Fook!

Clare and I went to see the Foo Fighters at Wembley last night. It was at very short notice: we were given the tickets by a friend of Clare (thanks Beth!). I wasn't what you might call a hardcore fan, but I thought they'd be fun. As it happened, the gig was utterly mind-blowing and I've become an instant convert to the Church of Grohl.

I'll be writing about it all in a bit more detail once I manage to regain my health, recover my composure and process the events. In the meantime, I'll share this with you:

We'd originally asked my brother to come along, but for various reasons he couldn't make it. While watching the first support (The Futureheads), I fired off a random mischievous text to Brother Younger that went:

"Fuck! Led Zep are support!"

As wind-up strategies go it was far from plausible. Clare discouraged me from sending it - saying that Rob would never buy such an outrageous lie - but I went ahead and sent it anyway. Rob, after all, has long been obsessed with the works of Messrs Plant, Page, Bonham and Jones for as long as I care to remember. If he even thought for a half a second that he might be missing out on a Led Zep reunion gig then it would have been worth it.

As it happened, Rob's reply was predictably swift and pithy:

"Bollocks," it read.

Oh well, I thought, back to the music. After the rather lame Futureheads, the mighty Supergrass played a storming set and then the Foo Fighters spent over two-hours methodically turning me into a evangelical Foo Fighters fan. Then came the encore.

The encore with the special guests.

The ones you might have heard about in the news.

Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones.

"Bollocks," I said. "Rob'll never believe me now."

Anger Management Class

When trying to describe a particularly stressful event to someone, I'll often say that I was experiencing a "David Banner changing-a-tyre-in-a-thunderstorm moment." This often confuses and bewilders people, particularly people who are significantly younger than me. That suits me fine. It's what they get for being significantly younger than me.

For the record, this is David Banner changing a tyre in a thunderstorm:



Comprende?

Don't make me Ang Lee

I've been reliably informed by the ubiquitous posters on double decker buses that the new movie based on Marvel Comics' The Incredible Hulk will be hitting cinemas next week. Starring Ed Norton, Liv Tyler & Tim Roth - and helmed by the French action movie director Louis Leterrier - it promises to restart a potentially lucrative franchise for the comic publisher-turned-film studio and seems to be a far cry from Ang Lee's adjectiveless offering from five years' ago.

I must admit, when I first heard that a recast and rebooted Hulk film was in production my initial reaction was an imperceptible murmur in the vicinity of my who-gives-a-shit? gland. As a card carrying-fanboy with reasonably geekish tendencies, I normally track the development of films like this with the tenacious obsession of a seedy tabloid journalist on the trail of a missing gamma scientist. On this occasion, though, I decided to sit it out. Maybe it was because I instinctively felt that the number of comic-sourced films released this year had reached saturation point. I've reached an age where I need to pace my endorphin explosions: it would make more sense to save it up for something more serious, substantial and significantly bat-themed.

(Another possible reason is that I was one of the few critters in the world who thoroughly enjoyed Ang Lee's Hulk. It was something of a flawed masterpiece and, like its protagonist, very much a monster misunderstood by man. Besides, you've got to respect it for having a guy called Bana plays a guy called Banner who says "Don't make me angry" in a film directed by Ang Lee).

Whatever the case, the prospect of the director of (cough) The Transporter taking over from where the director of Brokeback Mountain, The Ice Storm and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon left off didn't exactly fill me with giggly anticipation.

Until now, that is.

It was Rol's post on the subject last month that first lit the blue touch paper. On the subject of the film's trailer he said:

Best thing of all? Those strings at the end. Just a few notes, but they went all the way through me. Bill Bixby lives.

Those "strings at the end" were none other than The Lonely Man Theme, the haunting piece of music that would play during the closing credits of classic Hulk TV series from the 70s. Like Rol, those few notes struck a chord and evoked all kinds of memories for me. Comic puritans may get sniffy about the Hulk TV series, but that show and Star Wars were what got me (and, I'm willing to bet, plenty of others) into comics in the first place. Yes, it may seem a bit cheesy by today's standards seeing as we're all supposed to be so damn sophisticated now, but I'll always remember the show - and particularly the pathos and humanity the late Bill Bixby brought to it - with fondness.

