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I never knew fear until I kissed Becky

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The new (since July, anyway) School of Seven Bells album Disconnect from Desire is on hi-rotate at the writing desk. The Brooklyn electronica trio's first LP Alpinisms was the toast of the post-Jedi generation and anyone else who hadn't heard this sort of thing before but Disconnect is a real breakthrough; a sort of Cocteaus-meets-Casio pocket-sized exotica sound that's the right mix of sentiment and bleary whatevs. And unlike the Cocteau Twins every member of Seven Bells really is a twin - yet there are three of them: Benjamin Curtis from Secret Machines and Alejandra and Claudia Deheza of the annoyingly punctuated On! Air! Library! Anyway, way pretty and recommended for that early morning comedown. Check out 'I L U' from the Heart is Strange EP and 'Bye Bye Bye' from Disconnect from Desire.

Thought for the day

From the great John Carpenter:

It's about surviving and lasting. So many talented people that I've known in my life – directors and writers – just haven't made it and haven't had a chance. Some have had a chance and that was it. They got one chance. So, to be able to have some decades of filmmaking, I can't tell you how happy that makes me.

Full interview at Collider.

Does the MENACE grow like a black cloud?

Hit my revising limit of 10pp a day. Spent rest of afternoon looking at Greek vases and lugging the big hairy manuscript around Soho. That part of town is particularly lovely in the afternoons at this time of year.

Google now interrupts my typing like a precocious child. Net neutrality is becoming a political issue. Colonel Wilma Deering is now working as an agent. Michael Moorcock and the very smartly turned out Doc Savage author Lester Dent tell how to write a novel in three days.

AICN has another great interview with Werner Herzog:

Herzog: ...What is significant, and I would like to point it out, in sixty films that I made not a single actor ever got hurt. Not one.

Beaks: Not significantly injured.

Herzog: Not hurt at all. Well, very slightly. A few bruises. Crew members, yes. And I got hurt. But actors were always protected...

Pictured: Barbara Steele. Because you searched for her.

Baby you're the best magazine advice

New season of Mad Men about to start here, which means I can read the internet on Mondays again. Commentators have complained that the Rolling Stone cover looks shopped: don't care. Would upload copy if Blogger let me. Slow morning on the servers, I guess. Me, I'm up early. That's what writing on paper does for you - the laptop seems like a novelty again.

Gizmodo has a good essay on why writers are bypassing publishers and putting their own work online. Although every point they make could also be seen as a negative. With great power comes great responsibility, basically: the time you spend publishing your own work is time you could have spent writing. Still, got my eye on it.

Great essay on Liz Phair's new online album Funstyle at Rock Turtleneck. I still would.

Beaucoup fish

Whacked today. Above, my new favourite thing in the British Museum: a Roman mosaic gifted to a British king or something by a Pope or whatever. I wasn't paying attention to the label. I have other things on my mind.

I'm hacking into the second (third) draft, which feels really good, not least of all because I get to be away from my laptop. If I want to back up I take digital snaps of the ms and upload them to Flickr. It's a small step from there, I was thinking, to a completely graphic JPEG novel, especially if your favourite author has nice handwriting. Stephanie Meyer could scribble the next one on the backs of envelopes to be scanned and uploaded to eager fans.

Didn't watch the Emmys but was curious that 'Born to Run' fitted so smoothly into the Glee format. The song had previously been given three snaps up by Frankie Goes to Hollywood on Welcome to the Pleasuredome. How contrary and daring, we thought at the time, kind of, at least until the Propaganda album came out which was way better. In retrospect Frankie's cover was not that different to the original, and neither was Jimmy Fallon's magic fingers treatment.

I never got Bruce Springsteen. Why him and not Warren Zevon, was my question. Bruce is held up as old school rock'n'roll by people way more knowledgeable than me. He's said he wanted Born to Run to sound like Phil Spector doing Roy Orbison but the result is so quivering and emotional that it sounds more like Spector doing a girl-group: soaring strings, look-at-me flourishes, trilly* keyboard decorations. It's show biz razmatazz rather than Neil Young's For-God's-Sake-Dad-rock. Or to put it another way, camp. Nothing wrong with that: it just ain't what everyone says is on the label.

I'm also disturbed by the lyrics to the single:

Just wrap your legs round these velvet rims

And strap your hands across my engines

- Because the nouns are in the plural. Think about it: how many rims and engines do you have? Not that many, unless you're packing a little something extra.

In the meantime and on an unrelated subject, this is the review of The American that I would like to believe. It chimes with my experience of the novel.

If you would like to watch the terrific 1945 noir Detour you can download it for free here.

* A perfectly cromulent word.

PS. Now listening to Nebraska. Much, much happier.

PPS. The letters and cards are rolling in now. Most votes are for 'Atlantic City' and 'State Trooper.' I'd go with that. Nebraska was the one that changed everyone's mind. When it was released the lo-fi recording seemed deliberately contrary, not unlike the Lindsey Buckingham home-recorded tracks on Tusk. Now the album sounds completely natural - the Cary Grant moment when Bruce, after years of trying, became Bruce.