CC at Coalition

Leftfield 027
Originally uploaded by carnival collective

Our LeftField warm-up gig from Friday last week ...

BIG SPLASH SPLOSH

Fire escape 3
Originally uploaded by carnival collective

Well, we played Brighton Marina on Saturday night as part of the finale of Brighton Festival - and praise B it did not pish down as forecast and there were THOUSANDS of punters watching us across the water, and we DID have a ball - but twas also muchos muchos difficile as we were strung out on a floating pontoon that bounced back off the beat under our feet and also one end of the band couldn't hear the other end ... but still LUVERLY to be playing ...

Tired now :)

Anne Weale's Death: Farewell Bookworm

I've just cast a glimpse at Anne Weale's marvellous blog Bookworm on the Net to see whether she has posted any new thoughts on the world of books only to learn that she has very recently died. What a terrible piece of news for books, for publishing and for the blogosphere. Anne's bracing and intelligent views have been amongst the most refreshing I've encountered - she was a lovely writer and very, very wise. We also periodically chatted on email, usually about pet authors who are wrongfully neglected and I shall miss those exchanges enormously.

What a sad piece of news to get unexpectedly at the end of a Friday ...
There is a small catalogue of appreciations of Anne's life/work/thoughts starting to appear on her blog

I can't think of anything else to say except how sad I am for her family.

Crusoe George & Frankfurt

Well, while I've been at the frankfurt Book Fair plying my wares, son Crusoe's continued his media rise - getting pieces in local papers, on the BBC and now on Meridien. I've also had a few emails from people asking for links to his tunes - so here's a link to The Jazzy Letter Jay which is my favourite of his tunes. And now that he's all famous like, he's disgruntled that it's Soulful Swing, one of his oldest tunes, that's at no 1 in the Amazingtunes.com download chart - so he's hoping some people will start to listen to his other stuff...

Frankfurt was a total hoot - mad parties, lots of jaw ache - but sooooo much work to do now. I'm also reading my way through a pile of books written in Dutch which I can only read at a snail's pace, to assess their viability in the UK & US markets ... in between this I DID manage to read one for pleaure/leisure. Mary Lawson's The Other Side of the Bridge, which I bought on the Ferry despite the R&J book club choice sticker on the front (Something usually guaranteed to send me skedaddling away double quick). However the competition in the spinner was sparse and I needed to pay on card rather than use a 50 Euro note (change in sterling)> Yes, such is the basis of the modern impulse book purchase. The beginning did not engage me, I have to say - too many coming of age stories have passed through my shelves, and the brooding sense of tragedy whether past or present would have stopped me in my tracks had I any choice. But a couple of chapters in and it worked itself beneath my skin and in the end it turned into a profoundly moving book. It's odd about it's start - I did wonder whether it had been her first novel (in terms of writing chronology) rather than her second as it had a lot of the characteristics of the strong debut. Anyway, I ultimately liked it - to the point of tears...

Crusoe George does it again

As I busy muself getting ready to depart for the Frankfurt Book Fair to try and earn the family a crust, my eldest son Crusoe is in the papers again, apparently this tim starting to earn money off his music downloads (see the Saturday Guardian)

I think I'm going to have to review the rental arrangements on his bedroom - sorry - make that Recording Studio ... cor blimey, maybe I can retire after all.

Crusoe George AKA Rebrand

Ahhh - my little boi has done it again, bless him, warming every one of my fatherly cotton socks at once. The flagrant little self publicist has a rather good write up in today's Metro about his music c/o Amazing Tunes..

Apparently my no. 1 son is s new star in the making with his piece Soulful Swing featuring at no 5 on the Amazing Tunes download chart. He even has his picture in the paper too...

He IS clever...

Barbara Nadel: Better Voice than Plots

I've probably read too many books by Barbara Nadel too quickly. She's regularly compared to Donna Leon and sets all of her books in Turkey - mostly Istanbul. The cumulative effect of binge-reading her works is most peculiar. After 5 books I really love her writing and have grown to like her characters hugely. Also interesting for detective-based crime fiction, they don't actually have a single dominant character which I think is quite unusual: they are much more ensemble pieces. I also find her Turkey very convincing - I spent a great deal of time in Turkey some years ago - and when I'm feeling literary I regularly return to the fiction of Orhan Pamuk and Yasar Kamal. Nadel summons Turkey up with her pen every bit as well as these serious, major writers. Nadel's Istanbul is exquisitely evoked, as is her Anatolia. Now, as Meatloaf might put it two out of three aint bad - but that's as far as I can go. Weirdly, I just cannot get to grips with her excessively baroque plots. In this incredibly human, real, breathing world, Nadel spins some of the most ghoulishly excessive twaddle (plotwise) I've ever encountered ranging from a teenage boy who believes he's a Vampire to a mad artist who kills and embalms his own young children to incorporate them in to an artwork (with the support of his doting wife). There's also one with a deranged super-spy on a moral quest to purify society. Just bizarre. Any way it's a bit like overdosing on sweets - and left me feeling very groggy and more than a littel queasy. Strange strange strange. Am I missing something here?