And, judging from the new film's new trailer, it looks as though Messrs Norton and Leterrier feel the same way, too:

Go ahead punk, make my Birthday...

Clint Eastwood, the undisputed coolest man in cinema history and my favoutite movie icon ever, turned 78 yesterday. For what it's worth, I'd just like to wish him a belated Happy Birthday and thank him for producing a body of work that continues to inspire me.

I think I'll be wathing The Outlaw Josey Wales this week. It won't be the first time.

Johansson, Illinois

My significantly better half Clare (Bless 'er) bought me Scarlett Johansson's new album of Tom Waits' covers this week, Anywhere I Lay My Head. Now, I'm a bit of a unrepentantly obsessive Tom Waits fan (you noticed?), so when I first heard about this project I was more than a wee bit sniffy. Over the years, I've heard many, many, many cover versions of songs by the Great Voice of Gravel. A few have been sublime (Springsteen's Jersey Girl and T. Bone Burnett's Time spring to mind), most have been all right-ish to goddamn mediocre (The Ramones I Don't Wanna Grow Up and The Eagles' Ol' 55) and then there's Rod Stewart's take on Tom Traubert's Blues. It's at the bottom of the pile by a nautical mile and the less said about it the better.

If that wasn't enough, I also have an innate problem with Hollywood A-Listers who want to sing songs. This is a generational thing, I know: for my parents, it was de rigeur for the Hollywood elite to have the innate capacity to act, sing, dance and possibly shit through hoops at twenty paces. I, however, have always been hampered with post-Method school expectations: actors should act, rock stars should rock and never the 'twain should meet. Unless it's Bowie in The Man Who Fell To Earth, or possibly William Shatner's Rocket Man.

The prospect of a contemporary Bright Young Thing - talented though she may be - tackling the oeuvre of my all-time favourite recording artist bar-none did not fill my heart with giddy anticipation. "What next?" I wondered aloud, and possibly a bit too aloudly. "Keira Knightly releasing an album of Captain Beefheart covers? Jessica Alba Singing the Best of Billy Bragg? Gwyneth Paltrow doing Coldplay?"

Well, I needn't have worried. Ms Johansson's album is an absolutely marvellous thing of beauty that radically reinterprets and almost reinvents songs that have been hard-wired into my frontal lobes. Produced by the mighty TV on the Radio's Dave Sitek - and featuring guest vocals from none other than Mr David Bowie of Brixton, London - it's one of the best dedicated covers albums I've heard since, oh, Jeffrey Lewis's 12 Crass Songs and has been on heavy rotation on my tinny but temperamental car stereo for most of this week.

Like all good covers albums it reinvents and sometime reinvigorates the source material. The wistful, heartbreaking Small Change track I Wish I Was In New Orleans is turned into a musical box accompanied lullaby, whilst Bone Machine's swaggering singalong I Don't Wanna Grow Up is transformed into the bastard offspring of New Order and the Pet Shop Boys. It shouldn't work and I shouldn't like it, but it does and I do.

Clare's favourite is the title track (as she said literally moments ago: "Listened to it, picked my favourite, stuck with it"), but I'm torn between I Wish I Was In New Orleans and I Don't Wanna Grow Up.

Says it all, really.

Tom's Wait is Over

Séance: Tom Waits
Date et heure: 24/08/07 20:00
Endroit: Rex Theatre, Paris

Translation: Fucking-A!

This is why I like Tom Waits

I've never made a secret of the fact that my all-time favourite recording artist bar none is Mr Thomas Alan Waits of Pomona, California. My all-time favourite album is a Tom Waits album, my all-time favourite concert was a Tom Waits concert and my all-time favourite song about inebriated pianos is a Tom Waits song about an inebriated piano. You get the drift.

He'll be touring soon, which is good news for me. Assuming I get a ticket, that is. Getting hold of a ticket for a Tom Waits concert is a fiendishly difficult business. The last time he played in the UK was four years ago and I booked a day of work for the day the tickets went on sale and still failed to get hold of one.

Anyhow, he's touring again and here's a clip of the "press conference" he held to announce it. Like his music, you'll either get it or you won't.