Solo - film review

I wasn't expecting too much from Solo. The history of the production of this latest Star Wars film, with the half time substitution of Ron Howard for the original directors would normal indicate a bad film.  So far, initial box office for the film has not been record breaking.  Initial reviews have not been glowing.  It's an amazingly warm weekend in Scotland (and an amazingly wet weekend in England) so people have not been flocking to the cinema.

We decided to see Solo at fairly short notice so we didn't get our fancy IMAX seats.  Instead we just popped into the local cinema.  I just wanted to get through the film but I am pleased to report that it is very entertaining and I will certainly look forward to seeing it again.

We meet a teenage Han Solo on his home planet of Corellia trying to escape from oppression with his girlfriend Qi'ra.  Problems occur and they are separated.  Han has adventures and makes a good friend in Chewbacca before encountering Lando and obtaining a famous space ship.  The film, as one would expect, is full of easter eggs for Star Wars nerds and satisfaction is almost guaranteed.

In Solo the baddies are bad and the goodies are good.  It's fun and a good balance for the darkness of Rogue One or The Last Jedi.  It's written by Lawrence Kasdan who gave us both the Empire Strikes Back and Raiders of the Lost Ark so the script is a dream.  I went in with low exceptions and I saw a very enjoyable movie.  Looking forward to the next instalment.

In on the kill taker by Joe Gross

In on the kill taker by Fugazi is my favourite album. I bought it on cassette on the day of its' release. I can't even imagine the number of times I've listened to it in the quarter of a century since then.  Fugazi were a unique band and this is a great record.

Gross has written about it as part of the long running 33 1/3 series. This volume is thicker than many of the other entries in the series and takes material from new interviews with the band members.  We get insight into the genesis of many of the songs and lyrics and great detail about the recording process. I've heard the Steve Albini demo session but I was unaware of the existence of earlier studio recordings of both Instrument and Rend It.

Reading this book made me want to investigate the online Fugazi live series archive further. I have several shows from the archive but it would be interesting to follow the evolution of a few of these tracks.  The personalities and philosophy of the band members shine through as well. These guys tried to live their lives in an honest way and treat people fairly. There is an interesting anecdote about the difference in opinion on ticket pricing between MacKaye and Jeff Nelson which was one of the many factors that led to the demise of Minor Threat.

I was lucky enough to see Fugazi on this tour and two more times and also to see the Evens once. I'm lucky to have experienced so much amazing music in the last 4 decades, Fugazi were massive and a major success on their own terms.

If you are already a fan of the band this book is worth a read. If you haven't heard Fugazi this record is where to start.

Belle and Sebastian at the SWG3 Galvanisers Yard

The SWG3 complex is expanding.  Tucked away in a former industrial site behind the Yorkhill Hospital campus the complex has now taken over an old yard that is perfect for outside concerts.  Charitably it backs onto student flats which allows them to watch acts like Belle and Sebastian or LCD Soundsystem for free.  I've only been to inside shows to see Shellac, Godflesh and Loop so an outdoor show was a new experience for me today.

We arrived to find that most of the street outside the venue had been closed off for the show and a herd of Portaloos had been planted outside the yard.  There is also a larger indoor venue on the site that can host bigger shows that the small upstairs room.  A couple of food vans and a beer tent helped turn the outdoor area into a festival site.

We tried some food from the burger van.  The burger was better than the hotdog.  The first support band sounded a bit Morrissey-Like and the second group were more in the CHVRCHES pattern.  It was a pleasant May evening which is unusual in Glasgow.

B&S opened with Dog on Wheels and dribbled a few classics throughout the set. We were beautiful, She's Losing It, The Wrong Girl, Get me away from here I'm dying.  All West End Glasgow anthems.  There were newer songs that I am less familiar with that were pleasant.  As always, Boy with the Arab Strap was an anthem and the stage filled with dancing fans.  My partner had only ever seen B&S in a small venue before and she enjoyed the stadium show.

Belle and Sebastian accept all shapes and sizes.  They aim to entertain.  They want us to learn their new songs and they are happy to bring out the classics.  They don't have the live power of their local contemporaries like Mogwai but that's not really the point.  That's not what they want to do.

It's nice to see a Glasgow band on a sunny day in Glasgow.  Ned free.

Neil Young

Like many things Neil Young gets better with age and in many ways we do not appreciate him enough.  I've seen him play live twice I think, once in 1995 at the Reading festival with Pearl Jam and a second time, a year or so later, at the SECC.  As always, my memory of these things is a bit fuzzy.  The Reading Festival show is particularly hazy due to blood loss after breaking my nose and immature scepticism related to my adolescent dislike of Pearl Jam.  I have subsequently forgiven Pearl Jam a bit.

Young has made a lot of music in the last 50 or so years.  He's played with lots of bands and released a lot of albums.  He's also recorded many albums that have not seen the light of day.  Some of these albums only seem to be appearing now, often decades after they were created.

