Bring back Paul III

As the cardinal-electors gather in Rome, doubtless trying to consider the challenges of the modern world, I suggest they should instead be thinking about the past, and the character of the great popes of history. There's a nice looking book on some obvious candidates, though I've not read it and would have a less  modern list. It does, however, include my absolute favourite Pope, Paul III (1534-49). And I think the cardinals would do well to consider his example.

Granted, there are some difficult elements in Paul's biography. It's doubtful he was very devout, as he delayed his ordination well into his church career, which he probably owed to his sister's relationship to the Borgia pope. He had numerous illegitimate children. For whom he carved out careers and titles for them at the expense of the papal patrimony. He made his 14 year old grandson a cardinal. Nor was the external situation he inherited promising. At his accession, the reformation was gaining traction across Germany, England had gone over the divorce, and only seven years before, his staunchest 'ally' had led an army into Italy that sacked Rome itself. 

By the time he died though, the catholic church was back. It took longer than his fifteen year reign to remodel the church, but the foundations were all laid under Paul: the Council of Trent was called, the Curia subject to proper scrutiny, the Jesuits founded, some nice art commissioned, and the work on improving the quality of priests begun. All these were to prove difficult, the latter so much so that Paul IV (1555-59) resorted to condemning errant monks to the galleys. Nonetheless, in 1534, the church chose a politician, a leader, and an administrator rather than a saint or a theologian, and it has many reasons to be thankful it did.

Were I catholic, and a cardinal, I would be looking to find the modern equivalent of Paul III.

Bibliography, February 2013

BOTM: M. Atwood, The Blind Assassin

R. Blake, The Blood of Alexandria
S.C. Gwynne, Empire of the Summer Moon
W. Somerset Maugham, Cakes and Ale
J.R.R. Tolkein, The Silmarillion*
A. Zamoyski, Rites of Peace

It's been a great month for quality, if not quantity. Four of the six books here would have been contenders for BOTM at another time. Gwynne's account of the Commanche was lively and engrossing, though didn't always live up to its own rhetoric. Zamoyski on the Congress of Vienna is a great excavation of a very complex moment in history, which also alerted me to the fact the Kissinger's doctoral thesis was on the same subject. I'm surprised I've never read Maugham before, but Cakes and Ale was brilliant, waspish, and very nicely done, if a little slight. However, all were worse than Atwood's Booker winner. I've not always gotten on with Atwood. I thought the Handmaids Tale clumsy and boring, while I found some of her earlier books unreadable. This is a masterpiece. Despite being very obviously literary in construction - it's a book with a book inside it which itself has a book inside it - it's compelling, magisterially written and still manages a good twist (or two) at the end. A triumph.

The other Presley

When Andover-born Reginald Hall was searching for a stage name, he opted for one that looked very much like delusions of grandeur. He didn't care - and Reg Presley and the Troggs were born. He died yesterday and I've been playing them all morning. In truth, there are only five tracks that have stood the test of time, but what tracks. A world without Wild thing, With a girl like you, Any way that you want me, I can't control myself (all 1966) and Love is all around (1968) would be a much poorer one.

A world without Reg Presley would have been a much poorer one too. Despite his lack of chart success since 1968, he and the Troggs played on for the following four decades - only his final ill health ending it last year. Along the way his songs burst occasionally into public consciousness, Wet Wet Wet's version of Love is all around making him a fortune in the 1990s. He was also a proper eccentric, in a fine English tradition. Obsessed with UFOs, he spent the money he made on researching them, published here. There aren't many people who connect Jimi Hendrix (who also covered Wild Thing) with standing around in wet English fields looking at crop circles. Reg Presley may even be unique in this respect.

In the obituaries, he was called a 'very real person in a sometimes very unreal world.' That's a fine tribute, and a very fine one for a pop star. We should have more people like him, and now we've one fewer. Farewell.

The 20 best glam-rock songs of all time

Last week, the Guardian published a list of the top 20 glam rock songs of all time, as their response to the Tate Liverpool exhibition on the subject. I have at least four objections to it. Firstly, and this is only a quibble, the exhibition (and this list) only run to music between 1971 and 1975 so 'all time' doesn't really fit in. Secondly, it doesn't include anything by Gary Glitter because he's a paedophile. Some people have questioned the merit of Glitter's music, but I suspect that's not behind the exclusion of the electrifying Rock and Roll (part 2), rather this is therefore the best Glam songs not by someone convicted of interfering with children. Thirdly, nor does it include anything by Wizzard, ABBA (has no-one seen the Waterloo video?) or even the Bay City Rollers. (I retain my oft stated view that Bye Bye Baby, which is a song about the importance of marriage and helpless love, is far better and deeper than it's ever given credit for. I make no such claim for Shang-a-Lang). Finally, in an attempt to make Glam cool (which it isn't) they've added lots of more credible tracks in. I love Transformer from which Vicious is taken, but it's not a Glam album. 

