Film, TV, and Theatre

The Two Ronnies’ Mastermind Sketch (1980)

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Like More­cambe and Wise before them, the com­e­dy part­ner­ship of Ron­nie Bark­er and Ron­nie Cor­bett as the Two Ron­nies was one made in heav­en. Two strik­ing­ly affa­ble guys with nat­u­ral­ly fun­ny bones, remark­able chem­istry, and an obvi­ous mutu­al deep friend­ship, the Two Ron­nies’ lega­cy has hap­pi­ly been besmirched by nei­ther time nor scan­dal. Their TV show was a huge­ly pop­u­lar fea­ture of Sat­ur­day night enter­tain­ment from 1971 to 1987 and every­one grow­ing up dur­ing this peri­od will remem­ber their shows with great fond­ness, and per­haps con­jure a men­tal pic­ture of the Ron­nies as news­read­ers, read­ing spoof news items and end­ing each show with:

Cor­bett: That’s all we’ve got time for, so it’s “Good­night” from me.

Bark­er: And it’s “Good­night” from him.

Both: Good­night!

The Ron­nies had met each oth­er back in 1963 and first appeared on tele­vi­sion togeth­er in 1966 in The Frost Report with David Frost and John Cleese. How­ev­er, their big break occurred as a result of an eleven-minute tech­ni­cal hitch at a BAFTA awards cer­e­mo­ny at the Lon­don Pal­la­di­um in 1970, in which they filled in, unpre­pared and unscript­ed, with such aplomb that two audi­ence mem­bers, Bill Cot­ton and Sir Paul Fox (the Head of Light Enter­tain­ment and the Con­troller of BBC1 respec­tive­ly), offered them a show on the BBC!

The Two Ron­nies show was filled with sketch­es, either stand­alone or fea­tur­ing recur­ring char­ac­ters, and often involv­ing clever word-play (their Four Can­dles sketch being a case in point). Many of the jokes revolved around Corbett’s lack of height, with the self-dep­re­ca­to­ry Ron­nie C deliv­er­ing many of them him­self:

Bark­er: This next part does suit Ron­nie C. right down to the ground.

Cor­bett: Mind you, that’s not far is it?”

The Ron­nies also had their own solo sec­tion: Ron­nie B usu­al­ly appear­ing as the head of some ridicu­lous­ly-named organ­i­sa­tion, and Ron­nie C deliv­er­ing a dis­cur­sive mono­logue to cam­era from his famous arm­chair. Each series also had an ongo­ing com­ic ser­i­al fea­tur­ing pri­vate detec­tives Charley Far­ley and Pig­gy Mal­one (remem­ber The Phan­tom Rasp­ber­ry Blow­er of Old Lon­don Town?), giv­ing ample scope to guests such as Diana Dors and Kate O’Mara to ham it up.

My favourite sketch though is this clas­sic from 1980, the hilar­i­ous Mas­ter­mind sketch, which you can enjoy below and then per­haps go on to read the tran­script of the revised, expand­ed (and in some places even cor­rect­ed) ver­sion which was per­formed as part of their 1983 Lon­don Pal­la­di­um res­i­den­cy.

Tran­script:

MAGNUS: And so to our final con­tender. Your name, please?

SMITHERS: Good evening.

MAGNUS: Thank you. In the first heat your cho­sen sub­ject was Answer­ing Ques­tions Before They Were Asked. This time you have cho­sen to Answer the Ques­tion Before Last each time. Is that cor­rect?

SMITHERS: Char­lie Smithers.

MAGNUS: And your time starts now. What is palaeon­tol­ogy?

SMITHERS: Yes, absolute­ly cor­rect.

MAGNUS: Cor­rect. What is the name of the direc­to­ry that lists mem­bers of the peer­age?

SMITHERS: A study of old fos­sils.

MAGNUS: Cor­rect. Who are David Owen and Sir Geof­frey Howe?

SMITHERS: Burke’s.

MAGNUS: Cor­rect. What’s the dif­fer­ence between a don­key and an ass?

SMITHERS: One’s a Social Demo­c­rat, the oth­er’s a mem­ber of the Cab­i­net.

MAGNUS: Cor­rect. Com­plete the quo­ta­tion, “To be or not to be…”

SMITHERS: They’re both the same.

MAGNUS: Cor­rect. What is Bernard Man­ning famous for?

SMITHERS: That is the ques­tion.

MAGNUS: Cor­rect. Who is the present Arch­bish­op of Can­ter­bury?

SMITHERS: He’s a fat man who tells blue jokes.

MAGNUS: Cor­rect. What do peo­ple kneel on in church?

