Rufus Does Rufus: Rufus Wainwright at the Royal Opera House

Rock, roll and RSI

You know, it's funny - I've been working at my computer for almost two years and am suffering from repetitive strain injury only now, after spending just two days away from my computer.

The cause?

Guitar Hero for the Playstation 2.

If you've never played it before, I urge you - go out, get it, buy a Playstation if you need to (you can sell your real guitar for the cash), and say good bye to your social life.

It's the most fun you can have without leaving the house. I bet you'd love it.

I'd shake on that, but my hand is wrecked.

• Guitar Hero II

Great, white and blue

It took me a little while to get into the band, The National. Might be because their name is one word short of The National Front. It's more likely because I didn't have their CD.

But I got Alligator yesterday and it's brilliant. In fact, I've been playing 'Mr November' for almost eight hours straight.

I think it saved my life.

Though lyrics like, "I'm the great white hope/I'm the new blue blood," do little to separate the Indie rockers from that other 'National' group, there's something about lead singer, Matt Berninger's baritone and the energy with which the band pop out the 4-minute wonder that gives me hope.

Even if I'll never be great or white. Or blue even.

The National – mr november

In a bohemian sort of way.

I know it's really wrong but I still like Pete Doherty.

The gospel according to The Hold Steady

Craig Finn took to the stage last night like the speaker at a school assembly. The crowd was small and well behaved, many smartly-dressed, few actually paying attention.

Chubby, bearded and sweating profusely, Finn's appearance reminded me of an old school teacher, whose assemblies were almost always about global tragedies and usually infused with a typical mix of guilt and religion that, on one occasion, made one boy vomit and all of us - always - feel terrible.

When Craig Finn sang however it was clear he bore the mantle of preacher, not teacher. His stories were of local tragedy, of New York City and Minneapolis, of heartbreak and drinking. They made us feel good. And while one or two of us may have been sick, we were drunk with more love than religion could muster.

In 2000, guitarist Tad Kubler, drummer Judd Counsell and bassist Galen Polivka joined Finn and started a rock and roll band. But last night, on stage, they were his disciples. And four hundred or so people in Birmingham heard the gospel according to The Hold Steady.

Playing mostly from their third album, Boys and Girls in America, Finn smiled and sang and swung his arms, grabbed us by our collars, and whispered in our ears, the secrets of his friends, the stories of his youth.

And when he was done - sweating more so, drunk and tearful - he thanked us, he thanked the band, he said we were one and the same. "You are The Hold Steady," he said. And never before have I felt a deep sense of belonging to a room full of strangers. He walked into the crowd and to open arms and embraces, still singing, "I've had kisses that make Judas seem sincere."

And, just as soon as we planted one on his cheek, he turned the other and it was all over - ears ringing, amps buzzing and lights up on a room full of friends.

• The Hold Steady

Le Moonwalker

Ooh la la! Check out my photos from Paris on the link below.

• Paris is for Lovers [via my Flickr photo stream]

Peace out, James Brown.

The King of Pop bids farewell to the Godfather of Soul.

Greatest Hits

I spent a big portion of last night, horizontal on my sofa, going through my entire blog, assigning labels to every post in its three year history. It was a Sisyphean task. But an enlightening one, in that it allowed me to see the frequency with which I write about certain subjects.

By this study you could say that this is something of a travel blog. There are 43 posts in this category, but that's not necessarily because I travel a lot. It's just that I post a lot when I travel.

I also write quite frequently about dating. It's quite alarming how many posts are labelled both 'sex' and 'faux pas'. That should give you some indication of my prowess. (Still single, ladies. Form an orderly queue.)

So, the next time you're horizontal on your sofa browse my blog by label and you might find, if I may say so myself, some absolute corkers. Like these:

From Travel:

• Postcard from South Beach, Miami
• Postcard from Ohio. That's right. Ohio.
• Postcard from Hollywood

From Dating:

• Dumped.com
• My Mental Girlfriend
• Pretzel Logic

From Music:

• Michael Jackson: The Monster that Lurks Among Us
• Thrilling Me Softly
• Sylvia Plath

Tony Blair rocks out.

