Cat Power - Live on 6 Music

I was lucky enough to see Cat Power perform a memorable 6 Music Hub Session on Tuesday. I've long been a fan of her records but had never seen her live before, mainly because I'd heard too many stories about her unpredictability on stage (I did have ticket for one her shows years ago and she cancelled).

While Chan Marshall did show up, the session didn't go as smoothly as some I've seen. Accompanied by accoustic and slide guitars, she sounded great and began with her new spin on Hank Williams's Ramblin' Man. An apropriate title since her subsequent conversation with George Lamb meandered for ages.

Halfway through her second number, Song to Bobby, the band abruptly stopped playing as the electric guitar went dead. Chan didn't realise they were live, broke the cardinal daytime radio sin of letting fly an expletive, had a confab with her band about what they should do, and eventually played a different song.

To those listening live it might have sounded shambolic. Watching it in the flesh was a lot of fun.

You can listen to the session on the iPlayer (edited for decency I believe) and see some photos on the 6 Music website.

If you're unaware of Cat Power, this the video for Lived In Bars from her last album The Greatest, is a pretty good introduction.

And a couple more versions of Ramblin' Man, first the Hank Williams original on top of footage from a Buster Keaton movie:

And secondly the video for Mark Lanegan and Isobel Campbell's version:

Dozens of people have covered this classic. If you find more, post them below,

Bright Eyes, Troubled Waters

I made my professional blog debut yesterday on Guardian Unlimited, expanding this post about Art Garfunkel's incredible book list by about 600 words.

I loved seeing my article linked to from the Guardian homepage and I was encouraged by the second commenter, Belinda, who called it a "great post". Then things got a bit funny.

At present there are a very respectable 56 comments on my post. But, in the words of my friend John Barner, who emailed me after seeing it, some of them are "a bit cranky". Responses like "I don't really see the point of this article" are par for the course. Another poster, chameleonwoman, opined that "Recording lists of the books you've read... is akin to keeping all your urine in glass bottles". Wittier was the person who just typed, "Like a bridge over Asperger's Syndrome". I laughed at that.

My favourite responses were those that took what I'd written and riffed on it. Quite a few people speculated about Art's high-brow selections - "Am I the only one who thinks Art is telling a few porkies?" asked GoddamitGaryAct2.

You thought it odd that Art Garfunkel records all the books he'd read? Well, dellamirandola brought our attention to something far more weird - Simon Le Bon's Book Club.

Sam Jordison suggested I pitch writing about Art's library to the Guardian after he read my original post. Sam told me, from experience, that some of GU's blog commentators "keep you on your toes" and he's right. I wrote that Garfunkel read Catch-22 14 years after it was published. Pinball73 correctly commented that "Catch-22 was published in 1961, not 1955 as stated in the article". (I copied the date from Art's list).

Another commentor has accused me of ripping off the New Yorker. I came across Nick Paumgarten's interview with Art just before submitting my text to the Guardian. Presumably Paumgarten heard the same Dylan radio show as me. Unless, of course, he reads this blog. I left my own comment saying that there's no way I could have got the idea from the New Yorker and the complainant has now apologised. There is some civility on the Web.

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Art Garfunkel's Library

We're Not In Kansas Anymore

Last night BBC Four showed a great two-part doc, No Plan, No Peace, about the disastrous and unbelievably misguided attempts to rebuild Iraq after the 2003 invasion. One of the interviewees was the Washington Post's former Baghdad bureau chief Rajiv Chandrasekaran, whose superb book, Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone, I got for Christmas.

I'd never been convinced by Tony Blair's constant reassurances that he'd given considerable thought to what we'd do after getting rid of Saddam, but until reading this book I hadn't quite conceived how dumb the coalition had been. Comedy of errors doesn't do the Bush/Blair axis of idiocy's decisions justice.

Chandrasekaran spent more than a year reporting from the Green Zone, the fortified Little America that housed Saddam's Baghdad palace, where Americans watched pornos and scoffed all the pork they could eat. I could list some of the absurdities that he witnessed but Chandrasekaran does a much better job himself in this Daily Show interview with John Stewart.

A brilliant book. Highly recommended.

Art Garfunkel's Library

On this week's Theme Time Radio Hour Bob Dylan mentioned that Art Garfunkel's website lists every book the singer's read since 1968. Bob wasn't pulling our legs. The list currently stands at 1,023, the most recent entry being The Magnificent Ambersons (I've seen the film but not read the novel).

It's a fascinating list, if only because it must surely be the only example of its kind. Does Paul Simon list every film he's ever seen? I doubt it.

Art evidently likes a serious read. Picking through the list at random I noticed that between December 1985 and June 1986 Art read 14 books including The Aeneid, The Conquest of Gaul by Julius Caesar and a book I've never heard of called Zen in the Art of Archery (it gets a 4 1/2 star average on Amazon).

I'm not a particular fan of Simon and Garfunkel, but I am now bizarrely interested to see what Art will be reading in the year ahead.