SMITHERS: The Most Rev­erend Robert Run­cie.

MAGNUS: Cor­rect. What do taran­tu­las prey on?

SMITHERS: Has­socks.

MAGNUS: Cor­rect. What would you use a rip­cord to pull open?

SMITHERS: Large flies.

MAGNUS: Cor­rect. What did Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe always claim to wear in bed?

SMITHERS: A para­chute.

MAGNUS: Cor­rect. What was the next new TV sta­tion to go on the air after Chan­nel Four?

SMITHERS: Chanel Num­ber Five.

MAGNUS: Cor­rect. What do we nor­mal­ly asso­ciate with Bed­lam?

SMITHERS: Break­fast tele­vi­sion.

MAGNUS: Cor­rect. What are jock­straps?

SMITHERS: Nut­cas­es.

MAGNUS: Cor­rect. What would a jock­ey use a stir­rup for?

SMITHERS: An ath­let­ic sup­port.

MAGNUS: Cor­rect. Arthur Scargill is well known for what?

SMITHERS: He puts his foot in it.

MAGNUS: Cor­rect. Who was the famous clown who made mil­lions laugh with his fun­ny hair?

SMITHERS: The leader of the minework­ers’ union.

MAGNUS: Cor­rect. What would a dec­o­ra­tor use meth­yl­ene chlo­rides to make?

SMITHERS: Coco.

MAGNUS: Cor­rect. What did Hen­ri Toulouse-Lautrec do?

SMITHERS: Paint strip­pers.

MAGNUS: Cor­rect. What is Dean Mar­tin famous for?

SMITHERS: Is he an artist?

MAGNUS: Yes — what kind of artist?

SMITHERS: Erm… pass.

MAGNUS: Yes, that’s near enough. What make of vehi­cle is the stan­dard Lon­don bus?

SMITHERS: A Singer.

MAGNUS: Cor­rect. In 1892, Bran­don Thomas wrote a famous long-run­ning Eng­lish farce — what is it?

SMITHERS: British Ley­land.

MAGNUS: Cor­rect. Com­plete the fol­low­ing quo­ta­tion about Shirley Williams: “Her heart may be in the right place but her…”

SMITHERS: “Charley’s Aunt”.

MAGNUS: Cor­rect, and you have scored 22 and no pass­es!

The Two Ron­nies
Poetry

Alexander Pope’s An Essay On Criticism (1711)

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When it comes to lit­er­ary “wits”, two names are often bandied about, name­ly Samuel John­son and Oscar Wilde, but hon­ourable men­tion should be reserved for a ver­i­ta­ble club of wits that thrived in ear­ly 18th cen­tu­ry Lon­don. Found­ed in 1714, The Scriblerus Club was an infor­mal asso­ci­a­tion of writ­ers com­pris­ing promi­nent fig­ures of the Eng­lish lit­er­ary scene such as the satirists Jonathan Swift, Alexan­der Pope and John Gay. One of the club’s pur­pos­es was to ridicule pre­ten­tious writ­ing of the era which they did through the per­sona of a fic­ti­tious lit­er­ary hack, Mar­t­i­nus Scriblerus. They were the Pri­vate Eye of their time.

Swift would become famous for his 1726 prose satire Gulliver’s Trav­els; John Gay for The Beggar’s Opera in 1728; and Alexan­der Pope for a series of eru­dite mock-hero­ic nar­ra­tive poet­ry includ­ing The Rape of the Lock, The Dun­ci­ad, and An Essay on Crit­i­cism. Despite its dry title, the lat­ter was indeed poet­ry, one of Pope’s first major poems, in fact, and one which had already been pub­lished pri­or to the com­ing togeth­er of the Scriblerati. It is the source of the famous quo­ta­tions “To err is human; to for­give, divine”, “A lit­tle learn­ing is a dan­g’rous thing”, and “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread”, which is a pret­ty impres­sive set of addi­tions to the lex­i­con for just one poem.

An Essay on Crit­i­cism was com­posed in hero­ic cou­plets (pairs of rhyming lines of iambic pen­tame­ter) and writ­ten in the man­ner of the Roman satirist Horace (65–8 BCE), known for his play­ful crit­i­cism of the many and var­ied social vices of Roman soci­ety through his light-heart­ed odes. Essen­tial­ly, Pope’s poem is a Hor­a­t­ian-style verse essay offer­ing advice about the chief lit­er­ary ideals of his age and cri­tiquing writ­ers and crit­ics who failed to attain his (evi­dent­ly pret­ty high) stan­dards.