• George Bush and Tony Blair sing 'Endless Love'

The red, white and blues

As a medieval town Shrewsbury's epicentre is a castle that sits atop a hill - Pride Hill, to be exact, also the namesake of one of Shrewsbury three shopping centres.

The Darwin Shopping Centre is nearest the castle and generally considered the best of the three. Pride Hill is next - a little worse for wear, and then the Riverside Mall. If the Darwin is "king of the castle", then Riverside is something of a "dirty rascal", home to stores such as BeWise, TJ Hughes and Wilkinson, and frankly some of the strangest most miserable of Shrewsbury's inhabitants.

As the town's bottom-most shopping centre, the Riverside Mall sits quite literally in the shadow of its competitors, its customers generally those unable to climb stairs or inclines. Hence, there are a lot of old people and prams in the Riverside Mall. There is also a terrible sense of doom. Yesterday there was even jazz, but it did little to lift the mood of mall staff.

"Ah, bet that's lovely, getting to hear that jazz all day," I said to the assistant, as live music from a 'grand opening' party drifted into the store.
"Well," she sighed as she closed her eyes and clutched her head. "Don't get me started on that."
"Oh...okay," I said.
Hang on, I thought. What does she mean? "What do you mean?" I asked.
"Well, it's not my cup of tea," she said, still clutching. "That, out there." With that she used her other hand to point to the black lady singing old standards.
"What?" I asked, intrigued.
"Music."
"You don't like music?"
"Well," she brought her hand down to her side. The clutching had left little white marks on her forehead. "In my own time I do - "
"Right."
" - but I'm working."
"Yeah...did you say you had this in another colour?"
"Only what's on the shelf love," she said abruptly. "If it's not on the shelf we don't have it in stock. OK?"

And so I smiled, bought it in red and stepped out into the mall to see that the jazz band were packing away. "Tough crowd, huh?" I said to the drummer. "Perhaps you ought to play the blues next time."
He looked at me blankly.
"You know, give the people what they want?"

The Crotch-Grabbing of Fate

In, what can only be described as a twist, a pirouette and a crotch-grabbing of fate, singer Michael Jackson today received a jury summons at his Neverland Valley Ranch in California – four months after he was acquitted on child molestation charges.

If anybody remembers the trouble lawyers had in finding a jury of his peers (although I think two-thirds female, and mostly white was about right), imagine the fun they’ll have with Jackson in the jury box. Although by the sounds of it, he could do with the $15 a day.

On his recent trip to London the singer spent only £85,000 in 30-minutes at Harrods. Looks like someone’s tightening the belt...

Think McFly. Think.

Another ghost from blog past is Vicky the Violinist. Remember the hot busker I asked out with the aid of a low-fat, savoury snack? (See Pretzel Logic) Well, it turns out, I’m seeing her again.

Don’t worry. I realise my actually dating a girl would probably bring about the demise of this here blog; and anyway, since my pretzel antics I’ve not heard a thing from young Vicky. So when I say I’m seeing her, I mean just that. She’s in the new McFly video.

Kill the light, Save a Bird

Michael Jackson: The Monster that Lurks Among Us

The three month trial that ended this week with the acquittal of Michael Jackson was the ultimate assassination-of-character attempt on the one time King of Pop. And as he emerged for the final time from the Santa Maria courthouse Monday he was a free, albeit shadow of a man, hobbling to his SUV, barely managing to raise a hand to acknowledge his fans, many of whom recognise him now only as a zombie from his Thriller music video.

He appeared the relic of a human being, whom once, to quote Sir Bob Geldof, sang “with the voice of angels. And when his feet move, you can see God dancing.” His fall from grace was neatly packaged for network television and we gawped and gazed, not at the mastery of his art, but at the curiosity of his demise. From master to monstrosity, Michael Jackson is, at best, a freak.

But Michael Jackson is us.

