From the Archives #1: Terrorists Demand their Own State

[I'm a little bit swamped at the moment, so thought I'd recycle a few pieces from the archives that I came across recently]

Citing inalienable rights to independent nationhood, a diverse range of international terrorist groups are joining together to demand their own self-governing homeland, in which they can live and carry out terrorist activities free from persecution.

In a videotaped interview with Al-Jazeera TV, fugitive Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden railed against the treatment received by terrorists throughout the world. “For years we have been persecuted, harassed, and misrepresented. They say we are only interested in violence and do not have political aims. But terrorism too is a way of life, and we also need a place to call our own. Do you think we are so different from you? If you prick us do we not bleed?”

In recent times terrorists have been subjected to deportation, imprisonment and confiscation of funds, while many states now outlaw belonging to or supporting a terrorist group, measures which bin Laden calls “a clear violation of human rights”.

This situation has led terrorist thinkers to converge in proposing a radical solution – the establishment of a diverse, tolerant state for violent fanatics. “Everywhere we are marginalised and vilified” imprisoned Shining Path founder Abimael Guzman has said, “when all we want is to be left alone in peace to commit acts of terror”.

Sources report that opinion is divided on the structure of the proposed terrorist state. Some groups support a centralised parliament under the Westminster model governing the nation of Terrorististan, while others favour a federal system to be known as the United Rogue States of Terrorismia.

It is understood that a draft constitution is under development and will enshrine key rights including the right to bear arms of mass destruction, freedom of extremist dogma, freedom of hate-filled polemic and the right to inflict cruel and unusual punishments.

In a somewhat surprising move, the constitution is said to be a secular one, with a formal separation of church and state. “Obviously, I’d like to see Wahhabi Islam as the state religion” said bin Laden. But ultimately I recognise that my own form of faith, and my desire to impose its rigid strictures on others or destroy the infidel scum, are deeply personal matters. Other people should have the freedom to take their own totalitarian approach to fundamentalist worship as they see fit”.

A spokesperson for the Real IRA confirmed that they had entered into discussions with Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups and supported the drive towards statehood. “To be sure, we don’t actually give a toss whether the four provinces of Ireland are united or not” he said. “We really just want to blow people up”.

These sentiments were echoed by Miami-exiled Cuban terrorist Orlando Bosch, who called himself part of “the terrorist diaspora” Other members of the coalition are understood to include Japanese death cult Aum Shinrikyo, former North Harbour loose forward Troy Flavell, and supporters of Millwall FC.

It is not yet clear which geographical location is favoured for the terrorist nation. Bin Laden was cagey when asked if he felt that terrorists had a spiritual homeland, saying only that it should have ‘a good outlook’ and ‘plenty of sun’. However, one veteran al-Qaeda operative was more forthcoming. “Ideally, we’d like somewhere nice, with a coastline, a Mediterranean climate and some decent mineral deposits” he said. “What I’d like most is to be able to retire quietly somewhere, tend a few olive trees, and maybe manufacture a little ricin”.

No specific threats have been made to back up the list of terrorist demands, which include a seat at the UN for their provisional government-in-exile. However, if progress is not made many groups are saying they will not rule out widespread, large scale hunger strikes. Bin Laden promised that they would not rest until the dream of an independent terrorist state becomes a reality. “Terrorists of the world unite!” he cried. “You have nothing to lose but your caves!”.

Categories: satire

Germany 2006: Another Chance for Football?

Next month sees the crucial second-to-last round of games in the qualifying stages for next year's World Cup in Germany. It's going to be an exciting time, with the fate of many countries being decided, while others will be left with sudden-death playoffs.

The South American qualifying group is a mini World Cup all of its own. Each of the ten nations must play each other home and away, meaning an epic 18 games in total (in contrast, the European teams only play 10 or 11 games). There are no weak teams, and with the different national rivalries, each match is a big occasion.

Unfortunately for my personal sympathies, Peru is already out. Much like the country itself, Peru's football team is less than the sum of its parts. They have talented players but are plagued by a collective lack of confidence, puzzling tactics, failure to convert opportunites, and a tendency to leak soft goals. They find themselves 9th on the table, above only Bolivia.

Predictably, Argentina and Brazil are already through on 31 and 3o points. I'm picking, and even hoping, that 2006 may be Argentina's year. Forget the rather negative, cynical teams of the 80s, enlivened only by the genius of Diego Maradona. The current Argentina team play an attractive, attacking game based on the elaborate interweaving of individual skills.

In games between the sides Brazil has traditionally been the neutrals' favourite, but when the two teams met in the final of the Copa America in Peru last year everyone agreed that Argentina was much the better team. Brazil, lacking a couple of their stars, sat back all game and did little. They managed to equalise in the very last minute of both the first and second halves through pieces of individual brilliance, and nabbed a 2-2 draw, going on to win on penalties.

Third and fourth have also become reasonably clear, with Ecuador and Paraguay on 26 and 25 points. Paraguay are now making a habit of qualifying for World Cups, and would like to think of themselves as South America's "third force". Ecuador are also looking to make it their second in a row, but I don't have a lot of time for them. They play all their home games at altitude in Quito and have won almost all their points there--soundly defeating both Brazil and Argentina. On the road they have done virtually nothing.

My remaining sympathies are with Colombia, who will likely scrap it out with Chile and Uruguay for the fifth position. Football tournaments seem to follow me around (I was in France in '98 and Peru for the Copa America last year), and it turned out that my visit to the coffee-growing region of Colombia coincided with the South American under-21 championships there. Colombia beat all comers with compelling performances of outrageous skill and joie de vivre that were a pleasure to watch. If the inconsistent senior team could reproduce even a fraction of this style, you would certainly want to see them in Germany.

The fifth-placed South American team will play off against Australia for a spot at the World Cup. I think it would fantastic to see Australia make it, but if Colombia nab that fifth spot, my loyalties will be conflicted.

However, in terms of my adopted "home" teams, my remaining hopes are largely resting with Guatemala in the North American zone. Never having previously qualified for a World Cup, Guatemala had a great first phase to get through to the final qualifying group. The two giants in that group--Mexico and the USA--are already through on 19 points, and Costa Rica now look safe in third on 13. Guatemala is hanging on to fourth on 8 points, one ahead of Trinidad and Tobago. The prize would be a playoff against the fifth Asian team. Whoever eventually contests that playoff, and whatever the result, it's bound to produce a fairy story, since the Asian opponent will be either Uzbekistan or Bahrain.

The top four Asian teams go through automatically, and there are no suprises there--Japan, South Korea, Iran and Saudi Arabia have already qualified.

I don't know much at all about form in the African groups, but from the points tables it looks like South Africa might well miss out. It's also touch and go for Nigeria, while Ghana looks like it might finally make good on its reputation as a major African team by qualifying for Germany.

In Europe, the eight group winners plus two best second-placed teams go in automatically, while the other six second-placed teams play off for three final spots. Already-qualified teams are Germany (as hosts) and the Ukraine for the first time ever. My other perennial second favourite teams, Holland and Portugal, also look certain to go through, while Italy are pretty much there as well.

After looking like they would sleepwalk in, England somehow contrived to lose to Northern Ireland, and now need to win both their remaining home games against Poland and Austria to qualify automatically. Even if Poland is overtaken, it will qualify as one of the best second-placed teams. France has managed to convince Zinedine Zidane and other senior players to come back and now looks odds-on to take its group ahead of Switzerland. Spain is struggling in second behind Serbia and Montenegro and may be in for a playoff.

The Czech Republic is also looking good for a "best second-placed" spot behind Holland, while in the least inspiring group both Croatia and Sweden have a good chance. Significant teams likely to miss out altogether include Ireland, Belgium, Denmark, and one out of 2002 World Cup semi-finalist Turkey and Euro 2004 champion Greece. For those who believe in miracles, Scotland have made a late run--they are still fourth in Italy's group, but have a last couple of chances to pip Norway and Slovenia for a playoff spot.

Whoever makes it to Germany, I, and most other football fans, will be hoping for something special to give the international game back some of its spark and romance. The 2002 World Cup broke new cultural ground by being hosted in Korea and Japan, but the football was a little lacklustre, Brazil and Germany contesting the final virtually by default. It wasn't as dire as USA 1994, where Brazil took the title by beating Italy on penalties, but no player or team really set the world on fire.

After an exciting, goal-filled tournament in 2000, the European championships last year also failed to capture the imagination. Greece's performance in taking the title was heroic, but not exactly inspiring, based as it was on throwing everybody behind the ball but still managing to pinch one goal a game. Credit to them for doing it three matches in a row.

In the last couple of major tournaments, teams with a lot of players in the really big leagues (particularly those in England, Spain and Italy) have seemed tired, listless and unmotivated. With the big money now involved, club teams dominate schedules and loyalites, and the international scene has suffered.

Even at club level, all is not rosy. The Champions League was the inevitable result of the increasing popularity and professionalisation of football, and the money pouring in from cable TV. Big name teams like Manchester United, RealMadrid and AC Milan were able to assemble teams of stars, and agree to play each other more often than in the past.

This was always going to exacerbate the haves / have-nots divide, and mean the end of unknown teams like Nottingham Forest coming through to win the European Cup. But it was accepted as free-spirited capitalism, which gave people what they wanted to see. Harlem Globetrotters-style teams like Barcelona, with their attitude of "if you score four we'll score five", produced compelling sporting spectacles that were hard to argue with.

