Robert Sharp

I’m busy watching the Royal Variety Performance, and one of my bug-bears has reared its ugly head: The trans-sexual song. You know, one of those songs popularised by a person of one gender… yet performed by a person of another gender. And rather than simply sing the song as was written, they take the decision to swap the words around so they don’t sound, y’know, gay or something.

Sometimes, it’s fine. For example, ‘The Power of Love‘ is a serial trans-sexual, and “You are my lad-ee, and I am your man” does not sound so unnatural next to its opposite (”I am your lady, and you are my man,” which I assume is the original).

At other times, however, the sex-change makes a mockery of the song and its lyrics. In tonight’s gala, young crooners Teatro gave a harmonised rendition of ‘I Dreamed A Dream’ from Boubil and Schonberg’s private mint, Les Miserables. But, the song was given a sex change, and such poignant lines such as “he slept a summer by my side” and “he was gone when autumn came” were emasculated. Since the song is about stolen innocence, broken trust and the crushed dreams of a teenaged girl, the emotional intensity of the song was dropped into the surgeon’s waste bin along with its gonads.

Its irritating that these guys are making a living by taking this kind of liberty, and calling it art. I would rather they kept to the original lyrics, and made a stab at trying to convey the original emotions. Voice and music are powerful enough to communicate such things, regardless the gender of the person singing.

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Sometimes its nice to return to those sites where one has left a comment, to see if anyone responded to it. Some blogs have a feature which notifies you when someone else responds. There is even a Web 2.0 application which does that job for you.

It was in such an act of trawling that I happened across a comment on Dave Hill’s post about the Amazon Kindle. The comment is a week old now, but still worth a response. Chip says:

I do fear that it would mark the death of novels in the way that MP3s are destroying the recording industry.

I think this is to mistake evolution for death. MP3s may be breaking the Music Industry’s current business model, but I see no reason why the model cannot change, to adapt to the new technology. At present, the way music is created and published is an anachronism. The standard album of about twelve tracks is a hang-over from the vinyl days - that was all you could fit on a 12 inch playing at 33 1/3 rpm. These days, since most music is released on CDs, you can fit a lot more than twelve three minute tracks onto an album. Double, in fact, yet the artists rarely use this free space.

Likewise with the three-and-a-half minute ’single’ track, so designed for convenient radio airplay. If, in the future, most music is advertised online (via MySpace, say, or Last.fm) then time constraints are less of an issue. Control is returned to the artist, who can play on for five or ten minutes if they feel the need, without being labeled ‘indulgent’.

So, the idea persists that a musician should produce a coherent body of work of about three-quarters of an hour, cut up into twelve tracks, and that they should do this about once every eighteen months or so. The costs involved in this (studio time, a big marketing drive, and maybe a tour) have to be recouped by the label. All these considerations feed into the business model… and when the income demanded by this business model is undercut by MP3 downloads and sales, the new technology is blamed for killing off an industry.

The way music is published clearly needs to change, and embrace the new digital formats. Instead of producing an album per year, why not simply release a new MP3 track each month, or each week, maybe as part of a podcast? This would actually be more interesting, since fans could observe the development of an artists style over a much longer period. If the artist publishes a blog, and maybe a dynamic playlist (”Currently listening to…”) then the fans will be able to engage with the artist and their work on a much deeper level. Its no longer a case of ‘the difficult second album’ so much as the ‘difficult second year’.

As computer software becomes better, and computer hardware becomes cheaper, publishing high-quality audio becomes easier too, meaning that more people can create music. It is no longer the preserve of the elite, in their ivory studios, backed by big labels. If production costs go down, then break-even points are much lower, and fewer sales are required in order to recoup costs. And by releasing fewer tracks at a time, but with greater frequency, musicians will see a quicker return, too.

Finally, this model should also foster greater creativity, and better music. A favourite essay of mine, by a digital artist named Momus, discusses this point at length: For something to be ‘mainstream’, he says, it necessarily needs to be generic. Artists have to smooth their edge if they wish to appeal to a diverse audience with its own tastes (A pop music track of any given era sounds much like any other pop music track from the same era. This is because they are all compromises, attempts on the middle-ground). However, in the digital age, the global audience is big enough that a small yet viable audience can be achieved without the compromises of ‘mainstream’. Musicians can find a fan base, and give it what it wants. Even better, with a weekly or monthly MP3 release, the cost of ‘flopping’ is greatly reduced, allowing more risk-taking, experimentation and collaboration.