Since he was a child, he has had the tragic misfortune of having been cast as a lightning rod for our cultural diseases: racism, homophobia, gender confusion, celebrity obsession, sexual obsession, materialism, beauty obsession, paedophilia, security obsession. The bomb that loomed over Jackson’s head over the last few months can not be underestimated.

And it took 12 sensible-minded men and women seven days to defuse it.

We can see the way American culture has deteriorated to a society at war with itself – eager to demonize, unable to heal – in the tragic deterioration of Jackson's face and form. The crossover King of the 1980s, who offered a true promise, to quote Funkadelic, of “one nation under a groove,” left the courthouse on Monday to a more divided America.

The ugly ordeal of the past few months revealed a monster that lurks among us. Only it turns out the monster was not the freak.

It was the assassin.

Postcard from Neverland

Fumbling in my blazer pocket, which hangs noticeably on non-Michael Jackson t-shirt clad shoulders, I feel my way through Granola bars and candy for a non-perishable to give to the King of Pop. Everybody else here has fluffy toys, books and banners. All I find is a 30c postcard from Santa Cruz, actually intended for another aficionado of small boys, my mate Steve from Essex. It shows a freshly caught shark, blood dripping from its mouth. Not the most appropriate gift for a self-professed lover of animals (and indeed proponent of violence towards), but nevertheless I scrawl on the back:

Dear Michael Jackson,
Look what I caught fishing! If you get a chance visit my website, sansharma.com
Love,
San (from England)

I added the "from England" in case he knew another San in the area. Almost as soon as I do a black SUV drives up to the gates. Michael Jackson is back, after a day in court, to what he calls home and what we, this side of the gate, call Neverland.

Like shabbily dressed G8 delegates the crowd here have come from major industrialised nations: the US, France, Germany, Spain, Japan, Australia and, as represented by yours truly (and regrettably one other guy from Blackpool) the UK. And what with all the Jesus Juice we've been sipping I desperately need to pee. And while the others here are wriggling with excitement, I am only to keep it in.

But when his window winds down and an enormous white hand with alabaster fingers extends to net the gifts thrust before him I nearly let it out. Instead, and after 15 years of fan worship and adulation, face to gaunt, ghostlike face with my idol, I ask him if I can use his bathroom, laugh nervously and hand him a postcard of a bloody fish.

Postcard from Court

"Welcome to Santa Maria," he says. And then with the blatant disregard for accuracy that we have come to expect from Fox News reporters, "It´s a million miles from England!"

And that´s where I am. Well, more precisely, I´m sitting in the media camp just outside the small courthouse where Michael Jackson is currently fighting multiple charges of abduction, false imprisonment and child molestation.

Here, from a shanty town of satellite dishes and news vans, the media provide daily updates on the court proceeding. But news reports that Santa Maria is a quant and charming place does little to endorse its credibility.

Tomorrow morning however it will become an altogether more glamorous place, albeit under dismal circumstances, when Michael Jackson walks from his blacked-out SUV to the white washed walls of the Santa Maria courthouse.

In the words of two infamous Californians, one the leader of the state, originally from Europe, the other former frontman of the Jackson Five, seemingly from outer space, I'm going to "Beat It" but "I´ll be back."

Postcard from New York City

It is with a touch of jazz that I write this morning's postcard. I'm sitting in the Jazz on the Park hostel on Duke Ellington Boulevard where I spent the night (in the hostel, not on the street).

I was drinking in Chelsea when I met some Danish guys who were on their way to a jazz gig in Greenwich Village. Where abouts exactly, they were not sure, but using the New York City street layout as our rhythm foundation we meandered - improvised, no less - our way to the bar in question.

The jazz was amazing. And in my pursuit of "real America", which I've sort of decided is the purpose of this trip, it dawned on me that this is America's classical music, and as the instruments each played their turn before coming together, democracy in action.