Now, however, capitalism is morphing into oligarchy. Nothing typifies this more than the rise of Chelsea. Under the ownership of Russian oil baron Roman Abramovich, Chelsea have given new definition to the concept of buying success. The approach has been simple--if someone's good, get them, and bugger the expense. When Portuguese manager Jose Mourinho steered Porto to the Champions League title he was brought to Chelsea and told to assemble the squad of his choosing. When Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard inspired his side to an improbable Champions League success last season, Chelsea immediately tried to buy him (though in this case, Gerrard decided to stay with Liverpool).

While other clubs have put together teams of internationals, Chelsea now has two such teams. Stars such as Dutch winger Arjen Robben or English midfielder Frank Lampard are supplemented with players of comparable quality in every single position--negating the need to muddle through injuries or get individuals to play a range of tactics. While they have not had Champions Leaue success yet, Chelsea last season won the English Premiership with a record points tally, and this season are ten points ahead after only seven games.

To the fustration at the numbing predictability of the premiership has been added fans' increasing disgust at the values emanating from the game. In the last couple of months the British media has looked wistfully at the drama, passion, skill and gentlemanly comportment of the Ashes cricket series. In constrast, footballers with their stratospheric salaries seem to only display petulance and greed, and practically to collude with the tabloid media (a la Martin Amis' hilarious scene in Yellow Dog) in generating stories of violence and misbehaviour.

So, everyone's hoping for a bit of drama, passion, and even some inspiration at Germany 2006 to kick some life back into the sport. I'm not holding my breath, but football has been written off before, only to renew itself, so who knows?

In the meantime, go Guatemala!

Categories: football, Germany 2006

The Kiwi Folly, or: Bash MMP

When I was trying to explain New Zealand's political system recently to an American colleague, I suugested that the two countries now both have a system of checks and balances on political power, but very different ways of achieving them.

The American split between the executive, legislative and judicial powers is relatively well-known, as is the ability of the President to veto a bill, or Congress to impeach the President.

To outsiders, the fact that there are only two effective political parties seems to place a major limitation on the range of democratic expression. But "Democrat" and "Republican" are really more like franchise badges than party political affiliations in the British/New Zealand sense. They provide a broad ideological tent for the franchisee, who then sets his or her own menu of regional perspectives and personal principles.

In the implementation of policies, development of legislation, or nomination of political appointees, coalitions of like-minded individuals from both parties will often be "mobilised" to support or oppose a particular approach.

If Democrats and Republicans have come to seem like different chips off the same monolith, this may well be due to the enormous amounts of money a candidate needs in order to even think about running for office. Many believe that campaign finance reform is an urgent priority for the American electoral system.

In New Zealand, a political party is more like a close-knit team, with party "whips" who ensure that parliamentary members are in line with party policy, except on a limited number of designated "conscience issues". If a member votes against their party this is a much bigger deal than in the U.S. , and party members are not supposed to criticize the party leader in public.

However, we do now have some checks and balances in the system. This has been achieved, thanks to the multi-member proportional (MMP) system, simply by increasing the number of parties. Any party which gets over 5% of the vote or wins an electoral seat gets representation in parliament. This ensures a greater spread of economic, social, and regional viewpoints, with the ability and incentive to form a new party if a significant perspective is not being adequately represented within the big tent of a larger party.

It also requires a more consensus-based, consultative approach by the executive. With it being virtually impossible for any party to win an absolute majority, the government is formed either by a coalition of parties or by a minority government which receives support on confidence issues by one or more other parties. As in the U.S. , different groupings will mobilise to support or oppose different actions.

On the whole, New Zealanders are happy with this approach, which really mimicks checks and balances rather than having formal, constitutionally-based balances in place.

Looking back, it's quite frightening to think that we once had *no* checks and balances. Up until 1996, when MMP came in, the government could do pretty much what it liked. If you think of us as a company, the government of the day was the board of directors and top-tier management rolled into one, with the shareholders having the chance to like it or lump it once every three years.

When the move to MMP was being debated, the main tactic of its opponents, apart from saying "Italy" every so often and shaking their heads, was to warn that governments would no longer be able to "get things done" if they were forced to form coalitions or compromise on policy. This line was strongly pushed by the Business Roundtable and authoritarian elements in both major parties.

In reply, the majority of New Zealanders nodded their heads furiously. "Exactly!" they said. "We want to stop you from getting things done ". After a decade of furious change rammed through with an attitude of "suck it up, we know what's good for you", the country was desperate to apply the brake and get a wider range of voices into power.

The routine comeback was that the pace of change was necessary because of the "urgent reform" that had to be carried out.

Yes, well urgent reform was needed in large part because the previous incumbent had been able to "get things done" his own way, unhindered, for the previous nine years. To extend the previous corporate metaphor, Muldoon had also made himself the nation's accountant, lawyer, and bank manager during his stay in power.

Now, after some initial teething problems, the proportional system has helped New Zealand move towards a more mature democracy. Never again will a small group of politicans be able to remake the country in the image of their textbook.

And it's become apparent that more genuine democracy is not just some airy-fairy ideal, but actually improves decision-making. Even former critics like ex-prime minister Mike Moore now admit that the need to allow more criticism and consultation has led to smarter, more creative policies. This is hardly rocket science--competing perspectives help knock out the blind spots you get when one individual or group is doing all the thinking. There's a reason why science and academia demands peer review.

A further point is that if you want to really get things done, you'll only really succeed by getting what us bureaucrats call "buy in" and this means getting consensus--it might seem a little more cumbersome in the short term, but is more efficient in the long run.

My memories of the late 80s and 90s are of powerlessness and frustration at the arrogance with which policies were delivered, many of them poorly thought through and with unforseen consequences. The country voting to introduce MMP remains the political highlight of my life.

In the most recent election, New Zealand has again given a strong, but nuanced message: "we'll have a bit less of that, and a bit more of that, thank you--but not too much". Amidst the general uncertainty about exactly what the next government will look like, there are mumblings from some quarters about an "indecisive result" (i.e. those quarters didn't win) and a "lack of mandate". But give us a break--we can wait and see how it goes. It's rather ironic that the big business representatives who are constantly telling us that we need "less government" are so worried about government being unable to do things.

More insidious is this opinion piece in The Australian, which takes the opportunity to sneer at the proportional system by misrepresenting it as arcane and confusing (tell that to the voters in Epsom and the Maori electorates) and making groundless predictions of "a long period of political instability". The article certainly doesn't leave any doubt about its ideological slant, with phrases such as "minority and radical voices", "radical separatism and political correctness" and"feel-good excuse for a foreign policy". I was actually quite taken aback reading this piece; its bully-pulpit rantings make the New Zealand papers look deep-thinking and progressive.

It's another example of Australian corporate media using New Zealand as a useful whipping post for when it feels like burying an idea promoted by local progressives. A similar approach has been taken to bashing the Kyoto protocol. They have a cunning, if rather transparent, tactic:

"The puzzle is less how Kiwis managed to get themselves lumbered with a mess like this than the fact that the minor parties in Australia seriously propose we should travel down a similar road. So here's an idea: let's not. "

The approach is to trade on the average Australian's slightly patronising attitude towards NZ. This allows the pundit to more freely ridicule the idea and put his or her compatriot off it. "Look what those Kiwis have gone and done now!" the line goes. "You know, our eccentric cousins who are overly fond of their sheep, think 25 degrees is a heatwave, and probably still get around in walk shorts and sandals? Well, now they've come up with an even fruitier scheme than before. What do you reckon they put in the water over there?".

Hopefully, Australian citizens are smart enough to see through that.

Categories: New Zealand Politics, American Politics, Australian Politics
, Electoral Systems

Would You Like Your Government Supersized?

In the midst of the dirty tricks and ugly slanging matches in the lead-up to the New Zealand election, the debate of the issues has actually reached a slightly higher standard than in the past. On TV, this has in part been due to the influence of John Campbell and TV3, who by treating the viewer with a modicum of intelligence has helped the channel make huge inroads into the urban, educated audience and forced complacent, lumbering TVNZ to up its game.

[Don't laugh], blogs have also had some impact. While they have only a limited direct audience, bloggers like Russell Brown, Frogblog (Green Party) and, National's David Farrar have hurried up the mainstream media a little by exposing contradictory statements, questioning assumptions, checking facts and uncovering sources.

But there's a highly annoying and recurring feature of the discussion that nobody has yet critiqued. This is the continued characterisation of social democractic parties as favouring "big government" and "more intervention", while conservative parties are said to support "smaller government" and "less intervention".

These phrases are rhetorical flourishes long employed by Republicans in the U.S. to skew arguments their way--if you're allowed to choose the language you've won half the battle. Yet here they've been repeatedly employed by commentators who at least purport to be giving a neutral description of policies. For example, a work colleague who was recently describing the various political parties to an American visitor, and who clearly thought he was doing so from an objective viewpoint, told her that "Labour favours big government". Amongst the media, even the mostly thoughtful Colin James in the Herald has used the same terminology.

"Big government" suggests something bloated and lumbering, conjuring up images of hordes of grey bureaucrats making everyone fill out forms. It also has sinister connotations of a multi-tentacled faceless entity intruding into people's lives. Likewise, "intervention" suggests meddling, interfering with the natural state of things.

"Less government and less intervention" meanwhile, sounds clean and crisp, with implications of freedom, fewer grey suits, and people getting on with their lives.

But what do these characterisations acutally mean, and are they at all accurate?

A literal interpretation of "big government" would seem to imply big-spending. This reflects the historical view that left-leaning governments are profligate in their social spending, while liberal or conservative governments balance the books. However, this distinction no longer seems to hold true. In New Zealand the social democratic Labour government has been a model of fiscal responsibility, while National promises to borrow more and erode the existing surplus. In the U.S., the Clinton years saw the building of a budget surplus which turned out to be an oasis between the ballooning deficits of the Reagan and George W Bush Republican administrations.