I find that there are Neil Young songs I am familiar with and amazing Neil Young songs that I have never heard or live interpretations of standards that bend exciting new shapes into my ears.  Often, when I have listened to Young I haven't really focused on the lyrics.  This is embarrassing when you think of a song like Ohio.  I've been listening to Ohio for more than 20 years, and while I know it's about the Kent State massacre it seems like I'm hearing the words for the first time.

His words are like stealth bombers, sneaking in with the fury of his music.  He can rearrange his songs and play them live in twisted new shapes.  The version of Tonight's The Night on the Bluenote Cafe set is stunning.

I listened to Chrome Dreams II for the first time last night.  It's a diverse set which pulls together songs from different periods in his career and finally gave a studio release to Ordinary People that was being played live 20 years earlier.  Ordinary People is a great song but it is typical of Young to leave good tracks sitting on the shelf for decades.  In terms of output and reinterpretation he is almost on a level with Dylan.

The original Chrome Dreams remains officially unreleased.

I have tended to focus on the 'classics' in his catalogue but I realise that this approach perhaps overlooks some of his better songs.  Young has followed his own path with his career and released the music he felt was right at the time.  He spent much of the eighties in a very public feud with his record label and I wonder what would have happened if he was given creative control back then.  We may have been given many of these great songs earlier if he had been allowed to do what he wanted.

The world is different now.  Music is no longer controlled by record conglomerates and the internet has levelled the playing field.  Websites like Bandcamp let musicians present as much music to the public as they choose, whenever they want.  Young may have had a very different career if this technology had existed in the eighties and he is embracing this now with the Neil Young archives.

The online archives probably represent a good opportunity for fans to truly explore the 70 or so releases he has put out since the sixties.  There is certainly a lot to explore.

Young has followed his own path for decades.  He has kept moving, innovating and evolving.  He has inspired other interesting artists such as Sonic Youth.  He is an acquired taste but certainly worth exploration.

Avengers: Infinity War - film review

Popped into the cinema after work yesterday to catch this film.  I know I was a bit late but it was worth it.  I'm assuming most people will have seen it buy now so this will be a bit spoiler-y so stop reading now if you haven't seen it.

Infinity War is the 19th Marvel Cinematic Universe film and it helps to have seen several, if not all, of the previous films to fully understand and appreciate this film.  It's an epic, both in length and in
the scope of the story.  The action spreads from Waverly Station in Edinburgh to Africa, New York and then across the universe.  Almost every MCU movie character appears (although there was no real sign of the Netflix characters).

The big bad is Thanos, a character familiar to comic book readers.  I've never been a massive fan of the big purple troll.  He's a genocidal necrophiliac.  By this I mean that he is in love with a physical representation of death (at least in the comics).  He is not a corpse fiddler to the best of my knowledge.  In the film, he wants to improve the universe by killing half the population of reality to reduce overcrowding.  He is logical, in a warped way.

To help commit his crazy crime he needs to track down the Infinity Stones, seeded throughout previous Marvel films to complete the Infinity Gauntlet, as featured in the comics when I was a kid.  Thanks needs to kill a lot of people to have the opportunity to kill more people.  The assorted Marvel heroes do their best to stop him.

Dr Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) features in a prominent role as the only intelligent superhero who actually knows what is going on.  He is supported by occasionally useful idiots, Tony Stark, Spiderman, Thor and the Guardians of the Galaxy.  Apart from Strange, the other heroes are brave but fairly stupid.  There are funny moments and laugh out loud moments.

The space action is slightly more fun that the moody Captain America led Earth action.  All the heroes on Earth are more serious and intense and a lot of them are wearing black.  It was nice to see Wakanda and the supporting cast from the recent Black Panther film in prominent roles.

The film was actually slightly less apocalyptic that I expected.  I sort of expected that everyone would be wiped out although that would be an end to the franchise.  I'm looking forward to Avengers 4 which I think will be out next year, as well as the intercurrent Ant Man 2 and Captain Marvel films.

I want to watch this again when I get a chance.  It's better than Avengers 2 and it may even be better than Civil War.  Currently, I think the best Marvel film so far has been Dr Strange but I reserve the right to change my mind.

Narconomics: How To Run a Drug Cartel by Tom Wainwright

I enjoy popular economics books and economics is one of many things that I wish I had a greater understanding of.  Much of economics is witchcraft and pretension papering over bullshit but it is useful to use different models to try to understand the world.  As part of my holiday week reading I decided to delve into the economics of drug dealing.

Wainwright is a British editor for the Economist and he writes well.  He decided to study the economics of the narcotics industry and he follows the journey of illegal drugs from farming to end user.  I've read a lot of this before in books like Freakonomics or the Undercover Economist but Wainwright does add some additional colour and detail to the scenarios.