Me, myself and i

There have been grumblings from those bastions of integrity, the Op-Ed columnists of the broadsheets, that, as Andrew Sullivan of The Times writes, "society is dead." We have all, with the aid of those pretty, white things, "retreated into the iWorld." Sullivan is not referring to the attractive WASP community of The O.C. but, with his clever inference of the lower case ‘I’, the Apple iPod – friend of the music lover; enemy, as the article suggests, of the regular human being. Yes, the portable music player, capable of storing 15,000 songs, has usurped the mobile phone, cable television and indeed the pocket watch of yesteryear to become the feared slayer of society.

"What was once an occasional musical diversion became a compulsive obsession," writes Sullivan. "Now I have my iTunes in my iMac for my iPod in my iWorld. It's Narcissus heaven: we've finally put the 'i' into Me." What would happen, you might wander, if we tried to take the 'i' out of me. Well, partial blindness, you might say. But just yesterday I became an accidental guinea pig in one such social experiment, when my iPod, damaged under the heavy foot of drunkenness, slept quiet in its dock, while I, in upper case, went about my day - not a wire from my ears, a hard drive in my pocket or a song in my heart. This is my story. iStory, if you will.

9:02am Walk from my flat to the office without the usual spring in my step. Feels less like a music video than usual. I sense a draught in my inner ears and the discordant music of a town waking up. Am also reminded that traffic lights make noise. This makes me laugh.

9:05am Arrive at the office and immediately say hi to co-worker, Pat, without having to fumble around for the pause button on my iPod. With nothing to do with my hands, and not wanting to grope Pat, I fumble all the same, and comment on how great her new hair looks. I do not start up iTunes and instead turn on the radio. It's the news. An Italian intelligence agent has died under US fire while escorting a freed hostage.

11:15am Leave office for meeting. Overhear what I suspect is a conversation about anal sex. Am tempted at this point to walk the rest of the way with my fingers in my ears. The conversation however recalls the Backstreet Boys' song, 'I Want it That Way', which plays in my head. Ordinarily, I would replace it with something more sophisticated. *Nsync perhaps. Instead, I enjoy the catchy hook and eyebrow raising lyrics. I attempt to raise an eyebrow, but can't, and board the train.

2:15pm Arrive in Leeds. The outward journey was pretty horrific. ('Silent Coach' my arse.) And with no music my mind wanders to food. Time however only allows for the purchase of lunch but not its consumption and so, rushing off to my meeting, I push the snack into my jacket. Its plastic packaging rustles whenever I shake hands and introductions are made all the more uncomfortable with a hummus wrap peering out from my pocket.

3:15pm Stomach rumbles throughout meeting. Someone asks what South Yorkshire will do when EU funding runs out. I think of the David Gray lyric, "what we gonna do/when the money runs out," but can't name the song or recall any other lyrics. I begin to dread the train journey back, and the frustration of being unable to locate the track in my iPod music library. Grrr...

4:45pm Train changes at Manchester Picadilly. With the few minutes that I have I cave and visit the Apple Store. The song is 'Nightblindness' from the album, White Ladder. And the daydeafness, finally, is lifted. I turn on, tune in and cop out. If society is dead, I think to myself, then this is its funeral music. Rest in peace, I say, and turn up the volume. Loud.

Burn It: 'My Bloody Valentine'

Although I'm not a religious man I will readily celebrate Christmas and Easter. Valentines, on the other hand, though not technically a religious holiday, typically yields fewer cards and candies and therefore demands less of my attention. Of course, should I be on a date tonight rather than writing this, between a board meeting and sleeping alone, I might be more enthused. Instead - and as part of the estranged Burn It series - I've compiled a playlist for the dateless. We are alone together.

