SOUL SURMISE

PAUL MCCARTNEY - GOOD EVENING NEW YORK CITY

 

Paul McCartney has had such bad press recent years being tarnished as some soft MOR embarrassment. You shudder at how that can have happened to the man who changed the history and artistic power of rock ‘n roll in that six year recording period recently re-released in The Beatles Remastered series; fourteen albums, two of them double, in let me say it again, just six years! The Remasters not only reminded the listener of McCartney’s part in the most prolifically brilliant song writing partnership of the latter half of the Twentieth Century but, in the clearer sound, his bass playing demanded a whole new level of admiration. The Remasters tell us loud and clear that The Beatles were more than a soundtrack to the Sixties; those boys could play!

McCartney’s latest live album takes you on a journey back to those heady days. The second CD has only one post-Beatles’ song. It took McCartney until 1976 to add a couple of Beatles’ songs to his Wings’ live concert sets and a few found their way onto, perhaps his best ever live offering, Wings Over America but since that time he has been unabashed in his liberal smattering of Lennon-McCartney and even Harrison songs. Whether you are listening to McCartney live or on DVD or CD (both in this package) you feel the bombardment of classic songs from Day Tripper to Let It Be to Get Back to Yesterday. The first disc though shows us that, though bulkier and as a result perhaps more dross, McCartney has a strong post-Beatles’ catalogue too. The obvious Band On The Run and Jet sit alongside the less praised Flaming Pie, Mrs Vandebilt and two of his most recent compositions under his less-secret-than-it-was alias The Fireman.

Amidst it all there is an intriguing little trilogy of songs; My Love, Here Today, Blackbird. These songs cover every phase, Wings, solo and The Beatles respectively and reveal succinctly the various McCartney subject matter. My Love is one of the consummate McCartney love songs of which there are probably more than needed though he did say on Silly Love Songs, “You'd think that people would have had enough of silly love songs/I look around me and I see it isn't so/Some people wanna fill the world with silly love songs/And what's wrong with that/I'd like to know/'cause here I go again.”  Blackbird is the political Macca, singing about the Civil Rights Movement and he does it with a little more subtlety than his Give Ireland Back to the Irish. Here Today is a beautiful letter to John Lennon written shortly after his death and far from the only time that McCartney reminisces; his last studio album Memory Almost Full has lashings of pre fame Liverpool. Lennon’s shadow for good and bad seems to hang over McCartney’s entire life and work.

Good Evening New York is McCartney’s second live album this decade and his fourth in twenty years. He is a Beatle so the demand for product is obvious. In the old days people bootlegged tours and now that it is cheaper to release live albums the bootlegger is pretty much out flanked by official releases, so the vast audiences who have seen McCartney in recent years can have a record of what they saw and heard. That is the function of this great live album that has not the same interest or novelty of Wings Over America in 1976 but if you are a fan then it is another reminder of a career and a really great way to distil your vast McCartney collection into a car stereo compact listen. Embarrassing? Certainly not!

FOR GOD’S SAKE GIVE US SOME REALITY

FOR GOD’S SAKE GIVE US SOME REALITY

Alain Emerson shared this line from a Jeff Lucas sermon... written at a sanitised and inane Carol Service on the day that I watched one of my students bury the love of her life, who had been killed in a car accident.

Nicely rounded explanations

Safe and sanitised solutions

A magic text for every doubt

A definitive answer for every mystery

 “There, there everything’s going to be alright.”

FOR GOD’S SAKE GIVE US SOME REALITY.

 

A woman abused and left used, abused and lonely

A teenage widow behind the love of her life’s coffin

A child whose legs were ripped from his body by landmines

A ten year old township orphan cooking for her little brothers

A father whose child has been found strangled in the forest park

FOR GOD’S SAKE GIVE US SOME REALITY.

