Legends of the Sun Pig

A surprising number of books this time!

• In The Cold Dead Ground by Stuart MacBride is the latest in his Logan McRae series. As the series has progressed, the books have become less physically gruesome, but have taken Logan McRae to more morally dark places. Over the last few books, he has been dealing with hallucinations of his girlfriend Samantha who has been in a vegetative state for years following an accident he feels responsible for. Narratively, she has been the voice in his head arguing against his feelings of guilt and balancing out is self-destructive impulses. But in this book Logan has come to the point where he has to take her off life support. When her voice is gone, what replaces her? As the protagonist of the book, I naturally feel sympathy for him, but that sympathy has limits. He emerges here as a deeply damaged, disturbed, and unpredictable individual.
• I read Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt in the original Dutch to keep Fiona company as part of a book report she had to write for school. Apparently the English language version is more of an adaptation than a transalation, and has extensive changes throughout. It’s a dark journey, genuinely horrific, and surprisingly misogynistic. I appreciated it, but I don’t think I actually enjoyed it. Horror isn’t really my thing any more.
• Rather Be The Devil by Ian Rankin: the new Rebus novel. (More of a Rebus/Fox/Clarke novel than pure Rebus — he doesn’t seem to be doing separate Malcolm Fox books any more.) Liked it.

Having said that I’m not too into horror any more, one of the films I watched recently was 10 Cloverfield Lane. Which sits in the same universe as Cloverfield, which I suppose is kind of in the horror genre, but I would probably class more as sci-fi suspense. Anyway, I found the premise of 10 Cloverfield Lane intriguing (woman is “rescued” from a disaster above ground by a doomsday prepper, and he won’t let her out of his underground bunker), and I wanted to see how it would play out. Was there really a disaster, or is it all in his imagination? Is he sane or a psychopath? Both?

In many ways it expands on director Dan Trachtenberg’s short film Portal: No Escape: woman tries to escape from a dire situation, but is the outside world really what she thinks it is? The ending of 10 Cloverfield Lane genuinely surprised me. I had thought it would go in a different direction, but the one it took was very satisfying.

Other watchings:

• Synchronicity: reasonable time-travel thriller. Set design, lighting, and music are very heavily influenced by Blade Runner.
• Point Break (2015): vacuous and awful.
• The Disappearance of Alice Creed: tense, claustrophobic, low-budget crime thriller about an abduction that has more to it than meets the eye. There may not be much bloody violence on screen, but the psychological humiliation perpetrated against the hostage Alice (Gemma Arterton) is graphic and uncomfortable to watch. Without giving too much away, she gets her chance to turn the tables, but it’s hard going. Great performances from all three actors (the only people who appear on screen). But like the book Hex, I didn’t actually enjoy this.
• Parks and Recreation isn’t on Netflix here in NL or in the UK, and until recently I had only seen an occasional few episodes while I was in the US. When I was in Glasgow a few weeks ago I picked up a DVD cheap box of the first two seasons, and have just finished watching them. Love it.
• For no specific reason, I felt a desire to re-watch Fringe. I’ve started in on season 1. The show takes a while to find its feet, but there’s enough entertainment there to keep me happy.

Speaking of Gemma Arterton (The Disappearance of Alice Creed), she features in the music viceo for Bonobo’s new track, “Kerala”. If the video looks subtle and intricate on first watch, try watching it a couple more times and see how much more detail you spot.

If The Girl With All The Gifts got a theatrical release here in NL, I missed it. I’m looking forward to when it appears on download or streaming, though.

As for music, I’ve been playing a lot of Frightened Rabbit, and A Tribe Called Quest. Their new album We got it from Here… Thank You 4 Your service is amazing.

New Area 11 music video for “After The Flags”. This one was great live.

Funny story about my memory: after seeing The Joy Formidable in May I had a drink with my colleague Mike, and we talked about music and concerts. Turns out he loves Frightened Rabbit, too! We said how much we would love to see them live some time. Except I did see them in the Kleine Zaal of Paradiso in 2012, and had forgotten about the gig entirely. If I dig far enough I can come up with the vague recollection that they didn’t have any merch on sale, and that I was disappointed by that fact. But apart from that? Nothing.

