(TV) A few laughs for the weekend

["Joe Thornton" <joe.thornton@gmx.net>]

See: www.warr.org/verlaine.html

(Wilson & Alroy's Record Reviews -- "We listen to the lousy records so you
won't have to")


These reviews of Verlaine albums are not completely useless or stupid but the
summaries -- my oh my:

Dreamtime: "... just isn't very substantial... A dreary and disappointing
disc"


Flash Light: "...it sounds just like the rest of his stuff, but it's largely
uninspired... There's a little stylistic variety... but it's not enough to
enliven the record. Still, if you just have to have another dose of Verlaine
this isn't such a bad buy.


And I thought this was smart and funny:
www.guardian.co.uk/arts/fridayreview/story/0,12102,1353957,00.html


Finally, another story from the Guardian today:
www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,1354677,00.html
This is about Ireland, and I can make it sort of on-topic by reminding you of
what Tom Verlaine said about Ireland in a 1984 interview
(www.micksinclair.com/zigzag/verlaine.html): "I'd like to see Ireland,
anywhere where people think for themselves and are not influenced by radios
and television."

There's more of that sort of thing here:
www.obbard.com/tvlist-archive/0306/msg00161.html

More to the point, Verlaine's enthusiasm, coupled with naivety (I have to call
it that), about Ireland is echoed by the recent report in The Economist that
gave rise to this Guardian article.

The two writers are leading lights of the Irish cultural scene, journalist
John Waters and novelist Joe O'Connor. This is intriguing because Joe O'Connor
is the brother of Sinead O'Connor, one of whose children was fathered by John
Waters, and there was a famous custody battle in the courts over that child.

Let me say that I, like many Irish people, am very fond of all three of these
big talents, particularly Sinead, whose brilliance is matched only by her
fallibility, for which we don't hold her 100% responsible. (If her recording
of, for example, "Nothing Compares 2 U" doesn't grab you, well, forget it.)

Waters wrote, among other things, a book about U2. More recently, as if to
demonstrate that he could match Sinead for publicity stunts, he came out in
favour of Bush-Blair's Iraq War (!).

Oh well...

--JoeT
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