Pope’s open­ing cou­plets con­tend that bad crit­i­cism is even worse than bad writ­ing, thus sig­nalling that even crit­ics should be on their guard, not just pure writ­ers. Dare I say, it has an ele­ment of con­tem­po­rary “rap bat­tles” or “roasts” with its gen­tle rib­bing of infe­ri­or writ­ers; it’s not too hard to imag­ine a mod­ern-day ren­der­ing of these lines, per­haps with a mike-drop­ping flour­ish at the end:

‘Tis hard to say, if greater Want of Skill
Appear in Writ­ing or in Judg­ing ill;
But, of the two, less dan­g’rous is th’ Offence,
To tire our Patience, than mis-lead our Sense:
Some few in that, but Num­bers err in this,
Ten Cen­sure wrong for one who Writes amiss;
A Fool might once him­self alone expose,
Now One in Verse makes many more in Prose.

Pope points out com­mon faults in poet­ry such as set­tling for easy and clichéd rhymes:

While they ring round the same unvary’d Chimes,
With sure Returns of still expect­ed Rhymes.
Where-e’er you find the cool­ing West­ern Breeze,
In the next Line, it whis­pers thro’ the Trees;
If Crys­tal Streams with pleas­ing Mur­murs creep,
The Read­er’s threat­en’d (not in vain) with Sleep.

The cou­plets are impec­ca­bly and relent­less­ly deliv­ered, 372 in all, each rapped out in that steady da-dum da-dum da-dum da-dum da-dum iambic pen­tame­ter. Pope only breaks out of iambic pen­tame­ter once, and that’s delib­er­ate:

A need­less Alexan­drine ends the song,
That, like a wound­ed snake, drags its slow length along

The sec­ond line of this cou­plet is itself an Alexan­drine, which is iambic hexa­m­e­ter, a form that Pope evi­dent­ly regard­ed as laboured and inel­e­gant with that extra da-dum and which this line demon­strates (ged­dit?). The whole piece is a mas­ter­class in poet­ry, and all writ­ten when Pope was just twen­ty-two, so take that, pre­ten­tious and turgid writ­ers of the 1700s!

Alexan­der Pope
Music

Sam & Dave’s Soul Man (1967)

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In the six­ties, just as Berry Gordy up in Detroit was dri­ving the Motown sound, down in Mem­phis the most influ­en­tial cre­ator and pro­mot­er of that crossover of blues/soul/pop music known as the Mem­phis sound was Stax Records, found­ed in 1957 by Jim Stew­art and Estelle Axton (Stewart/Axton = Stax). Unprece­dent­ed in that time of racial ten­sion and strife in the South, Stax’s staff and artists were eth­ni­cal­ly inte­grat­ed, includ­ing their leg­endary house band Book­er T & the MGs, who played on hun­dreds of record­ings by artists includ­ing Wil­son Pick­ett, Otis Red­ding, and Bill With­ers.

Book­er T & the MGs c. 1967 (L–R): Don­ald “Duck” Dunn, Book­er T. Jones (seat­ed), Steve Crop­per, Al Jack­son Jr.

Anoth­er suc­cess­ful Stax act was Sam & Dave, made up of har­mo­nious­ly-com­pat­i­ble soul singers Samuel Moore and David Prater, and today let’s enjoy their 1967 record­ing, Soul Man, writ­ten by Isaac Hayes and David Porter. Hayes had found the inspi­ra­tion for the song in the tur­moil of the Civ­il Rights Move­ment. In July 1967 he had watched a tele­vi­sion news­cast about the after­math of the 12th Street riot in Detroit, Michi­gan, and not­ed that black res­i­dents had daubed the word “soul” onto their build­ings in the hope that the riot­ers would pass them by – anal­o­gous to the bib­li­cal sto­ry of the Passover, it was their way of say­ing “Please don’t wreck my build­ing, I’m one of you” (so to speak). The idea mor­phed in Hayes’ mind into an expres­sion of pride and defi­ance: “I’m a soul man!”.

The MGs were draft­ed in to record the song, with the help of horns from that oth­er reli­able Stax house band, the Mar-Keys, and the result was an instant smash that would enter the Gram­my Hall of Fame. Sam and Dave take it in turns to sing the vers­es, join­ing in togeth­er for the cho­rus­es, and com­ple­ment­ing each oth­er seam­less­ly. One of Steve Cropper’s gui­tar licks is intro­duced by the excla­ma­tion “Play it, Steve”, a nuance that was repeat­ed some years lat­er when Soul Man was includ­ed as one of the soul clas­sics paid trib­ute to by the mak­ers of 1980’s The Blues Broth­ers movie (in which Crop­per makes an appear­ance).