This lapse doesn’t bother me because it’s a symptom of the inevitable slide into old age and where did I put my teeth. It’s more that if I don’t remember the experience of seeing my favourite bands live, what is the point of going in the first place?

Of course, I don’t remember every single meal I have eaten or every walk I have taken, either, and that doesn’t mean those things were useless. Taking the time to feed one’s soul is important as a regular activity even when it doesn’t turn out to be a life-changing experience.

This gap in my memory makes an interesting contrast with the well-formed memories I have of concerts that I have written about here on my blog. Back in 2012 I may have held their set list in memory long enough to write it down, but without any more context, it faded very quickly. In the last couple of years I have got in the habit of taking pictures at gigs and writing about them. Even if the pictures are blurry and the words are minimal, the practice of spending time thinking about what I am going to say and what photographs I will choose to represent it, fixes the event more firmly in my memory. (Which is actually the whole point of this blog nowadays anyway. The strapline I maintained until recently was “I’m doing this for me, not you.” I used to write things in the hope they would get read; now I write to remember.)

To be honest, sometimes this feels like a burden. Every gig has a certain amount of overhead and homework to do after I come home. Also, I think I’ve overdosed on concerts this year. Large arena gigs in particular are starting to feel like work rather than an exciting evening out.

So there were a number of factors that made me less enthusiastic that I could have been going to Tolhuistuin last Monday evening. Gig fatigue, general day-to-day tiredness (it’s winter) and work exhaustion, embarrassment over having forgotten their last gig, and a feeling that I didn’t like their new album Painting of a Panic Attack as much as their earlier efforts.

Spoiler: it all worked out fine, and I had a great time.

Paradiso Noord, aka Tolhuistuin is actually really easy to get to from here. It’s on the right (North) side of the IJ, and the car parking for the A’DAM Tower is plentiful and close by. If I was less lazy (or maybe if I had finished work earlier), I would have cycled, but there you go. I didn’t get there in time to see all of PAWS’ opening set, but they have never really been my taste anyway. (Sorry guys.)

Frightened Rabbit opened with “Get Out”, which I think is still my favourite track from Painting of a Panic Attack. (Haunting video.). There was a knot of folk right in front of the stage who were very excited and adoring, and kept clamoring for particular songs. Scott Hutchison appreciated the excitement, but he was a bit put off by the interruptions. “We’re not your wedding band!” he declared. This didn’t stop the fans from passing him a birthday card they wanted him to sign after the gig, and from placing down a line of shots on the stage in front of him just as the band were playing “I Wish I Was Sober”. “I’ve no idea what’s in this,” Scott said, shrugging it off. (He did bravely down one later in the gig, though.) I think it was “Head Rolls Off” they wanted him to play, because when the band played it they all went a bit wild. It has a line that resonates very strongly with me, too: “While I’m alive, I’ll make tiny changes to Earth.”

The rest of the set was fantastic, too, with a mix of slower numbers and foot-stompers like “Nothing Like You” and “The Loneliness and the Scream”. I really should stick to small venues. There is nothing like being so close to the stage.

Before the gig I had checked out the merch stand, as I always do. Aside from the lovely T-shirts and posters, they also had a one-of-a-kind item on the table. A used drum head, signed by the whole band, and illustrated by Scott. It was being auctoned off for charity, with proceeds going to the Scottish Refugee Council. There was a bid sheet next to it, and no-one had made an offer on it yet. “Hmm,” I thought to myself.

Throughout the evening I loved watching Grant Hutchison on the drums. He keeps up a fantastic rhythm on the pedals, which was something I always struggled with when I was still playing. (It’s being close to the stage at a gig that makes me miss having a kit.) When the gig was over I moseyed over to the merch table again, and was surprised to see that still no-one had bid on the drum head. I asked how the auction worked: put your name, phone number, and a bid down, and the highest bid gets it. The woman behind the table said that they’d probably finish it up in about ten or fifteen minutes. What else could I do? I bought the T-shirt and poster I wanted, counted how much cash I had left (€40), and wrote it down. Fifteen minutes later, as they were packing up the merch stand, I was the only one who had bid, so I got it. I’m delighted to have got a unique souvenir, and to have given some money to a great charity.