 

A recently wall papered stable

Freshly washed cattle and perfumed straw

A carpenter with extra mural studies in midwifery

Theologically sound eastern stargazing mystics

A perfect little baby “no crying he makes”

FOR GOD’S SAKE GIVE US SOME REALITY.

 

Impoverished and homeless

Germs breeding in the filth and squalor

A teenage girl screams birth fierce pain

Death squads in the dawn’s first light

 Refugees running in fear of their lives

FOR GOD’S SAKE, BORN INTO THE MIDST OF REALITY.

HENRY'S HAND BALL AND WORLD JUSTICE

I thought it a little out of perspective and then realised that it wasn’t at all. We were visiting an elderly member of our congregation who was eager for us to tell him the news, what was happening in the world. When Dorothy, our pastoral visitor, said that most of the talk was about France’s goal that knocked Ireland out of the World Cup I was a little embarrassed that we had lost a perspective on world events when a goal in what was just a game was headline news. Then I realised that this was not just a goal in what was just a soccer game... it was a whole lot bigger than that. When Thierry Henry handed the ball to cheat his team’s way to South Africa next summer, he cheated for a nation against another nation; he stole people’s careers and many people in Ireland’s jobs; he became, and I don’t think I exaggerate, another oppressor of a people who had justice rent from them.

Let us deal with the cheating first. Sport has never seen so much cheating as it has in recent times, whether it is use of drugs, players diving or the faking blood injury that so recently made the headlines. Is it sportsmanship or is it cheating? It is cheating and in today’s world where people spend vast amounts of money on tickets and travel in order to see these great sporting events it is only justice that they get their money’s worth and are not cheated out of seeing the best team win. We remember Neil Back punching the ball out of Peter Stringer’s hand in the last moments of a Rugby Union Heineken Cup Final. A crowd and television audience were cheated out of an amazing finale and Leicester took the Cup. Maradona’s “hand of God” robbed an English team of World Cup progress in 1986.

That this is just another minor incident in sport is fails to recognise the wide implications of this soccer result. It is injustice at lots of level and robs the fans of their well earned money and the players of the development of their careers. Irish players at the World Cup Finals next year would have been able to show their talents on the world’s greatest stage improving their career prospects and contracts as well. If other professions went through the same type of robbery people would be put in jail for years! Other professions are also effected by Henry’s actions. Ireland, with an ailing Celtic Tiger could have generated much from having a team at the World Cup Finals. Travel, merchandise, tourism and the general morale of the workforce have been left without the lift that justice might have brought. Yes, we might still have needed penalties but if we had lost in that manner it would at least have been a correct result. That cheating robs individuals and nations has serious repercussions.

What can we do though? Some have called for video evidence and it seems utterly amazing that soccer would be stupid enough to not bring in technology at the highest levels of the game where so much money is changing hands. However, we should remember that these are the same clever men who give yellow cards to people for taking off their shirts while celebrating goals! FIFA have never revealed themselves as the smartest directors of sport! Richard Dunne who had an unprecedented apology on the pitch from Henry at the final whistle might blame the referee rather than Henry but the referee had to see it before he could give it. What can be done to stop such cheating is a three year ban for such offences. The three year ban that Dean Richards got for the fake blood injury in Rugby Union pales into insignificance compared to Henry’s act against the Irish. A three year ban would certainly make Henry and others like him think before he does it the next time.

Henry and Dunne sitting beside each other on the final whistle said it all about this incident. Henry knows he cheated. His confession was moving and deserves some respect but it was a little too little way too late. It is not too far to push the incident into global terms and agree that FIFA got their way because the bigger country with a bigger television audience qualified for the World Cup Finals. Sport is as financially dirty as anything else these days and the seeding for the qualifiers and then this particular outcome adds another historical travesty where the minnows are oppressed by the richer powerful nations. Had Duff done what Henry did I wonder how much easier it would have been to get FIFA to call for a replay!