Here’s a TV appear­ance by the duo singing Soul Man (sans Crop­per and thus sans the “Play it Steve” snip­pet but hey…) to an audi­ence that does­n’t quite yet know how to move to the rhythm!

Sam and Dave

 

Art

Wassily Kandinsky’s Yellow-Red-Blue (1925)

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My appre­ci­a­tion of art spans many cen­turies. I’ve mar­velled at the Gre­co-Romano art of the clas­si­cal world; con­tem­plat­ed fres­coes adorn­ing Byzan­tine monas­ter­ies and church­es in Turkey, Arme­nia and Cyprus; spent hours in gal­leries mus­ing over paint­ings from the Medieval and Renais­sance peri­ods, through the eras of Baroque, Neo­clas­si­cism and Roman­ti­cism to late nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry Impres­sion­ism and on to…well to be hon­est, when we hit the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, my enthu­si­asm starts to wane. Sure, Art Deco was a bona fide, aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing and inno­v­a­tive art move­ment, and Cubism had its place, but when I start to con­sid­er Sur­re­al­ism, Min­i­mal­ism and Abstract Expres­sion­ism, I’m less impressed.

Sure, sure: it’s emi­nent­ly pos­si­ble to sit and enjoy a mon­u­men­tal and vibrant Jack­son Pol­lock can­vas in New York’s Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art — and I have done — and there will always be excep­tion­al and intrigu­ing art to be found through­out the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. But my con­tention is that over­all these tend to be out­liers, and that in amongst the gems there is a broad seam of dis­tinct­ly uncap­ti­vat­ing art. You can enjoy a Mark Rothko but can you real­ly be cap­ti­vat­ed by it? I can’t. And don’t get me start­ed on the tru­ly mod­ern “art” of the last four decades, the likes of Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, the Chap­man Broth­ers, Mar­tin Creed et al…please!

Hav­ing said that, I’m going to give a free pass to one of the head hon­chos of Abstract Expres­sion­ism, the Russ­ian painter and art the­o­rist Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky (1866–1944). With Kandin­sky I can embrace the new cen­tu­ry vibe and be inspired by all that art the­o­ry behind colour and form. Kandin­sky wrote volu­mi­nous­ly about art the­o­ry: his writ­ing in The Blue Rid­er Almanac and the 1910 trea­tise On the Spir­i­tu­al in Art were bold affir­ma­tions that all forms of art can reach a lev­el of spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. He found­ed the short-lived but influ­en­tial Blue Rid­er group (Der Blaue Reit­er) with like-mind­ed artists such as August Macke, Franz Marc, and Albert Bloch, who exper­i­ment­ed bold­ly with colour, lines and form, and gave pri­or­i­ty to spon­tane­ity and impro­vi­sa­tion.

Kandin­sky’s paint­ings are expres­sive explo­sions of colours, lines and shapes that have an extra­or­di­nary force and musi­cal qual­i­ty about them. Kandin­sky recog­nised that there were impor­tant con­nec­tions between music and abstract art: music is abstract by nature and does not try to rep­re­sent the exte­ri­or world but instead express­es the imme­di­ate inner feel­ings of the soul. That is why Kandin­sky referred to his works as “com­po­si­tions”. I get it. I seem to remem­ber hav­ing this com­po­si­tion — 1925’s Yel­low-Red-Blue (Gelb-Rot-Blau) — on my kitchen wall in the nineties, and, to extend the musi­cal metaphor, I find it rather jazzy!

Kandin­sky, Yel­low-Red-Blue
Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky
Music

The Eagles’ Hotel California (1977)

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Decem­ber 1976 saw the release of the Eagles’ Hotel Cal­i­for­nia album, with its epony­mous sin­gle released in the fol­low­ing Feb­ru­ary. This was right in the mid­dle of a sem­i­nal time for me in terms of musi­cal flow­er­ing (the release of the records strad­dled my 14th birth­day) and it hit the spot just as sure­ly as songs by the likes of Deep Pur­ple, Led Zep­pelin, Cat Stevens and David Bowie had in the year or two pre­vi­ous­ly. I loved the way the song told a sto­ry (a slight­ly dis­com­fit­ing, odd sto­ry at that) and how it auda­cious­ly includ­ed an exquis­ite and lengthy gui­tar solo (2 min­utes and 12 sec­onds) that would become the bane of radio pro­duc­ers bred to keep musi­cal offer­ings short and sweet (the whole song is six and a half min­utes long).

