I was at a memorial service today for a lovely lady that I used to work for. The service was held in a very beautiful old church in Mayfair, Farm Street Church. I was struck by an amazing painting on display in the church which could have been an old master, perhaps a Caravaggio. Having researched it, it turns out to be a depiction of the Last Supper by contemporary artist Andrew White. I wish I'd taken a photo, but this is the best I could find online, with the artist standing in front of his work. Absolutely stunning. please log in to view this image
It’s a long story as to how I ended up reading about Charles Upham but, ****, what a guy! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Upham The only combatant to have won the VC twice - the two other double winners were doctors - but when you read the citations etc. you realise he could’ve won it 5-6 times. Incredible man.
Any of the posters on here familiar with a New York band called Endless Boogie? Just read a review of their sixth album and listened to a couple of songs, and it’s genuinely startling stuff, really basic rock, old fashioned but at the same time distinctly unsettling. Like a very grizzled and simplified Canned Heat. Pondering whether to make a major time investment in them.
I've posted this track on the music thread before, it's a couple of years old... Heard a bit of their stuff, almost verging on stoner rock. I like it alot, going to have to check out the new stuff
I listened to the first track .. thought it sounded like Icelandic rock … definitely unsettling That said … the new Idles album sounds good; also like Dave Gahan & Soulshifters new release is a positive ‘mixed bag’ (more good than bad).
Odd bit of serendipity. My daughter has just returned from a weekend with mates in town. She spent her Friday night in the Mother Red Cap on Holloway Road, Archway end…..where I used to drink regularly when I worked at the Whittington Hospital in 87-88. A proper old Irish boozer (as opposed to a themed ‘Irish pub’) apparently it remains very friendly and a good craic. I suspect this pub was the source for the Mother Black Cap as featured in Withnail and I. Perfumed Ponce!
Just caught the last few minutes of an interview on the Today programme. Worked out that it was with a couple of members of what must be a very successful band, talking about their freedom not to make guitar records any more, and how they have packaged their latest offering as a ‘virtual exhibition’ using gaming technology, and how it will change peoples lives and be like a ‘good bad trip, or the reverse’. They genuinely described what they are doing as ‘fine art’. It really was a record breaking level of pretentiousness and well worthy of a permanent monument in a prominent location in Pseuds Corner. I made a guess at who they were and was spot on. Radiohead, of course. Sorry Steels.
Watching ‘An Audience With Adele’ with my daughter. Really enjoying the unscripted spontaneity of the occasion. Unique.
My wife very thoughtfully bought me a book called Liquid History, a guide to London’s Greatest Pubs, which has just been delivered. I’ve drunk at quite a few, but many still to sample. Seems like a challenge to me. Anyway it’s a good book at first glance, more of a history of the pubs than a real ale fanatics guide, these boozers are all old and funky, with some great stories. Just read that The Hand and Shears, up by Smithfield, which I used to drink in way back in the early 80s when I worked near St Pauls, was the pub that condemned men got their last drink from to sup on the cart on the way from Newgate gaol to the scaffold……hence ‘one for the road’. I’m sure some pubs will be missing, can’t see the Old King Lud, but I have a feeling that it might have closed or been converted to something unpub like. Recommend the book, oddly low quality paper which is sort of endearing.
Being a connoisseur of all things London, I always thought ' One for the road ' stemmed from the wagon stopping off at The Swan at 66 Bayswater Road on their way to be hanged at Tyburn Corner, which is at the junction of Edgware Road and Marble Arch. Happy to be proved wrong. Find out more about The Swan - Fuller's Pub near Hyde Park (swanhydepark.co.uk) Every day is a school day.
