My Essential Music: Blue - Joni Mitchell

Many people will say they like Joni Mitchell's later, jazzier stuff and in an attempt to impress you they´ll say that The Hissing of Summer Lawns is her masterpiece and Blue is Joni Mitchell-lite. They may have a point but I know which one I´d rather listen to.

When I first listened to Blue I was rather underwhelmed. It seemed to just past me by, a wave of sound without an undertow to pull me in. I persevered, determined to understand what made this album seminal. Then, one evening, while listening to it on my CD Walkman (remember those!?!), I finally got it. It was like a sudden eureka moment and the intricate charms of the album unveiled themselves to me.

To me, Joni Mitchell is three things. First of all is her lyrics, deceptively simple and disarmingly effective, honest and succinct. She is equally adept at narratives and more stream of conscience style lyrics and she was the first female singer songwriter who showed me that being feminine didn´t equate to being weak and saccharine sweet. Then there´s that voice, peaking, dipping and swooping, plumbing the depths of the words and gleaning their full meaning. Finally, there´s the music. Anyone who has ever been foolish enough to attempt to play one of her songs on the guitar has soon realised the inventiveness of her tunings, the strange eastern quality to her chords which is further emphasised by her use of the dulcimer. Apart from these and the piano the instrumentation is usually sparse. There´s no hint of manipulative, lavish string arrangements. She knew the power of her songs needed no embellishment.

This is one of those rare albums where I don´t ever skip a track, but when pushed against a wall, the title track is my standout. A song so evasive it can be about anything or anyone, never tying you down to one interpretation and ultimately it´s significance for me has evolved over the years. So too has my love of this album, which is a little bit like wine - I warm to it more and more as I get older.

My Essential Music: Sweet Jane - The Velvet Underground

I first started listening to The Velvet Underground when I was about fifteen having found out that they had been a huge influence on REM. Little did I know what I was letting myself in for when I picked up the innocuous looking CD with it's jolly banana cover. The Velvet Underground and Nico took me from the safety of my bedroom and plunged me into the murky underbelly of New York in 1967. The light years that separate The Velvet Underground and Nico from the other seminal album of that year, Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, are many and how lyrics and music of such ferocity emerged at the height of the Swinging Sixties remains, to me, an anachronistic mystery. This album is no time capsule from the summer of love, it's a primal scream from a never ending winter.

By the time a friend of mine lent me his copy of Loaded, the Velvets's fourth album, I was a confirmed fan. However, without John Cale's drones I knew this album wouldn't be the same bitter pill as the first two. Even the cover, with it's marshmallow pink smoke seemed like a visual move in the MOR direction.

The first song, Who Loves the Sun, was a pleasant Nico-less I'll Be Your Mirror but it was what came next that won Lou Reed's place in my eternal esteem. From the first notes of Sweet Jane my pulse began to race and a feeling of bliss spread through my veins, a warm wash of guitar and reverb that sounds like liquid sunshine. For me the perfection of the song lies in those first 16 seconds. The amazingly effective simplicity of the rest of the song, to my mind, is elevated from the ordinary by the intro's aural nirvana. I couldn't help but repeat the song over and over again, sometimes just listening to the intro. It became an obsession. And then, I had to return the CD after a falling out with my musical donor. I had copied the album, but to a cassette that got lost in one of my many moves. So, I forgot about Sweet Jane and the fix of absolute euphoria that the intro gave me.

That was until just before Christmas, while in a bar I let out a squeal of delight mid conversation when the DJ put it on and I was listening to it with new ears. It sounded just as good as the first time round and once I arrived home I sought it out and the obsession returned with renewed vigour.

Not a day goes past now when I don't listen to Sweet Jane. I can rely on the intro to bring me out of even the worst of bad moods and it's ironic that the thing I like most about the Velvets (their dark, sinister and uncompromising music) is absent from my favourite song of theirs.

Listen to the most perfect 16 seconds of music here :)

http://www.reasontorock.com/audio/sweet_jane/intro.mp3

On Being Neighed At...