Hotel Cal­i­for­nia was the Eagles’ fifth album and they were already the biggest band in Amer­i­ca when they embarked on its record­ing. Sad­ly, per­son­al rela­tion­ships in the band had already bro­ken down (a repeat­ing theme in the life of the band, despite which, amaz­ing­ly, the band endured); nonethe­less, per­son­al enmi­ties nev­er stood in the way of the band cre­at­ing ground-break­ing music. Gui­tarist Don Felder came up with the Hotel Cal­i­for­nia riff, which was then devel­oped by Don Hen­ley and Glenn Frey. Frey’s lyrics were inspired by an attempt to “expand our lyri­cal hori­zons and try to take on some­thing in the realm of the bizarre, like Steely Dan had done”.

He cer­tain­ly nailed it: the brood­ing imagery around this fad­ed hotel in the mid­dle of nowhere (the hotel in The Shin­ing about sums it up in my head) is mag­nif­i­cent­ly evoca­tive and the lyrics are pep­pered with killer lines. I can­not con­ceive of a bet­ter line, giv­en the pre­ced­ing lyrics and lead­ing into the icon­ic gui­tar solo, than “you can check out any time you like but you can nev­er leave”. Then again, have there ever been two open­ing lines – “On a dark desert high­way, cool wind in my hair” – so evoca­tive of a place and milieu? I could go on (“some dance to remem­ber, some dance to for­get” et al), but let’s instead just enjoy the whole piece and its won­der­ful duelling gui­tars at this live per­for­mance at Largo, Mary­land, in 1977.

The Eagles
Film, TV, and Theatre

John Boorman’s Deliverance (1972)

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At my school we were encour­aged to join one or more of the many extracur­ric­u­lar clubs and soci­eties, and I recall a bewil­der­ing array of choic­es from archery to play­ing the zither (not real­ly, but it begins with Z and illus­trates the point). I chose Film Club because it didn’t involve any more effort than sit­ting in the lec­ture the­atre and watch­ing a movie, and this seemed like a fair extracur­ric­u­lar activ­i­ty to me. Some stu­dents must have been in con­trol of the actu­al film selec­tion because I can’t imag­ine any of our teach­ers sug­gest­ing 1975’s vio­lent­ly dystopi­an sci-fi flick Roller­ball (set in the then-dis­tant future of 2018) or 1972’s grit­ty and nudi­ty-con­tain­ing mob movie, Prime Cut, yet both these movies fig­ure promi­nent­ly in my Film Club mem­o­ries. Anoth­er movie that some­how made the cut was Deliv­er­ance.

Deliv­er­ance was a land­mark 1972 movie pro­duced and direct­ed by British film­mak­er John Boor­man, and chron­i­cles the sto­ry of a group of city slick­ers embark­ing on a canoe­ing adven­ture in the remote wilder­ness of north­ern Geor­gia. Burt Reynolds plays Lewis, the most sea­soned out­doors­man and leader of the group, with Jon Voight play­ing his friend Ed, and new­com­ers Ned Beat­ty and Ron­nie Cox appro­pri­ate­ly play­ing novices Bob­by and Drew. Unfor­tu­nate­ly for all con­cerned, things don’t turn out quite the way they were planned.

The film is not­ed for the music scene near the begin­ning, in which one of the vis­i­tors, Drew, plays Duel­ing Ban­jos on gui­tar with a gift­ed ban­jo-pick­ing coun­try boy, played by fif­teen-year old local Bil­ly Red­den (whose large head and almond-shaped eyes ticked the box­es for Boor­man look­ing for a char­ac­ter sug­gest­ing an “in-bred from the back woods”, with all due respect to Red­den). Red­den didn’t actu­al­ly play the ban­jo and wore a spe­cial shirt that allowed a real ban­jo play­er to hide behind him!

Duelling Ban­jos

Deliv­er­ance is also noto­ri­ous for the scene lat­er on in the movie when the adven­tur­ers are now deep in woods coun­try, and in which Bob­by and Ed encounter two shot­gun-wield­ing moun­tain men. These men turn out to be the last peo­ple you would want to meet in such a remote set­ting, and they tie Ed to a tree by his neck whilst one of them puts Bob­by through a gru­elling and humil­i­at­ing ordeal: he is com­pelled to strip down and then to “squeal like a pig” as his attack­er tor­ments him, before final­ly being raped. It’s grim view­ing, and only relieved when Reynolds’ capa­ble char­ac­ter Lewis hap­pens upon the scene and comes to the res­cue (if a lit­tle late for Bob­by) by killing the rapist with his bow and arrow and induc­ing the sec­ond hill­bil­ly to scarp­er into the woods. The rest of the film involves the pan­icked reac­tions of all con­cerned and the dra­ma of their attempts to escape back to civil­i­sa­tion (where you can safe­ly imag­ine Bob­by would be remain­ing ever after).