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Art Garfunkel's Library

My Favourite Octogenarian Film Reviewers

The always reliable, often nuts WFMU's Beware of The Blog tipped me off to Reel Geezers - a superb YouTube film review show with a refreshing twist: the critics are a pair of knowledgeable OAPs. Lorenzo Semple, 84, was one of Hollywood's top screenwriters in the 70s (Three Days of the Condor, The Parallax View). He's joined by 81-year-old former agent and film producer Marcia Nasatir.

What's great about the duo is their love of cinema shines through in every review whether it's Superbad or Michael Clayton and the banter between the two is priceless. Here's their take on a couple of the films I've enjoyed most in recent months, Juno and I'm Not There.

Reel Geezers on Juno

Reel Geezers on I'm Not There

For more background on Reel Geezers, The LA Times has a very good interview.

A Year of Gigs

I'll wait until I see Bruce Springsteen next week before deciding what my favourite gigs of the year were. However, as an aide moi, I've just gone through my diary to remind myself who I did see live in 2007.

January

The Broken Family Band @ The Tricycle Theatre

Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan @ Shepherd's Bush Empire

February

The Decemberists @ Shepherd's Bush Empire
The Hold Steady @ The Borderline

March

Arcade Fire @ Brixton Academy

Malcolm Middleton @ King's College

Andrew Bird @ Bush Hall

Dan Bern @ The Borderline

The Broken Family Band @ Koko

April

Camera Obscura & Au Revoir Simone @ Koko

May

Carrie Rodriguez @ The Luminaire

Wilco @ Shepherd's Bush Empire

The National @ The Astoria

June
Ryan Adams @ LSO St Luke's

Andrew Bird @ The Scala

Beirut @ Koko

July

Josh Rouse @ Madam JoJo's

The Hold Steady @ Shepherd's Bush Empire

Grand Drive @ The Luminaire

Cambridge Folk Festival

August

Tom Russell @ The Luminaire

The Hold Steady @ The Electric Ballroom

September

Richard Hawley @ The Roundhouse

Guy Clark @ Bloomsbury Theatre

Rachel Unthank and The Winterset & Devon Sproule @ Spitz

October

Will Kimbrough & Tommy Womack @ The Borderline

Old Crow Medicine Show @ King's College

Son Volt @ The Luminaire

Justin Townes Earle @ The Luminaire

Mark Olson @ Dingwalls

Charlie Louvin @ Dingwalls

November

Jim White @ The Borderline

Rilo Kiley @ Shepherd's Bush Empire

Three Sheets To The Wind

An Excellent Book About Beer By Pete Brown

My friends Dave and Natalie gave me this book for my birthday last month. Remarkably, considering I'm a paid-up CAMRA member and have taken days off work to attend beer festivals, it's the first book about beer I've ever read cover to cover.

Pete Brown, a drinks marketeer and author of Man Walks Into a Pub: A Sociable History of Beer, takes a tour around the world's most noted beer-producing nations exploring its role in each country. Brown's an entertaining tour guide, illuminating everywhere he visits by not only recounting his pub crawls but also trying very hard to find out why beer drinking in other countries rarely results in the vomit-strewn pavements it so often does here.

He enjoys cerveza y tapas in Spain, sings along with oompah bands at Oktoberfest and marvels at the Bond villain architecture of the Asahi brewery in Tokyo. The section on America is fascinating. I've long been a fan of American beer like Sam Adams and Anchor Steam and the book contains a revealing insight into why US beers are currently so tasty. Karl Ockert, the brewmaster at Portland's Bridgeport Brewery, says:

"In the UK you had a real ale tradition that was almost wiped out. CAMRA rescued it, but because they were trying to preserve something. Here, [in the USA] the tradition of making beer decent beer was completely wiped out. Destroyed. There was nothing to preserve. So craft brewers started with an attitude of experimentation. We don't worry about whether something is traditional not, just if it's great beer."

It's an interesting point. The book is full of them. It also made me realise that I'm still probably too much of a beer conservative. I think the reason I've never been a fan of Belgian beer is not because I don't really like the taste. It's because they don't taste like the British beers I love. Any suggestions of what to broaden my tastebuds with gratefully received.

As I said, the book's full of the sort of trivia that's irresistible to pub quiz bores like myself, my favourite being the fact that home brew was illegal in America until 1979 (God bless Jimmy Carter).

I actually bought a copy of Pete Brown's previous book a few years but never opened it. That was until last night when my thirst for beery facts was not yet satisfied.

Since most of my posts here have so far been music related, this is a perfect opportunity to share a few songs from the superb Barstool Mountain blog. Hank Thompson, who died last week, was a master of beer-inspired song. You can download two of his classics below.

Amazon

Three Sheets To The Wind by Pete Brown

Man Walks Into A Pub by Pete Brown

Download

MP3: Hank Thompson - Six-Pack To Go

MP3: Hank Thompson - Hangover Tavern