Having been on the receiving end of many the interesting come-on since being here in Cordoba, myself and F were still taken aback by being neighed at, at length, by a waiter in the Corredera. We are still wondering whether neighing was a compliment, i.e. you girls are so pretty that ye merit my best horse impression. Whatever he meant by it, we had to give him kudos for the most surreal form of flattery we have come across thus far.

Feria 2008

So, once again, that time of year has come. The time of year when all Cordobesans go mad and head to a wasteground next to the river in order to drink, dance and wear crazy costumes. And I....join them. Because it's fun and you can't argue with tradition, no matter where it may spring from! La Feria de Nuestra Senora de la Salud has been celebrated in Cordoba, in one form or another, since the 1300s. Despite the name, it now has very little to do with religion, like most Andalucian fiestas, and it wraps up a mad Cordobesan May of partying with a bang. The women get gussied up in their best trajes de gitana and the men sport hats and funny trousers, but all of this is optional. Lots of people choose to dress as normal but drink as if all the sherry in the province were going to run dry.

So, with muchas ganas, I descended on Feria this year, a day late due to the incredible electrical storms and my fear of rain (I'll melt if I'm exposed to it, of this I'm sure). No matter how often you've seen it, or even if you've watched it being assembled over the past few weeks, the entrance ( portada) to the Feria never fails to impress. Never to be outdone, and always trying to get one up on Seville, the Cordoba portada, at 140 metres long and 45 metres high, is the biggest in Andalucia. Seeing it looming large in the distance is enough to make you all giddy and it's especially pretty at night when lit up by thousands of twinkly lights. So under the portada we went.

After a few free beers, a very tasty but very expensive lunch (every time I remember the figure it causes an involuntary twitch - must remind myself to only eat at feria once a year) and a jug of tinto de verano (red wine and lemonade - seriously, it's great) we saw some little girls flamenco dance to the strains of a very talented guiri guitar player and then the madness ensued.

Feria often means a lot of horses. There are processions every day and they wander up and down the feria carrying their traditionally dressed riders (many texting on their mobiles as they trotted past - very achronistic). Having begun chatting to some of the riders I happened to mention that I had been on a horse a couple of times before... Before I knew it I was astride a beautiful, but very headstrong, horse called Caprichoso, wearing a traditional sombrero cordobes. What a little bit of red wine and lemonade can do!

When I thought things couldn't get any more interesting we headed off to the other side of the feria. Like most things in life, there are two sides to the feria. On one side you have the casetas, civilized little houses with bars, food and dancing and, on the other, you have the funfair where things become infinitely tackier and, inevitably, scarier. Here you can win yourself your mini motorbike in an exciting game of bingo, eat your weight in candyfloss and lose limbs in all sorts of dodgy rides. Once again, I found myself (nobody ever seems to have control over their own actions at feria, you just find yourself doing things that in other circumstances seem totally insane/life-threatening...alcohol has some part to play in all this, but feria is akin to the twilight zone)mounting a ride which I later discovered involved me hanging upside down for a protracted period of time. Having drunk so much tinto de verano it made me very giggly and hicuppy.

Things wound down to a very calm close as we threw shapes on the dance floor of a communist caseta, sipping rebujito (sherry with lemonade - I'm telling you, we Irish just don't mix enough things with lemonade!). Day 1 of the feria down, just 7 more to go!

Here's to Navel Gazing

So, I've decided to give this blogging thing a try... Just what I really need! Another forum for airing my thoughts and, subsequently, analysing said contemplations.
Basically, I've no clever idea or arc for my blog, just a way to keep a diary of my goings on while living here in Cordoba, Spain. Recurring themes are likely to be how great it is to live here, how shite it is to live here, music (and trying to find it here), cinema, linguistic schizophrenia and just general observations from a Dubliner living in Cordoba.

Bueno, he decidido lanzarme al mundo de escribir blogs. Lo que me faltaba. Otra manera de expresarme y luego darle vueltas a lo que pienso.
Mi blog no tiene nada de otro mundo, solo es una manera de organizar mis pensamientos mientras vivo aqui en Cordoba, Espana. Es muy probable que los temas se repitan: que genial es vivir aqui, que mierda es vivir aqui, la musica (y la busqueda de ella en Cordoba), el cine, mi esquizofrenia liguistica y las observaciones generales de una dublinesa que vive en Cordoba.