There is a scene in which the guys fall from their canoes whilst rid­ing a par­tic­u­lar­ly dan­ger­ous stretch of rapids. Dum­mies were used in the film­ing but hav­ing viewed the scene, Burt Reynolds request­ed to have the scene re-shot with him­self in the canoe rather than a dum­my, in the inter­ests of authen­tic­i­ty. Boor­man agreed and Reynolds pro­ceed­ed to ride the rapids, but fell out, smashed his shoul­der and head on rocks and float­ed uncon­scious down­stream, before wak­ing up with Boor­man at his bed­side. Reynolds asked “How’d it look?” and Boor­man said, “It looked like a dum­my falling over a water­fall”!

Get a flavour of the movie by watch­ing this mon­tage below.

Music

Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 Adagietto (1902)

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Although Gus­tav Mahler (1860–1911) is right up there in the pan­theon of com­posers, his music gained its true cur­ren­cy only well after his death. Sure, he was famous in his life­time as a con­duc­tor but his com­po­si­tions were large­ly neglect­ed and indeed banned in Europe dur­ing the Nazi era (Mahler was an Ashke­nazi Jew), and it was only after 1945 that a new gen­er­a­tion of lis­ten­ers redis­cov­ered his music and turned him into one of the most fre­quent­ly per­formed and record­ed com­posers which has sus­tained to the present day.

Mahler com­posed his Sym­pho­ny No. 5 between 1901 and 1902, most­ly dur­ing the sum­mer months at his hol­i­day cot­tage at Maiernigg in Aus­tria (his “com­pos­ing hut” is now a lit­tle muse­um). At near­ly sev­en­ty min­utes long, it’s a musi­cal can­vas with some seri­ous scope, but today we’ll look at the fourth move­ment or Adagi­et­to, a ten­der piece of music that was said to have rep­re­sent­ed his love for Alma Schindler whom he mar­ried in March 1902.

The Adagi­et­to is undoubt­ed­ly the sin­gle most well-known piece of Mahler’s music. Leonard Bern­stein con­duct­ed it dur­ing the funer­al Mass for Robert Kennedy at St Patrick’s Cathe­dral in New York in 1968, but it was its use in Luchi­no Visconti’s 1971 film Death in Venice that sky­rock­et­ed it to fame.

Death In Venice was Ger­man author Thomas Mann’s 1912 novel­la about a famous and enno­bled writer, Gus­tav von Aschen­bach, who is sojourn­ing in Venice for health rea­sons and becomes increas­ing­ly obsessed with a young hand­some Pol­ish boy, Tadzio, who is stay­ing in the same hotel on the Venet­ian island of Lido.

In the movie, Vis­con­ti turns von Aschen­bach (Dirk Bog­a­rde) from writer to com­pos­er, which allows the musi­cal score (which also includes music by Beethoven and Mus­sorgsky) to rep­re­sent Aschen­bach’s work. The end­ing scene in which the dying com­pos­er watch­es Tadzio strolling and wad­ing through the sea­wa­ter to the enrap­tured tones of Mahler’s Adagi­et­to (before von Aschen­bach prompt­ly keels over dead) is strik­ing. You can go watch the movie (despite the spoil­er!) but for now, lis­ten to the music itself:

Gus­tav Mahler
Poetry

Louis MacNeice’s Prayer Before Birth (1944)

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In good poet­ry there is so often a great last line, some­thing that effec­tive­ly clos­es the poem leav­ing the reader/listener with the white space/silence in which to reflect on their expe­ri­ence. Some­times the last line has a sense of fade: take Ozy­man­dias, for exam­ple (see here), in which the once-mighty stat­ue of that ancient king now lies bro­ken and decayed and the final line “The lone and lev­el sands stretch far away” draws our atten­tion to the bar­ren desert in which the ruins reside and allows the irony to sink in.

Oth­er poems end with an encap­su­lat­ing line, sum­ming up the theme of the entire poem in one line: Wil­frid Owen’s last line in Dulce Et Deco­rum Est (see here), after a series of shock­ing imagery about the grim real­i­ties of the front line, sums up the empti­ness of the plat­i­tudes around “hon­our and glo­ry” that the gen­er­als had hoped to instil into the com­mon sol­dier: “The old Lie: Dulce et deco­rum est Pro patria mori” (“it is sweet and fit­ting to die for one’s coun­try”).