"Intervention" is an even more nebulous concept. American conservatives have spent many years railing against "government intervention", but it's not clear that they've been consistent about it. The same society which long resisted background checks for people attending gun shows swiftly moved to allow law enforcement agencies to secretly review library users' borrowing records¹. And even most conservatives would be embarrassed by the question: if a government should ever "intervene", (i.e. act), should it prioritise intervening in another country by invading it, or intervening in a local disaster by providing medicine and water?

Taxation aside, it's left-leaning parties' social policies that attract the most flack from right-wingers who deride what they call "social engineering". But funnily enough, the policies of progressive administrations that have most raised the ire of conservatives have generally been about promoting less intervention in people's lives: de-criminalisation of prostitution, de-criminalization of cannabis, allowing gay couples to be formally recognised. It's a laughably perverse for people to claim, as some have, that "homosexuality has been forced on us" when the right they say they have lost is to direct their intolerance and sanction on others who are doing them no harm.

There is, in fact, a reasonably consistent distinction between the social democratic and conservative approaches as regards the role of government and the kinds of interventions each considers appropriate. But it's not at all the simplistic "less vs. more" difference with which we're usually presented.

Social democratic parties do tend to put more emphasis on government funding of health, education and social services. The wellbeing of society at large is considered to be a public venture, worthy of public investment. Progressive philosophies are underpinned by the belief that it's possible to actively reduce the inequality and unfairness of society.

Convservative parties are more prepared to tolerate structural inequalities. They emphasise the ability of individuals to overcome these barriers, and their right to be rewarded for doing so. To maintain order, however, they deploy the power of the state in a more punitive, deterring way. They promise to be "tough on crime" and bolster spending on the police and prisons.

They also spend more on defense. While progressives are more likely to be internationalists, conservatives have a more pessimistic view of human nature and believe that nation state is the broadest sphere in which the rule of law can be reasonably expected to operate. Beyond its borders, what matters is being powerful and having powerful friends.

The libertarian position which consistently rejects any kind of government involvement really only flourishes in liberal economics departments and Reason magazine. In New Zealand, the ACT party, which began as a libertarian Ayn Rand appreciation club, morphed within a few years into single mother-bashing puritans who thought we should spend more on defense. Don Brash started out as a socially liberal finance wonk who just wanted to lower taxes; now he finds himself reversing his position on civil unions, promising to "rebuild" the police and end parole, and becoming an unwitting poster boy for big religion.

Tthe United States is consistently held up as an example of limited government and free-spirited commerce. But if you look closely, you find a history of pretty big government. American enterprise has long been supported by systematic intervention of its government in other countries to ensure the availability of resources and the conditions for successful commerce². Closer to home, the US imprisons and executes its citizens at a greater rate than other developed nations. Such government activities allow heavy subsidisation of less wealthy areas through the location of military bases and prisons.

And while social democratic attempts to introduce initiatives like universal health insurance have repeatedly met with stalwart opposition, there has been no such reluctance to unleash punitive measures against activities judged destabilising to the social order. Eric Schlosser's excellent book Reefer Madness provides some illuminating case studies of the enormous resources deployed by government against individuals best described as entrepreneurial capitalists, operating in industries (e.g. marijuana, pornography) in which they have caused no direct harm³.

So it turns out that "intervention" by "big government" can take different forms. Within limits, I favour the social democratic approach, which is not only kinder, but shows good evidence of being more efficient. Ronald Reagan said that "government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem". If he were talking about the wastage and violence of the "War on Drugs", which after many years even the British police agree has been an abysmal failure, I would be inclined to agree.

1. Post 9/11, though the provisions of the Patriot Act

2. Not necessarily a criticism. Such interventions have ranged from the generous and visionary (e.g the Marshall Plan) to the foolhardy (the creation of Al-Qaeda in 1980s Afghanistan) to the simply criminal (e.g. CIA plot to assassinate Salvador Allende).

3. Here is another good example. Look for the sly pun in the last sentence.

Categories: Politics, New Zealand Election, Ideology

The Daily Minion Presents: Policies 2005

In the lead-up to the New Zealand election, most attention has been focused on the tax reforms proposed by the two major parties. But what are some of the other, less well-known policies of the election frontrunners?

National

Climate Change: will pull out of Kyoto until better scientific evidence that Earth is a “globe” surrounded by an “atmosphere”

Social Policy: will establish Ministry of Mainstream Affairs, to address disadvantages for normal New Zealanders

Resource Management Act: to be renamed Resource Extraction Act

Foreign Affairs: to cut bureaucracy, foreign policy will be outsourced to the kind folk at the US State Department, who have offered to provide the service at a bargain rate.

Education Curriculum: history classes will no longer teach the Treaty of Waitangi or other outdated material.

Labour

Economic Development: will support the development of a "knowledge economy" by saying at least 12 positive things per annum about science and research

Defence: Phil Goff will be deployed in the South Pacific to pre-emptively lecture possible security threats.

Secondary Education: NCEA will be reformed and turned into an acronym that everyone can pronounce

Race Relations: will commit to remaining at least 10% less racist than National.

Constitutional Reform: it is inevitable that the outdated monarchy eventually be replaced by a People's Republic headed by a popular, competent president.

Greens

Economy: will steer New Zealand towards a modern, industrial hemp-based economy

Genetic Engineering: will commit to keeping Rod Donald in the lab.

Foreign policy: will only engage with ethically acceptable nations. Norway to become New Zealand’s major trading partner.

Health: many health problems can be prevented by regular exercise and a wholesome, hemp-based diet.

Defence: there are great opportunities to develop our own tanks and planes from hemp.

New Zealand First

Veterans Affairs: Veterans will be given a "Gold Card" allowing them free health care, priority for social services, and the right to annex rural properties.

Immigration: immigration from Asia will be restricted and linked to the industry needs of selected Courtenay Place restaurants.

Social Policy: unemployed people will be required to design new, productivity-boosting technologies, if they want to keep receiving their benefit.

Categories: New Zealand, New Zealand Election, Satire

Disaster Deja Vu

Seems like I'm condemned to view the world through the prism of Hollywood blockbusters. When 9/11 happened, my first reaction was a horrible feeling that someone had snuck in and sabotaged the plot of a gung-ho Bruce Willis flick.

Later, when everyone was appalled that Palestinians on the Gaza Strip were cheering at footage of the twin towers being hit, I felt a guilty familiarity and wondered why no one seemed to understand. Weren't we all overjoyed in Star Wars when they blew up the Death Star? Did we consider for a moment whether there were innocent people on board? No, we just rejoiced at the destruction of what the movie told us was the symbol of oppression (see this only half-humorous article on the Case for the Empire for an alternative view).

Watching the New Orleans floods, I haven't been able to get The Day After Tomorrow off my mind. This is a movie which commands too much space in my subconscious anyway, because I've seen it about five times. The first time was willingly; I went to the cinema in Arequipa when it first came out. After that, almost every long distance bus I caught in Peru seemed to have it as one of the on-board movies.

About the third time this happened, I managed to head if off before it got into the video player. "Please, please don't let it be El Día Después de Mañana!", I begged the bus attendant as she started to insert the tape. Startled by my vehemence, she stopped what she was doing, shrugged, and swapped the video for another one, which fortunately turned out to be something I hadn't seen.

The movie stars Dennis Quaid as a climate scientist who has developed alarming models suggesting that melting ice caps caused by global warming could totally blow the nothern hemisphere's climatic equilibrium and plunge the planet into a new ice age. After he gives a public presentation on his theories, he gets ticked off for scaremongering by the US Vice President (the spitting image of Dick Cheney) who tells him "the climate's not the only thing that might be unstable. This economy is pretty unstable too".

Quaid's right, of course, only instead of all this happening within his predicted fifty years, things start going haywire within five weeks. Sea temperatures in the North Atlantic plunge, a massive tornado devastates Los Angeles, and storms brewing over the Arctic start descending on America.

Every Hollywood movie has to involve a father who is overinvolved in his work and distant from his child and/or wife; he has to endure a crisis where he must rescue one or both of them in order to set his priorities straight. So they work this in by having Quaid's adolescent son stuck on a school trip in New York when the storm hits.

The city is overwhelmed by tidal waves; as a wall of water pours through Manhattan, Quaid's son and his friends are among those who seek shelter in the NY Public Library. Here is where the movie gestures feebly at the kind of issues which would be laid painfully bare in New Orleans. Among the people trying to get into the library is one (1) black homeless guy. He has a dog with him, and when he tries to take shelter someone tells him snootily "you can't bring that in here". Later, the homeless guy (he manages to sneak in the dog) distributes newspaper to everybody, explaining that it keeps you warm if you stuff it under your clothes.

There's a point being made here - something about the hubris of wealth and status and how it all counts for nothing when you're forced to face the elements. But it's all rather lame - there's no looting or real race or class tension, and everyone waits in an orderly fashion, politely sharing out the potato chips, while the rain turns to snow and ice.

Meanwhile, Quaid's spurned scientist has been made an advisor to the US government after they realised they were wrong (this would be kind of like UN weapons inspector Hans Blix being brought on board to help out with Iraq). We see mock CNN footage of refugees wading across the Rio Grande, while the reporter says "Thousands of people are trying to cross illegally into Mexico" (the cinema crowd in Peru chortled gleefully at this).

Quaid draws a line across a map of the United States starting from roughly Washington DC, and tells parody-Cheney that everyone to the south of the line must be evacuated. For those to the north, it's already too late. Cheney vacillates, until the parody-Bush president (who, weirdly, bears quite a physical resemblance to Al Gore) awakes from his slumbers and says "yeah, do it".