This is not just a wee incident in an inconsequential game of soccer. It has the right to hit the headlines because injustice needs ripped asunder and thrown out of our world. We all want a world that is fair and it is up to us all in the places we live to bring that fairness to bear. Henry, France, the referee and FIFA have a responsibility to stand for it. They didn’t and won’t. So, my question to self is why do I trust such a game and support it with my money and time? Soccer doesn’t deserve it but I will probably succumb!

STEVE STOCKMAN INSTALLED IN FITZROY

 
 

Steve Stockman, the host of this website, was installed as minister of Fitzroy Presbyterian Church on November 13th (and yes it was a Friday!). After fifteen years living and working with studnets this is a whole new venture for Stocki, his wife Janice and children Caitlin and Jasmine. Fitzroy, however, is not your common or garden Presbyterian Church and Stocki's quirky, unique, artistic and down right weird approach to things will be given much room to breathe. It should be a fascinating space to keep an eye on, or visit if you are ever in the Belfast area.

If you want to know more about Fitzroy... http://www.fitzroy.org.uk/

If you want to hear Stocki's sermons... http://www.fitzroy.org.uk/Groups/80917/Fitzroy_Presbyterian_Church/Worship/Sermons/Sermons.aspx

SONGS FOR A HEALTHY SOUL: PEACE IN THE VALLEY ONCE AGAIN - The Handsome Family

 

PEACE IN THE VALLEY ONCE AGAIN

 

The Handsome Family, that quirky American couple Brett and Rennie Sparks, throw their Goth-like storytelling and American folk template into shapes that could often called Old Testament Biblical. Perhaps their most prophetic song takes the title of the old hymn Peace In The Valley, though they add Once Again to the end. Brett’s lyrics are like a final chapter in a Douglas Copeland novel describing a post apocalypse world where “empty shelves swarmed with bees” and “cash machines sprouted weeds.” Instead of this catalogue of desolate images culminating in doom laden judgment we find that it leading to “peace in the valley once again.” The shopping mall has become the centre, all but Cathedral, of the modern world and rather than being a helpful source of human progress and well being, Sparks is suggesting it is the very place that rids us of our inner peace; gadgets, needless trinkets and fashion choice have played havoc in many person’s deep soul.

 

How accurate he is. We seem to love loving ourselves with things that are killing what’s important. The answer to our every need is to visit that Mall and pamper ourselves with analgesic consumption. My good friend Justin Zoradi, Executive Director of the wonderful These Numbers Have Faces charity, used to call Belfast’s biggest mall, Castle Court, a Church. For him it is the place we go to get what Church should give us. We love ourselves as we pamper ourselves with the right fashion house label, the right product, the right skirt with the matching top or the latest sleek Apple Store invention. As we do, there are armies of business heads sitting in New York offices trying to con us into making them rich by convincing us in advertising propaganda that their piece of disposable trash can give us meaning, identity and transcendence; some kind of redemption. We selfishly strive through our shopping to acquire other people’s attention and yet never quite get there, feeling that tug of yearning deep within as we never look quite good enough or up to date enough with our acquisitions. Ultimately the Church of the shopping Mall fails.

 

Irish folk singing prophet Christy Moore has been singing a cultural history of Ireland for well over forty years. He is a true Irish bard who can make us laugh at ourselves and cry repentant tears at our lost innocence, in detailed accounts of our defining events. His cover version of Peace In The Valley Once Again on his album Burning Times is reset in Dublin’s relatively new Liffey Valley Shopping Centre (Valley… get it!), one of the many results better or worse of the famed, but now ailing, Celtic Tiger. The Irish context somehow gives even more power to the hoped for Kingdom in the song where the mirrors will crack, mannequin eyes will fall out and birds will nest in the escalators! When Jesus said “Blessed are the poor…” and “Woe to you who are rich…” (Luke 6) he may have sensed the same spiritual sickness that The Handsome Family and Christy Moore expose so brilliantly.