Graceful Degradation

In view of the fact that I haven't posted a review for a while, I popped over to The Music Memoirs to check out this week's 'Top 5 on Friday'. Pretty good one this week, and one I feel I can do! Top five albums you wish you had in your collection:

1. Chinese Democracy by Guns N Roses - because it would mean that Axl had finally got his act together and released his first album of original music since the Use Your Illusion albums. I'm seeing GNR live in June at the RDS arena in Dublin, and I would love to have had the new album to listen to before then.
2. Decade of Decadence by Motley Crue - there are still quite a few Crue albums I have to get (and by the looks of it I will have to spend a lot of time on eBay since the High Street is proving to be rubbish) but Decade of Decadence was the first album I bought by them, years and years back and it was on a cassette which has long since died. I loved it, it's a great collection, and I want it back again.
3. Best of Ballads and Blues by Poison - okay, so I know it's another collection, and let's face it, with iTunes I could probably compile kick-ass collections myself of my various favourite bands, but it's easier to have them do it for me.
4. Never a Dull Moment by Tommy Lee - again with the eBay trawl I guess. Never seen it in a shop, downloaded a couple of tracks from iTunes, and I generally would just like to have it in the collection. Fame '02 is particularly good.
5. Hmm, why is the last one always so difficult? The next Velvet Revolver album, to see if their follow up is as good as Contraband? The second Brides of Destruction album, even if Nikki Sixx isn't on it, just 'cos the first was so much fun? How about whatever Motley Crue come up with, since they say they are going to be recording again once the current tour is over? I really don't know! Maybe I should just go for someone completely new as an experimental thing: let's say City of Evil by Avenged Sevenfold - just because the last band I heard called the most dangerous band in the world was GNR, and I love them. Plus Avenged Sevenfold will be supporting GNR at some of their European concerts so you never know, I might end up seeing them in June too.

Possibly not the most imaginative list, but it's honest. Or at least, it is until I remember whatever crucial album I've missed.

Via another blog I occasionally look at, So Many Books, I have discovered an online facility to catalogue my small library. I don't have anywhere near the number of books that some of these people have - don't have the space as much as anything else - but I had been thinking of getting my collection rather more organised. I've even downloaded some info on the Dewey Decimal system but am thinking that is probably unnecessarily pretentious.

The site is Library Thing and you can catalogue up to 200 books for free. I am currently contemplating whether it is worth paying $25 (roughly £15) to become a life member and catalogue my whole collection. It's a question of the purpose of it really - once they are all on there, what am I going to do online with my library? And it isn't going to help me get them organised here, is it? Still, it's quite entertaining in an extremely geeky kind of way. I've put the link to my catalogue in the sidebar if you wanted to have a look.

I'm actually having a minor clearout of some of my books at the moment. There have been several that I have taken down to the British Heart Foundation on the basis that I've read them once and not picked them up again (or never even got round to reading them) and I need space for new ones. Expensive way of reading though. If only libraries round here were actually any good.

From the back cover: Uther, the High King of Britain, has died, leaving the infant Mordred as his only heir. His uncle, the loyal and gifted warlord Arthur, now rules as caretaker for a country which has fallen into chaos - threats emerge from within the British kingdoms while vicious Saxon armies stand ready to invade. As he struggles to unite Britain and hold back the Saxon enemy at the gates, Arthur is embroiled in a doomed romance with beautiful Guinevere. Will the old world magic of Merlin be enough to turn the tide of war in his favour?

The Winter King is the first in Cornwell's Arthurian trilogy The Warlord Chronicles. Having come to Bernard Cornwell via the Richard Sharpe novels (and admittedly to those through the ITV series starring Sean Bean), I have for a long time been strangely reluctant to move on to his other series. Cornwell is a prolific writer of historical, mainy military adventure. The Starbuck Chronicles are set in the American civil war, and because it is not a period that is terribly familiar to me I have not felt the need to pick up a copy, whereas Sharpe follows the Peninsular campaign and the Duke of Wellington, a particular military hero of mine. The early history of the British Isles seems to be another period of particular interest to Cornwell, since we have the three books of the Warlord Chronicles, the Grail Quest series set in the 14th century, and the Saxon Stories focusing on Alfred the Great and his descendents, not forgetting Stonehenge, Cornwell's take on the origins of the stone circle.

