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The Pt. 1 in the title of this post refers to a two part review, not the series itself.

Hmmm! Watched one and a bit episodes of this. Not at all convinced. Why all the hype in the press/media? Jamie Dornan isn’t compelling. When I found out he’s a model turned actor it was like, ‘well, that figures’.

Structurally it ought to work. We should want to know how The Man wound up in hospital with no memory, and why there’s a guy buried alive in a barrel. But I found myself struggling to engage with any of the ‘characters’, many of whom seem paper thin.

Let’s start with Dornan’s The Man – who may or may not be the titular ‘tourist’: his reaction to a huge truck attacking him, prior to the crash and resulting amnesia, is that of a macho jerk, and not very believable. So, from the get go, I dislike him.

And from then on he carries on, in sub-Western genre brooding silent tough guy mode, as an assortment of ‘other folk’ all behave as if they’ve got serious chunks of personality missing, in order to collude in the prolongation of something I wasn’t interested in to start with.

So in episode two I started scrolling through the many interminable bumbling functionary type scenes, before finally thinking, screw this.

I even read reviews suggesting this was a great comedy. Seriously? The Helen Chambers character, is she funny for constantly seeming diffidently embarrassed? Not in my world.

A scene that sums it all up for me is when The Man, and what appears to be his ex, get held up on a road due, it turns out, to copulating turtles (ok, that sounds funny written down here, but believe me, on screen it isn’t). The Man reinforces his tough guy jerk persona, and my initial dislike starts turning to hatred.

One suspects that prior to the accident he was a bad man doing bad things. And perhaps that’s why his ex isn’t telling him she knows who he is? (Why was she ever with him? Why is she still hanging around him?) He’s such a cock! So I simply don’t care.

One thing I noticed on some of the comments sections of positive reviews (e.g. Guardian and Independent) was the preponderance of women digging it. The cynic in me says this must be down to them fancying JD. How depressing!

Not going to waste any more time on this. Rather like a male model type, this thinks it’s good looking and therefore interesting. I found it a grinding bore.

Pt. 2

Ok, so the following day, having written the above, I find myself going back to The Tourist. And, I guess, maybe I need to eat a little slice o’ the ol’ ‘umble pie?

I won’t totally disown all of the above. But, to be fair, as the saying goes, this isn’t as bad as I initially thought. I’ve gradually warmed to Elliot Stanley, and in staying with it, it finally wound me in.

So what did I get most wrong? Well, it is, occasionally, a bit funny, for starters. And I am sufficiently intrigued by it all to want to know what it’s all about. Or at least where it’s all going. On the other hand it is still an odd assemblage of a load of jumbled old clichés. And some of the characters are wafer thin.

It also partakes of the modern TV/film ‘trope’ (eugh!) of never-ending plot twists; pile ‘em high, an’ keep em’ coming. But all in all, I’ve warmed to it sufficiently to decide I will follow it to the end. All I know is it’ll be pretty dark and prob’ also a little bit funny,

One of the things I still don’t like about such ‘black comedies’, however, from the darkly brilliant Fargo, to this lesser essay in that tradition, is the normalisation of ‘collateral damage’; many the innocent bystander is butchered, in pursuit, essentially, of couch potato consumer entertainment.

Does the normalisation of such violence feed into the same culture in which despicable lunatics like the Christchurch shooter see themselves as gunslinging ‘heroes’ in a first-person shoot ‘em up console game?

Any road, I’m revising this up from one and a half to three stars. Better than I initially thought, but a long way from classic or essential.

Pt. 3

Ok, so it’s now several days later, and after the Part 2 post, above, I’ve finally finished The Tourist. And, I have to say, I’m back to a downer on it.

I thought I’d post part three here – not that anyone knows or cares! – as opposed to doing a new post, just to keep it all in one place. Truth be told I’m expending way more time and energy on all this than the series or my interest in it merits. But, well… whatever!

So, there’s a gurt big ‘doors of perception’ segment (an idea developed quite literally), when Elliot accidentally imbibes a big dose of Kosta’s LSD-laced water.

