Days Of Miracle And Wonder

Twice recently I've had one of those periods of a couple of days where I become obsessed with a song from the past and play it endlessly. A few weeks ago it was Fine Young Cannibals' I'm Not The Man I Used To Be. Last weekend it was The Boy In The Bubble by The Blue Aeroplanes. 

The Boy In The Bubble (Album Version)

In 1991 Bristol's Blue Aeroplanes were signed to a major and were half expected to crossover. In 1989 they'd supported R.E.M. on the UK leg of their Green tour (I saw them in Liverpool at the Royal Court- they were outstanding and played a memorable supporting set to a full house, Gerald ending it at the lip of the stage arms outstretched. R.E.M. were next level. It was quite a month for gig going- I saw The Stone Roses on 4th May and R.E.M. on 21st). In 1990 they released Swagger and a year later Beatsongs.

The Boy In The Bubble is a cover of a Paul Simon song, the only one he wrote a lyric for while on his controversial, sanctions busting trip to South Africa that led to Gracelands in 1986. The line, 'The way the camera follows us in slow mo/ The way we look to us all', was written in South Africa. The rest was all done back in the USA. 

The Blue Aeroplanes cover, which I must have played twenty times last weekend, is a riot, a blast of early 90s indie guitar rock. The riff and the clang of the guitars make Paul Simon sound like The Clash (appropriately enough as Strummer was a big fan of Graceland). Vocalist/ poet Gerard Langley spits the words out, reveling in Simon's lines about bombs in baby carriages, distant constellations, long distance calls, how 'every generation throws a hero up the pop charts' and the chorus payoff, 'These are the days of miracle and wonder/ Don't cry baby/ Don't cry'.

The video is a lively affair, lots of movement and energy, various guitarists twirling and riffing, dancer Wojtek doing his things, action painting on a glass screen happening while the film is being shot and lots of black denim. 

Paul Simon's video is similarly, mid- 80s video FX- collage and colour to mirror the cross cultural nature of the song, African rhythms, accordion and Adrian Belew playing a synth guitar solo.

Like I say- obsessed. I'm still playing it a couple of times a day. The Blue Aeroplanes have recently released two career spanning albums- a best of called Magical Realism and an alternative best of titled Outsider Art. 

Today is the fourth anniversary of Isaac's funeral. For some reason this anniversary doesn't carry the same emotional weight and dread as the anniversaries in November do, his birthday on the 23rd and his death on the 30th. I can remember aspects of the funeral as if it was yesterday, events and conversations and emotions too. The sheer dread I had waiting to read the eulogy we'd written and the pause when I stood at the lectern to collect myself and try to get the first line out of my mouth. I remember thinking that if I got the first line out, I'd be able to read the rest but getting the line out seemed to take an age. Lou has told me that she and Eliza were sitting on the front row willing me on silently. The first line was, 'They say it takes a village to raise a child...' 

Heck, what a fucking day day that was.

We chose this Billy Collins poem for the celebrant to read at the graveside. I read it again last night while putting it into this post and it has lost none of its power in the last four years- if anything it means more now than it did then.  

'The dead are always looking down on us, they say,
While we are putting on our shoes or making a sandwich,
They are looking down through the glass-bottom boats of heaven
As they row themselves slowly through eternity.

They watch the tops of our heads moving below on earth,
And when we lie down in a field or on a couch,
Drugged perhaps by the hum of a warm afternoon,
They think we are looking back at them,

Which makes them lift their oars and fall silent
And wait, like parents, for us to close our eyes'