Having bought The Winter King with some book tokens given me for Christmas, it still took me a couple of months to pick it up and read. I shouldn't have worried. One thing that the Sharpe novels demonstrated is Cornwell's committment to historical accuracy where it is known, and informed guesswork for story-telling purposes where it is not. The Dark Ages were well named because there is little surviving from that period, and certainly as far as Arthur himself is concerned we have nothing more than myth to go on.

This story is written as the memories of Derfel, an aging monk who at one time was a warrior and warlord who fought alongside Arthur. He is telling his tale for a Queen, who likes to hear stories of Arthur, but who is occasionally impatient when Derfel's memories do not tally with her romantic ideas. This is a helpful device and is well used in terms of tieing together the myth of the man with the historical military reality, as far as is known. Cornwell tells us of blood, mud and slaughter, the brutality of the Britons and Saxons alike, the rituals of the druids, the realities of the shield wall - in which I can see the later development into the square favoured by the 19th century infantry against cavalry, although here it also provides a strong position for two clashing sets of foot soldiers.

Merlin features, but largely in shadow. He is not present for most of the book, and when he is seen his own focus is the uniting of Britain and restoration of the old gods against the incoming Saxons and the spread of Christianity. Merlin is powerful and respected on all sides, but he is not portrayed here as Arthur's man - he will favour whichever British king will unite Briton and enable him to find the Treasures of Britain. Arthur himself is not a king, he is a warrior who is sworn protector of the crippled infant king Mordred, yet he is also surrounded by people either ambitious for him to take the throne himself (including Guinevere) or ambitious for themselves. Lancelot is shown to be handsome and arrogant, taking what he wants, claiming credit for battles he has not fought and generally appearing in total contrast to the chivalrous knight of the Arthurian myth.

The Winter King is an interesting read, and I am likely to pick up the sequels in time, but it isn't really top of my list as a must read novel. The Sharpe novels have something about them that this does not, although it might be as simple as taking the same view as the Queen Igraine, looking for the myth and being disappointed with the brutal supposed reality. In as much as we can make a guess of the reality of Arthur and his knights, Cornwell has weaved a great and plausible tale of an ultimately flawed man who destroyed his own careful plans for peace between the Britons by his obsession with Guinevere, who traded the lives of one set of Britons for peace with the Saxons so he could fight and defeat another British king. Myth gives us heroes brought down by others, reailty is always more complicated and Cornwell gives us a possible reality.

Reviews:
Bernard Cornwell's official site
The SF Site - review
Book Page - review

I've discovered a new website - Last.fm. It allows you to choose music that you like to create your own personal radio station. I've joined as a free member so have limited ability to be too creative with my 'radio station', but I imagine if you pay their fee (something like £1.50 a month so I might do it, depending on how frequently I use it) then you can become quite creative. So far I haven't explored it in too great a depth. However since the boss is on holiday at the moment I have been taking the opportunity to listen to music in the office and have had it on for the last couple of days.

I've put a link in the sidebar for the chart of the music I have been listening to on Last.fm. The way my 'radio station' was created was listing various bands I like then it chose similar music, so I added in Guns N Roses, Motley Crue, Poison, Velvet Revolver and Metallica. The chart is of what the website chose for me. Have a look, it's pretty cool.

From the cover notes: 'Be a MAN in the City Watch! The City Watch needs MEN!' But what its got includes Corporal Carrot (technically a dwarf), Lance-constable Cuddy (really a dwarf), Lance-constable Detritus (a troll), Lance-constable Angua (a woman ... most of the time) and Corporal Nobbs (disualified from the human race for shoving). And they need all the help they can get. Because there's evil in the air and murder afoot and something very nasty in the streets. It'd help if it could all be sorted out by noon, because that's when Captain Vimes is officially retiring, handing in his badge, and getting married. And since this is Ankh-Morpork, noon promises to be not just high, but stinking.

I've made an unconscious decision, it would appear, to read the Watch sub-series of the Discworld novels, which Pterry returned to with book fifteen. Men at Arms follows on from Guards! Guards!, showing how the four misfits who saved Ankh-Morpork from a dragon had progressed. Sam Vimes is leaving the Watch to get married to Lady Ramkin, the richest woman in the City. The Patrician has decreed that the Watch needs to reflect the ethnic make up of the City and so must employ a dwarf, a troll, and a woman (most of the time), so they are put into the Night Watch to keep them out of the way.