The MP3 format may be killing the music industry, but it is also the stork of a new kind of social market for music, where the money is spread amongst a greater number of artists. The distribution and pricing models are not in place yet, but at least musicians are trying new methods. Radiohead offered fans the chance to pay whatever they felt like for In Rainbows. Prince gave away his latest album free with the Mail on Sunday.
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Sam Marlowe is scathing about Shilpa’s new show:

Given the anguish and humiliation that Shilpa Shetty suffered in the Celebrity Big Brother house this year, the British public are probably prepared to forgive her almost anything. Even so, she is pushing her luck with this shoddy piece of opportunism.

She should have taken my advice and gone for a six-part drama.

I was in the Royal College of Surgeons for a conference the other day, and wandered past this vast canvas.

It is one of a number of paintings hanging around the place, depicting various committees and groups of Fellows of the Royal College. The other pictures depict small groups of people in natural looking poses. The result is a convincing ‘action shot’ of the Great and the Good, and they look quite dignified. This one, however, is clearly a composite of dozens of individual portraits, and the inaccuracies of scale and sightlines make for a slightly disconcerting effect. It was surely conceived as a pacifier to satisfy the members of some bloated committee.

Most bizarre is the inclusion of a tea-lady, centre-right. She has a neat plait, and her head turned shyly away from the viewer. Even so, she towers above the Fellows she is serving, and is by far the most compelling figure in the image.

I mentioned ‘mash-ups’ last week. It’s a term that seems to have only gained traction in the past year. To me it seems to mean something halfway between ‘collaboration’ and ‘remix’. I don’t know what it means to other people.

We live in the age of the Remix. Sure, sampling and cover versions have been around for decades. Simple, honest plagarism has been around even longer. But it is the current era, one of cheap recording technology and limitless storage space for content, that the Remix and the mash-up will come to dominate.

The most popular video clip on the Internet is not a famous speech, a TV moment, or even One Night In Paris. Instead, it is footage of a plump kid wielding a broom, pretending it is a light-sabre. In one sense, he was not really pretending – The clip is so ubiquitous because thousands of people have added special effects to the footage, giving the anonymous hero a proper Jedi weapon (one suspects that the video was originally made for just such a purpose). Filming something and adding special effects is technically a remix. When we see unadulterated video, we call it “raw” footage, which suggests the idea that it is incomplete and un-evolved. Only when it has been mixed does it take on a clear and proper meaning.

I think one of the reasons I enjoy the music of Will Oldham is his propensity to remix his own songs. Hearing an old tune sung in a new style forces you to think about how the original was put together. The differences between the two renditions bring out the best of both. This is also true of artist Tommy Perman’s project Chinese Whispers, where the mix that was remixed was remixed was remixed, by an ever-expanding group of producers. Real World Records run a similar ongoing project too, again facilitated by the Internet and accessible production software that simply was not available five or six years ago.

Tommy Perman is a member of the FOUND collective. A couple of years ago, they thought up an excellent tag-line to promote their ‘Stop Look Listen’ exhibition at the Royal Scottish Academy: Remix Our Poster. The results were quirky and highly entertaining. What the FOUND exhibition shows us is that an initial thought can take different people on very different journeys. The pleasure lies not in seeing one aesthetically pleasing image… but in seeing dozens. It is delightful to see how varied are the thought processes of our fellow human beings. When it comes to lateral thinking, human imagination expands into infinite dimesions. The idea of the remix gets better with each new pathway.

A more recent example is the Layer Tennis Tournament, currently in progress over at the Coudal Partners site. One artist remixes another artist’s work. The remix is then remixed once more by the first player (using Photoshop layers)… and so the ‘volleys’ continue. Last week, illustrator Kevin Cornell took on designer Shaun Inman. The individual images they created are very pretty, but it is the juxtaposition of two different minds that makes it entertaining.

The Remix allows dialogue between many minds, not the monologue of a single person sharing their experience with us. Technologies, which we humans have invented and perfected over the past generation, increasingly allow this kind of art to arise and develop. And why not? Human thoughts overlap, and our art should too.

Update

From a good review of Waves (and British Theatre in general), courtesy of Ben Brantley in the New York Times.

At a time when the theater is often regarded as the quaint elderly relation of the art forms, it’s a pleasure to the see this alleged invalid flexing its muscles, turning cartwheels and generally showing off to the tune of “Anything you can do, I can do better.” Adaptation, at its best, is not mimicry; it’s rejuvenation.

Fifty Nine have been working with director Sally Potter, on the video design for Carmen at the ENO. As with Attempts on Her Life, a micro-site has been created, presenting trailers and blogs which chart the creative process from start to finish. Its an interesting method of engaging with audiences, and by-passing the traditional “gate-keepers” in the press.

In this case, the show has divided critics. Writing in the Independent, Edward Seckerson enjoys the dystopian setting:

Potter’s big metaphor for her Carmen is civil liberty under threat. She and her designer use the scrim to superimpose the jerky CCTV images over actuality. Surveillance is the new reality. Carmen’s entrance is pre-empted by her grainy monochrome image blown up to fill the entire screen. She pouts knowingly for the camera, as if to say: “I know you’re watching.”