Of particular interest to modern readers are sections on the use of legal highs in New Zealand, the legalisation of cannabis in Colorado and the impact of internet retailers (on the dark web) on the distribution and sale of drugs in the modern world.

The extent of the black economy and the massive potential gains in tax suggest that legalisation of narcotics may be a good way forward although the damage done by these substances cannot be underestimated.  It is also important to note that there is no such thing as 'fair trade' cocaine.  People who buy and use cocaine are partially paying for murder.

Legalisation, taxation and careful regulation are surely the way forward.

Stiffed by James Morrow

James Morrow is a retired consultant neurologist from Northern Ireland.  He did outstanding work in the field of epilepsy, particularly in his work looking at the effects of anti-epileptic drugs on pregnant women and their children.  He had to take early retirement when he developed autoimmune encephalitis and he wrote about his experience of this in Practical Neurology, a British neurology journal, a few years ago.

He has kept busy during his retirement and he has written a book, Stiffed, about the pharmaceutical industry and the various challenges it faces.  The book is a comedy crime novel in the vein of Chris Brookmyre and has a few unexpected twists and turns.

There is a palpable sense of reality to the book as Dr Morrow borrows details from his extensive medical career and work with the pharmaceutical industry.  I don't want to spoil things but there were a couple of sightly unexpected twists in the tale.

The text of the kindle edition could do with some additional proof reading but it's a good read.  I'd read another book by him.  Best novel by an eminent neurologist that I've read for some time.

Panacea by F Paul Wilson

I'm doing some holiday reading this week and another book that I've enjoyed is Panacea by F Paul Wilson.  I've written an appreciation of the work of F Paul Wilson before.  He's an American doctor who writes fairly intelligent supernatural thrillers, most famously the Repairman Jack series.  Panacea  is the first book in the ICE sequence and unfortunately it's not available for Kindle in the UK so I had to pick up an imported American paperback copy from Amazon.

The book is about a forensic pathologist who has a sick daughter and is asked to track down a mystical panacea that can cure any illness.  She is hired by a terminally ill billionaire and she is accompanied by a very capable bodyguard.  There are a lot of echoes of Repairman Jack but that's not a bad thing.  The medical bits, both scientific and ethical, are done well and I'm looking forward to reading the next book (hopefully in paperback or on the Kindle).

Lost in France - DVD review

Lost in France has been out for a couple of years now.  I've only just got round to watching it tonight. It's a documentary about the mid to late 1990s Glasgow music scene that revolved around Chemikal Underground Records and the 13th Note/Kazoo Club.  It focuses on some of the bands from that era, including Mogwai, the Delgados and Arab Strap as well as other important figures on the scene such as Alex Huntley (later Kapros) and Hubby.

I spent a lot of my formative years in Glasgow at this time, buying records, attending shows, writing songs, practicing with bands and playing gigs.  It was a great time to be 16 to 23 in Glasgow and looking back, I'm so glad I was there.

The old footage from back then is great.  I kept looking for myself in the background but I couldn't see myself.  It's nice to see the old posters and record sleeves too.

I almost feel a bit young for this sort of nostalgia but I'm glad the film has been made.

It's All in Your Head: Stories from the Frontline of Psychosomatic Illness by Suzanne O'Sullivan

Functional Neurological Disorders (FND) are hard to understand, both for people affected by FND and doctors involved in their care.  Functional Neurological Disorders are essentially real neurological symptoms which exist when damage to the nervous system cannot be detected with tests or on clinical examination.  The symptoms are real and disabling but the function of the nervous system is intact.  Many of these symptoms may be due to stress or psychological symptoms, some can be due to other non-neurological diseases or an exaggerated response to a neurological disease process and at times no cause is found.

Often, a person affected by FND can make a good recovery, especially if they engage with the diagnosis.  Others can be stuck with the symptoms forever.  The symptoms are extremely upsetting for those affected by them.

Suzanne O'Sullivan is a neurologist with an interest in functional neurological disorders and epilepsy who works in specialist neurological disorders in London.  In her book she tackles dissociative seizures, psychosomatic illness and functional neurological disorders.  Many doctors struggle to deal with patients affected by these illnesses, thinking that the patients are faking symptoms, attention seeking or trying to fool doctors.  This is not the case.  People with FND are distressed and often lead difficult lives.  Dr O'Sullivan puts a human face on these stories and tackles the issues surrounding this complicated diagnosis.  She highlights some of the mistakes she has made and the communication breakdowns she has encountered.  FND is a difficult diagnosis for both doctor and patient.

This book is a good one for neurologists to read and a good book for anyone affected by FND.  A good patient resource is the Neurosymptoms website, developed by neurologists from Edinburgh which can be used to help understand strange symptoms.  This book also helps make sense of odd symptoms and is worth some of your time.