I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: THE BEAUTIFUL SOUTH-Welcome to the Beautiful South (1989) & Choke (1990) & 0898 (1992) & Miaow (1994) & Blue is the Colour (1996) & Quench (1998) & Painting It Red (2000) & Goldiggas Headnodders and Pholk Songs (2004).

When the Housemartins broke up and The Beautiful South sprang into existence, I was working at our college radio station. I received a Beautiful South poster of the debut album, Welcome to the Beautiful South, and I remember hanging it on the hallway bulletin board of our dorm. It stayed up there an unreasonably long time for a public bulletin board Maybe everyone liked the picture of the women with the gun in her mouth. But really, that’s all I knew about them for a pretty long time. Then sometime around Blue is the Colour, I started paying attention to them and really started to like them. I was also amazed to hear that Carry On Up the Charts, their greatest hits record was one of the best selling records in England at the time. So, I thought I would have to check them out more fully.

What is interesting about them is how, for a band that does not seem like a “hits” kind of band, they have a huge number of great singles.  So, how best to describe them? They’re a sort of mellow rock band, with jazzy leanings, occasional lounge lizards stylings, and occasional rocking songs. But their selling point for me is Paul Heaton’s lyrics (and voice, of course). Beautiful melodies masking such harsh words (I’m seeing this theme in a lot of the songs I like, hmmm). So, Welcome to… starts off the collection pretty solidly, and the overall tone for The Beautiful South is laid out pretty plainly in the first track: “Song for Whoever.” It includes a list of women’s names and then the sweetly sung line “I wrote this song for you.” This is the perfect sort of song that you don’t realize how cynical it is until you start paying attention.

It has been suggested that around the time of Choke and 0898, The Beautiful South were a little too much like themselves for their own good. I think for me, the difference between these two and the later albums is that the later ones tend to sound more full. This also seems to be a pattern with a lot of bands that I like. Their early stuff, before I knew them, is simple and stripped down; as they build and change their sound a little, they get fuller, either with more members or just bigger production.

The Beautiful South started adding new singers, including two successive female singers–the second one, Jacqueline Abbott, has a powerful voice that matches Heaton’s, especially on the bitter duets. She comes to particularly strong use in Blue is the Colour‘s opening track where she sings a beautiful ode to a lost lover, with the sweetly sung chorus: “Don’t marry her, fuck me.” This made me take notice!

The follow up, Quench, continues with this more rocking theme, and in fact, it’s my favorite of all of their records: solid from start to finish.
I saw them live on the Painting It Red tour. Their live show was really great, lots of fun, and generally wonderful. The only drawback was that Jacqueline Abbott left the band pretty much around the time of the tour. Boo! So, the duets were handled by one of the other fellas in the band, which was actually fine. The show was a big hit for me.

Throughout their career, The Beautiful South have been huge in England and basically unknown here in the States, so I had to get many of those early albums on import. Their last two, Gaze and Superbi haven’t been released here at all as far as I know.

Even Goldiggas didn’t get a release here, I don’t think. I found this one used. It’s a crazy amalgam of covers that don’t suit The Beautiful South at all, and that’s what makes the album so fun! Nothing works, and yet it all works together. Covers of “You’re the One that I Want” from Grease and “Don’t Fear the Reaper” are given the mellow Beautiful South treatment and because they aren’t half-assed, they work really well. And it’s fun! So, if you can find a Beautiful South record, pick it up. If you can find Carry Up the Charts, you won’t be disappointed, even though my favorite records were released after that compilation.

Oh, one last thing. At the end of Barenaked Ladies’ song “Hello City,” Steve Page sings “What a good place to be…it’s happy hour again,” which is taken directly from The Housemartin’s song “Happy Hour.” Steve Page and Paul Heaton could be identical voice twins. It’s a great shout out. This is the original cover of BNL’s Gordon, by the way.

[READ: August 17, 2007] Company.

I have read both of Max Barry’s previous works, Syrup and Jennifer Government. When Jennifer Government came out, it sounded great and I simply had to read it; it wasn’t until picking up the book that I realized that I had read his previous work. So it was with Company. I had no recollection of reading either of his two previous works until I saw the reviews on the back and was reminded of the content. In no was is this suggesting that the books were forgettable. They weren’t. I think maybe the name Max Barry is forgettable. It sounds fake to begin with. I heard about this new book through an article in The Week magazine, I think, and it sounded great. So, I checked it out, and it was!

It starts of as a blistering satire of the corporate workplace in a company called Zephyr Holdings. Nobody really knows what the company does, no one has ever seen the CEO, and great injustice is done when a donut goes missing. The story centers around Jones (just Jones) a new drone to Zephyr. He is hired without fully understanding his job duties (he is a “grad,” a new kid out of school and essentially someone’s peon), or indeed, exactly what Zephyr does. They are a holding company. And that’s all he can find out.

Jones becomes bent on finding out what is going on with the company. And he uncovers many secrets, including one that may work in other big buildings as well: There is no 13th floor in the Zephyr building; however, if you press the elevator buttons for 12 and 14 at the same time, and get to somewhere between floors 12 and 14 (it always seems to take a little longer to go from 12 to 14 that between any other floors) and then press Door Open, you will arrive at the secret Floor 13.

I am not going to give anything else away about this book, because the turn that it took after about 150 pages was, to me, wholly unexpected. What I will say is that I was disappointed when the book starting going in this different direction, because I was really enjoying the corporate skewering (in the acknowledgments, Barry thanks Hewlitt Packard, and apparently used to work there). However, as the book started following its new path, I began to really get into the secrets and lies of the company and their global strategy. The corporate skewering becomes even greater by the end, and the overall picture is nihilistic and hilarious.

The book is very funny. There is still a part of me that would have liked to see the last 150 pages follow in the footsteps of the first 150 or so…that is, don’t take the surprise twist and see where it ends up. But the new direction is a good one as well. I’m reluctant to say more about it or why I found the twist so compelling because I don’t want to give anything away. So, rest assured that my complaints are only in a “what-if” type of attitude. The twist is great, and so is the ending.

If you have any interest in seeing Senior Management mocked, if you have ever felt like you were the only one wondering why your company didn’t make logical decisions, and if you really like donuts (because donuts play a pretty big part in this book), then read this. Or if you just like the funny, then read this. It’s an enjoyable book. Now, if I can only remember the name Max Barry next time he writes something.

Note: I used the original cover of the book, because the donut is so prevalent. I usually just take the most recent cover, but this one was special.

[Update 11/14: I just found this quote from Wikipedia which I find hilarious:

Max Barry (also Maxx Barry; born 18 March 1973) is a contemporary Australian author. He says about himself that he “put an extra X in his name for Syrup because he thought it was a funny joke about marketing and failed to realize everyone would assume he was a pretentious asshole.” ^[1]