Later, Carmen angrily asserts her freedom, her right to choose her own path, in the face of Don Jose’s frenzied passion. She gets a knife in the belly for her troubles.

In The Times, Richard Morrisson is less impressed with the chosen themes… but is still complimentary about the video work:

Forbidding walls topped with razor wire; an oppressed populace spied on by CCTV; menacing cops and booted tarts; desultory, neon-lit bars; bodyhoppers and hoodies; dreary airport transit corridors – where have we seen this before? The answer is in most ENO productions since the 1980s. Potter should get out more.

What is saddest is that the staging’s most interesting aspect – real-time video (by Fifty Nine Productions) projected on to a gauze to suggest a society under constant surveillance – is abandoned after one act.

Rupert Christiansen in The Telegraph also had mixed feelings about the setting, but still enjoyed the music.

Es Devlin’s sets are sparely beautiful and evocative, and Potter generates more intensity and atmosphere than Francesca Zambello did in her drearily conventional version for the Royal Opera. But I feel that Potter has been in two, or even three minds as to what she wants to do. Some scenes, including the final confrontation, catch fire. Others, such as Carmen’s arrest, remain inert.
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The biggest applause was rightly reserved for Edward Gardner, conducting a vivacious orchestra in a sparkling, colourful and clean-textured account of the score which never becomes hysterical or heavy-handed.

Andrew Clements in The Guardian was unfortunately not at all impressed, and thinks that “one of the most ambiguous heroines in operas is reduced to a mere cipher”. Ouch.

I meant to post this image yesterday. A few people commented on the (in)appropriateness of the Prime Minister giving his speech set against a lush Tory blue.

The choice of blue is unwise not only because of the political symbolism, but because of the technological implications too. The even blue is the perfect colour for CGI work. Anyone with the most basic CGI software can take an excellent ‘key’ from that blue, and will be able to add Gordon to any number of amusing or satirical locations - the most obvious being the Tory party conference. In this, the age of the ‘mash up’, I do not doubt several such projects are already underway, in upstairs bedrooms in cul-de-sacs up and down the land.

The Zidane footage from the World Cup last year had similar benefits. The assault was filmed against the green grass of a football pitch, and easy to replace with whatever the comedians wished.

The satirical mash-up, perfectly given a platform due to the wonders of YouTube and its ilk, will only become more common as time passes, and more and more people become more and more savvy with software that is less expensive.

Update

Compare the pictyure above, with this one from later in the week.

This week, there has been a short online discussion about blogging on the (virtual pages) of The Guardian. Michael Billington asserted the need for professional, paper based reviewers, but I think some of his comments betray a patronising tone. He is simply wrong when he claims that

The critic, unlike the blogger, also has a duty to set any play or performance in its historical context.

… since blogs have the same responsibility if they want to be considered relevant (or simply, ‘good’). Billington is taken to task for this misunderstanding in the comments, and also for a misplaced nostalgia when he says:

The blog seems to me have supplanted the kind of prolonged argument about the arts that once took place in the correspondence columns of newspapers. Example: years ago, when I rashly suggested that Shaw was the best dramatist after Shakespeare, a considered, if heated, debate went on for weeks in the paper itself. Now such a suggestion would be a 48-hour wonder on the blog.

But that’s the point, says Ian Shuttleworth in the comments:

Blogs in this respect are filling a gap that has for some time and increasingly been left by editorial neglect in print publications.

Meanwhile, Lyn Gardner is a good deal more positive about the medium of blogging. It was her contribution which drew me to the debate, because last year I remember she used The Guardian’s theatre blog to publish a dissenting review of Katie Mitchell’s Waves, which had been panned by… none other than Michael Billington. Sadly, an online argument about Mitchell’s (admittedly divisve) work never materialised. This was a shame, since this sort of debate, between critics who care, is a feature which Billington himself misses. Blogs can complement theatre criticism, not challenge and marginalise it in the way that TV and film reviews have done.

Other writers also lament the absence of such robust industry. I am reminded of Michael Coveney’s essay in Prospect (November 2005). Here is a telling paragraph:

But the truth is that newspapers increasingly devote largely uncritical coverage to the latest product of the publicity machine … Previews and interviews now take precedence over critical responsibility. But the idea that they do so in order to meet a public demand is, I believe, false. Anyone under the age of 30 who wants to read about pop music, new film and reality television knows where to go. That place is not the broadsheets, but magazines and the internet. So the liberal, professional intelligentsia who read the broadsheets are confronted with coverage they don’t want and comment on “high culture” by people who often know less about it than they do.