As a one-time psychedelic psychonaut, of sorts, I find such scenes quite intriguing (and potentially unsettling!). This one was done, initially – the onset of ‘the trip’ – quite well, tailing off into something – the whole doors of perception bit, alluded to above, done almost too literally – much less psychedelic, but, I suppose, easier for viewers to digest.

I’m not quite sure what I think about this whole segment, which comes in either episode four or five (can’t quite recall!?). It’s not as weird as many a bit in Twin Peaks (not that I watched all of that!), but it is bit weird in the context of it’s own otherwise quite humdrum mode of delivery. The only other element akin to it is Kosta’s whole ‘imaginary’ or hallucinatory brother.

One of the biggest issues I wound up having with The Tourist in the end, is how little likeable humanity there is in it. Elliot Stanley both is, post bump on the head, and was, much more so pre-amnesia, a sociopathically selfish man; Luci, his ex, is a vacuous damaged opportunist thrill seeker; and the potentially nicest person, copper Helen Chambers is, in actual fact, such damaged goods, that really she’s not so nice after all.

And these are, one assumes, the folk we’re supposed to root for and take to heart. Aren’t they!? Their antagonists – Kosta, Billy Nixon and cold-hearted bent career-cop Lachlan Rogers (potentially one of the more interesting characters) are all well and truly horrid. Only the most cypher like peripheral characters might be just about alright. They usually wind up as uninteresting bit players, or else get killed.

And this brings us (partial spoiler alert) to the end. Like the litany of complaints I have about the folk populating this drama, it is, ultimately, crushingly bleak and negative. Is the emoji of a burrito Helen sends Stanley, as he expires (we assume; all the signposts indicate this) by his own hand, part of the comedic thread?

If it is, it’s obsidian dark comedy. Comedy that laughs at the futility of life. I have to confess, when this ended, having initially loathed it, then mellowed to it, I once again came to dislike it. And so, after all the above, I’m settling on two stars. Not the best investment of my time I’ve ever made.

Woah! I’ve been saying this a lot lately. But I love snooker. And this match was, to use the modern parlance, amaze-balls!

We got home from helping a friend in his garden earlier, and I stuck the TV on hoping for some snooker, with the Masters being on.

And boy oh boy did my wish come true!

I really like both Mark Williams and Neil Robertson. And when I came in the score was 5-2 in favour of Williams. Amazingly Robertson fought back to 5-5.

And then – as the players walked in to the decider to a standing ovation – we were served up a semi-final of acutely and epically dramatic proportions.

Safety play can sometimes be excruciating. But in this frame it was exhilarating. There was a passage of play that looked like it might get kind of stuck; as two reds and the black fit ever tighter to the top left pocket.

Williams was only one or two point off taking the deciding frame. And then this impasse developed. How on Earth were they going to get out of it? Never mind one of them finding a way to win!

If I am to be totally honest, I was, for some reason, rooting for Robertson. Was this my old allegiance to the underdog? Having witnessed him battling back to parity, to see him defeated would be a jarring prospect.

In the end it came down, I guess, to the mounting pressure of the situation, and Williams fluffed what was probably an erroneous choice of shot; aiming to screw down on the cue ball and curve around green to the object ball, yellow, instead he bounced the white onto the green.

Robertson had come to the table needing one snooker. Play had progressed such that at one point he needed two. Now, however, thanks to the penalty points and the lay of the balls resulting from Williams’ mistake, he was in a position – if he cleared up all the remaining colours – to steal the frame by just a few points.

And this he duly did.

His response to winning was extremely moving. First there was the obvious disbelief on his own part. And the relief. All the stress and pressure, which Ted handled amazingly, suddenly gone. I could feel the tension, the weight, quite palpably, lifted off his shoulders, and the rush of exhaustion that followed.

True gent’ that he is, he then apologised to Mark for winning. He needed a while to compose himself, as he readied and steadied himself for the post match interviews. The clarity of his emotions in that moment was very powerful to witness, amplified by a crowd on their feet, clapping and cheering.

Rob Walker – a terrific boon to Snooker as a fan, pundit and commentator – showed exemplary taste and restraint in how he handled this moment. He gave Robertson the time and space to come down off his cloud a little, and when he did get the interview started, it was pitched perfectly to elicit a very candid and even moving response from Neil.