We later hear that they've sorted out an agreement for Mexico to take American citizens, in exchange for the cancellation of all Latin American debt (the Peruvian audience hooted with laughter). By the end of the film, the president's evacuating plane has been lost in the storm, and president-elect parody-Cheney gives an address from the American embassy in Mexico in which he admits his administration was arrogant and lacked foresight (as the Tui ad says...)

Meanwhile, the plot has got (even more) incredibly cheesy, as Quaid sleds off into the storm to rescue his son, who is fighting off wolves (escaped from the zoo) to get penicillin for his girlfriend's infected leg which she got saving a poor immigrant woman in the flood...you get the picture.

I did actually enjoy the movie--besides being feelgood fodder for us smug liberals, the disaster set pieces are mostly outstanding (who doesn't like seeing LA get smashed to bits yet again?), the science hovers just on the right side of total implausibility, and there's some original touches, like the astronauts watching the storm unfold from space.

But following the news from New Orleans, I cringed every time I was inadvaertently reminded of The Day After Tomorrow. It's strange; you almost feel like there's something karmic about the way the bad things from blockbusters come true, but with a nightmarish nastiness that punctures the flippancy of the film's treatment.

Part of it is that the stereotypes seem self-perpetuating--the warnings ignored, the head-in-the-sand government, the rule-obsessed dithering bureaucrats (in Bruce Willis films it's always the bureaucrats' fault). Partly the ludicrous way in which all this is smoothed over by the alpha male hero, who saves the day and reunites his family. And then of course in reality there is no such hero, and everyone is shocked that there is no happy ending.

It wasn't so long ago that Hollywood made movies like Chinatown, with heroes who faced a complex reality and real moral conflict. But nowadays any moral dilemmas are telegraphed and comic book-style ("hmmm, about time I turned to the Dark Side"). Obviously you can't actually blame the bread-and-circuses escapism of today's entertainment for things that go wrong in reality. But its constant diet lulls us into dull passivity that leaves us useless when the shit fits the fan, helplessly waiting for the good guys to show up and blaming everybody else when they don't.

I'm sure it's ludicrous to suggest that this attitude even infects people in positions of authority. But is it totally irrational to think that if our popular narratives were a little less mind-numbingly dumb and simplistic, people would be a little less surprised and a little more constructive when things go wrong?

Categories: movies, Hurricane Katrina

After the Flood

Like many people, I've been staggered and upset by seeing the images of New Orleans post-Hurricane Katrina. People still trapped in the city and surrounded by flood waters are without food, water, and medicine, let alone sanitation. On TV3's news last night a British camera crew driving into the city were surrounded by a crowd shouting "help!" "help!" and people saying they had no water. A man waved around a three month-old baby yelling that it had no diapers or infant formula. The camera crew were threatened and eventually had to leave.

Another camera crew cruised in a boat through the flooded streets and came to a hospital surrounded by water. They spoke to a nurse who looked close to tears as she described how they had no support, communications, electricity or supplies. People were dying and therewas nothing they could do. The boat picked up a frail-looking man in a hospital gown floating in the water and returned him to the hospital from where they thought he had wandered off. It didn't look like he'd be much better off back in there.

Meanwhile, much of the media coverage has focussed on the looting and disorder in central New Orleans, and the first major federal contribution--four days after the end of the hurricane--was to send in National Guard troops armed with machine-guns. From the sounds of it they're badly needed, with armed gangs roaming the streets, snipers shooting at rescuers and rapes and beatings happening at the convention centre and Superdome where refugees are crowded.

It's a black irony that these are troops who have just returned from Iraq. It's a reminder that without the rule of law, security, food, water and electricity, living in a " democracy" is worth bugger-all. It doesn't matter where you are, civilization is a thin veneer which leaves us about four missed meals away from chaos.

But it's still disturbing to see guys carrying guns, who "know how to shoot, to kill, and surely will", as the advance guard of assistance. While some of the looting is crazed and criminal, it seems clear that most people are just trying to survive. As a television viewer, you feel that the narrative is somehow wrong. "This is the United States", you remind yourself. How can there be people who don't even have any water? Where are the large-scale airlifts of food, water and supplies, the reassuring teams of medics? Not everyone can be evacuated at once, but where are, I don't know, the packages being dropped in, like in Afghanistan? Come on, it's four days after the hurricane. You're left confused and appalled.

CNN's website has some quite good coverage and links--there's a brilliant interview with New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin bemoaning the lack of help, and a comparison of what authoritities say is happening with how people on the ground describe it.

Slate also has a good collection of comment, including a piece on how pretty much everybody still stuck in New Orleans is black and poor. There's also considerable discussion of the missed opportunities to reinforce New Orlean's defences and much lampooning of George Bush's comment that "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees."

When investigated afterwards, disasters tend to show up a trail of bungles, cut corners, lack of accountability and knocked-back attempts to do something. The weight of blame allocated isn't always entirely fair, since things look much clearer with 20/20 hindsight. In this case, there appears to be have been pretty close to 20/20 foresight, and the Army Corps of Engineers were denied badly needed funding to do work which might have made a difference.

But this still isn't the point. The point is, no matter how badly cocked-up or how inevitable the disaster, you have to get in there and help people affected by it. The other day Bush was on TV, grinning like an idiot (his minders had told him to "look relaxed"?) and saying, "now, I know people would like help to have arrived yesterday", as if such people were impatient children, instead of being infants and elderly dying though lack of clean water and sanitation. Yes, for f*cks sake! Yesterday would have been good; the day before yesterday even better. It's enough to shake your remaining faith in Western civilization.

I don't know how much difference it can make now, but the American Red Cross seems like a good place to make donations.

Categories: New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina

Sometimes It's Scary When You're Right

In my recent post on my No 3. song of all time, Bruce Springsteen's "Thunder Road", I said that Springsteen is part of a rich tradition of American narrative and myth-making, and consciously draws on a range of popular-cultural sources. I bet he had inspired a few American studies theses (read "cultural studies", for people inside the US, and probably in general--sorry, I'm stuck with my University of Canterbury vocabulary).

I admired the "intertextuality" in Springsteen singing about the radio playing Roy Orbison, and half-jokingly suggested some possible academic paper titles; "He-ro and Automobile: Sexual and Religious Symbolism in Springsteen", for example.

Well, the next thing you know, I discovered this story in the Guardian about a three-day Bruce Springsteen symposium to be held at Monmouth University in New Jersey from September 9. According to the article, "the first-of-its-kind symposium is expected to attract more than 150 papers exploring Springsteen's influence on US literature, sociology, religious thought and politics. Academics will debate his impact on America's memory of the Vietnam war, and its higher education curriculum."

The guy organising it, an associate professor of English at Pennsylvannia State University, is quoted as saying: "When I figured out this was the first broad-based academic activity to do with Bruce, I was kind of shocked".

His paper is an exploration of the various female characters, such as Wendy, Sandy and Mary, that appear in Springsteen's songs (I've always thought one of his major achievements was managing to make a credible rock song with a heroine called Wendy).

"Although she comes in many guises, she's the female face at the heart of the sociocultural nostalgia that structures Springsteen's sense of pastness throughout his work," the paper's abstract explains.

Also presenting is an Italian associate professor called Samuele Pardini, who is discussing the repeated appearances of women called Mary in (Catholic-raised) Springsteen's songs.

According to Pardini, Springsteen "subverts a male-dominated, Italian-American Catholicism in order to subvert a national identity historically marked by the gender and racial conflicts of its class-divided society and to affirm the plural identity of an equal, and therefore free country".

I promise never to be flippant again.

Categories: Bruce Springsteen, Cultural Studies

How to Write a Feature Article for a New Zealand Newspaper

Follow these simple steps:

1. Pick a topic based on a "current issue", preferably one contrived by the publication you work for.

2. Find an "expert", preferably a tenured academic, preferably foreign (so we know we can take them seriously) and get them to expound at length on the issue.

3. Quote the "expert" verbatim and fill in the gaps with breathless speculation on how "we" might be affected by the issue.

4. Find somebody else to say something as well, to provide "balance" and to prove you've done your research. Always include several quotes, whether or not they cast any light on the question. If really stretched for filler, ask some of your friends what they think.

5. Don't bother trying to string together enough actual facts with sufficient rhetorical structure to present a coherent argument. This is overambitious and should be left to foreign experts.

The latest case study of this approach appeared in relation to the New Zealand "man drought" which has been the subject of much debate and discussion recently amongst Wellington's chattering classes. I was intending to comment on the subject itself (that will have to be saved for a later post) but got distracted by the greater-than-usual mindlessness of how it was presented in the print media.

A couple of weeks ago, a short article appeared in the Dominion Post and on the NZ Stuff website reporting a study by Australian demographer Bernard Salt which established that in New Zealand there are 53,000 more women than men in the 20-49 age group. While interesting, that's nothing that anyone couldn't have worked out by getting hold of a few spreadsheets from Statistics New Zealand--and remember, this is based on the 2001 census, so we're talking about five year-old data.

But naturally it was presented as sensational news. In relation to the finding that the gap was biggest in the thirtysomething age group, with a 9% female surplus, Salt was quoted as saying that "a 32 year-old woman has as much chance of finding a partner of her own age as an 82 year-old woman".

That's actually mathematically false, before you even make reference to the real world. But [sighs], you can be sure that the article didn't manage to make that point.

