Peeling The Layers

A couple of interesting little interviews courtesy of The Onion's A.V. Club. One with Paul McCartney and the other with Nick Lowe.

I really liked this passage from the Nick Lowe piece:

AVC: If you had a choice between cutting a really great album or a really great single, which would you choose?

NL: Oh, a really great single, I think. [Pause.] Although, wait a minute. No, I answered that rather quickly. Well, you see, the sort of albums I like are the ones where no one song particularly stands alone. I like the sort of albums where you start at the beginning, and you listen to the whole thing, and there aren't any fillers. All the tracks actually bolster each other up, like the one that comes after the one before will make the one before sound better. So it does actually sound like one giant single.

All I can say is that back in the day, when I was producing a lot of records, I seemed to get gold records and awards and things all the time. They used to come by post, and I didn't know what they were. It almost didn't matter, it seemed completely irrelevant, so I sent them all over to my mother. And they were extremely ugly, these things. I mean, I know they represented something, but they were extremely ugly-looking, and I didn't really want to put them on the wall or anything like that. And then, unfortunately, when both my parents died in these last few years, I inherited all these hideous gold records and things. But amongst them was a gold 45 that I'd gotten in the UK for producing an Elvis Costello single called "Oliver's Army." And it's such a cool item to have, this gold 45 RPM single. I couldn't believe that I'd had it amongst that collection and I'd never realized it. I don't think they make them any more. Well, of course they don't make them any more.

AVC: Most bios of you now mention that you became a millionaire when a cover of "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love And Understanding" appeared on The Bodyguard's soundtrack. But is that money still holding out? Or are you just about through it?

NL: Oh no, it went a long time ago. [Laughs.] It's amazing how not-very-far a little less than a million dollars will go. That's what I think I got. God knows what some people got for that record. Especially the guy who wrote the B-side of "I Will Always Love You" and got his album cut as well. So very nice indeed. But no, I managed to make two albums on that money really, and toured with them both, you know, with a band. Staying at reasonably good hotels, where we wouldn't get our stuff stolen. I could pay my guys right. So I financed all that, bought a couple of suits, took a couple of people to dinner, and that really took care of it.

But the thing is, my career had stalled a bit up 'til then, and I'd just found this new way of recording myself and writing songs for myself when this check came through the door, and hey, presto! I was able to realize it. If it hadn't gotten that money, I don't think I would have been able to. And once you're seen to be back in the game again—which I desperately needed to be—other things come to you. Even though the Bodyguard money per se is gone, that led to other things, and other people have cut my songs, and you know, my fortunes started changing for the better.

But the Macca interviewer sure doesn't know his shit. In discussing Dylan's influence, he asks: "When he went electric, were you and John and the guys booing?" I mean, really. Did he actually think The Beatles would have been booing Dylan's electric set at The Royal Albert Hall? Read a little, will ya?

Interesting, though, that McCartney still gets excited when he hears one of his new songs on the radio.

As The Jesus Of Cool says, And so it goes...

Being Kurt

From the Onion:

15 Things Kurt Vonnegut Said Better Than Anyone Else Ever Has Or Will

Number 3

Well, I guess this answers that question.

etc.

R.I.P. June Callwood.

They say we lose prominent people in sets of three. I wonder who's next?

So it goes.

"Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.’"
--excerpt from God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

"When the city of London wanted to give [George Bernard] Shaw its Order of Merit, he thanked them for it, but said he had already given it to himself.
I would have accepted it. I would have recognized the opportunity for a world-class joke, but would never allow myself to be funny at the cost of making somebody else feel like something the cat drug in.
Let that be my epitaph.
--Timequake p.141

"We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different!"
--Timequake p.219

Happy Blogiversary!

It was on Easter weekend, five years ago, that I started this little ol blog. Not for the fame. Not for the glory. Not for the hits. Just for the sheer...blogginess of it.

I've neglected it far too often, but here it waits, silently, to accept my whims and thoughts when the mood strikes me.

Bless you, little blog, and happy fifth birthday!

Right ONN

The world just got better.
Now we have The Onion News Network.

And there's a podcast!

Jimbuck2's Joke Corner

Bono is at a U2 concert in Ireland when he asks the audience for some quiet.

Then in the silence, he starts to slowly clap his hands. Holding the audience in total silence, he says into the microphone, "Every time I clap my hands, a child in Africa dies."

A drunken voice from near the front of the audience pierces the silence...

"Fookin' stop doing it then!"

What's The New Jimbuck2?

Dig the new blog redesign! Spiffy, eh?

Gotta figure out how to add the other banner elements from the old template, but that shouldn't be too hard.

Whoa, barely a peep out of me in 2007, then three blog posts in the past week! I'm on fire!

La Fheile Padraig

Happy La Fheile Padraig*

That's St. Patrick's Day in Gaelic. If you want to know how to pronounce it, go here.

Slainte!

*accents deleted because they were screwing up the text formatting

Close Encounters...

I don't know if it's a full moon tonight, but it sure was a bizarre trip home from work. First, I get on the subway, only a few other people seated sparsely about. This little lady, Filipina, I think, gets on with a bunch of bags of groceries and a big shoulder bag, and even though there's a whole row of seats open across from me, she makes me move my bag from the seat next to me and takes up the whole 2 seats with her bags and herself, sitting at a bit of an angle, and squishing me in the corner against the door buttress thing. Her bag is partly on my leg. I move a bit and try to make some more room for myself. She's still encroaching on me a bit, but it's not a complete invasion of space so I let it ride. She's like a 4.5-footer. Little middle-aged lady. But she could have easily given me more room. A woman sits across from us, and she's looking at the lady with a quizzical expression, as if to say, "what's up with this lady?"

Then, later, my "close" friend gets out a book to read, and in so doing, places her elbow right across my right arm. I reach up with my left hand, move her elbow off me, saying "excuse me"... If I hadn't been so worn-out from work, I think I may have told her to get the fuck off me and shoved her away from me if she hadn't.

I figured maybe she wanted some sort of reaction from me, for whatever reason. It was almost like she was purposefully trying to provoke me. As my station was coming up at Woodbine, I figured I would get up, and then lean back in to her and say, as overly genuinely as possible, "have a nice day, ma'am." And smile. And then if she responded abusively, I'd dump her groceries on the floor.

But I didn't get a chance. When the train pulled into Woodbine, they announced that the train was out of service because of a power outage at Broadview which was effecting the line from there to west of Yonge. So in the general hubbub of everyone moving to "de-train", the moment just wasn't there.

On the subsequent bus ride down Woodbine I heard other passengers saying that the power outage was caused by a suicide jumper at one of the stations. Don't know if that's the case, and, of course, they don't normally report those in the media, but as I walked home a police car went zooming up Kingston Rd, siren and all, almost hitting an idiot driver at the corner of Dundas who didn't give the cop car the right of way. Then as I crossed at the intersection, another idiot driver almost ran me over. I let him know what I thought of his driving. Then another cop car went screaming up Kingston Rd. So something's going on, but I don't know if it's related to the subway situation. Maybe that lady pissed off the wrong guy after she didn't get what she wanted from me.

Ah, life in the big city...

Nuff Said

blogorrhea