Oth­er poems end with a sur­prise, a jolt – often called the “trap door” or the “rug pull” – and today’s poem from Louis Mac­Ne­ice fits the bill per­fect­ly. See what you think…

Louis Mac­Ne­ice (1907–1963) was an Irish poet and play­wright, born in Belfast, and a mem­ber of the Auden Group, that loose affil­i­a­tion of lit­er­ary fig­ures active in the 1930s and includ­ing W. H. Auden, Christo­pher Ish­er­wood, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis, names that have come down to mod­ern times with per­haps more celebri­ty than MacNeice’s (and two of whom have appeared in the pages of this blog before, here and here). Mac­Ne­ice’s body of work was wide­ly appre­ci­at­ed by the pub­lic dur­ing his life­time, how­ev­er, due to his appeal­ing style and the fact that, like many mod­ern Eng­lish poets, he found an audi­ence for his work through British radio.

Prayer Before Birth is a poem writ­ten at the height of the Sec­ond World War, and takes the form of an ago­nised plea from the mouth of an unborn infant in its moth­er’s womb. Dra­mat­ic in inten­si­ty, the poem bemoans the deplorable state of the world, but artic­u­lates that, whilst liv­ing in it is a painful expe­ri­ence, being born into it must be tru­ly ter­ri­fy­ing. It mir­rors per­haps the grow­ing mod­ern trend of young peo­ple choos­ing not to have chil­dren due to their fears of what the world is becom­ing.

As pes­simism goes, it’s hard to beat, but it’s incan­ta­to­ry rhythms, allit­er­a­tions and rep­e­ti­tions gives it a hyp­not­ic, rit­u­al­is­tic qual­i­ty and, as I said, it serves up its final line with a pow­er­ful punch.

I am not yet born; O hear me.
Let not the blood­suck­ing bat or the rat or the stoat or the
club-foot­ed ghoul come near me.

I am not yet born, con­sole me.
I fear that the human race may with tall walls wall me,
with strong drugs dope me, with wise lies lure me,
on black racks rack me, in blood-baths roll me.

I am not yet born; pro­vide me
With water to dan­dle me, grass to grow for me, trees to talk
to me, sky to sing to me, birds and a white light
in the back of my mind to guide me.

I am not yet born; for­give me
For the sins that in me the world shall com­mit, my words
when they speak me, my thoughts when they think me,
my trea­son engen­dered by trai­tors beyond me,
my life when they mur­der by means of my
hands, my death when they live me.

I am not yet born; rehearse me
In the parts I must play and the cues I must take when
old men lec­ture me, bureau­crats hec­tor me, moun­tains
frown at me, lovers laugh at me, the white
waves call me to fol­ly and the desert calls
me to doom and the beg­gar refus­es
my gift and my chil­dren curse me.

I am not yet born; O hear me,
Let not the man who is beast or who thinks he is God
come near me.

I am not yet born; O fill me
With strength against those who would freeze my
human­i­ty, would dra­goon me into a lethal automa­ton,
would make me a cog in a machine, a thing with
one face, a thing, and against all those
who would dis­si­pate my entire­ty, would
blow me like this­tle­down hith­er and
thith­er or hith­er and thith­er
like water held in the
hands would spill me.

Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me.
Oth­er­wise kill me.

Louis Mac­Ne­ice
Art

Gilbert Shelton’s Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers (1971)

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As a boy, the Beano was my com­ic of choice, with occa­sion­al for­ays into the Beez­er, the Top­per, and the Dandy. Lat­er, War­lord would come along, a now large­ly for­got­ten boys’ com­ic fea­tur­ing sto­ries cen­tred around Lord Peter Flint (code­name “War­lord”), Union Jack Jack­son and Bomber Brad­dock (I would write to the com­ic for its free pack to become a “War­lord agent” with a badge and every­thing). By the eight­ies, all grown up, I had pret­ty much done with comics, but one notable excep­tion came along in the guise of the series of under­ground comics writ­ten and drawn by Gilbert Shel­ton and fea­tur­ing the “Fab­u­lous Fur­ry Freak Broth­ers”.