When the inevitable feature appeared on the front page of the Dominion Post Saturday magazine, it was accompanied by a photo of a crowd of grim-faced, black-dressed Wellingtonians trudging to work, with some of the silhouettes of the men cut out, leaving white spaces. The article then trawled anxiously through all the demographic statistics, enlisting the aid of no fewer than three experts to help us interpret them - Salt, plus Wellington economists Simon Chapple and Paul Callister.

One of the most irksome things about NZ feature writing is the total inability to provide an informed critical viewpoint. So, when the fallacy of the "same chance as an 82 year-old woman" was finally uncovered two-thirds of the way through the article, it was only thanks to Callister, who "bears some good news: it's not quite as bad as [Salt] portrays it". While both the 32 and 82 year-old groups have around 3,000 more women, the gap is 9% for the 32 year-olds, but 58% in the much smaller 82 year-old population.

If that seems blindingly obvious, the article outdoes itself at the end of the paragraph, offering the following insightful conclusion:
"And a 32 year-old woman has the option of an older partner".
You don't say? Dear me, he could even be younger. Haven't you watched Desperate Housewives?

The three "experts" posit a range of theories to explain the demographic gap, including the higher male mortality rate and the supposition that "young, mobile males are more likely to be undercounted at the census than women" (it's true, male suspects he didn't fill in a census form in 2001). The gap is biggest--43%-- in Asians born overseas, which Callister suggests could be due to women coming to NZ for domestic work or mothers accompanying school-age children.

Salt is sure that the demographic gap in both NZ and Australia is due to the globalised labour market and a slightly higher rate of male migration to the larger economies. He may well be right, though the blatant misrepresentation of the statistics quoted above doesn't exactly inspire confidence in his methods; his view that "women have closer family ties and are more likely to settle down in their home territory" just seems like prejudice (as a random sample, off the top of my head I can think of three female and no male friends who have married foreigners and settled overseas) .

The truth is that nobody really knows. Nor do we know what proportion of people are actually single or "in a relationship", what their goals and preferences are, nor anything at all about their behaviour.

This does not stop the economist wonks from making speculative pronouncements about the future of relationships in New Zealand. Callister informs us solemnly that "I have heard things like, 'There's more choice out there, I can leave you'...You might see people doing that sort of thing more". Chapple meanwhile, "reckons power dynamics within relationships could shift, with educated men in short supply and able to get a better deal from their partner".

This is a slightly scary insight into the thinking of an unreconstructed economist, who believes that the world is the sum of self-interested rational calculations, free from the complex cultural reality in which people actually live, and unencumbered by those nutty things called human emotions . Next time you feel like complaining about being governed by schoolteachers and sociologists, remember that the country used to be run by Treasury types like these.

You can imagine how they'd approach it:
"I'm leaving you, Mary! The demographic balance is in my favour, interest rates are steady, and Jupiter is in Aquarius". If these guys have wives or long-term girlfriends, the unlucky women should seriously consider preemptively ditching them.

In the competition to manufacture psuedoscientific garble, it's Salt who takes the cake:

"Mr Salt says there's already a phenomenon of what he calls "time-share men", who engage in sequential monogamous relationships. "The woman will have a relationship for a few years, then retreat and live by herself for a few years. He forms another relationship straight away and she is out of the ring for a while" ".

I don't know the guy, so I don't know whether he is taking the piss, or whether this is wishful thinking on his own behalf. But Puh-lease. Do I need to point out that both men and women forms relationships, end them, stay single or start new ones for a whole range of reasons, almost all of which have nothing whatsoever to do with a small demographic imbalance. And again, in my personal experience, exactly the opposite pattern as that described above tends to operate.

However, the most annoying thing is not that what these guys say--I'd be happy enough to pompously waffle on too, if someone asked me. What's really tragic is that they're quoted as if they're offering unadulterated pearls of wisdom; the writer completely fails to note that they have no more idea about the future, or even the current, dynamics of relationships than herself, you, I, or the postie. NB: these guys have crunched some numbers. Although they may have "Dr" in front of their name or work for an international consulting company, they do not know everything.

I promise I will comment further on the "man drought" question at a later date with some speculative and personally-skewed theories of my own. In the meantime, here's a plausible one. Men, biologically slightly more predisposed to extreme reactions, have about a 9% higher rate of being driven over the edge by the inanity of what passes for public discourse in this country, and consequently deciding to end it all.

Categories: Man drought, New Zealand

Funding Cuts Short Sighted Says Twilight Golf President

New Zealand Twilight Golf Association (NZTGA) president Baz Ledbetter has lashed out at what he calls "short-sighted" funding cuts to twilight golf training programmes announced by Minister of Education Trevor Mallard, and predicts they may result in many of our most promising twilight golfers being forced to ply their trade overseas.

Twilight golf was among the programmes affected by $163 million worth of recent cuts to private training courses funded by the Tertiary Education Commission.

Speaking as the shadows lengthened across the 18th green at Auckland's Beachlands course, Mr Ledbetter said that the ending of government of support for the training would prove to be a loss, not just for the twilight golfing community, but for New Zealand as a whole.

"This is an extremely short-sighted decision" he said. "Sure, you might balance the books by making budding twilight golfers pay their own way. But where does that leave the country in the long term? We run the risk of losing many of our most talented youngsters, to Australia, to regular golf, or to some other sport altogether. If steps aren't taken to secure our future, twilight golf could go the way of dry-creek canoeing".

NZTGA records indicate that many young twilight golf graduates already head across to Australia, attracted by better earnings and the year-round tropical twilights of north Queensland. It is likely that the loss of funding will only exacerbate this outflux.

Mr Ledbetter said that part of the problem lay in ignorance of twilight golf's specialist training needs. "Some people think that you can just learn regular golf and then adapt it to twilight conditions", he said. But in fact, everything is different--club selection, putting style, ball retrieval. These skills need to be taught from day one. To suggest that they can be learnt as some kind of add-on by the generalist golfer is like saying that nocturnal lawn bowls or naked cricket don't require specialist training."

For now, subsidised access to twilight golf programmes will remain, as the New Zealand Crepusculan Trust have agreed to fund scholarships for a limited number of applicants. "It's a relief to have a stop-gap solution but it's only going to keep us afloat for a limited time" said Mr Ledbetter. "They inserted a sunset clause in our agreement".

It seems that for New Zealand twilight golf, the long-term future is murky. "Where do we go from here?" asked Baz Ledbetter, peering towards the sixteenth fairway. "I'm afraid to say, I'm in the dark".

Well I'm Glad That's Over

I promise never to do it again. All future top 10 or top 5 lists will be short, punchy, and contained within one post.

When I started out, I truly intended to do my top 10 over the course of 10 consecutive days, with a short commentary explaining why each one gained its place. As it turned out, I couldn't restrain my natural verbosity and ended up writing a mini essay on each song. So I apologise to my regular readers (all 15 or so of you) for making this so drawn out.

It has been an interesting process, though, because I've been forced to think hard about the merits of each song and try to explain what's so great about it. Unfortunately, this may have caused me to end up likeing some of them slightly less--in striving to understand something, you can sometimes destroy it.

It's also missed out more than its captured. As I said, the top two or three songs are pretty set, but the rest are more contingent, and are based on shifting, somewhat arbitrary criteria. Now they're set down, the ones that missed out seem all the more attractive--somewhat as the talented attacking player who can't quite find a role in a winning team seems even more dazzlingly skilful. I therefore feel the need to acknowledge some of the unlucky ones.

Some songs missed out on the shortlist partly because of the mood I was in; it turned out there was no place for great unrequited / jilted anthems like "I Don't Want to Talk About It" (Rod Stewart / Everything But the Girl) or "Walk Away Renee" (endlessly covered; most versions are horrible apart from the Left Banke's 1966 violin-and-harmonies original).

In the category of songs which make you jump on the dancefloor at an 80s disco and drunkenly shout "this is a classic!", there could really only be one entry. Including "Back on the Chain Gang" blocked off sentimental favourites like "Drop the Pilot" by Joan Armatrading, Mr Mister's "Kyrie" and, sadly, "99 Luftballoons" by Nena (star of even more German magazine covers than David Hasselhoff).

Yet it seems strange that "Just Like Heaven" seems to be the only, and not necessarily even the most worthy, representative of all the 80s and early 90s left-of-centre guitar bands I was into. From the UK: the Smiths; the Jesus & Mary Chain; Teenage Fanclub; the Stone Roses ("Fool's Gold", "Waterfall", "Sugar Spun Sister" and the vastly-underrated B-side, "Mersey Paradise"); Suede ("the Wild Ones"); Radiohead ("Fake Plastic Trees"). No room even for the La's' "There She Goes", which definitely has one of the top 5 riffs of all time. From the US: Violent Femmes; Dinosaur Jr; the Pixies; the Lemonheads; Pavement (no "Summer Babe"--Simon Doherty would be appalled).

Dear me, there's not even any Billy Bragg ("Greetings to the New Brunette" a longtime favourite), despite me having a bit of an epiphany after seeing him at the Liverpool Dock Workers Benefit gig in Willesden Green, about how it's possible to remain a totally sound bloke in a confusing world.

"Throw Your Arms Around Me" and "Distant Sun" filled spots for the antipodean mainstreamish guitar sound, shutting out Dave Dobbyn, the Muttonbirds et al as well as the Warumpi Band's "My Island Home" (another word-of-mouth Australian classic). But what of all the Flying Nun stuff from Dunedin and Christchurch I was so into at university? The Clean, the Strangeloves, the Bats, Straitjacket Fits? I had considered this issue and decided that it was more about the sound, the style and seeing the bands live--none of the songs were ever really among my absolute favorites. Then, when it was too late, I remembered--how could I forget?--the 3Ds' "Outer Space". What a classic slab of distorted pop--it probably should have been on the list.