My Bloody Valentine (Total Time: 1:20:21)

1. 'Are You Lonesome Tonight' - Elvis Presley
A qualifying question from the King. If your answer is 'yes' please proceed to song 2.
2. 'Excuse Me While I Break My Own Heart Tonight' - Whiskeytown
Nothing says drunk and alone like the sound of slide guitar and fiddle. Here the Ryan Adams vehicle, Whiskeytown, articulate both states of being in a style both a little bit country, a little bit rock and roll.
3. 'Bye Bye Love' - The Everly Brothers
Only the Everly Brothers can sing the line, "I think I'm gonna di-ie", with one too many syllables and a disposition so sunny to belie the song's doomful lyrics.
4. 'I Don't Love Anyone' - Belle & Sebastian
"Not even Christmas"? Not even Christmas.
5. 'What A Wonderful Thing Love Is' - Al Green
What sounds like a rather odd choice for an anti-Valentines playlist is, on closer inspection, rather inspired. The Reverend Al Green, as he is now known, has that remarkable ability to evoke empathy in even the most callous of listeners. Here however his delivery is so curious in its phrasing that the song's supposed romantic sentiment can be read as ironic. Such a reading is only promoted by Green's troubled love life and the story of his former girlfriend, Mary Woodson, who broke into his Memphis home, October 1974, and poured boiling grits on the singer while he was bathing. She inflicted second-degree burns on his back, stomach and arms, before killing herself with his gun.
6. 'Today Has Been OK' - Emiliana Torrini
Emiliana Torrini is an exquisite concoction of Italian and Icelandic decent, with a voice not unlike Bjork's and a pathos that recalls Nick Drake's Pink Moon. Torrini's boyfriend was killed in the 'honeymoon period' of their relationship; she herself was attacked by a gang of muggers in London. So although her problems might surpass being alone on Valentines, I nevertheless find some affinity tonight with this track.
7. 'Shit, Damn, Motherf*****' - D'Angelo
A day not so okay is recounted in D'Angelo's obsenity riddled tale of infidelity, revelation and ultimate murder, when our hero finds his wife in bed with his best friend. Over a mid-tempo, soulful groove D'Angelo sings, "Why the both of yous bleeding so much?" 'Cause you shot them mate. That's why.
8. 'F*** It, I Don't Want You Back' - Eamon
As if to outdo Mr Angelo, Staten Island vocalist, Eamon, takes his profanity-laced pop to a new level and finds a profitable outlet for his long-suffered Tourette Syndrome. The result is the insanely popular 'F*** It, I Don't Want You Back', its offensive language and misogyny cleverly censored by a series of indecipherable asterisks and silent pauses.
9. 'Cry Me A River' - Justin Timberlake
Not to be confused with the melancholy Arthur Hamilton standard that was a hit for late Jazz singer/actress Julie London in 1955, here is a song utterly devoid of dignity and grace, a melodrama with atmospheric rain, a chiming Greek chorus and a speaker, velvet voiced and vindictive. It's also the most interesting track on the otherwise bland Justified album, but as a tell-tale piece on ex-girlfriend Britney Spears it does little to incite our sympathy. Its accompanying video, in which JT breaks into his ex's house, films himself fooling around with new lady friend and leaves the video playing, does little to help the situation.
10. 'The KKK Took My Baby Away' - The Ramones
A pretty good excuse for being alone on Valentines, I think. (Though actually a story of how Johnny Ramone stole and later married Joey Ramone's girlfriend.)
11. 'Cold Hard B****' - Jet
More mean spirited misogyny from Australia's finest cock-rockers, Jet.
12. 'Hallelujah' - Jeff Buckley
A perfect, though hardly romantic marriage of Leonard Cohen's words and Jeff Buckley's voice, this version of Hallelujah is a masterpiece of bitterness and spite, bubbling at the surface with intimacy and urgency, and saved only from self-destruction by the effortless grace of Buckley's guitar and vocals. "Love," according to Cohen, "is a cold and a broken 'hallelujah'".
13. 'Solitaire' - Jesse Malin
Between Jeff Buckley and Ray LaMontagne, Jesse Malin is in fine company and manages to hold his own in this ode to solitude from his 2002 debut, The Fine Art of Self-Destruction, a record of fight-or-flight mentality with its love-sucker heart worn proudly on its alt-country sleeve. Malin's voice is a raw as his emotions as he sings, "got some cigarettes/I don't need anyone."
14. 'Burn' - Ray LaMontagne
It was indeed late and I'd had a bit to drink when I discovered LaMontagne on a re-run of 'Later with Jools Holland'. By the morning, like some kind of a gay one night stand, his gruff voice and rough beard were fresh in my memory but his name had escaped me. I found him, of all places, in a Virgin Megastore, after asking an assistant for Ray Lasagna. My humming was more helpful and she promptly handed me a copy of his debut album, Trouble, which I can heartily recommend. An obvious choice for this playlist for the lyric, "It's so hard to ignore/All this blood on the floor/'Cause this heart on my sleeve/Won't stop bleeding." And a cracker of a voice.
15. 'Creep (Acoustic)' - Radiohead
A rather brilliant fan video, linked below, does little to contest Thom Yorke's reputation as a bit of a weirdo. Watch a mini Yorke sing his little heart out in a cartoon cross between Stressed Eric and The Office. Video
16. 'Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me' - The Smiths
"Just another false alarm." Not one of the more cheery - and I imagine, unreleased - Smiths songs.
17. 'Cheers Darlin'' - Damien Rice
One of the more exciting moments of the largely acoustic, O, which is, I think, at its best when Rice is given the freedom to experiment with scale, sound effect and indeed electricity. "Cheers darlin'," he mumbles over a lazy electric guitar, "here's to you and your...lover man."
18. 'The Rat' - The Walkmen
"Can't you see me?!" shouts front man, Walter Martin. "I'm pounding on your door," which incidentally, is the overall effect of this from New York rockers The Walkmen. It breaks briefly in the middle for the line, "when I used to go out I would know/everyone that I saw/Now I go out alone/If I go out at all," and then repeats its joyful anger until it hammers home.
19. 'Chelsea Hotel' - Leonard Cohen
The Chelsea Hotel, I've decided, is not a nice place to stay. It's spawned several songs of loneliness and insomnia, characterised by these old and new songs from 1974 and 2004 respectively. Here Cohen hands us a snapshot, a Polaroid picture of a moment in time, remembered in detail but shaken dry by denial. "I remember it well/in Chelsea Hotel," he sings. "But that's all/I don't think of you that often."
20. 'Hotel Chelsea Nights' - Ryan Adams
"And I'm tired of living in this hotel," a lovesick Senõr Adams sings, "TV and dirty magazines," which just about sums up my valentines. I'm San Sharma. Thanks for listening.