Walker was spot on in observing that no one who witnessed the event – he was referring to those privileged enough to be there in person, but it was no less true for me as a viewer at home – will never forget what they’d seen.

And Robertson ‘broke the fourth wall’, so to speak, turning to face the camera and the audience watching wherever the may be, and said ‘I just want to say, to any kids watching, never give up!’ What a sublime moment. Truly sport at its exciting and inspiring best.

And then, later in the day, this heartwarming exchange:

Wow! There’s a YouTube channel calling itself Lewis Taylor, and it looks and sounds, for all the world, like it might be genuine.

And the most exciting thing is not the archive of old videos and music that’s going up there, but the promise of new material.

I can’t recall exactly when I first heard this news. It was some time last year. Maybe around mid-2021? But now, in Jan ‘22, there’s the new video, above, with actual snippets of music.

Whoever was the very first LT song I heard, courtesy of Gilles Peterson, on one of his radio shows. And given I almost never listen to such stuff (contemporary music on the radio, that is), looking back that’s quite miraculous!

[I have to confess I find the video posted above a bit annoying – the visual style of it; too much movement/cutting (and other stuff I dislike, but I’ll not go down that rabbit hole!) – and advise listening to the track I headphones, eyes shut!]

As a result of listening to that show, and poss’ also reading glowing reviews in the magazine Straight No Chaser, I bought two albums: Leon Parker’s Belief (1996), and Lewis Taylor’s self titled debut. Both albums are good.* But the latter is truly great.

As well as his YouTube channel, LT appears to have a website, which is fairly minimal, but includes links to purchase his back catalogue, and news on the latest impending release.

Given the eclecticism and range of music LT has made, it’ll be interesting to hear more fully the whole new album. Can’t wait! From the snippets in the online teaser video, it seems to follow on pretty seamlessly from the ‘core’ LT sound(s) he established with his first two or three albums.

I think I’ll save further ruminations – I could digress, esp’ on the potential for more off the beaten track style music (don’t forget he did a Trout Mask Replica homage!) – on all things Lewis Taylor for another post. For now, this is just a brief ‘halloo’ in excitement and anticipation, re the news of a forthcoming release of long and eagerly awaited new LT material.

* This post is actually a reminder to me to go back and check out Belief again!

This really should be an anthem for our times…

‘Take vacations into outer space
Or pay all school teachers a living wage’

Amen, brother Theo. As a teacher I can only dream along with you.

Wow! What a talented guy Theo Katzman is. Not only is he an ace drummer, singer and guitarist, but he’s also an excellent songwriter and producer.

The music here is kind of pop/rock. But those two words fail utterly to encapsulate the richness of Theo’s music. It’s very indebted to the best sounds of the late ‘60s and the early to mid ‘70s, something also attested to by the album cover design. But it’s also very contemporary, partly thanks to his amazing voice, partly the postmodern magpie gleanings in the music, and also the very high production values.

If there was any justice in this world Katzman would be massive. A global superstar. He’s very much an heir to folk like James Taylor and Joni Mitchell; raw talent with oceans of genuine heartfelt soul. Ok, so I guess, given how much I’m diggin’ this, on my 50th birthday – a present to myself! (BTW Thanks Patrick for the Amazon voucher with which I bought this.) – and my first full listen through, I ought to do a track by track appreciation.

The album – digital only (at this juncture) – starts with the fabulously positive yet raunchy rock of ‘You Could Be President’. Am I right in thinking this first appeared online under a different name? Whatever, it’s just terrific. The first thing to note is how beautifully produced it is. As Theo’s an excellent drummer, it shouldn’t perhaps surprise that the drum sound is literally perfect. Crisp and dry, yet dig the rich timbres of the toms in the fills!

This first track also combines an extremely funky folk-rock guitar riff, with a simple yet clever verse structure – two measures of 4/4 finished with one of 3/4, juxtaposed with a kind of ‘primary colours’ style chorus, and ending on an epiphany of vocal prowess, including a phrase for our times ‘yeah, no…’

‘The Death Of Us’ struts with an elastic funk. Lovely little touches, like congas and guiro, enrich the delightful groove. Whilst ‘You Could Be President’ has a sublimely musical/soulful and tasteful slide guitar solo, ‘Death Of Us’ features talk-box. Like the font on the cover, it’s super-‘70s, in the best way possible.

