How sweet time feels
when it’s too late

and you don’t have to follow
her swinging hips

all the way into
your dying imagination

From ‘Book of Longing‘

The Gate Arts and Community Centre is definitely quite a strange venue for a Throwing Muses gig – a  converted 19th Century Prebytarian Church in Roath, Cardiff with many fixtures and fittings still in place. Main theatre/hall is on the first floor:

The Gate set up for the Throwing Muses, 8th November 2011

Quite small and intimate venue, capacity of around 300, I think. Great little Cafe Bar on the ground floor with many bottled real ales, so no complaints there. We took the wrong route up to the hall – ended up going up in a lift and emerging in the band’s ‘backstage’ room (behind the door to the left of the stage in the picture) amongst Kristin Hersh and the band

The piano in the picture is not for the Muses but for their support act Teitur, a singer-songwriter from the Faroe Islands. Very laid back with long, meandering chats between his songs. Stayed sitting on a pew for his set, but there was no way I wanted to remain there for the Muses and moved to the floor. Only complaint is that the stage is very low – not easy to see over the heads, too old to push my way to the front!

Throwing Muses on stage at The Gate, Cardiff

Set list the Throwing Muses played was

Soul Soldier
Shimmer
Garoux Des Larmes
Speed and Sleep
Bright Yellow Gun
Start
Shark
Hazing
Tar Kissers
Say Goodbye
Limbo
Furious
Vicky’s Box
Bea
[Encore]
Hate My Way
Pearl
Mania

On stage for about an hour and a quarter, excellent performance which got better as it progressed, but would have liked longer From the sound point of view, musically all very sharp but from where I was standing Kristin’s vocals could have been a little more prominent, again particularly for the first few songs.

Kristin Hersh

Few more pictures – quality not too brilliant I’m afraid – small camera, dark venue, audience in the way!

Kristin Hersh, David Narcizo

Kristin Hersh, David Narcizo, Bernard Georges

Throwing Muses, The Gate, Cardiff, 8th November 2011

Fantastic that Throwing Muses are touring again. Will be going to

More on this later!

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2011, which was ultimately won by Julian Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending - deservedly!

Snowdrops, like Barnes’ novel, is not a long book. I thought it was quite a surprising Booker nomination – fairly predictable story, simply written and pleasant to read, but I couldn’t find any real depth or drama in it. A low-key thriller tale with a low-key ending. I probably appreciated the evocative descriptions of Moscow and Russia in winter more than the story itself.

A worthwhile read to pass a couple of hours, but I can’t see myself re-reading it – which I probably will do with The Sense of an Ending.

Incidentally, the Kindle edition had numerous typographic errors in it – more so than I’ve noticed in any other recent premium priced Kindle book I’ve purchased.

Browsing through a book of poems by D.H. Lawrence last night and came across this, which I’m sure I’ve read before and forgotten about. It may suit the ethos of this site!

Wages

The wages of work is cash.
The wages of cash is want more cash.
The wages of want more cash is vicious competition.
The wages of vicious competition is — the world we live in.

The work-cash-want circle is the viciousest circle
that ever turned men into fiends.

Earning a wage is a prison occupation
and a wage-earner is a sort of gaol-bird.
Earning a salary is a prison overseer’s job,
a gaoler instead of a gaol-bird.

Living on your income is strolling grandly outside the prison
in terror lest you have to go in. And since the work-prison covers
almost every scrap of the living earth, you stroll up and down
on a narrow beat, about the same as a prisoner taking his exercise.

This is called universal freedom.

There don’t seem to be that many books of Lawrence’s poetry in print at the moment – mine is an old Penguin copy of D.H. Lawrence – Selected Poems. I presume Wages is in the currently available Complete Poems of D.H.Lawrence (Wordsworth Poetry) though.

It’s been quite a long time since I read any of Kafka’s novels. Metropole by Hungarian author Ferenc Karinthy was a timely reminder that I probably should revisit them. A central character thrust unawares into an unidentifiable situation and left isolated and lonely floundering for explanations. That’s The Trial and that’s Metropole. Rather than being embedded in the pseudo-legal mire of The Trial, the protagonist of Metropole is whisked away to a completely alien (not extra-terrestrial!) city and left to his own devices amongst an indifferent population. In spite of his occupation as a Professor of Etymology, the main obstacle to his resolving the situation is the indecipherable language spoken around him…

Very readable and recommended!

Morrissey, refusing the spectacle

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Posted By ianam to ianam on blogger on 10/03/2011 07:11:00 PM

New Amazon customised bookmark:

http://amzn.to/directbook

Now, everyone start using it!

Suddenly got a flurry of new users registered on this blog. Who are you? Spam or genuine – make a comment somewhere so I can see!

Just started contributing to seti@home again after a long break of nearly five years (I think!). Need to look into what other distributed computing projects are now up and running using the BOINC client. Must be some other worthwhile ones!

Posted via Blackberry and http://nntk.net/

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Posted By ianam to ianam on blogger on 4/08/2011 03:37:00 PM