Emo

Emo is neither a flightless bird nor a Sesame Street inhabitant. It is, as it happens, the vehicle, albeit a shoddy one, for this characteristically overdue post. It is also an alternative music sub-genre that favours raw, unfettered expressions of emotion over melody, craft or any form of subtlety, spawning a gut of guitar anthems for the misunderstood college guy whose love for the girl next dorm goes unrequited. Boo-hoo.

The problem with Emo bands such as Dashboard Confessional is that, unlike the universal disgruntlement of say The Smiths or The Cure, they're so lodged in adolescence that nobody past sophomore year is able to connect with their music.

I mention it because just now I was myself connecting with music, browsing the iTunes online music store and stumbling across Emo in the unlikeliest of places. I was looking for an Audiobook to help with my train journey to London tomorrow and found that by How to Make People Like You in 90 Second or Less is the suggestion that "you might also like Dashboard Confessional". A case of Apple knowing its customers, me thinks.

So, I'll save you the confessional and hope that you like me beyond our first 90 seconds. It's usually in my second or third minute that the appeal really kicks in, and the seldom used nickname, Sharma the Charmer, begins to take effect. Imagine then, if you will, three weeks in my company. For America, land of the free, home of the brave, that dream will soon be a reality, as I venture beyond the window shopping of iTunes to the booking counters of online travel agents. That’s right – I, like Eddie Murphy of the 1988 film of the same name, am coming to America. So lock up your daughters, or indeed your mothers, I’ll be there April 2nd to 23rd.