, the identity of the interviewee. It's lyricist Hal David, worked with Burt Bacharach, mostly. Wrote these opening lines: 'Every day I wake up, before I put on my make-up . . .'

Now sing the interviewee's words to the tune of those lines from I Say A Little Prayer. They almost fit, don't they. Not exactly but close, in beats and rhythm.

The point? That the wondrous ability David had to write lyrics that sounded like real speech was, it seems, rooted in his own speech rhythms. That's why those lines from I Say A Little Prayer are so wonderful. No matter how often I hear them sung by Aretha Franklin (or Dionne Warwick/e), they always sound like she is finding that thought as she sings the words — that neat trick that only really on-the-money actors can do on a regular basis. I'd always thought that was mostly down to the singers. Now I think I'd have to say it was already there in the lines written.

PS If you hadn't guessed it by now, I'm working on something about pop music — not just lyrics but the whole deal. It's a big thing. I've got lots of stuff about lots of songs. And I'm trying out some of the thoughts etc here.

Next up Another bit (or piece) but not about music that time

Bits & pieces, one

I have a file of notes of stuff and links I thought to put on this blog. Somehow, for various reasons, they don't always make it on. So I've decided to put them up, one a day, till I've run through them.

They're all brief. They're often stupid. Sometimes, they are no more than a link. And, by and large, I'm not giving context or explanation or analysis. I'm leaving that up to the space between your ears.

Think of it, perhaps, as an online version of Sir John Soane's Museum — an external manifestation of the stuff that floats around between my ears. It'll probably tell you more about me than mere fine writing ever could. Not that you might like what you find.

Anyway, whatever, I start with a quote which I found quoted by someone else. I forget who. The point, I guess, if there is one, is to figure out why I might feel the need to quote it.

Or just laugh.

So, here goes . . .

Fowler The Mathematics of Plato’s Academy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Second Edition. 1999. 'Part of every literate person’s intellectual baggage, along with the second law of thermodynamics and the principles of relativity and indeterminacy, is some version of the story of the discovery of incommensurability by Pythagoras or the Pythagoreans…'

See you tomorrow . . .

A punk burial, slight return

After I posted the bit about Tom, I sent a link to a friend who immediately passed it on to Tom's brother Jimmy — who, of course, was in Lost Trios and actually performed the song. And Jimmy replied almost right away and here is his reply . . .

It's not true that Tom wrote the line "shove me in a plastic bag and leave me on the pay-ver-ment-ah" (not street). It could be true that he laid claim to it, but the lyrics for this particular song were penned by Bob "Bob" Harding. Tom did actually give me a line when I got stuck on a lyric for another Alberto song "Dead Meat" and he supplied "eat your sister by mistake".
All the best
Jimmy

Which leads to two possibilities . . .

One, my memory is faulty.

Two, Tom's was faulty, perhaps florid.

Take your choice

Chronicle of a punk death foretold

Reading an obituary of the pop writer Tom Hibbert (who I worked with and edited for a while), I found myself remembering a conversation with him.

His brother was in a band called Alberto Y Lost Trios Paranoias. In 1977, they released Snuff Rock, an EP of punk parodies — when barely any punk singles had actually come out. There was a track on the EP with a line about ‘when I’m dead, just put me in a plastic bag and leave me on the street’.

By way of doing that bonding thing we all do with people, I told Tom how funny that line was and how proud his brother should be of it.

‘That was my line,’ said Tom.

I didn’t remember that when he died. I didn’t go to his funeral — not close enough for that anymore. I do, though, wonder if anyone quoted it. And if he was telling the truth about its authorship.

Haircuts of today, number three

Fashion is, of course, the reverse of fish.

That is, while fish rot from the head down, fashion works the other way, from the bottom up to the head.

In this case, of course, that means Stan Kroenke. As Arsenal’s big boss (he owns the biggest hunk of shares), he has clearly been influenced by the fashion decisions of his ‘employees’. Certainly in the hairdressing department, anyway.


Or is it just me that reckons it’s a syrup?

Haircuts of today, number two

Well, actually, whatever it is, it’s not the number two of skinhead world. It’s true that it could be seen as a number two at the edges. And some have suggested that the middle section looks like a different kind of number two, left there by a passing flying bird.

I guess it could also be seen as some kind of mix of a flat-top and a Mohican. (Or is it a Mohawk? I get them mixed up.) In fact, I think it looks more like a landing strip — in the women’s beauty parlour sense. Maybe he had his wife/girlfriend’s beautician do it.

Two more things.

One I do wonder how much they talk about hair in football dressing rooms. Has it taken the place traditionally occupied in footballers’ empty afternoon by visits to snooker halls, turf accountants and, in the days before afternoon pub opening, drinkers?

Two Frimpong announced he intended to dye his hair pink if Arsenal beat Chelsea. But he doesn’t seem to have done so. Now, I’m no shakes when it comes to tweet’n’twittering but I did find a few things in that world.

* A message from, all people, Lord Sugar.Frimpong new hair style you should try @piersmorgan will suit you.’ No I can’t make sense of it, either. Then I don’t watch The Apprentice. Maybe it’s written in code.

* A picture of Frimpong with a pink stripe on his head, looking like one of his auntie’s slippers has flip-flopped on to. It looked like it might be a fake.

* A note from Frimpong26AFC — which I guess is the man himself. It says: ‘My mum said if i go pink she will disown me I’m really sorry i need somewhere to sleep can’t have me on the streets now can we.’

And I think, aaah, how sweet.

Next in this chain The big boss’s do. (Not the one you’re probably thinking of, though.)