The Freak Broth­ers were a trio of hip­pie ston­ers whose lives revolved around the pro­cure­ment of recre­ation­al drugs and whose chaot­ic lives led them on var­i­ous adven­tures. First appear­ing in 1968 in the under­ground coun­ter­cul­ture news­pa­per The Rag, pub­lished in Austin, Texas, the char­ac­ters were emblem­at­ic of the bloom­ing hip­pie cul­ture of the late six­ties and soon would grad­u­ate to a ded­i­cat­ed com­ic book of their own: Shel­ton co-found­ed Rip Off Press in 1969 and pub­lished 13 issues of The Fab­u­lous Fur­ry Freak Broth­ers com­ic between 1971 and 1997 (so no, it was no week­ly com­ic, it was issued as and when Shel­ton fin­ished his lat­est piece). How they came onto my radar, I’m not entire­ly cer­tain, though I was pos­si­bly drawn by the vibrant and promis­ing cov­ers:

The “broth­ers” (who were not actu­al­ly sib­lings) con­sist­ed of Fat Fred­dy (over­weight, yel­low curly hair, mous­tache), Free­wheel­in’ Franklin (tall, skin­ny, bul­bous nose, Mex­i­can mous­tache, cow­boy hat, pony­tail) and Phineas Phreak (bushy black hair, joint-shaped nose). They live in San Fran­cis­co (where else?) and their adven­tures often serve to foil Nor­bert the Nark, the inept DEA agent who is con­tin­u­al­ly try­ing, and fail­ing, to arrest them. Mean­while, a bonus com­ic strip at the foot of the page fea­tured feline anti-hero, Fat Fred­dy’s Cat (which spawned its own spin-off com­ic series).

With drug use being the dom­i­nant theme, the sto­ries are very much in line with the shenani­gans of con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous on-screen homo­logues Cheech and Chong. Far be it from me to con­fess some kind of fra­ter­ni­ty with law-break­ing drug-tak­ers con­spic­u­ous­ly fail­ing to be mod­el cit­i­zens but what can I say, I’m a cul­tur­al observ­er! Shelton’s comics are rich­ly humor­ous and bril­liant­ly drawn, even if very much of their time. They must have clicked with a whole gen­er­a­tion of boomers for whom, as Free­wheel­in’ Franklin said, “Dope will get you through times of no mon­ey bet­ter than mon­ey will get you through times of no dope”.

Gilbert Shel­ton
Music

Miles Davis’s Soundtrack to Elevator To The Gallows (1958)

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Rolling Stone described him as “the most revered jazz trum­peter of all time, not to men­tion one of the most impor­tant musi­cians of the 20th cen­tu­ry” and it’s hard to argue with that appraisal of Miles Davis (1926–1991) the Amer­i­can trum­peter, band­leader, and com­pos­er. Not to everyone’s taste for sure (and cer­tain­ly not to the oth­er adult shar­er of my house­hold, who pret­ty much loathes the entire genre of jazz) and chal­leng­ing at times to even the most will­ing of new lis­ten­ers, but he is one of the most influ­en­tial and acclaimed fig­ures in the his­to­ry of jazz.

Born in Alton, Illi­nois to a well-to-do fam­i­ly (he was born Miles Dewey Davis III), Miles went to study at the cel­e­brat­ed Juil­liard School in New York, but dropped out and sought out, befriend­ed and soon joined sax­o­phon­ist Char­lie “Bird” Park­er’s bebop quin­tet, col­lab­o­rat­ing with him from 1944 to 1948. Short­ly after, he record­ed the ground-break­ing Birth of the Cool ses­sions which would become the defin­ing record­ing of the “cool jazz” genre, and in the ear­ly 1950s he record­ed some of the ear­li­est “hard bop”, the funky off­shoot of bebop music. Ever inno­v­a­tive, he was always push­ing the enve­lope and invent­ing gen­res along the way.

Davis signed a long-term con­tract with Colum­bia Records, and record­ed the album ‘Round About Mid­night in 1955. It was his first work with sax­o­phon­ist John Coltrane and bassist Paul Cham­bers, key mem­bers of the sex­tet he would lead into the ear­ly 1960s and with whom he would rule the jazz world. Dur­ing this peri­od, he alter­nat­ed between orches­tral jazz col­lab­o­ra­tions with arranger Gil Evans, and band record­ings, such as Mile­stones (1958) and Kind of Blue (1959), the lat­ter record­ing sell­ing over five mil­lion copies in the US.

The piece I have sin­gled out for our delec­ta­tion today is a piece of cin­e­mat­ic cool, com­bin­ing Miles Davis’s musi­cal sound­scape with some typ­i­cal­ly moody French art-house aes­thet­ic pro­vid­ed by leg­endary screen god­dess Jeanne More­au. This scene is from the 1958 crime thriller movie Ascenseur Pour L’échafaud (Ele­va­tor To The Gal­lows), direct­ed by Louis Malle. The sound­track was record­ed in one night, and impro­vised by Davis and four oth­er musi­cians while they watched the rel­e­vant scenes from the film. Jazz crit­ic Phil John­son described it as “the loneli­est trum­pet sound you will ever hear, and the mod­el for sad-core music ever since”.

Miles Davis

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