Review of 2012

Not to take myself too seriously, but here are some of the things I've really enjoyed this year -- they didn't all come out this past year as I'm usually to be found rootling around in the long tail.

Let's start with...

ART

Richard Hamilton: The Late Works at the National Gallery

David Hockney: A Bigger Picture at the Royal Academy

Lucian Freud: Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery

Martin Honert: Children's Crusade at the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin

Seduced by Art: Photography Past and Present at the National Gallery

BOOKS: FICTION

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (brilliant psychothriller)

Tin Toys trilogy by Ursula Holden (amazingly truthful portrait of childhood)

The Partnership by Barry Unsworth (wonderfully dark early novel by Barry Unsworth,died in 2012)

Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont (great novel by woefully underrated writer)

Bird Brain by Guy Kennaway (lovely, funny novel of just deserts and making amends)

BOOKS: NON-FICTION

My Judy Garland Life by Susie Boyt (beautiful personal account of hero worship and empathy)

Seeking Rapture by Kathryn Harrison (memoir of an impossible-to-reach mother)

Delirious New York by Rem Koolhaas (psycho-architectural enquiry into New York City)

Groovy Bob by Harriet Vyner (oral history of Robert Fraser, the art dealer)

The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones by Stanley Booth (best rock tour account ever)

America: Empire of Liberty by David Reynolds (pulled together American history for me)

FILMS

True Grit remade by the Coen Brothers

Moonrise Kingdom by Wes Anderson

Nowhere Boy by Sam Taylor-Wood

Crossfire Hurricane documentary by Brett Morgen

The Queen of Versailles documentary by Lauren Greenfield

The Thomas Crown Affair -- the original by Norman Jewison

TV

The Killing III

Hunderby

The Glee Project

The Bridge

Murder

Moominland Tales: The Life of Tove Jansson

From the Sea to the Land Beyond

SINGLES

'Welcome Home' by Radical Face

'Home and Dry' by The Silver Seas

'A Lack of Understanding' by The Vaccines

'Hollow Talk' by The Choir of Young Believers (theme tune from The Bridge)

'Doom and Gloom' by The Rolling Stones (still got it)

plus

'Joburg Jam' by Pogo:

 

Rolling Stones: Crossfire Hurricane

Last night I 'went' to the premiere of the new Rolling Stones documentary, Crossfire Hurricane. Alas, I didn't actually go to Leicester Square to see Mick and the boys strutting up the red carpet, Keith apparently wondering why they were there. I was sitting in the cinema in Stevenage where the whole event was beamed live (and to another 300 cinemas round the world as well). It was good fun. Lauren Laverne was our host and nabbed people of interest and glamour as they went up the carpet. I have to say the celebs were rather thin on the ground: Liam Gallagher was the 'highlight', mumbling rather resentfully that he'd met the others but not Keith (who is the one, you imagine, he has modelled himself on but who has perhaps chosen to steer clear...). Otherwise, there was Anthea Turner and Grant Bovey (seriously), Colin Firth (who has never done it for me, wet or dry) and, erm, that was about it.

However, the film itself was absolutely brilliant. It's made up entirely of pre-existing footage, with new interviews with the Stones making a commentary. I only got into the Rolling Stones recently -- I've no idea why it took me so long as I was a fanatical fan of punk as a teenager (albeit one who remained 'normal' on the outside -- inside I was raging, spitting, pogo-ing, all the while neatly dressed and with a nice bob. I read the NME in secret).

This is me in 1979, at the height of my punk phase (loving The Gang of Four, Television, Tom Robinson, Stiff Little Fingers, the Buzzcocks and other more obscure stuff I got off the John Peel Show). I appear to be wearing a badge the size of a saucer, which I think is probably a Rock Against Racism badge, and also two small TRB badges. All this is to say that when I finally got into the Stones, about a year ago, I discovered that all the things I most loved about punk had been lifted note for note from the Stones. It was really musical theft.

     I've been reading up on the Stones and have read Keith's autobiography as well as Stanley Booth's and Robert Greenfield's great books about touring America with the Stones. And I've watched Gimme Shelter (a documentary film about Altamont) and also Performance, in which Mick stars with Anita Pallenberg (just couldn't see it as a 'modern classic' though). And I've gorged on the music. The film last night was an amalgamation of all of those elements, brilliantly edited together into a really powerful wave of imagery and sound. The amazing energy that the Stones unleashed in their fans was terrifying -- far more destructive than punk, really. It was completely anarchic and primal. I think the band themselves were frightened by their own power, but then they got on top of it and used it, distancing themselves from reality in various ways. If they hadn't, they probably would have gone insane or died, like Brian Jones. I absolutely love Mick Jagger, especially in his early incarnations. He personifies male beauty to me.