Dumb Riffs

It’s all quiet around here, so check out what’s happening on my new Dublin Bike Blog instead.

A while ago I wrote an article about a visit to the house the Marx Brothers grew up in, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Since then, some of the block the house stands on has been demolished with a view to building a seven storey apartment building, and a group has formed to campaign for the preservation of the house (they linked to my article, and that’s how I found out about the story). Woody Allen’s written a letter about the issue, calling for the preservation of the building

because the Marx Brothers are among the great comic artists in history, their accomplishments are revered internationally and in countries that place a high value on cultural contributions as opposed to simply bulldozing things in the name of progress, the Marx Brothers home would remain standing and affixed with a plaque.

Quite. There’s also a NY Times article about it here.

Here I am at my desk in Dublin only a few hundred miles from Glastonbury. The weather outside is wet and quite cool. The forecast is for more rain, but is that some sunlight I can see on the horizon? Here’s hoping! (Although the weather here in Dublin is no guarantee of what it’s like in Glastonbury, of course). I’ve just checked Google Maps, and according to that it would take about nine hours for me to drive to Glastonbury if I left now - which I have no intention of doing! (I don’t even drive.)

Neil Young! No way! That was just Neil Young on my MP3 player there. Followed by The Strokes and Elvis Costello and the original line-up of the Attractions. This really is an all star line-up! (I have no idea who’s playing Glastonbury though… um… a mash-up between Jay-Z and Noel Gallagher?)

Where are you watching the Euro semi-final tonight? I’m torn between watching its faint flicker on a big-screen through a rainstorm while standing in a muddy field surrounded by twat-hatted revellers in Somerset (maybe it’s dry there - I haven’t checked the reports) or watching it in my house in Dublin with a nice cup of tea and easy access to numerous academic textbooks. I’ll let you know which I choose in later ‘live from Glastonbury’ posts on this site!

There’s an interview with David Byrne about his ‘Playing the Building’ project in New York in today’s Guardian here.

My interview with genial Police drummer Stewart Copeland is here.

Actor Rip Torn, of the Larry Sanders Show:

- Dennis Hopper pulled a knife on him just before the filming of the film Easy Rider; Torn left the movie, and his role went to Jack Nicholson.

- Later, Hopper claimed that it was Torn who had actually pulled the knife on Hopper. Torn sued, and won $475,000 in damages, Hopper appealed the decision, and subsequently had to pay another $475,000.

- Has had a couple of drunk-driving charges against him, but has only been convicted once.

- During the filming of Norman Mailer’s movie Maidstone, Torn hit Mailer three times on the head with a hammer. Then Mailer bit Torn’s ear. In the background, Mailer’s children could be heard screaming at Torn to stop. Unbelievable. You can watch the footage here. Be warned - it’s quite insane, and, perhaps more shockingly, contains some hep-cat-isms from Torn.

An article I wrote about Liverpool’s Overhead Railway and the fate of Everton FC’s home ground Goodison Park is in the Irish Times today here.

My profile of Bjork in last Friday’s Belfast Telegraph here.

…is this passage by Anthony Lane in the New Yorker:

In the seventeenth chapter of “The Voyage of the Beagle,” Charles Darwin turned to the mating habits of the giant Galapagos tortoise. “When the male and female are together, the male utters a hoarse roar or bellowing, which, it is said, can be heard at the distance of more than 100 yards,” he wrote. This is also the most accurate description that we possess of the duet performed by Mick Jagger and Christina Aguilera in “Shine a Light,” Martin Scorsese’s documentary on the Rolling Stones.

Anthony Lane, review, New Yorker April 14 2008.

Some months ago, we started meeting occasionally and we’d fall into talking about how we write and what the process is and where we get stuck and when it’s easy. I would sit, rapt, as I felt like I was hearing the words of a master songwriter, a kind of magician who was going to reveal to me, over lunch, some of his best tricks. Here was a more contemporary Gershwin or Cole Porter who was going to tell me a little of how it was done. Listen up.

David Byrne writes about trying to learn a few songwriting tricks from Paul Simon here.