The Warmth of the Sun

Been avoiding the TV all day. Been doing things to get my mind off of …

Been playing The Beach Boys ‘The Warmth Of The Sun’ a lot today. Just because. It sounds beautiful; Brian was right when he said he knew he and Dennis had something spiritual going when they wrote and recorded that song. Go listen to it right now.

I have a huge pile of CDs sitting on my desk to listen to and review, but all I want to play these days is old Beach Boys records. Old Beach Boys singles specifically. I made my own ‘Endless Summer’ MP3 playlist the other day, and it’s been playing almost non-stop.

I managed to interrupt Endless Summer long enough tonight to play the new Butterflies of Love album ‘The New Patient’. It’s divine. It’s on Fortuna Pop. And it’s divine. It can’t be said enough.

Also divine is the new Russian Futurists album ‘Let’s Get Ready To Crumble’. Maybe I love it because it actually sounds not unlike the Beach Boys. If The Beach Boys were enamoured with ‘80s electro-pop and wanted to make records that sounded kind of like China Crisis’ finest Pop moments. File, inevitably, next to Magnetic Fields and Future Bible Heroes, if only because it’s really that good. Really. Even if the cover is horrid.


posted by duke harringay at 8:28 PM

Big Sky

Autumn skies are the best. Is it autumn yet? I think we’re just nudging our noses into it. The roads in Devon certainly are showing signs of the seasons turning away from summer; the hillsides are no longer a homogenous green but are dappled lightly with ochres and russet tones; the banks are no longer dotted with flowers, but instead by their skeletons, reaching up like Pompeii hands to the sky. The fields are no longer all honey golden, but are instead already turning the deep red of the Devon soil, a colour I love for its richness.

August, or more specifically, September skies are the best. September skies always seem to be the biggest skies. I love the bruised clouds, pregnant with rain, that roll in across the hillsides and approach from over the sea. I love the cerulean punctuation between those bruises, and the white wisps left over from August.

Brighton was full of Big Skies at the weekend. The clouds were awesome, hovering over the whiteness of the hotels along the front, and out above the derelict skeleton of the West Pier; ever changing but always dramatic. And driving west, driving home on Sunday evening, the sun slipping fast beyond Salisbury Plain, the clouds like blueberries hung from heaven. Or nearer to Dorchester, clouds rising tall, dark and mysterious like that giant rabbit Bill Drummond kept seeing in the Bunnymen’s album cover photos; the presence he convinced us all was in fact Echo.


posted by duke harringay at 8:47 PM

I’m glad that Everett and Charlotte decided to get married on the first weekend of the new school term. Aside from the unfortunate result of meaning we were unable to stay on long enough for the evening’s party, it nevertheless got us out of Exeter and Devon at a time when we’d otherwise have no doubt fallen into the depression of considering the weeks of joyless work stretching ahead of us.

So instead we headed out of school Friday afternoon and hit the road out through East Devon and into Dorset, from thence through to Sussex, and Brighton shortly after sunset… leaving (nearly) all thoughts of schools and education behind.

We were kind of concerned about Brighton to be honest. Our previous visit, ten or so years ago during my first ever half term holiday, had been blighted by torrential rain and gales. We hid out from the worst of the weather in The Bath Arms, and went to a theatre to watch that movie about Columbus discovering The Americas. We couldn’t even get onto the sea front because it was so hideous. We would have been blown away. Also, not being really ones for clubbing (at that time or still now), we weren’t sure exactly what Brighton had to offer…

Thankfully the weather was much kinder to us this time, and Brighton felt on the whole like a delight. Sure, perhaps a slightly too-sure-of-itself haunt for uber-hipsters, or alternatively a gaudy Mecca for mainstream squares and trashy hen-parties, but what the hell… maybe it’s that peculiar juxtaposition that gives it the appeal. I don’t know.

