Paul Weller: Studio 150

The brother must read the old blog once in a while as, after posting about The Jam back in December, I received a copy of that band’s lead singer Paul Weller‘s latest CD, Studio 150 for my Christmas pressy. A covers album, more Style Council cool than the anger of The Jam, it’s dandy dandy dandy. Weller covers “The Bottle” with a backing of 1974 Jethro Tull art-rock flute with some of the left over waa-waa guitar from Shaft that are floating around the universe: [wma, 3.0 MB]. His voice is perfect for this style and sounds about two decades of two packs a day from his pissed teen sound of “Eton Rifles” or “A Town Called Malice”. Recall thinking every time a new album by the Jam came out how his voice got closer and closer to singing. He’s pretty much there now.

Thinking about the voice of someone covering a Gordie Lightfoot tune is a bit strange for anyone exposed to CBC’s weekness for him but Weller’s approach to “Early Morning Rain” [wma, 3.6 MB] is right, not so much reverential as honest. I’ve always thought that Lightfoot’s 1960s Canadian camp keener voice made some of the good liquor and fast women ideas a little fake. Weller’s got crap on his boots and a hangover when singing this one to me. Nice touch on the pretty authentic Ontario folkie fiddle for a Londoner’s set recorded in Amsterdam. In fact, the instrumentation is some of the best stuff about this album. The organ in “Early Morning Rain” at the end, the clarinet in “One Way Road”, the flute and waa-waa in “The Bottle”, the disco strings in “Thinking of You”. The Modfather, he cleans up well in a three piece suit and is the only human who could get away with wearing a canary yellow Faire Isle sweater in the presence of Pete Townsend.

Hans really needs to buy this one.

Buy This Book


Walter the Farting Dog

This book, by William Kotzwinkle and Glenn Murray, is the apex of a certain type of subversive kid’s book that busts up our four and six year old. At the heart of its subversion, it makes Mom or Dad say “fart” about twenty-seven times before the light in the kids’ room goes off. It is perhaps the sort of book that creates two classes of people and, in a better world, would be a generally accepted gift for all occassions and a coffee table regular.

Conference

Being at a conference – even a good one like this – is like being on an elevator for two days, all looking in the same direction. The room we are sitting in is a bit something. Clearly a nod to generic euro-aristo, fake faded tapestries, gold trim on cream wall, far too many bevelled mirrors. The site of wedding parties – grannies have sat where I have sat ecstatic at the match and finding themselves surprisingly beyond their two wine limit. High school pals have proven themselves less than they were remembers. Five hundred bands that have not made it have not made it here. The room shows it bit. The aged gold upholstry has aged more than intended, gone pilly. Faux antique finish now looks less faux but not antique either. Beers have spilled on this carpet and been cleaned up again.


Many still keen early on

Conference orgaization has always interested me in in how it is as mannered and structed as a high Anglican mass. Who decided we need to meet like this? A few years ago I discussed creating a consultancy in disruptive converence giving, playing with the format, the book of common prayer, with the goal of making people think and learn. It only got as far as me saying and writing “zymurgy” whenever “synergy” was expected and even likely still heard.


Fast-talking man needs to get more information out after lunch is over

Two presenters present two ends of the scale. A hyper interested fast talker cannot get all his ideas out. He sounds like a bobolink, his words falling upon each other. He should attempt multiple information streams, speaking about one thing, his power point slides working on another theme, the hand-outs giving more on something else. He could be flanked by two blue-glow screens on different subjects, his pace and volume steadily increasing. Another speaker is from MegCo and he is grabbing us with the topic “what is outsourcing” – he is a good speaker but someone else, a committee perhaps, wrote his script, told him to run TV ads as part of the presentation. Apparently, “key consultants say that outsourcing has great growth potential” – dandy. Twice he refers to his power point lap top as being “McGivered” and says that we have to bear with him. How would disruptive conference consulting deal with this moment? Someone in the crowd might laugh too much at the ads and say out loud “hahaha – I saw that on TV!” If the speaker is a “recognized leader” does that make those in attendence at the conference “recognized followers”?


Friday afternoon the seats start to empty

I am a fidgetter. I fidget. I move to the back of the room so I can get up fuss with my papers, go get a juice when the speaker is not on an area that applies to me like the jurisdiction of a tribunal I cannot reach. By the end of Friday afternoon, even the speaker jokes about we who remain.

Iraqis Vote

Good to see that Iraqis are voting in big numbers. One inevitable – and, frankly, somewhat cliché – election day event occurred:

Further north in the Kurdistan town of Salamanca, CNN’s Nic Robertson reported seeing a 90-year-old woman being taken to a booth in a wheelbarrow. Others came on crutches to cast their ballot.

Something tells me there was a grannie in a wheelbarrow story out of the first elections in Afghanistan, Cambodia and South Africa as well. It would have been interesting to find out why their kids are such deadbeats, as you can’t exactly wheel barrow yourself to a polling booth. Can’s the UN organize a “Taxis for Grannies” bureau. First you would have to register your intention to be wheelbarrowed, then actually produce the barrow in question in order to receive a taxi chit. I would, of course, accept the first commissionership for the bureau along with the apartments in Geneva which would go along with it.