Big Screen - Where Is the Friends Home?

1987
Iran

A boy accidentally takes a freinds schoolbook home and homework has to be done for the morning, so he must return it so his pal doesn't get a rollicking from their strict teacher. And nothing else really happens. But it's the minimalist nature of this film that makes it so absorbing. I took great comfort and delight last night whilst sitting with my feet up, hot chocolate in hand, watching as the camera painstakingly follows every movement of Ahmed (the boy) as he feeds and rocks a baby sibling as he attempts to explain to his mum several times that he must go and return the book to his friend, but like all the adults here, she's not listening and mutters, "No you can't go out. Finish your homework. Rock the baby", and the camera lingers on her as she thoroughly washes some clothes in a sink and wrings them out firmly as dogs bark and horseshoes clutter in the background of this gorgeous pastoral town of washed out white slums walls. It's very much from a kids perspective as we feel their frustration at the condescending, simple minded adults. There's a quite commaraderie among the children of the town and this is caught in a nice scene outside the school as a kid hurts his knee and is lead to a hose by his friend who tenderly rubs the water onto his leg, without a single word between them. The cast are not trained actors and you feel a warmth and humanity in their conversations, even when the adults speak to each other. There's a realism there that makes you care about the mundane happenings in their lives.

One of the best moments is when the boy sees his mother distracted and seizing the moment he's been waiting so long for, he grabs the schoolbook and makes a dash . . . only to realise his picked up the wrong book again and cautiously returns for the right one. Ahmed finally meets someone who's willing to listen to him, a nice old man who speaks of the windows he once fitted around the town which are now being replaced and of the family that have left him for the city. It's charming stuff and the boy listens respectably.

The biggest star of the film for me was Iran itself, my foreign eyes getting a rare glimpse into this world. The town of Koker looks like some beautiful medieval labyrinth of alleys, stairwells and underpasses that, as night approaches and a strong wind gathers, becomes quite a creepy place. Ahmed doesn't return the book in the end as he became too frightened. But he completes his friends homework himself and what we are left with is a simple, charming tale of friendship.

Moribund Ball of Dregs

It ain't so bad you know, lying there in the back garden during peak summer on that awkwardly unfolded chair which nearly flips you over backwards whenever you sit up in it. You can hear the snap and sizzle of Mr Ramblebottom's BBQ next door, as smoke swells and swirls over the fence and, lo! what is that? Rambles has some music playing! I never knew he had it in him the drab old square! But what is this joyful sound and sunburst? It's certainly not Pink Floyd. Why this moribund ball of dregs might be worth saving after all!

The sound of some lazy vibraphone patter mingles with the smell of burning delicious fat and you look up to an aeroplane shooting streaks of white into the cloudless blue and for that one fleshy moment you're locked inside that scratchy reggae groove, hands as light as wisps of smoke, hungry, on fire. There are wrens and magpies and alders and aspens and you are not separate. You are soil you are silicon you are stone. You are God. You are swine that's been sweating in the same t-shirt for three days. What joy! What a dreadful musky stench.

You see a wood pigeon shi . . . . AHHHHHHH! A fly! You flip over backwards from the chair and spill some lemonade up your leg and you curse and compose yourself as the fly decides to take a swim in the glass of severely lacking lemonade. What would Mr Ramblebottom think? He's scratching his bum and nodding at his beer can. I think I got way with it. Ah, bless him and his gluttony. Then the buttery fingers of the sun creep up and around your neck whilst a passing breeze caresses your cheeks and you relax and drink the lemonade anyway. Such a treacherous life dear English summer!



But instead you're in a freezing cold flat with dead spider guts on the walls listening to some mildly irritating elevator music. In Croydon.