And it's puzzling that there is no spot anywhere for REM ("You Are the Everything", "I Believe"), nor Counting Crows ("Anna Begins", "A Murder of One"), nor even U2 ("Sunday Bloody Sunday", "Bad", "Running to Stand Still"). All could have been there on a different day.

Amongst the guitar-hero rockers, it was bad luck for Led Zeppelin ("Black Dog", "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You", "Going to California"), Jimi Hendrix ("Foxy Lady", "All Along the Watchtower"--though that would really have been stetching the Bob Dylan connection) and even Santana (the seductive "Samba Pa' Ti" was the instrumental closest to getting on the list).

The 60s were quite well represented, with Nos 1 and 2. But it's still quite odd that there's no Simon & Garfunkel ("the Boxer", "I Am a Rock"). Not quite room for those Rolling Stones tough-fragile ballads ("Ruby Tuesday", "Wild Horses"). And though I've never been a huge Beatles fan, George Harrison's "Here Comes the Sun" has long been a favourite, and just missed out (an ex-girlfirend once told me that when she heard it, it reminded her of me...).

For someone who spent so much time playing in an "Irish" band, it might seem surprising that there's nothing in that genre. But of the Pogues' stuff, only "A Rainy Night in Soho" is remotely close. I love the Waterboys' lyrical epics "A Bang on the Ear" and "the Whole of the Moon", yet couldn't squeeze them in. And yes, even a great song can be totally ruined by overexposure. So no "Brown Eyed Girl" (how could it ever survive endless drunk, not particularly attractive women squawking "This is my song! This song is about me!").

Finally, amongst my more recent stylistic preferences, Manu Chao is much more of an album artist--"Clandestino" is not quite the same without the rest of the CD. And though I'm a huge salsa fan, I really just like whatever they play. The only ones that stand out are la India's "Seduceme" and "Un Montón de Estrellas" by Polo Montañez--the latter a recurring presence during nights in the discotecas of Peru and Colombia.

So that's it, qualifications and all. I'm the first to confess certain limitations to my list. It was always going to be guitar heavy; there's only one song with a female vocalist (Sarah McLachlan's live version of "Hold On" was next closest--it's been special ever since it soothed my carnival-working mental and physical exhaustion on a lonely Greyhound driving through the dark Saskatchewan night); and the artists are pretty much all white. But what can you do? Whether your preferences are due to your inherited archetypes, constructed cultural location, or what kind of hymns they had at church when you were a kid, they end up operating at gut level and you're stuck with them.

I'm keen to keep receiving people's own top 10 lists (thanks, Kevin, for your three separate lists). It's certainly an interesting exercise, as you end up creating this little narrative about yourself. What does it all mean? Not even Nick Hornby has a clear answer, and I certainly don't.

No 1. Like a Rolling Stone - Bob Dylan

Yes, how predictable. Pretty much all serious lists of Top Ten Songs put together by music critics name "Like a Rolling Stone" as The Greatest Song of All Time (in the popular votes "Hey Jude" tends to fight it out with a couple of Elvis songs). In a recent poll of rock and movie stars run by Uncut magazine it was voted number one out of the music, movies, TV shows and books that "changed the world". More than one entire book has been written on the song, most recently a 260-page opus by Greil Marcus called Like a Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads.

But I'm grown up enough now not to avoid the obvious choice out of sheer contrariness and elitism. If everybody else thinks it's the Greatest Song of All Time, and I can't reasonably disagree, I'll take it on the chin.

And I have to confess that I've never found any song--not "Mr Tambourine Man", "Thunder Road", nor any other-- close to as powerful and exhilarating as "Like a Rolling Stone".

For a start, there's the urgent, crowded spontaneity of the music. One ringing beat on the snare drum and the band bursts in, playing their instruments, as somebody said, "as if they'd invented them". The piano rinky-dinks its way through the verse, the guitar elbows everything else out of the way on the hook into the chorus, and once we get there the organ takes its chance to burst to the fore.

This was the moment in 1965 when Dylan "went electric", alienating a fair portion of his right-on folk fans. Maybe the band was afraid that he'd change his mind and go back, because they play the song like they're never going to get the chance again. Only in the already-mentioned early Springsteen, maybe some Van Morrison, and some of Jimi Hendrix's stuff do you hear musicians sound like they're having such a good time, making it up as they go along and getting it exactly right.

Perhaps it's because I've subconsciously avoided having a copy around for long enough to thrash it into the ground, but "Like a Rolling Stone" always sounds like it was written and recorded about five seconds before I press "Play" on the CD player.

Then there's Dylan's performance, back when he still had a rich, sneeringly nasal voice. These days he'd struggle to nail a recording contract, let alone get on the radio, sounding like that. But in 1965 he was completely in charge, rhyming and alliterating his way through the verses, not even waiting for the band to catch up. And the lyrics are my favourite kind--dense with images, full of offhand references to colourful figures like the diplomat with his chrome horse, the mystery tramp, Napoleon in rags.

But something is incongruous here. I expect it hasn't escaped people's attention that most of the songs on this top 10 list have been sweet, romantic, dreamy or nostalgic--in short, nice. Guilty as charged; I guess I'm a sensitive guy who doesn't really respond at a gut level to the nastier stuff. I dont really enjoy hip-hop, apart from Nesian Mystik; I've never liked heavy metal (apart from maybe Metallica at their riffiest); and I couldn't quite get into the noise / industrial stuff that my friends raved about during university. My favourite Guns n' Roses song is "November Rain".

Yet, "Like A Rolling Stone" is, at face value, an angry, splenetic song. It scornfully tells of an unnamed female antagonist whose life of glamour and privilege has taken a disastrous wrong turn; she's been badly double-dealt, and is now on her way down to the gutter.

It's true that part of the response inspired by the song is a triumphant, seething schadenfreude laced with bitterness at all the kids who thought they were too cool for you at school, and the girls who dissed you at university. I could see this emotion welling up in Jeremy Rathburn when he used to spit out the entire lyric for no good reason after his seventh pint of Guiness down at the Loft bar in Christchurch on a Friday night.

Who does not feel some self-righteousness hearing about how the chrome horse-riding diplomat pulled a fast one on the girl in the song who thought she was so smart:

ain't it hard when you discover that / he wasn't really where it's at
after he took from you everything he could steeeeal...

But is "Like a Rolling Stone" just a long, rousing "f*ck you" to the world? Why is it that singing along to it feels not just like carthasis, but liberation?

A quick flick through the blogs and the reviews tells me I'm far from the first one to think of this, but this is actually a song less of bitterness than of celebration. The singer might be doing some gloating, but by the time he gets to the chorus he's offering welcome and recognition. Since, to be on your own / with no direction home / like a complete unknown / like a rolling stone... is in fact the human existential state .

There's a point where manipulation and privilege ends, when everything is stripped away and you have to face reality. With "nothing to lose", condemned to be free, the only thing that matters is what you decide to do. Even back in '65, the long-secretive Dylan had the good advice for our celebrity-obsessed generation that losing it all might actually be a good thing:

you're invisible now / you've got no secrets to conceal...

In other words, you can actually live your life, unhindered by the demands and scrutiny of the other "pretty people" or siamese cat-carrying diplomats.

Of course, its not as romantic as it sounds; it gets cold and tiring being out on your own with no direction home like a complete unknown. But the way Dylan howls out the chorus, you feel like you can cope.

How does it feel? Actually, it feels alright

Categories: Bob Dylan, Like a Rolling Stone, Existensialism

No 2. Mr Tambourine Man - the Byrds

The arpeggio riff on Roger McGuinn's 12-string Rickenbacker skips up, then down, the paired strings chiming like bells in the jingle-jangle morning; and the listener is plunged through the looking glass into a world that will never be quite the same again.

Bob Dylan's original version of "Mr Tambourine Man", is already something special. The four double-length verses are inspired, Keatsian flights of fancy, and there's the bewitching melody built on what the Holy Toledos' Mike Gregg called "that irresistible subdominant-dominant-tonic-subdominant chord sequence".

Dylan has commented that he has never tried to write a "repeat" of any of his songs, *except "Mr Tambourine Man"*. Even the consummate songwriter-craftsman was captivated by what emerged from his pen and his guitar in this instance.

The Byrds 1965 cover version transforms the raw material into something unique and transcendent. At 1:58 in running time, it includes only the second of the original verses, the one that starts:

Take me for a trip upon your magic swirling ship

But though the other verses were probably trimmed to fit with then-current views on the appropriate length of a pop single, they were already superfluous; everything expressed by their eloquent and poetic words is rolled up into the Byrds' not-quite two minutes of jingle-jangle guitar and choirboy harmonies. In fact, in hindsight Dylan's additional lyrics seem like footnotes to the Byrds' cover version; they go some way towards articulating what the music makes the listener feel and desire.

The recording is a serendipitous coming-together of different individual contributions. There’s Dylan’s words and music, of course. The Beach Boys' producer Terry Melcher helped give the record that Californian feeling of space and light. Extra drive was added by the session musicians who were brought in to play the bass and drums; it was felt at the time that the Byrds' rhythm section was not quite up to the task. Roger McGuinn, David Crosby and Gene Clark sang their three-part harmonies, while McGuinn played his jangling Rickenbacker, and added that unforgettable intro / outro riff.

What must it have been like to hear this song for the first time on the radio when it was released in 1965? How many people’s lives were changed by the new world of possibilities it suggested? Even twenty-five years later, when I first listened to the song properly, at the age of about fifteen, it seemed groundbreaking and transformative.

