ONE TANGLED UP IN TOTALITARIANISM
The Handmaid’s Tale is so good, it makes everything else on tv look faintly pallid. Here are the words of Offred, at the top of episode two, as the Commander begins “The Ceremony” and she tries to take leave of her corporeal vessel by looking at the colour of the ceiling and slowly running down a list of the blues…
“Blue Moon, Rhapsody in Blue, Tangled Up in Blue, Blue Oyster Cult, Blue Monday.”
The updating is full of great touches, and great song choices (such as a slowed-down “Heart of Glass” soundtracking the explosion in the cafe during the riot in episode three).

Margaret Attwood, in a terrific column for the New York Times: “By 1984, I’d been avoiding my novel for a year or two. It seemed to me a risky venture. I’d read extensively in science fiction, speculative fiction, utopias and dystopias ever since my high school years in the 1950s, but I’d never written such a book. Was I up to it? The form was strewn with pitfalls, among them a tendency to sermonise, a veering into allegory and a lack of plausibility. If I was to create an imaginary garden I wanted the toads in it to be real. One of my rules was that I would not put any events into the book that had not already happened in what James Joyce called the “nightmare” of history, nor any technology not already available. No imaginary gizmos, no imaginary laws, no imaginary atrocities. God is in the details, they say. So is the Devil.”

TWO CHESS MEN

Barney and Mark visit Chicago for Rock’s Backpages, and discover this extraordinary wall at the Chess Studios Museum. Barney reports: “they are slightly weird and creepy death masks… but a good number of the people are still alive!” I found this interesting piece on Chicagobusiness.com, asking why the Chess Studios aren’t a tourist mecca. I have to book a ticket to Chi-Town immediately.

I bought a copy of the Oxford American’s Music Issue (typically excellent) last month, and found that nearly all the adverts were for blues tours through most every city in the American South. There’s “New Music City” Birmingham, Alabama, Georgia is apparently on my mind, and I’m Soul’d on Stax and Memphis (where [Cap A] Authenticity comes from, according to Memphistravel.com). I find that music and history live where Robert Johnson died, in Greenwood, Mississippi and that Jackson in the same state has the most markers on the Mississippi Blues Trail. History also goes to be recorded in Muscle Shoals, recently refurbished by Dr Dre and Beats Entertainment (I’m not making this up).

THREE AFTER 40 YEARS, JOE ALLEN PREPARES TO MOVE AROUND THE CORNER
…and I wonder if The Divine Miss M will still be above the door to the restrooms… (I’m hoping they keep all of Jim McMullan’s great Lincoln Center Theatre posters, too).

FOUR PSYCHO, ROYAL FESTIVAL HALL
Nick invites my mum (or should that be Mother! MOTHER!) and I to a screening at the Festival Hall of Psycho, with the Herrmann score played live by the London Philharmonic, conducted by Robert Zeigler. Zeigler introduced Bernard Herrmann’s widow, Norma, and asked about the fallow period in his career after his falling out with Hitchcock over Torn Curtain in 1965. “Everyone in Hollywood at that time was afraid of being old hat – all the men had their shirts open to down to here, chains, middle-aged people smoking pot… Not Bennie. Or me. They were scared of being left behind, and Hitchcock wanted to tune in, and said: I want you to write me a pop song… And Bennie did what was best for the film – no pop tune, and that caused a rift between them. Even when he called Lionel Newman [Randy and Thomas Newman’s uncle, and senior vice president of all music for Twentieth Century Fox Films] and said What have you got?, he said Sorry, Bennie, we’ve decided to run with the kids… meaning You’re old hat… Well, he was really furious and he paced up and down, saying run with kids, run with kids? But come Scorsese and Truffaut and Spielberg… Taxi Driver… and Lionel Newman rang him and said Are you free? Are you free?, and Bennie said I’m sorry… I’ve decided to run with the kids!”

The original score has never been released, apparently, although it has been bootlegged. The track names are great:
1 Prelude – The City – Marion and Sam – Temptation
2 Flight – The Patrol Car – The Car Lot – The Package – The Rainstorm
3 Hotel Room – The Window – The Parlour – The Madhouse – The Peephole
4 The Bathroom – The Murder – The Body – The Office – The Curtain – The Water – The Car – The Swamp
5 The Search – The Shadow – Phone Booth – The Porch – The Stairs – The Knife
6 The Search – The First Floor – Cabin 10 – Cabin 1
7 The Hill – The Bedroom – The Toys – The Cellar – Discovery – Finale

FIVE OLD CROW AT SHEPHERD’S BUSH EMPIRE
Along to the old BBC TV Theatre with “Discount Fireworks” competion winner Lloyd to see OCMS playing the whole of Blonde on Blonde, turbocharged Bluegrass-style. They are incredible at what they do, and they remember all of the lyrics, even “Sad Eyed Lady”. Their London crowd is partisan, and the evening is a blast (apart from a “comedy” version of “Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat” that we’ll pass lightly over). My only criticism would be that the softer side of BoB doesn’t really stand a chance. Even if they start a song as a stately dressage-like waltz, by halfway through they’re thrashing its hindquarters and racing for the finish line. The end with “Rock Me Mama like a Wagon Wheel”, a song they co-wrote with Bob, even though they’ve never met him. See the full story on the music player to your right.

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