The Room Of Hollow Eyes

The room was small the eyes were hollow, all dregs and decay.
Ruffled hair, dry scalp and seamen stains
Nails being bitten, cobwebbed corners, bedwetted sheets.
The room is smaller now, the air is ringing
Riddle me, riddle me
Why must thou haunt me?
The darkness strangles, the eyes crushed like two grapes on glass
The merciless unseen, taunting with her movents
Maniacal cackling, a loosening of hinges
Trouble is silent
Silence is trouble
Riddle me, riddle me
Take me already

Summer Buzzing

Main Source - Breaking Atoms
Spent the afternoon lazing in the garden's sunshine listening to this. It was fucking bliss. The rippling bass lines, the fruity organs, the rays of the sunshine and the snap and crackle of the beats causing tingling feelings round the spine. The thoughtful humility of the words with not an ounce of lazy misogyny in sight. There were several moments - the keyboard solo of 'Watch Roger', Elephant Memory's hazy "ooo aahh"'s backing 'Baseball', the bass line to 'Vamos', the cries of "he got so much soul, he don't need no music" -  moments where I had a strange primal urge to run up my garden shed and cling on to the roof, pull myself up and take the big run and leap onto the roof of my house Parkour style and raise a triumphant fist up to the neighbourhood below. The fact that I'm recovering from a broken leg may have saved a few blushes.  The entire LP kills it and will receive a lot summer spins.

John Cale - Paris 1919

John Cale - known for his work with maverick underground artists such as La Monte Young, Terry Riley, The Stooges and of course, The Velvet Underground - released his fourth Lp Paris 1919 in 1973. His backing band are boogie rockers Little Feat who provide this album with much punch and zing. Producer Chris Thomas last worked with Procol Harem and provides many lush orchestral tones although Cale himself dismissed the LP as "alright, but I don't want to make Procol Harem albums all my life." Ignore the bugger. Cos Paris 1919 is bloody brilliant.

'Child's Christmas in Wales' is the perfect opening track, instantly invigorating with its jaunty piano riff and wailing guitar sauntering over the hill. It's first example of the subtle experimentalism that is scattered throughout Paris1919, a six second riff with an impossibly complex time signature (or is it a standard 4/4 beat playing tricks on my mind? Either way you've won Mr Cale.) And then there's the opening line - sung, as always, by a man that sound like he could do with a warm blanket and a cup of coco - "The mistletoe of candle green, to Halloween we go", a lyric and image that threaten to rip at the fabric of the space time continuum. The cut and paste style wordplay on this album means I haven't got a clue what he's going on about most of the time, but when he throws gorgeous pastoral images at you like " the cattle graze bold uprightly" it doesn't matter. 'Child's Christmas in Wales' is uplifting and boogie-tastic, yet the scarred, haunted 'Andalucia' is even better. A song that's longing for people and places that will never return. Over lovingly plucked acoustic guitar chords and a Velvets style to-and-fro riff Cale sings his tenderest of vocals, especially with the line, "your face doesn't alter, your words never falter". Then he stretches his voice to the limit with a cathartic "I loooove you". Best of all  'Andalucia' its wrapped up with those beatific, twanging, sliding pedal steel guitar sounds, the type that were later nicked by Belle And Sebastian and Camera Obscura, and the type that get me all moist in the eyes and mushy at the knees.

Elsewhere closing track 'Antarctica Starts Here' is the only song I know that is twee and sexy at the same time. Then there's the retard reggae of 'Graham Green', a song sung with delicious disdain. I love the way he sings, "Stiffly holding umbrellas, catching the fellows making the toast", his welsh accent lending charm to his contempt. The accent twinned with his literacy know- how make for many exciting moments. Witness the moment in the title track when he rolls the words "how the Beaujolais is raining, down on darkened meetings on the Champs Elysée", all prim and proper.. When I first heard 'Hankey Pankey Nohow' I rather absurdly thought Cale was repeatedly saying "hackey paki nohow" in the chorus. 'Hankey Pankey' features one of the albums most evocative lyrics as Cale ponders;
"Nothing frightens me more
Than religion at my door
I never answer panic knocking, falling
Down the stairs upon the law
What law?"
These words strike with a pang when you realise that Cale was apparently molested as a child by a priest. (They're all at it aren't they?) This may explain why John sounds so unsettled on the title track where he sings "I'm the church and I've come to claim you in my iron drum" before a ominous violin darkens the corners of your mind while those words hang in the air. Otherwise 'Paris 1919' is quite a light hearted track, all jerky descending strings, 'Elenor Rigby' if she wasn't so depressed. It's also so dam catchy that I'm sure it's not legal. If you sat in you're bedroom and played the chorus on repeat for so long that you turned into a skeletal bag of excrement, with relatives that presumed you dead months ago - you'd still find joy in the way John briskly sings the "la,la,la,la,lal,la". (As a bonus 'Paris' is infectious on an international scale because everyone knows what "la" means".) In fact, for some one that's so renowned for their work on the mysterious and intimidating avant-garde scene, Cale is a stonkinly great pop songwriter.
 
