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Soundtracks of Our Lives week ending 27 July 2014 CE
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IanB
IanB
6761 posts

Edited Jul 28, 2014, 10:06
Re: Soundtracks of Our Lives week ending 27 July 2014 CE
Jul 28, 2014, 05:06
Haven't been doing this of late as I haven't had a lot of time, energy or good health for new music (or much interest in wading through the tide of new releases) but I have a few things (two books and a couple of dvds) to pass on that are kind of linked ....

Kathleen Hanna's The Punk Singer is recently out on dvd and is well worth seeing even if you have only a fleeting interest in the riot grrrl scene, Bikini Kill or Le Tigre. I have no clue how "true" it is but it makes a really interesting bookend to the equally enjoyable but far more deliberately art-house Fugazi film. Especially given that for such a physically, emotionally and politically committed singer she is significantly less pop hook-adverse than many of her contemporaries.

Viv Albertine's autobiography is highly recommended whether you are a Slits fan or not. Half of the book straddles the Glam / Punk era and half is focused on the everyday struggles of being 40/50/60 in post-Punk (rather than Post Punk) England. The Joanna Hogg movie Exhibition, in which Albertine stars, is also just out and well worth seeing if you can handle a movie about the inner lives of middle class artistes that moves at an Eric Rohmer-esque pace. The book and film are inter connected though one is fiction. I read the book first and that may have been a mistake as I had to keep reminding myself that she is not playing herself.

For both Hanna and Albertine it is the personal, everyday struggles and the unexpected shifts in events on which real lives turn that make art move forward. That rather than music being born out of some inexorable / inevitable procession towards greatness, peopled largely by otherwise disposable partners, collaborators and civilians. These are not run-of-the-mill rock hagiographies and better for it.

With that in mind I have to thank Riverman for the Takemitsu prompt a few months back. Going through his work in some detail has been a lot of fun and his wife Asaka's book about their lives together also brings some very welcome everyday detail into the supposedly rarefied world of being a "proper" composer. They sounds like a family you could go to the pub or a game or a gig or a movie with and, like Henze, Takemitsu's music seems to know no bounds set by theorists, academics or obscurantists. His film scores in particular are unimprovable.
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