‘What Did You Mean (When You Said Love)’ is chosen as the favourite track in a lot of the online reviews of this album I’ve seen. And I can see why. I love it. But it’s not my favourite track. Perhaps because it’s the most ‘contemporary pop’ sounding on this near flawless album. That said. It’s bloody brilliant. And grows on me with every listen.

Katzman’s vocals (that phrase was just rendered as ‘Katzman avocado’ by my iPhone’s predictive text function!) are incredible. And on this track he uses his skills in a performance that puts me in mind – ever so slightly – of the kind of vocal performances favoured by TV talent show judges. But whereas those performances are too often like very well performed karaoke, here it’s the artist themself bringing these skills to bear on their own material. A quite different proposition.

Track four, ‘Hardly Ever Rains’, hits closest to my own emotional tenor, with it’s clever yet soulful and very 60s-70s folk rock vibe. Poss’ my favourite track (thus far!) Katzman’s more baroque pop tastes come to the foreground on ‘Lily, of Casablanca’, with it’s more complex arrangements and jazzier chord voicings. Once again this talks directly to my own tastes and preferences. But as superb as it is, I admire this one more than I’m moved by it. If that makes sense?

One thing I miss about not having this on CD (or even vinyl*) is not being able to read stuff as I listen, as I write this. Darting between the Amazon Music app and Notes is annoying! Anyway, back to the music: ‘Best’ is slightly funkier, rhythmically, and one of the tracks that helps earn the album an *explicit* warning. It’s another of the harmonically richer numbers, as opposed to the folksier ones.

Talking of which, ‘100 Years From Now’ sounds, esp’ as it starts, like one of the latter, although actually it’s quite subtly harmonically rich, belying the quite stripped down mellow vibe. Many of the songs here are surprisingly mature lyrically, mixing a homespun philosophical vibe with a modern burned-out take on the ‘age of ego’. In a way this track captures the essence of Theo; witness the near solo passage, just guitar and voice, which starts the verse about the pal meditating in a Thai monastery. And even the way it ends says something astonishingly simple yet profound. In the midst of an intense chorus, perhaps like our lives, it just suddenly stops. Theo, you, sir, are a genius! Brilliant!

‘Darlin’ Don’t Be Late’ continues the shockingly strong succession of musical excellence. There’s so much in the mix. From the whole torch song and jazz tradition, of harmonic movement/resolution, to shades of everything from Steely Dan to ‘80s Bob Dylan, with The Eagles and all sorts in a soulful bouillabaisse of utter gorgeousness. It sounds very different from Jeff Buckley’s amazing Grace album, but it has an equivalent, if somewhat warmer more organic richness.

‘(I Don’t Want To Be A) Billionaire’ is terrific. More funky, with a kind of N’Awleans bounce, it addresses the current climate of Mammon worship blighting the world, and perhaps the US in particular. ‘I don’t want to sing along, if a computer wrote the f*ckin’ song’ he sings, in an impassioned way. Amen, brother Theo, I’m feelin’ you deeply.

‘Like A Woman Scorned’ is terrific musically – as is absolutely everything here (the cover says ‘12 good songs’, and for once they ain’t joking!) – and very interesting lyrically, as it addresses the contemporary state of the ‘battle of the sexes’. Theo is great at articulating some difficult things, and making art out of his musings on a subject that concerns us all, whether we like it or not. I’m not being ironic when I say… good man!

‘Fog In The Mirror’ mines the starker seam of Theo’s muse – and, quite unbelievably, as I type this he sings ‘a sad romantic looking for a muse’ – damn, but I do love a spot of synchronous serendipity! I think this one is competing with ‘Hardly Ever Rains’ for my favourite. I’m essentially a melancholy soul! And that aspect of many artists often touches me deepest.

And so we arrive the final track, ‘All’s Well That Ends Well’. It’s worth pausing here to note the role piano plays on this album. With a CD or vinyl I’d hope for instrumental credits. So far I’ve not found any. Is Theo playing piano, as well as all the other things we know he does? And which tracks is he drumming on? As a fellow muso I love knowing such things.