The best tracks here may sound like likable but standard pop-rock fair at first. But slowly and steadily they'll creep up on you from all sides and gorge themselves into your consciousness until all other pop music sounds clumsy and inadequate. Its as if Cale took his experimental knowledge into a laboratory and, with the help of some adrenaline samples, grown man tears and a test tube full of post-gig sweat, conjured up an album of cosmic energy and chord patterns that seem to intertwine with your every thought and emotion, answering your mind and souls every whim releasing pleasure bubbles when and where you need them and I'm getting emotional now but fuck it, I'm hungover and I've truly come to love this record. I am Paris 1919. Paris 1919 is God. We are all God. We are all one. And you know what? I'm gonna commit the ultimate sin and admit I love this way more than any Velvet Undies Lp. Of course I like them and all that but Lou Reed always feels too cool for school, detached and exotic. Nothing wrong with that but there's not an equivalent in the V.U catalogue to Cale singing,"What's needed are some memories of planing lakes, those planing lakes will surely calm you down", as if he's got his arm around your shoulder, or "Needing you, taking you. Keeping you, leaving you", said with genuine regret rather than Reed's junkie nihilism and narcissism.
Cale, like me ( and I'll hazard to guess you. Yes YOU reading this) is one of the awkward ones, doomed to be an outsider looking in. (Or should that be inside looking out? Actually it should. The production of Paris 1919 means that hearing John's voice and trying to pick out the words is the auditory equivalent of squinting through the condensation on your window to get a glimpse of a blue bird, or spying on the neighbours you're to embarrassed to talk to.)
Empathy bounces between you and Cale throughout Paris 1919's duration. With Lou Reed you either want to punch him, fuck him or feel sorry for him. Or all three if you're feeling kinky (and he'd enjoy it.)
 
Paris 1919 takes us on a trip through Dunkirk, Paris, Dundee and Andalucia with music that evokes numerous time periods. To me it's like a travelogue pieced together  years after the event, with all the distortions and half memories left unedited. But in the end you get the sense that Cale was never anywhere in the first place, slipping through the net ignored. And this sense  makes . . .um sense when you consider that Cale was unable to communicate with his English only speaking father for most of his childhood. He's a ghost la, la, la, la.
 
If you've made it through this neurotic ramble of a review and have been left with an achy, muddled head, then do yourself a favour. Stock up on some Paris 1919 and feel it nourish the mind. It's unassuming charm will surely calm you down.

Poem: Gargle Time Avenue

If yo play all yo card rite, down Gargle Time avenue
Ya'll get polish to a perfect shine, and ecstasy 'll be avin' yo'
Lipstick, eyeliner an a ruddy good time
Stretch mark an needle, a face full o' slime
The most rigid of movemen'
Racing towars the finishin' line

Tryn' ta make the mash on the new Calico Queen
Cos namby- pamby ain't yo scene
Sherrif los he badge in the farmyar stack
He trigga be finga beneath  a milky rack
He holster empty, glistenin' n a furry crack
Empty yo ranch upon the maiden back

They get the bulge on yo, yo be on a noose
Fetish play ripe fo the calaboose
But yo carn pull yo horn like a shave tail
Don' throw up the sponge, skedaddle wit tha gal

If yo wear yo cowboy hat down Gargle Time avenue
Ya'll lasso up a beaver storm, ya'll tame jus bout any mule
Ya'll ride bout the happy houses
Will oftin be withou yo trouser
Won't ya' holla', yell and sing in tune
Stick it n the neares bazoo
Oh-be-joyful, down Gargle Time avenue

Poem1:Christ on a String

Christ on a string, sort this shit out
Christ on a string, give me a shout
A nod, a nudge, a knock upside the head
A curse, a blessing, a sign from the dead

Christ on a string just give me a clout
Give me the words to see this rhyme out
Would you make the first move if i start to believe?
Would you wash away my sins and start to relieve?

Oh Christ on a string I've scissors in my hand
I've a warm cloak of guilt on which you can land