So it's also a terrible list. I've made a better one below. This site also great, though I disagree about where they put the credibility line. Where relevant, I've put the Observer ranking in brackets and therefore have dropped off about half of their list  - in part for the reasons outlined above, but also because some of the choices are just wrong. For example choosing Bowie's Queen Bitch above Starman smacks of trying too hard. Anyway:

1. David Bowie, The Jean Genie [7]
2. Sparks, This Town ain't big enough for both of us [17]
3. Wizzard, Angel Fingers (A Teen ballad)
4. Roxy Music, Virginia Plain [4]
5. David Bowie, Starman 
6. Slade, Coz I Luv You 
7. Mud, Rocket 
8. ABBA, Waterloo. 
9. Alice Cooper, School's Out [3]
10. Slade, Cum on Feel the Noize [8]
11. T Rex, Children of the Revolution 
12. David Bowie, Suffragette city
13. T Rex, Get it On [11]
14. Sweet, Blockbuster [14]
15. David Bowie, Rebel Rebel [18]
16. The Bay City Rollers, Bye bye baby
17. Gary Glitter, Rock and Roll part 2
18. David Bowie, John, I'm only dancing
19. Alice Cooper, Elected
20. Alvin Stardust, My Coo-Ca-choo 

Near misses for Chicory Tip, Son of my father and Roxy Music, Do the Strand. Note I've excluded anything by Queen or Elton John for the sake of definitional ease. And I've also excluded the two major Christmas classics by Slade and Wizzard. They would chart highly.

Bibliography, January 2013

BOTM: D. Athill, Instead of a letter (K)

J.R.R. Tolkein, The Hobbit*
R. Blake, Conspiracies of Rome 
R. Blake, Terrors of Constantinople
G. Eliot, Silly novels by Lady novelists

I read most of these in the first half of the month, and have added only one in the last fortnight. I'm not sure quite why. Last week I read several editions of Foreign Affairs but I don't count periodicals as part of this. Anyway, much was fun, I was struck by the total unsuitability of The Hobbit for three films, and the best was Athill's 1960s memoir. Frank, with a good helping of nostalgia and a nice style. It was also a total bargain on the kindle. I'll buy the rest of hers now.

Just Say Gnome!

In 1990, during his Sound + Vision tour, David Bowie invited fans to vote for what he should play. Inevitably, someone ran a campaign to get one of his 'embarrassing' early works, The Laughing Gnome, on the list. Voting was then scrapped in what I think was a regrettable lack of a sense of humour (an unusual one, look at this) and of proportion.

A similar lack of proportion, though in reverse, seems to have attended the publicity-explosion of the last few 

weeks about the surprise release of where are we now. I mean, it's fine, isn't it? I just don't think it merits the reception it's gotten. And nor is this the first time this has happened: in fact everything that Bowie has put out since at least 1999, when everyone said Hours sounded like Hunky Dory, which it doesn't, has had the same treatment. Perhaps everyone's just so relieved it's not Tin Machine again. That's a shame, because it diminishes the original achievements in his golden period running from 1970 to 1983 (you can dispute both ends). It's not that the recent albums aren't bad, many tracks are good, they just lack the sense of risk, innovation and plain madness that characterised him at his pomp (and indeed afterwards, I'm no fan of Earthlings, but it shows the same restlessness). It's certainly true that since 1999 he's eliminated the tendency to put out something awful, but it comes at a price - he's lost that sense of adventure. Not surprising for a man in his sixties. 

But in his pomp, he was extraordinary. He released more than an album a year in the 1970s (useful list here). And all of them (Pin Ups aside) are great, and different. To have followed it at the time must have been amazing, even in retrospect, it's jarring, but exciting. Above I noted that Hours doesn't sound like Hunky Dory, that's because nothing sounds like Hunky Dory - it's a odd, affected record, but it's brilliant, packed full of gems as well as the classics. I remember getting it, it was one of my CDs and it unlocked Pop for me. I then bought most of the rest. You can take your pick, but I'd single out Ziggy Stardust, Station to Station and Diamond Dogs as the best. At one point over 40% of my CD collection was Bowie. 

Anyway, there's a nice retrospective here (hat tip to Elliot), though it misses out The Laughing Gnome.

An elegy for lost data

Notoriously, I have a database of my friends. Specifically, I have a small spreadsheet on which I record my core friends - about 50 of them - and various facts, including how often I see them. I also have spreadsheets that record in detail a variety of other things, including my books and reading. No-one really remembers them though. Now, they are all gone - or at least 2012 is - as I put them memory stick on which they reside in the washing machine. The data for 2012 is lost. I was, and am, very upset about this. A doesn't really understand why.

Now I've had these for about ten years, maybe a bit more. I started them for quite prosaic reasons. I built a list of books because at the time most of my books were still at my parents' house and I didn't want to buy duplicates. I started recording presents when I bought the same thing for the same person two years in a row. I built the Friends database to win an argument over how many of my friends were Tories - less than half as it happens. But I've kept them because they're useful, and interesting. They've expanded in function of course. It was the Books DB that told me I'd not read about 15% of the books in the house, and so I read them. It's the Friends DB that means I don't forget to catch up with people who aren't front of mind. A record of what I cook, and where, from means I could throw out half my cookbooks last year, and forced me to discover more in those I kept. There's more, minor (I also recorded when people first met JR on the Friends DB) and major (the Books DB also records reading levels, allowing me to note the catastrophic baby-induced collapse in volume). I'll now never have that information for 2012.

But the loss I feel is bigger than that - I feel like I have lost part of my past. Without the data, I'm forced to rely on my perception of what happened, and perception is irredeemably faulty, unsystematic and unreliable, and just plain wrong. We know this - that's why we write things down, it's why we take photographs. For me, the information in those spreadsheets was part of my narrative of my past. The information contained allowed me, quickly, to access accurately the past. I'm not making any great claim for the information they held as a record of my life, but they captured part of it, and with ten years of data, they were compelling. And now they are gone. I can replicate some of the information, but not much, and though I've only lost one year, the sequence is broken and the data will always be incomplete. So will the narrative they supported.

I mourn.