Musically the final track is another that could stand for the whole album. It moves effortlessly between ultra minimalism, such as the final verse, which strips right down to piano and vocals, before building to a rich chorus with the whole band, only to end on the minimalist vibe, so quiet and delicate you can hear the dynamics pedal of the piano being released.

So there you have it, the whole album, track by track, as I see and hear it. Now that I’ve listened to the whole thing Amazon Music has served up ‘Browns At Home’ by The Greyboy All Stars, which – as much I might want to object to such algorithmic stuff – is perfect! But, discipline,

I’ve been aware of Theo Katzman for several years now, courtesy of Vulfpeck, for whom he sings, plays guitar, and drums. His multitalented musical abilities are, even in that context, where he’s not the central ‘star’ performer, mightily impressive.

I first checked out his solo stuff maybe about a year ago. And immediate loved it. But I didn’t dive in to it fully. Today, on the eve of my 50th birthday, I took a deeper dive. Typing this at 11.45 pm, Jan 4th, it’ll probably be my birthday by the time I finish and post it!

I had been watching yet more snooker. Teresa objected! So I binged on some Vulf videos for a bit. The great thing was that, I guess using some evil algorithms, YouTube curated a string of Vulfpeck videos for me. I did intervene a little, trying to favour stuff I’d heard/seen less (or at least less recently).

After about ten Vulf vids, a Katzman one snuck into the playlist; I’m Too Busy Trying To Write A Pop Song. It’s hand scrawled text only black and white title screen just caught the eye. I listened. And lo, it was good. Damn fine, in fact.

I’m a big fan, old fashioned as I am, of owning hard copies of the music I love. I’ve only really broken that rule for music that can’t be had on CD, some of that’s old vinyl, some modern streaming only, etc. But it looks like Theo’s stuff is digital only. Pity!

But just look at the cover of Modern Johnny Sings! Couldn’t be more up my street with its retro vibes, from the colours to the font, to the slightest suggestion of a hippy/classic rock vibe in the shoeless/guitar as violin pose. And the image perfectly fits with the music.

I’m not sure anyone other than me ever looks at this blog. I need to address that somehow! But if anyone does, then please support a real artist. Visit his website, buy his albums, watch his videos, go see him live. I’m pestering him to come and perform for us in the UK!

It looks like I missed out on a recent re-issue of his previous album, Romance Without Finance. Re-released as a limited edition crowd-funded vinyl package. Damn!

I fully intend to get hold of all his stuff – since starting this post I’ve learned Modern Johnny is album three, and number two is Heart Break Hits (2017) – as everything I’ve heard by him, and his many super-talented associates, is just fantastic.

Just caught the last five or ten minutes of this. Fascinating! Neil deGrasse Tyson might be described as an heir to Carl Sagan, inasmuch as he’s a populariser of science, and a New Yoiker.

I’ll definitely be checking out the full interview at some point.

Several things stuck me, about Tyson (or should that be deGrasse Tyson?)*. First off I’m on his ‘team’, so to speak. His bit about open-mindedness reminded me of Dawkins’ thing about being so open-minded your brain falls out!

Returning momentarily to the Sagan allusion I made above, another thing about the astrophysicist that was less appealing than his very reasonable eloquence and knowledge was his rather booming slightly overbearing style.

Folk like Sagan, and in other areas of science, Attenborough, even Richard Dawkins, are (if you actually watch them in public discussion, as opposed to basing your views on the hearsay of their ‘adversaries’) pretty scrupulous in their attempts to be calmly and politely evenhanded, or reasonable. Neil deG&T, on the other hand, exhibited moments of what looked to me worryingly like controlling bluster in his responses to some of Stephen Sackur’s questions.

* Americans are big on middle names. Very notably so in public and intellectual life (one of the themes of this interview concerns the state of the latter in the modern US). But, although I’ve not seen it hyphenated, deGrasse Tyson sounds like a double-barrelled surname.

Painting is proceeding apace. I’m kind of hoping I’ll get the bulk of it done today. This is proving to be a fun little project.