The Guardian’s consideration of blogging is welcome, but ultimately, I cannot help but think that these critics are arriving late onto the scene, when they should have been in the vanguard. When Natasha Tripney writes

Bloggers are not constricted by word count or deadlines, and have free reign to write about what they want, when they want

or when Michael Billington types

critics are much more accountable for their opinions… the blog also gives a voice to the hitherto voiceless

we are reading insightless cliché - Many of us have been identifying these features for yonks! To paraphrase Michael Coveney, bloggers are being presented by comment on “blog culture” by people who often know less about it than they do.

“Could you read 100 novels in 100 days?” asks the BBC. Apparently, that is the rate at which the Man Booker Prize judges must read in order to be able to give their verdict.

What with me not being a publisher or a journalist, I know I could never match their Pheidippidian pace. I think a conscientious Robert, managing his time healthily and socially, could only manage about a novel a month. I think this is realistic, since there will be times when I will read more (if I become a commuter, or maybe go to a beach for a week), and times when I will read less (child-rearing, or a World Cup, perhaps). If I further assume that I will probably give up on all that “reading” malarkey when I reach four score of years, then that computes as follows:

52 years x 12 books = 624 books

I think that is an over-estimate, but it doesn’t look like much to me. I’m sure I can fit in the great clichés from the canon of Western literature, but as a fully paid up member of the multiculturalist cognoscenti, I worry that it leaves precious little space for anything less mainstream. Slots are at a premium - can I risk falling in love with an author, and the compulsion to read their novels more than once? Can I afford to take a risk on something bad? It occurs to me I’ll need plenty of those loathesome “Top 50” lists if I am going to succeed.

And how many of those books am I effectively ignoring by reading blogs?

Meanwhile, the NaNoWriMo project encourages you to write your own novel in 30 days. Who is with me? Dave?

Update

I am reminded of this comment from Mark, on a post last year:

I think that part of the pleasure of buying magazines is that one is not simply buying a publication; in buying a magazine you are promising yourself a period of time, normally on your own in which you can escape whatever else it is that you should be doing. Is it just me, or is at least part of the pleasure the act of buying a paper or magazine, and walking home, or to a cafe, with it burning in your bag or pocket, knowing that you have bought yourself a little slice of leisure time? And I think that perhaps it is this reason which explains why we don’t mind the fact that we often don’t read them - the intention was good. And in the same way that the initial intention was honorable, so to is that most unrealistic, yet fiercely guarded notion that yes, one day, we will go back and fill in the gaps by picking up those old publications. Nick Hornby’s recent collection of ‘Believer Magazine’ articles, published under the title of ‘The Polysyllabic Spree’ expresses this same sentiment - we all have bookshelves populated with book bought in the best of faith, unread, and unlikely to ever be read. But they stay there, a collection of promises to the self, that one day, there will be nothing more pressing to do than go back and make amends.

One of the reasons for being at the various Edinburgh festivals is the opportunity to get ahead of the ‘curve’ on films, plays and actors that are destined to become successful in the coming year. I saw Murderball before everyone else, and it was festival audiences who provided a seal of approval for Black Watch before it went on a lengthy tour of Scotland, England, and television.

This year the gem was In the Shadow of the Moon, a documentary about the Apollo Project. It was actually made by a British film-maker, but features interviews with several of the astronauts who journeyed to the moon. It also includes some newly-released and restored NASA footage of the voyages. It is due for release in the US where it is set to be a success, one which encourages a little bit of patriotism in a country that has been hit with a bout of Iraq-induced self-doubt.

Noticeable by his absence from the film is Neil Armstrong, who is a notorious recluse. This is annoying at first, but when one ponders the enormity of what he did, I think it is an unsurprising result. Who could resist grabbing him by the collar and shouting “MAN, YOU WALKED ON THE FUCKING MOON!” He has probably been subjected to that kind of hysteria for many years.

And in retrospect, Armstrong’s non-participation is a blessing, in that it gives the other Apollo astronauts a chance to shine (no pun intended). Michael Collins, in particular, explodes the notion that he was somehow “unlucky” to be left on the Command Module while Armstrong and Aldrin made history. The intelligent musings of Collins and the other astronauts on the nature of their heroism and how they dealt with the enormous pressure to succeed is what makes the film so inspiring - After all, they have experienced the nearest thing to a Total Perspective Vortex that humans can create, and the footage they brought back from the moon is a delight to behold, especially on a large cinema screen.

My favourite quote is from Alan Bean, the fourth man on the moon.

Now, I never complain about the weather. I am just glad that there is weather.

Though the funniest is Charlie Duke’s once-and-for-all put down to conspiracy theorists:

We went to the moon nine times. Why would we fake it nine times?

He has a southern drawl that makes it work. Wise, yet human.