Their lives are suddenly complicated by the murders of a clown and a dwarf craftsman, and an unexplained explosion at the Assassins' Guild. A mysterious new weapon is on the loose, and the Patrician orders the Watch to play no part in the investigations, orders which he hopes will have the desired effect on Vimes. Dwarf/troll relations, the difficulties of policing in a City like Ankh-Morpork, and how a life-long copper deals with staring retirement in the face are all elements thrown into the mix.

A striking feature of Pterry's work is the character development. This often takes place over a series of books, but while it helps to have the full background to a character it is not essential. You can find out everything you need to know about Vimes (or Carrot, or Nobby, or Fred Colon) from this book, just as you could from Feet of Clay or from Guards! Guards! But the use of familiar characters in different stories gives them a depth and creates well-rounded individuals, and that in itself creates restraints for the author. When his audience believes they know the characters like old friends the author cannot have them do something completely unexpected - the reader would not accept it.

At this stage, we are still getting to know the characters of the City Watch, but they are clearly continuations of what we already know. Vimes is struggling with his alcoholism, sense of identity (he's a man with a badge, can he learn to be one without it?), and the nagging sense of being a class traitor through falling for Lady Ramkin. Nobby and Fred are again in the position of having to deal with new recruits, Carrot having settled into the City and the Watch as if he had always been there. We even have Detritus, seen in Guards! Guards! employed as a splatter* at the Drum, then again in Moving Pictures where he meets Ruby, the troll whose expectation that he get a proper job if he wants to marry her is behind him joining the Watch in the first place. This is one of Pterry's greatest strengths - the way the Discworld stories tie together. Does it matter that Detritus and Ruby met in a previous story? No, but for those who follow the series the tie-in is there. It gives a continuity and chronology.

Men at Arms is another detective novel, which is the best use Pterry can make of the Watch and also possibly the reason there was such a gap between the first two stories in their sub-series (six books serparate Guards! Guards! and Men at Arms while there are only three between Men at Arms and Feet of Clay). It again brings in the theme of the long-lost monarchy of Ankh-Morpork - the motivation behind the murders is the restoration of the crown, although on this occasion the plotters believe they have identified the genuine article. We have politics, the dangers of a mind open to inspiration, and a very human story of the difficulties of a new romance.

Another gem of a book from a master of his art. He does not recycle characters unless he can give them a specific new story that justifies it. We have not seen Esk, Victor and Ginger, or Pteppic again since their stories came to a conclusion, but others from those stories have taken on lives of their own. The detective story hangs together well and it keeps you guessing. Well worth a read, whether as a stand alone story or as part of the Watch series.

*like a bouncer, only harder

Reviews:
Terry Pratchett - Harper Collins site
SFF World
Rambles

Since this has been on near permanent play in the car over the last few weeks at ear-bleed volume it seems right and proper to put into writing my thoughts on 1994's album Motley Crue by the mighty Crue. This was the first original album since 1989's Dr Feelgood and appeared three years after the collection Decade of Decadence. It features John Corabi on vocals and it is a very different beast indeed from what went before.

And I love it. Absolutely fucking love it. Of the albums I have, until this arrived through the post courtesy of eBay Dr Feelgood was my favourite Crue offering. The title track Dr Feelgood, the adrenaline charged Kickstart my heart, the power ballad Without you, Same ol' situation (S.O.S.) - what's not to like? Then along comes Motley Crue and blows Dr Feelgood clean out of the water.

The sound is heavier for a start - the Crue had clearly taken a look at the way the rock world had been changing since 1989 and reacted accordingly. There is a grungier sound, and Corabi's vocals work perfectly with it. Vince Neil has a very different style and I've not heard him attempt any of these tracks so I don't know what he makes of them, but I can't see him being quite as right for them as he was for the likes of Girls, girls, girls.

Power to the music and Hooligan's holiday are grunge tracks which make my car vibrate but do you think I could play them at anything other than high volume? Loveshine has more of a chart friendly kind of vibe, Hammered and Til death do us part are back to the darker, heavier sound, with Til death do us part being a particularly good example of the differences between Corabi and Neil. And then there's the track which has completely got its hooks into me - the insanely catchy Poison apples. I'm assuming (don't have the sleeve notes in front of me) that it was Tommy putting his talents on the piano to good effect under Mick Mars' riffs on this track, and Tommy's drumming throughout this album was absolutely spot on.

I can't find a fault with this piece of work at all, although I'm not in any sense claiming to be objective. Although I still have to complete my Crue collection it will take something special to top this one. Motley Crue is possibly the most underrated and overlooked of the Crue's efforts - purists will miss Vince on vocals and it is quite a change from what came before. If you think you know what Crue are like then this will prove you wrong. If you have never heard it go on iTunes for a listen right now. It will blow you away.

