Sk8er Boi

Dear James,

A few months ago I came across a page on Wikipedia called "development hell", about novels and projects which were optioned by Hollywood but never made it past the development stage. The page which has since been edited and no longer features what I'm going to tell you, which suggests it was all bollocks to begin with, but I obviously refuse to disbelieve anything I read on Wikipedia:

In 2003, Paramount Pictures optioned the popular Avril Lavigne song for adaptation into a feature film. As of April 2008, the film has apparently been abandoned.

Clearly, the film was abandoned when it became apparent that Avril Lavigne was only going to be famous for three months, but what a great idea for a film! Let's set the scene: He's a boy, she's girl. Bit obvious so far, but bear with us. He's a punk, she does ballet. Now we've got conflict, and if there's one thing I've learnt form my script-writing course, it's that conflict is the driving force behind all writing. Well, that and talented writers who get up before 11am. Back to Sk8er Boi: He wants her, she doesn't tell, secretly she wants him as well, but due to peer-pressure she ultimately fails to follow her heart. There's your fatal flaw and your first dramatic twist, when the girl with the stuck-up nose turns down our boy.

Moving on to Act 2, we're now five years later. Our stuck-up girl, in keeping with ladies of her type, has fathered a bastard and is resigned to a life of feeding said bastard and watching MTV. It is here that she sees the guy that she turned down, rocking up MTV. Imagine! MTV showing music instead of reality shows! She calls up her friends, who are such good friends that they already knew, bought tickets for his show and didn't bother to tell her. She "tags along" to the gig, because gigs are like parties and if you haven't got a ticket it's OK as long as your friends are all going. I'm beginning to see where the film development broke down.

In a flimsy Act 3, we find out that Sk8er Boi is now with... the narrator of the story, who has a magical ability to "see the soul that is inside". How she does this is not explained, but we are told that they "rock each others' world". And that's about it. Terrible idea for a film. I wonder how much they paid to option it. Mind you, this guy's into the idea:

Tale of Brave Ulysses

Eric Clapton & Cream - Tales Of Brave Ulysses (Live 1968)
by fagopy

Dear Daniel,

It was Bloomsday this week and it's the 105th anniversary of the original journey in Ulysses, if my maths is correct (and it was only vaguely correct between 1994 and 1997, so who knows how it is now...). I'm sure you would have been particularly interested in the translation lecture that was scheduled for last Monday. I never read Ulysses, largely thanks to a memory I have of you being vaguely scathing about it. Of course, looking back I now realise you were vaguely scathing about most things so I probably should have given it a whirl and made my own mind up...

To Cream, who were apparently on too many drugs back in 1968 to realise that, no matter how good he was at painting you album covers, your in-house artist shouldn't be relied on for lyrics...



Clapton admits that the song was heavily influenced by The Lovin' Spoonful, but it immmediately reminds me of the middle bit of Shangri-La by the Kinks which you posted at the start of the year. The original goes a little something like this (the middle section starts 3mins in).



Dear James,

I don't remember being vaguely scathing about Ulysses, but it's hard to remember amid so much scathing vagueness. I read it half way in the dark autumn of 98 before realising I hadn't understood a word. Tried again in 2005, didn't get past the first 100 pages. It's the kind of book you'd have on your bedside table, beneath many other books you've started and given up on.

I remember there's a Bloomsday here in Buenos Aires, somewhere in the bit where all the Anglo/Irish Argentinians live. They eat the three meals mentioned in Ulysses and spend the day reading the book. It would be nice to join them one day, but I don't know where they are and they're probably a boring bunch of old farts, but only in a vaguely scathing way.

PS. This is the 4th time you've mentioned Eric Clapton on the blog. Put a lid on it, yeah?

Afterglow

Dear James,

I'm going through a bit of a Small Faces renaissance at the moment, although since I was never really into the Small Faces back in the day it's really a Small Faces naissance. I started psychoanalysis yesterday and my therapist says it's perfectly all right for a man of my age to do this. You can read more about that and more at my new blog, here. It's bilingual, but if you just read the bits at the tops of each article, you shouldn't find it too taxing.

I've also been enjoying their "quirky, off-beat and very successful" Son of a Baker, which we're not allowed to embed (Why Small Faces? We could make you famous like we did with Little Boots!) However, the song appears to be about being a baker getting it together to bake some bread. Is this a metaphor? What other mod bands did songs about trades? Do The Who have a little-known b-side called The Artisans are Alright, about a guy whose girl is going out with a man who makes handcrafted nit-nacks? Do The Jam have a song about making jam for a small family business? Probably not.

An annoyance with youtube is that all the live Small Faces stuff is just them miming. There's even one with P.P. Arnold doing "Tin Soldier", except miming. And even then she only gets three lines.



Let the lady sing, Steve and Ronnie! Oh there we go, you already have:

There Will Be Soundtracks

Dear James,

The other day I finally got round to watching "There Will Be Blood". It had taken me a while to get round to watching it as it's a bit of blokes' film so I had to watch it while Josefina was out. Then she came back before I´d finished watching it, and I had to explain the whole story to her, as Daniel Day Lewis rained down blows on the false prophet's head. With a skittle. Spoiler Alert! Oh, too late.

One of the things I liked about the film is its soundtrack, composed by Jonny Greenwood, the one with the floppy fringe from Radiohead. Very tense, and almost scary. I pleased to see Josefina come home, as it was past midnight. It turns out Jonny Greenwood has previous in this department (writing orchestral stuff, not slightly scaring man-boys), as seen in his piece Popcorn Superhet Receiver. He's also composer-in-residence at the BBC. When did the BBC become so trendy? And when are they going to bring back Wogan?



As I may have mentioned elsewhere, Radiohead played here with Kraftwerk on March 24, "Memory Day" here in Argentina. That's the day when we try to remember where we put our keys and have a good old reminiscence about 80s' TV. Naturally, I didn't go. Far be it from me to stand in a cold field with a bunch of kids when I could be in the comfort of my own home, reminiscing about 80s' TV. But also because Radiohead and Kraftwerk are very much like Terry Wogan to me: something I like to admire from afar, but not something I've ever been inspired to investigate more deeply. Plus it was 300 pesos for tickets, so, you know. I don't believe this nonsense about musical lapels either, as much as I admire the "minimum fuss" concept:

Maps

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Maps
by Yeah-Yeah-Yeahs

Dear Daniel,

Morning!

My disappointment at how poorly the video for New in Town fits with the song led me to think about times when video and track are in perfect harmony. Driving later, Maps popped up on a shuffle. An example of a great song being improved by the video, I reckon, despite being performance-led i.e. often the laziest and cheapest option.

Dear James,

Afternoon! It was going to be morning, but it's a bank holiday and things just didn't work out that way. What's all this two posts in 24 hours business then? You'll disorientate the readers (now 86 unique users! See more details here. I spend more time looking at these stats than looking at the blog.)

Not overly keen on the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, primarily because I always think it might be a "yeah yeah yeah" in the excited Beatles sense, and it turns out to be a "yeah yeah yeah" in a bored sarcastic sense.