I think it’s fair to say that this gig won’t slip from my memory like the last one did.

Set list (also):

• Get Out
• Holy
• The Modern Leper
• Living In Colour
• I Wish I Was Sober
• Head Rolls Off
• Little Drum
• Fast Blood
• An Otherwise Disappointing Life
• Blood Under The Bridge
• Nothing Like You
• Woke Up Hurting
• Floating In The Forth
• The Oil Slick
• Lump Street

Encore:

• Death Dream
• The Woodpile
• The Loneliness And The Scream

Supported by Rationale. Nice stage design with big video and projection screens with cool visuals running throughout the show. Great sound. Tons of excellent merch. Hearing the entire Ziggo Dome chant “eh eh oh eh-oh eh eh oh eh-oh” along to Pompeii was spectacular. Fiona loved the gig. Maybe it’s because I was still recovering from a virus, but for me it felt like just another trip to the Ziggo Dome. I’m feeling a bit burned out on arena concerts.

Set list:

1. Send Them Off!
2. Laura Palmer
3. Warmth
4. Snakes
5. Flaws
6. Oblivion
7. Lethargy
8. Things We Lost In The Fire
9. The Draw
10. The Currents
11. Power
12. Bad Blood
13. Four Walls (The Ballad Of Perry Smith)
14. Blame
15. Of The Night
16. Fake It
17. The Weight Of Living, Pt. II
18. Glory
19. Good Grief

Encore:

20. Two Evils
21. Icarus
22. Pompeii

The wake of the US presidential election felt much more like the aftermath of the Scottish independence referendum to me than the days following the Brexit result. I remembered Robin McAlpine’s article in Bella Caledonia: “Wipe your eyes. On your feet.” It has a lot in common with Jon Schwarz’s piece in The Intercept: “Donald Trump Will Be President. This Is What We Do Next.”

These recent battles between progressive and extremist values are an example of asymmetric warfare. When one side considers science nothing more than ideology, there is no common ground on which to stand. Trump (and the Brexiteers) took a machine gun to a cavalry battle. Fake news is more powerful than real news, because there can be so much more of it, and when it lines up with convictions it can’t be refuted with facts. Search and social media filter bubbles encourage this cozy slide into unchallengeable beliefs, and contribute to a rising mistrust of experts and the reality-based community at a time when we need them more than ever.

The new media ecosystem “means everything is true and nothing is true,” Obama told me later. “An explanation of climate change from a Nobel Prize-winning physicist looks exactly the same on your Facebook page as the denial of climate change by somebody on the Koch brothers’ payroll. And the capacity to disseminate misinformation, wild conspiracy theories, to paint the opposition in wildly negative light without any rebuttal—that has accelerated in ways that much more sharply polarize the electorate and make it very difficult to have a common conversation.” –David Remnick in the New Yorker

In our parliaments, the opposition parties have to decide where they stand on the spectrum of “let’s see how we can work together” to “I will oppose you and everything you stand for.” The former normalizes extremist behaviour. The latter tactic is of limited use in winner-take-all two-party states, and is tainted by the fact that it is a poisonous tactic that drives even more tribalism and extremism. It compromises what we stand for.

We can laugh at the inconsistency, but the contrast is striking. Democrats grumble but abide by the rules; Republicans immediately dial up the rhetoric and denounce their opponents as illegitimate, eventually paralysing their ability to act. That was the admitted strategy of congressional Republicans in the first Obama term: a determined effort to prevent him governing at all. –Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian

In our homes and daily lives, we progressive non-politicians are left despairing over the inaction and in-fighting of representatives we elected to work for us. If they are powerless, what can we do as individuals? A single person can only reduce their carbon footprint by so much. A lone household can’t take in a whole village of refugees.

This is where asymmetric warfare comes into play again. A parliament can only house so many representatives. But we can fill the streets with a million protesters. We can join, fund, and strengthen the organizations that strive for social justice and a livable planet. We can boycott, advocate, and drive commercial decisions. (You don’t see car manufacturers scrapping their electric car projects, do you?) It’s going to take a movement. It’s going to take time. It’s going to take perseverance.