Doesn't on the wagon come from the executioner or a guard having to stay on the wagon whilst the prisoner was having the one for the road
A bit of context - they were talking about the art for their virtual exhibition that celebrates the re-issue of Kid A and Amnesiac, made 20 years ago when they moved away from guitar records and experimented with synths. They've released this video game where you can hear the music as you walk through the exhibition. Whilst I agree with you that it's a touch pretentious, and least they weren't grandiosing about their actual music, more about the art that has been developed for the exhibition. This is from the FT..... Radiohead’s interactive ‘exhibition’ pushes music and games into new territory Created in collaboration with gaming studios, ‘Kid A Mnesia Exhibition’ embeds the player in a rich visual world A nightmarish labyrinth: ‘Kid A Mnesia Exhibition’ Radiohead’s first idea to celebrate two decades of their landmark albums Kid A and Amnesiac was to crash a brutalist spacecraft into the Victoria and Albert Museum, “inserted into the urban fabric of London like an ice pick into Trotsky”. It was to be made out of shipping containers and would tour the world. But the V&A wouldn’t give permission; neither would the Royal Albert Hall. Eventually Covid-19 scuppered the plan entirely, so the band settled on an alternative plan — an “interactive exhibition”, released last week, that plays like a video game, an opportunity for fans and newcomers to take a psychedelic walk through two seminal rock albums. The band have always been interested in leveraging new technology to release their work, from the early adoption of streaming for Kid A’s release in 2000 to In Rainbows, which in 2007 was made available as a pay-what-you-want digital purchase. For this year’s reissue of Kid A and Amnesiac, the band joined TikTok with a series of surreal videos. In this context, a game feels like a fitting new experiment, particularly one celebrating Kid A, released at the dawn of music’s digital age and marking a transformation for the band, who left behind the guitar riffs and singalong choruses of OK Computer for oblique song structures and an expanded sonic palette of string sections, synthesisers and drum machines. Although it’s called an exhibition and plays like a musical walking simulator, the experience of Kid A Mnesia Exhibition is far more ambitious than walking down digital corridors and looking at virtual art. The player wanders through a nightmarish labyrinth full of moments of serenity and beauty, in keeping with the tone of anger, anxiety and turn-of-the-millennium paranoia threaded through these albums. The exhibition features haunted landscapes . . . . . . and unsettling creatures Developed over two years with game studios namethemachine and Arbitrarily Good Productions, the exhibition embeds the player in the rich visual world created by lead singer Thom Yorke and longtime artist collaborator Stanley Donwood. Their striking imagery deserves wider attention: two books of their artwork have been published alongside the reissue albums and interactive exhibition. Because each song is rearranged by your movements, the experience is often akin to hearing these tracks for the first time Donwood and Yorke’s album art conjured a lonely world which is expanded thoughtfully into interactive 3D space. The landscapes are haunted by anxiety about politics and climate change, the colours often sickly. As you roam the maze of tunnels, unsettling creatures appear — spindly figures with grinning faces, white monsters made of papier-mâché and minotaurs, lost and doomed in labyrinths of their own making. In an interview, Yorke described them as “personifications of the mood of the time, that flowed in and out of the songs and writing. The faceless terrorists; the self-serving politicians; corporate bigwigs hugging.” Beyond the artwork, on digital walls and 3D renders of Radiohead’s bestiary, there are dramatic set pieces in certain rooms that soundtrack particular songs: a hurricane of swirling paper set to the tumbling guitar of “In Limbo”, a crimson womblike chamber that pulses along to the heavy-hearted piano of “Pyramid Song” and a spectacular cube of light that pulses to the jittery percussion of “Packt Like Sardines In a Crushd Tin Box”. Thom Yorke has described the figures that feature in the exhibition as ‘personifications of the mood of the time’ The band’s longtime producer Nigel Godrich has taken apart each song using the original multitrack recordings and restructured its elements to be triggered at key moments in the experience. As a Radiohead fan, I was overjoyed when I entered a corridor and was swallowed by the syrupy synths of “Everything in Its Right Place” and discovered an amber blob that, when entered, caused the furious bassline of “The National Anthem” to erupt from the speakers. Because each song is rearranged by your movements, the experience is often akin to hearing these tracks for the first time — and they still sound fresh today. Musicians today are beginning to wake up to the marketing possibilities of the gaming space, but few — Björk aside — have investigated the artistic possibilities of games. It is refreshing to have an experience that draws us deeper into fully engaging with these songs. Perhaps one day such music games tied to new releases will be as common as music videos today. The groundbreaking idea of MTV was that music wasn’t just for listening, it was also for watching. The Kid A Mnesia Exhibition argues that the next evolution of music could be gameplay. ‘Kid A Mnesia Exhibition’ is available now for free on PS5, PC and Mac