References to taking a trip and "disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind" raise the obvious question-- is the song about drugs? Yes and no. No in that it’s really about something bigger--the quest for authentic, direct experience which breaks through the quotidian and banal. It's part an expression of youthful wanderlust and part a yearning for spiritual insight or artistic inspiration.

Yes, in that this urge is as intoxicating and addictive as any drug. In the headlong rush to, as On the Road's mad hero Dean Moriarty puts it, "know time", the Tambourine Man is that ephemeral figure egging you on. I can vouch for that--I spent most of about seven or eight years hooked on pure Tambourine Man, principally motivated by a desire to chase after the indefinable sense of freedom and adventure suggested by the song. Reading Kerouac et al just confirmed my intentions, and I could make a reasonable case that pretty much every important decision I made until the age of twenty-six was affected by this single-minded romantic fever.

If Dylan's lyrics consciously evoke the story of the Pied Piper of Hamlin, the potent achievement of the Byrds version is that the music turns the lyrics' promise of transcendence into a glimpsed reality. The song itself becomes the Pied Piper, luring the listener off on their own directionless quest. As the twentysomething John Keats said in Ode to a Grecian Urn, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty. That is all ye need to know". Listening to the Byrds play Dylan on "Mr Tambourine Man", this makes perfect logical sense.



Categories: the Byrds, Mr Tambourine Man, Bob Dylan, Jack Kerouac, Romanticism

No. 3 Thunder Road - Bruce Springsteen

This is where the rule about having only one song per artist really starts to be count. I could make an entire top 10 list purely of Bruce Springsteen songs. The howling, exaggerated anguish of "Backstreets", the folkish tragedy of "The River", the exhilaration of "Rosalita" and the careering escapism of "Born to Run" would be in there, just for a start.

Never considered particularly fashionable or cutting edge, Bruce Springsteen transcends fashion and has made more memorable music than just about anyone else. The Beatles, the Rolling Stones--sure they might have been more "important" and influential, but how many of their songs do you really feel *fond* of, want to come back and explore and revisit? In how many do you feel like you can actually imagine the characters, and wonder about their lives?

In a genre (rock music) which overrates discontinuities, Bruce Springsteen’s songs acknowledge and celebrate a historical tradition of American pop music and popular culture. Woody Guthrie, Elvis, the Motown back catalogue, Phil Spector’s girl bands, West Side Story, westerns and James Dean movies—they’re all rolled into his music.

Inaccurately pigeonholed early on as a new version of the more intellectual, acerbic Bob Dylan, and later dismissed as just writing about “cars and girls”, Springsteen sits solidly in the tradition of American narrative, spinning tales of people growing up, having parties, getting laid, hitting the road, messing up, losing their jobs and trying to get by. He's John Steinbeck with sex; Jack Kerouac with a sense of humour. His songs--especially the early ones—are as full of wacky characters as a novel by Thomas Pynchon or Philip Roth. I guarantee there’s a few American Studies theses out there he’s inspired.

For all that Bruce Springsteen has carried on making great music for over 30 years, in my view it's in the 70s that his genius was displayed to best effect. This was when he and his E-Street band created a warm, exuberant wall of sound, where the piano and organ wrestled for space with the saxophone, drums and guitars, and the musicians sounded like they were having the time of their lives.

It’s also the era when his lyrical creations where at their dense, colourful, verbose best. One accusation that’s been levelled at Springsteen is that he’s excessively bombastic and overblown. Which is probably true, but his charm, wit, skill and sincerity make up for it. Who could possibly expect to get away with a line like this?

In the day we sweat it out on the streets of a runaway American dream

Bruce Springsteen could—partly because he invented the clichés, and partly because a few lines later he comes up with:

Wendy let me in, I wanna be your friend, I wanna guard your dreams and visions

That’s something Kerouac just wished he thought of. And how’s this, from 1973’s “For You”?

I was wounded deep in battle / while you stood stuffed like some soldier undaunted
For her Cheshire smile, I’d stand on file / she’s all I ever wanted

His internal rhymes, use of language, and snappy ability to create a vivid scene in a few words would put to shame all but the most talented of hip-hop artist--and he’s got empathy, irony and optimism that Eminem and Public Enemy don’t--not to mention the melodies.

“Thunder Road”' is from 1975, its piano-and-harmonica intro easing us in to the classic Born to Run album. As many agree, this goes very close to being the greatest rock n’ roll song ever. Now rock n’ roll, at its core, is a young person’s game. A few manage to soldier on and create relevant music into their middle age. But it requires a fair swag of youthful naivety to think you can reject, and possibly create anew, everything about both yourself and the world around you—a belief which lies behind much of the best and most vital rock music. “Thunder Road” is convinced of this truth.

The song opens with a brilliant cinematic scene, where:

The screen door slams / Mary’s dress waves
Like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays

The radio is playing Roy Orbison (intertextuality in pop music! The American Studies students are having orgasms!) as the protagonist tries to convince Mary to escape with him. He's grown up enough to know it isn't a fairy tale; he tells Mary that you aint no beauty but hey you're alright, and says of himself:

Now I'm no hero, now that's understood / all the redemption I can offer, girl, is beneath this dirty hood ("He-ro and Automobile: Sexual and Religious Symbolism in Springsteen", maybe?)

But he's still idealistic enough to promise that the night's busting open, these two lanes could take us anywhere... The tempo rises, the band comes in, and then they're cruising out on the open road, letting the wind blow back Mary's hair. At least in his imagination; at the end of the song he's still on the porch trying to persuade her to jump in the car.

It's a classic song about escape and redemption, making you want to jump in a car and roll down the window whenever you hear it. It's about getting out while you're young, and could really only have been written by someone still seriously young. But while you might get old and tired, the way "Thunder Road" makes you feel doesn't. Very close to my favourite ever.

Categories: Bruce Springsteen, Thunder Road, Top 10 Songs

No. 4 Distant Sun - Crowded House

As I said at the outset of this list, the top few songs are pretty fixed--that is, I can't imagine not including them on any list I would make now or in the future. These are songs which, each time I hear them, surprise me anew with the minor miracle of their existence. With "Distant Sun" we're now solidly into that territory.

I've always liked songs which achieve a kind of aural onomatopoeia--where the music fits the images suggested by the song title and lyrics. "Distant Sun", with its dreamy, lightly pyschedelic sound, is a case in point, and includes several touches which are unique and perfect. The lead guitar line which weaves it's way between the opening chords with a light tremolo which shimmers like stardust. The bass riff between the end of the first chorus and start of the second verse--a long slide up to the fifth and then descending notes which sound as if they're dropping off into space.

While many of the songs on this top 10 list are about lusting after the impossible and the idealised, the protagonist in "Distant Sun" is older and wearier, trying to deal with real relationships, asking:

Tell me all the things you would change / I don't pretend to know what you want

I've always assumed that the singer is half addressing these queries to himself. He's a poet and a dreamer, but has now grown up, had some of his bubbles punctured, and is in reflective mode. It's hard to believe that the "you" in these lines from the second verse is not self-directed:

Still so young to travel so far / Old enough to know who you are
Wise enough to carry the scars without any blame / There's no one to blame

While there's an elegaic sense of lost innocence here, on another level the song is a celebration of the richness and mystery of life. Neil Finn has said that the "dust from a distant sun [which] showers over everyone" suggests the strange and random connections which exist across time and space. This is the song of someone who's been gripped by youthful wanderlust, stumbled through his share of problems, still doesn't know what it all means, but accepts that the world forms a many-threaded tapestry.

One night in New Plymouth a couple of years ago during a road trip I saw Wellington band Hobnail Boots at the local pub. In the same set they played "Distant Sun", Dave Dobbyn's "Whaling" and Bic Runga's "Sway", all embellished with their trademark harmonies and Jo Moir's gently persuasive violin. Hearing all these songs together played by the same band made me realise there was something shared by their yearning melodies which made me feel a particularly strong connection with them.

The next morning as I walked along the New Plymouth waterfront and looked out at the Pacific Ocean, I wondered if I hadn't stumbled across an emerging cultural identity. Nothing represented by swanndried blokeishness, nor rugby, black boats or buzzy bees, but
rather something to do with living in what poet Allen Curnow called "a small room with large windows"

If the New Zealand psyche has inevitably been shaped by the claustrophobia of being stuck in the small room of a frontier society, it is also affected by staring out through the large windows of the sky and sea. On the surface, New Zealanders are dour, depressive, reticent and crushingly prosaic. But, though no one would ever admit it on public, it turns out we are actually also a nation of dreamers. There's a naiive, questing quality to a lot of New Zealand music driven by a lyrical response to the physical space around us and a desire to know what else is out there.

I've only recently begun to understand this, as I've noticed that I seem to have a far better chance of feeling directly, personally connected to music from New Zealand than from other places. And it's hard to imagine that songs quite like "Whaling", the Muttonbirds' "Anchor Me" and Goldenhorse's "Maybe Tomorrow" could come from anywhere else. Which is something of a revelation, because I've never felt particularly comfortable or at home in the culture here. Yet, people have written these songs which seem to express something about who I am - and they've even become popular, which means other people must have similar feelings.

Just a pity we can't talk to each other about it.

Categories: Crowded House, Distant Sun, New Zealand Music, Top 10 Songs

No 5. Throw Your Arms Around Me - Hunters and Collectors

The song that compelled a generation of antipodean males to show their sentimental side, clapping their mates around the shoulders and letting a tear fall in their beer as they sang along with the chorus.

But you don't need to be a solid Aussie or Kiwi bloke to have fallen in love with this gentle, hummable three-chord ballad, which stretches the word "throw" into seven syllables covering four musical notes (in an interesting twist, it turns out to be the third song in this list with similar vocal feats).

