Sweet Nothings

Let's have a round-up of the gigs I went to in the last week or so, because hey it passes the time and that. The Complete Stone Roses - Islington Academy Having reconciled myself long ago to the fact that I would never get to see the most seminal band from my Uni years play together (one particular Ian Brown quote, responding to how much it would take to reform the Roses - "You could give me Mars and Jupiter and it still wouldn't be enough" - sticks in my mind, not to mention John Squire's "I have no wish to desecrate the memory of the Stone Roses" sculpture-thing), I booked tickets earlier this year for this highly-regarded tribute act instead. And, y'know, they were alright .   The singer has a decent stab at Brown's ape-dancing as well as the bouts of atonal skronking, and the guitarist looked vaguely Squire-like even though the other two looked bog-all like Mani and Reni (not sure the drummer was even black), and there was only one Secon

Which is up against some pretty stiff competition. Eat your heart out, Carol Ann Duffy: Remember, Remember, the 4th of November, when a part of the M5 was alight. The UK became cold, when the news was told, ... 34 vehicles were burning bright. Sympathy to them all, who were in the fireball, to those relatives who were on that route. May everyone reflect, so we can pay our respects. Let's spread the poem to show our tributes There are genuinely no words.

I was interested to read  this article  the other day, as I'm currently halfway through Haruki Murakami's epic   1Q84  (the first book of it anyway). The bit that particularly struck me was that some reviewers apparently have a beef with him for only being interested in playing to his own fans rather than trying to win new converts to the great intellectual cause: "Murakami, now 62, has ceased being a novelist and has entered the dangerous world of literary phenomenon, a cult figure himself." On the surface, this would appear to make Murakami the literary equivalent of Radiohead, who now make esoteric electronica designed to appeal to a set few who - by implication - have outgrown hoary old concepts like choruses and hooks. Or perhaps Stewart Lee, who instead of telling jokes prefers to endlessly deconstruct them for his audience of delighted fellow pseuds. But the world of novels operates in reverse. Murakami is a great writer who can combine high quality with bro