Reviews and band links:
Official Motley Crue website
Rolling Stone - review
Amazon link - including review
Wikipedia page

I took myself out to lunch today, to a little Italian restaurant. They do a lunchtime special for £5.95 and past experience told me that they are good, so why not?

About the only reason why not is portion size - they are huge. Their pizzas are thin crust and a good size, their pasta and risotto dishes are great platesful. So when you're trying to lose weight it might not be the most sensible idea!

I opted for risotto tosca - rice (obviously), salmon, peas, very creamy. It came as this massive platter which could have been enough to feed two quite comfortably. I only managed about half of it. Very hot, as you would expect, but strangely bland over all. The texture was great, the salmon was fine, and I don't really know what it was, but the total effect was not exactly a taste explosion.

You also have the choice of garlic bread or salad, and since risotto clearly doesn't contain enough in the way of carbohydrates I opted for the garlic bread. Big slices of french bread, very garlicy, but not too buttery so you don't drip it down your shirt. Maybe garlic bread was too strong a flavour to go with the risotto.

Along with a glass of the house white, it made for a lovely lunch for the grand total of £8.70, not including tip (which I know is only obligatory in the States but which I do tend to leave in restaurants).

Downsides - well, for some reason that was completely beyond me, every diner was shoved into close proximity in one part of the room. It isn't a big place, so when it is full it must seem overcrowded, but when I arrived there was a couple at one table in the corner, and three adults plus a child and a baby in a buggy around another. I was seated at a corner table, with the large party at the neighbouring table and only another table set for four between me and the couple in the corner. Another couple came in after I had been seated for a while, and they were put at the table next to the couple in the corner. At the other end of the room there was plenty of space, but everyone was ushered into one side and not the other. After the large party left another couple arrived, and the waiter seated them at the table by me. I fail to understand the logic - is it supposed to do something for the ambiance?

The other thing that was a slight annoyance for me is that the windows have blinds so you can't see out. Equally it means people can't see in, and the road isn't the prettiest in town so I can understand it to an extent, but I quite like to people watch and when dining by myself and sitting by the window I would have preferred to see out.

That said, it had been a while since I had been there and it is a very good lunch for the price. I must treat myself to something like that more frequently. Plenty of choice for their lunchtime menu and they are pretty rapid in preparations if you need something in an hour before getting back to work.

La Campanella
16 Rodney Road
Cheltenham

A belated post since I only had a chance to look at The Music Memoirs this morning, but the last Top 5 on Friday had the theme of 'Songs about death'. In no particular order, I offer you:

• Don't fear the Reaper - Blue Oyster Cult
• The End - The Doors
• 18 and Life - Skid Row
• Hell's Bells - AC/DC
• Prayer for the dying - Seal

In my current quest for improvements to my music collection and under the general heading of being experiemental, I bought the second album by My Chemical Romance Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge on Saturday morning. It went on the stereo in the car as I was driving down to a meeting nearly 30 miles away and I can't say I was disappointed. Buying any album when you know nothing about the band is a risk, but so far I am having reasonably good fortune with my choices. I've even listened to this one a couple of times over the weekend, so that must be a good sign.

Stand out tracks have to be Helena and I'm not okay (I promise) - which I think is my favourite - and The ghost of you. What we are looking at here is a high energy album which would fall into the sort of pop-punk category but with quite a dark edge lyrically, which I suppose puts it under the label emo, although that seems such a catch-all term at times I can't decide how useful it is. There seem to be a wide variety of influences at work - the opening of You know what they do to guys like us in prison reminded me of The Cure a little, clearly there is a fair dollop of Green Day in the mix too, but there is also some of the heaviness of Iron Maiden.

Apparently there is meant to be a story concept behind the album - two lovers in a gunfight in the desert, the man dies and goes to hell where he is told by the devil that he can be with the woman again if he brings the devil the souls of one thousand evil men. Can't say I would have got that without doing some reading round about the album and it seems half the songs aren't related to the plot in any case so it can't matter too much.

Overall, good enough effort, very listenable and while it isn't in the same vein as my favourites and default album choices I will say it is a good one for a long drive.

Reviews and band links:
My Chemical Romance official site
Amazon link - includes listeners' reviews
Wikipedia page
MTV band page