Without quite the same musical versatility and songwriting strength of contemporaries like Midnight Oil and Crowded House, Hunters & Collectors could probably be fairly tarred with that backhanded compliment, "hard-working". But even a fairly ordinary band can summon up an extraordinary song. And it's perhaps in the very simplicity of "Throw Your Arms Around Me" that it's enduring appeal lies.

There's a gruff intensity, awkwardness even, in the opening verse, where songwriter Mark Seymour promises:

I will come to you at night time / And I will raise you from your sleep
I will kiss you in four places / As I go running along your street

He sounds like he'd really rather be whacking in a pallet-load of fenceposts in the back paddock than confessing his love for his girlfriend, and therein may lie the secret to the song's sincerity.

"Throw Your Arms Around Me" was definitely never a pop hit and I'm not sure it was even released as a single. The fact that it's generally beloved across Australia and New Zealand shows that, even in this contrived world of pre-release marketing campaigns and "latest sensations", there is (or was) still such a thing as the modern folk song--one that becomes popular by word of mouth simply because people dig it.

While some songs in this list are indelibly linked to a particular recording or performance, most people would struggle to name their definitive version of"Throw Your Arms Around Me". The slowed-down, slightly bombastic take on the Hunters & Collectors best-of, Collected Works? Probably not. Crowded House used to play it live a lot, and there's a few of their versions floating around, but the ones I've heard tend to be a bit loose or jokey; they wouldn't define the song for you. The original H&C recording? Who even *has* a copy of that these days? I haven't heard it for a while, and from memory it doesn't quite do the song justice.

The time Ben got out the guitar at Mike's party and everyone sang along? No, man, you're thinking of *Rachael's* party...

In reality, everyone probably has their own personal mental recording of "Throw Your Arms Around Me" which is a composite of numerous cover versions and impromptu singalongs, spiced with dim memories of smoky bars and backpackers hostel courtyards.

Somewhere out there is the Platonic Form of "Throw Your Arms Around Me". But even if you can only catch the flickering shadows from the campfire, it'll do nicely.

Categories: Hunters and Collectors, Throw Your Arms Around Me, Top 10 Songs

No. 6 Tabaco y Chanel - Bacilos

In any top ten list, amongst the songs that have stood the test of time, is allowed one current obession--the song you throw on when you get up in the morning or give one last spin before going to bed, somewhat guiltily skipping all the other songs on what is a perfectly reasonable CD because you just have to hear it one more time. For me, "Tabaco y Chanel" has fallen into this category for a while now, and wins the No. 6 spot on that basis .

Bacilos are a Miami-based trio of Colombian/Puerto Rican/Venezuelan extraction. Over the last few years the band has gone from playing free shows in small Miami bars to being darlings of MTV en español. Their 2003 album Caraluna won a couple of Grammys and was a big hit throughout Latin America.

Their music is pleasant pop, mixing Beatles and other Anglo influences with a variety of Latin & Caribbean styles. Overall, it's a little slick and middle-of-the-road for my taste. But "Tabaco y Chanel", off their first album, is a genuine classic.

The first time I heard this song was in Ilo, on the south Peruvian coast, about this time last year. For those who read my post about Ana and Frank's wedding, this was the song which the newly wedded couple chose for the first dance of the evening after exchanging their vows. We were told it had been popular in the discotheques of Arequipa at the time they first met, three years ago.

I was already quite moved by the ceremony and, perhaps feeling the effects of the first couple of cocktails, a little susceptible to the emotion of the moment when they got up to dance. But the song was so beautiful, and the lyrics that I could hear so seemingly appropriate, that I swear it brought a tear to my eye. Before moving on to the next cocktail, I made sure I asked what the song was and who it was by.

"Tabaco y Chanel" is a mid-tempo ballad driven by a lilting violin over simple strummed acoustic guitar chords and a syncopated beat. Imagine the Waterboys at their most Celtic and misty-eyed romantic, underpinned by Caribbean rhythms and an extra touch of sexiness. The opening lines:

Un olor a tabaco y Chanel / me recuerda el olor de su piel
Una mezcla de miel y cafe / me recuerda el sabor de sus besos
[A smell of tobacco and Chanel / reminds me of the smell of her skin
A mixture of honey and coffee / reminds me of the taste of her kisses]

The song, it turns out, is another lament about fleeting and lost love, perfect exactly *because* it's lost. If anyone's picking up a trend with the themes of these songs, I suspect it's not just me, but reflects a preoccupation of folk and pop songs through the centuries. These lines pretty much sum it up:

Una rosa que no florecio / pero que el tiempo no la marchita
[A rose that never flowered / but that time does not fade]

That could be a direct quote from Petrarch--perhaps the godfather of the modern love song. Nothing is quite so exquisite as nostalgia.

The protaganist of "Tabaco y Chanel" is constantly asked about his lost love. Even the stars ask him the same question, and beg him to go back for her. He shows no sign of doing so, preferring to wallow in his memories. However, when I first heard the song at the wedding the repeated chorus line "Que vuelva por ella "("Go back for her") struck me as appropriate, because Frank had in fact come back for Ana. I guess even a love song can have a happy ending.

Categories: Bacilos, Tabaco y Chanel

No 7. Close Action - Big Country

What? I hear you universally say. I can guarantee that almost no one else has ever included this song on their top 10 list.

On the one hand are those who haven't heard much or anything of Big Country, or simply aren't fans of their music. To them, I can only repeat the strongly held belief of every true Big Country-ite: if you would only listen, not only would you become a convert, but the world would be a better place. Let me quote one fan, who does a better job than me at describing this conviction:

"I am torn between the frantic compulsion to track every one of you down and play [Big Country] for you, and the horrible, gnawing awareness that if I did, some of you still wouldn't be convinced. What a botched design-project people must be if these songs can make me feel this way, yet leave you untouched. If we don't share redemption this fundamental, no wonder we fight over abstractions like religions and copyright law. We invented guitars and drums, and somebody figured out how to coax these songs out of them. That should have been all we needed. Why does the planet still need saving? "

For those who need some background, Big Country, who released their debut album The Crossing in 1983, were often described alongside contemporaries U2 and Simple Minds as part of a new wave of Celtic rock, but their sound and style were truly unique. Driving rhythms were combined with soaring Celtic melodies from the twin lead guitars of Stuart Adamson and Bruce Watson; the songs vignettes from Scottish history, yearning romantic ballads or lyrical elegies about industrial decay in Scotland and northern England.

The band made eight studio albums up until 1999, but it was during 1983-86 that all their classic stuff (three albums, an EP and a movie soundtrack) was produced. Since the age of fourteen, when I first heard them, I've probably listened more to Big Country than to any other artist. No other music has ever struck me so hard and so viscerally. You only need to read the Amazon.com reviews to see that there's plenty of others across the world who feel the same way.

But even among hard-core BC fans, my choice would probably raise quite a few eyebrows. What am I doing picking "Close Action", the rather obscure track 4 off The Crossing? The acknowledged classics include "In a Big Country" (the one that even non-fans know), "Wonderland", "Fields of Fire", "Chance", "Look Away" and "Just a Shadow". Skip to tier two, the much-loved album tracks that lend their names to fanatics' web sites, and it still doesn't get a look in. I can only conclude that I see something few others do.

Let me confess that I always intended to pick a Big Country song for this list as a representative of their entire work. There are several songs which have missed out on the top 10 which have probably grabbed me more in isolation than any one Big Country song--yet Big Country have been too important to me not to have a song on the list. Is that cheating? I did tell you there would be a range of criteria.

There's many special moments in the BC ouevre. "Where the Rose is Sown" has the most neckhair-raising guitar chorus you'll ever hear. "The Sailor" off The Seer is an awsome epic which turns a gentle mandolin ballad into a drum-crashing opus. "Look Away" is probably the best straight-ahead pop song the band did. "Steeltown" evokes the rise and fall of the working-class dream with a vivdness and economy of phrase which is worthy of good poetry:

All the landscape was the mill / Grim as the reaper with a heart like hell
With a river of bodies flowing with the bell / Here was a future for hands of skill

But none of them are quite right. It's long been a source of frustration to me that I've never found the perfect Big Country song--all my favourites have little flaws somewhere. Perhaps this is just from caring too much.

In the end, the one I keep coming back to, to remind myself of what I love about Big Country, is "Close Action". To be fair, it's a something of a dirge. But what an epic, romantic dirge it is. Crashing drums, two separate guitar solos which lift the song into a different key and off on a cinematic journey across the wild Scottish highlands. And Stuart Adamson's singing at its impassioned best.

Like many other songs on the Crossing, the lyrics are a little cryptic. The first verse prefigures the more specific tales of industrial decay to feature on Steeltown, while the next two have mysterious references to sirens wailing and lovers waiting. There's no mistaking the chorus, however :

I will carry you home with the gods in my eyes
I will carry you home while the westerlies sigh

I reckon there's something uniquely Scottish about this. It partakes of the same fierce, yearning romanticism which is subtly different from the more mischievous, ironic Irish, and is exemplified in folk tunes like "Wild Mountain Thyme" and "Amazing Grace" (the bapipe tune, subtract the flaky religious lyrics which were added later). Big Country's music affected me in the same way as those tunes--with a chill down the spine and a twist in the pit of the stomach that I can only speculate is due to something passed down through the blood.

To anybody moved by the optimism of Big Country's best music, it remains tragically inexplicable that Stuart Adamson chose to take his life in a hotel room in Hawaii in 2003. The songs live on.

Categories: Big Country, Close Action, the Crossing, Stuart Adamson