I do know that in the ten years since we were there last, a lot seems to have changed. There seem to be more hip bars, restaurants, cafes; there seem to be record stores on every corner and a hundred and one stores selling the same pseudo-retro fashions. It’s all a bit much for me, but then I’m getting on a bit really. I mean, I’ve never really known what kind of clothes I ought to wear; I’m just not really all that good with fashion at all really. I mean, I have to admit that I have issues with the notion of eternal ‘youth’, or that ‘adult babies’ thing. I don’t really think I want to see 40 year olds carrying Hello Kitty bags, for example. Secretly I think I yearn for a time when all the men wore suits and all the women wore dresses. Secretly I think I actually rather like the idea of uniformity with freedom for expression in the details. And actually it’s not so secret. I think I’ve mentioned it before… I think that when I turn 40 (no real reason for picking that number other than it seems a convenient punctuation mark in life) I’ll empty my wardrobe and outfit it instead with a collection of suits and smart shirts. Italian styled suits… well, Italian styled as in Italian ‘50s/’60s style, as in Roman Holiday and la Dolce Vita. Or maybe US ‘40s. And I’ll wear hats, and be just like ‘ole Bogey as Marlowe.

Possibly.

Everett’s brother (I assume it was his brother – he looked very like Everett) looked super smart at the wedding in a hat. ‘I want to look that good’, I thought to myself, although really I know that I don’t get on too well with hats because my head is too small. Oh well. I wonder how small headed men got on in the ‘40s? Did they suffer years of feeling awkward because they had to wear hats? Or did they just not think about it? I guess they had other things to worry about. Like a world war and stuff. I don’t expect fashion was a priority in their thoughts.

There were lots of sharp looking folks at the wedding. I felt kind of square. But then I always do. Always have. I guess always will, and that’s just fine.

Brighton at least has a decent comics’ store in David’s Comics. At least it’s miles better than anything that Exeter has to offer, by which I really mean it isn’t solely stocked with Manga and Fantasy stuff, and I could pick up those Dan Clowes titles I’ve been after for a while (Velvet Glove) and recently (20th Century Eightball and Caricature). Also picked up issue one of Stupid Comics, and Seth’s It’s a Good Life If You Don’t Weaken, which I’d been hankering after at least since the start of the year. I guess these titles are like the Mainstream of comics, but I don’t really care… is Dan Clowes the, uh, Radiohead of Comics? Or can’t you really draw parallels between the two industries/media? I’m kind of hoping you can’t. I wouldn’t want to be thought of as a Radiohead fan in any context.

I don’t know if I’ve said it before, but it really feels good not drinking these days. Brighton in particular was better for not drinking. As I sat on the beach Sunday morning, enjoying the warmth and softness of the air, I thought how miserable it would all have been with the inevitable hangover from a previous night drinking… instead everything felt fresh, clear, wonderfully alive. I never thought I’d say this, either. I never thought I’d say I don’t miss having a drink… getting drunk. Whatever. I don’t mean to sound like some square proselytizing about the evils of alcohol; I just feel much better without it.

I finished off Paul Williams’ How Deep Is The Ocean when I was in Brighton. In fact I finished it whilst sitting on a blue sofa in a bar called Sidewinder, just round the corner from our hotel. It was Sunday, around midday, and we were sat under a collection of little drawings that looked just like the ones I was drawing twelve or so years ago when I was just graduating from Art School. It was quite strange seeing them. They really were so like my own. But The Beach Boys book… yes… YES… YES!! What an amazing book. The way Paul Williams writes about music in that book is so gorgeous, it just made me wish I had all my Beach Boys albums with me and could play them non-stop all day and night. There are some terrific points made in the book, specifically some late ‘60s talk about the nature of time and the meaningless of the traditional notion of linear ‘progression’ that made me draw breath: post-modernism in the late ‘60s! Cool. There’s loads more of interest of course, especially if you even vaguely like the Beach Boys, and I know I’m hopelessly late in coming to this whole scene, but what the hell… How Deep Is The Ocean is right up there as one of my favourite music books ever.


posted by duke harringay at 8:46 PM