The death of a 71 year old former Rock n Roll star and heroin addict shouldn’t come as a surprise, but Lou Reed was a man who lived to shock. After all, the artist who thrust the deepest pits of the underground into the public domain and released a ‘screw you’ 2 hour album of pure feedback was hardly going to give the people what they wanted.

Lou Reed was an outsider from the start. 1967’s The Velvet Underground and Nico was released within a year of classics such as Pet Sounds, Blonde on Blonde and Sgt Pepper; albums that would define an era of flower-power imagination and love. The Velvets instead – with their tales of nihilistic excess – would come to define the future of rock n roll. Where other groups experimented with orchestras and overdubs, Reed and Cale’s band stripped rock n roll back to its raw potential. David Bowie, Morrissey, Iggy Pop, The Ramones, The Smiths, Joy Division, The Strokes, Arctic Monkeys and countless others have all professed the direct influence Lou Reed’s music had on their own. The whole landscape of modern music would be unrecognisable without the impact Reed had on Glam, Punk and Pop. With 45 years of hindsight, his influence truly was profound.

Reed implemented a fresh kind of honesty to rock n roll music with often unnervingly candid lyrics and simply structured, three chord songs. It was this talent as a song writer that enabled The Velvets to seamlessly switch between the full-bloodedness of White Light/White Heat to the more tender tracks such as Pale Blue Eyes without ever seeming contrived.

His solo work will always be remembered for two of the greatest all time pop classics in Walk on the Wild Side and Perfect Day though he was never a pop artist. Reed was always selfish in his work, only writing for himself. He would frequently disregard the desires of critics, fans and record labels. Berlin was hardly the pop follow up to Transformer that was anticipated at the time but it’s rediscovery as a forgotten great this last decade has cemented Reed’s legacy as a timeless songwriter. For better or worse, he was always original (at least that’s a way to excuse Metal Machine Music).

Reed’s death has impacted the music community unlike many others before him. Once they survive past 27, these rock legends seem like almost eternal figures, a continual reference point for generation after generation. No one saw one of alternative culture’s corner stones being removed so suddenly. After years shaping alternative culture whilst remaining so enigmatic, it’s strange to think that Reed was mortal after all. It even casts into doubt the other worldly magic of his surviving contemporaries, and who could ever replace such figures as Reed, Dylan and Bowie. If Reed started an alternative revolution, perhaps his death also symbolises its end.

In tribute to Reed, Morrissey wrote that “his music will outlive time itself”, it had started to feel that rock’s ultimate survivor would do too. 

The promise of a new addition to the James Bond franchise brings with it expectations of beautiful women, fast cars, alcoholic excess and plenty of action. However, the latest offering from William Boyd places Bond’s own character firmly in the foreground, creating a much more complex and human incarnation of the agent the majority feel so familiar with.

The novel opens with Bond in the streets of Chelsea, but he is soon sent off into the jungles of Africa, finally ending up in Washington DC. Sent on a mission to end a brutal civil war in the fictional country of Zanzarim, he quickly finds himself part of a much wider plan to extract the country’s new-found oil reserves. Confronted with his mirror-image nemesis, Jakobus Breed, (Jacobus being the Latin name for James), Bond jumps from journalistic investigation to military action.

This, however, is where the book falls down the most. The plot is not only confusing but seemingly anti-climactic. Bond’s final showdown comprises him simply taking out three incompetent guards and confronting Breed.
For a reader who is used to the modern blockbuster, it all seems a little unassuming.

However, the author comes into his own when he explores the character of Bond himself. Rather than blasting his way into the villain’s volcano lair, he must rely on his own skills and experience in a much more nuanced way. Boyd’s use of a grizzled, middle aged Bond allows him to construct a character who is much more complex than we might expect. In fact, it is a slightly sad figure that is created; the book opens with Bond hungover and alone in the Dorchester Hotel after a night drinking by himself and lusting over a young woman.

Yet this Bond is still the cruel and in many ways cold character of Fleming’s creation. It should not be forgotten that the brutal torture scene from the Casino Royale film that drew criticism for its violence is taken directly from Fleming’s own novel. Bond demonstrates his  desires to exact revenge on those who have done him wrong, taking risks to ensure his enemies feel as much pain as possible.

Solo is a book that delights in many ways but disappoints in others. Boyd carries Bond smoothly from the excess of the Dorchester Hotel to the African jungle with only a few hiccoughs along the way, yet it seems that a more cohesive plot would be required in order to really hold everything together. Fortunately, Boyd’s wonderfully complex 007 ensures that the book still manages to do justice to the world’s most famous spy.

Solo is published by Jonathan Cape and available here. 

Привет, Moscow calling!

So this is where I’m spending my year abroad, in the capital of the Motherland, and so far it’s been great! Moscow is a city with a character, a culture, a vibrancy that are at times breath-taking and at times nerve-tingling.

Let’s begin with the ‘breath-taking’ part. Moscow has a traffic problem. Before I came to Moscow, I received a message from one of my friends saying ‘Welcome to the city of traffic jams’. As a distinguishing feature of any city, I thought this was a slightly odd choice and somewhat at odds with Oxford’s epithet ‘the city of dreaming spires’. Sadly, there’s no punting here … but there a LOT of traffic jams!

This being the case it’s probably for the best that I don’t own a car. Moscow drivers can only be described as ‘crazy Russians’, capable of carrying out the most daredevil (life-threatening?) manoeuvres preferably performed on the busiest roads. On the plus side, they’re now taking zebra crossings seriously, but instead of the driver stopping for a pedestrian ready to cross, the attitude here is that if you’re not on the crossing, no one’s going to stop for you. Which is problematic if you’re not too comfortable with stepping out into the path of onrushing traffic.

Which brings me quite neatly onto the ‘nerve-tingling’ aspect of life in Moscow. Here order and chaos vie for supremacy and like all big cities Moscow can be a tad intimidating to the newcomer. Most districts are made up of shabby, Stalinist-era apartment blocks ripe for renovation, these in stark contrast to the eerily quiet neighbourhoods where security guards stand menacingly in the doorways of the sleek luxury dwellings of the Russian elite.

This dichotomy of life in Moscow is also apparent in the somewhat schizophrenic, East/West mindset of the city. Whilst you can get just about any Western brand in any one of the numerous shopping complexes, people still have more traditional values. Family is very important, where it’s usual for men and women to adhere to conventional gender roles. Several of my Russian friends of about my age are already married, some even have kids. Crazy.

Despite this schizophrenia, as a place to live, I absolutely love it here. The song ‘Moscow Never Sleeps’ is certainly true. Most shops are open until about 9pm and my local supermarkets are 24 hours. Restaurants stay open until the early hours of the morning. The city is bursting with energy and there’s always something interesting to see or do. There are countless theatres, galleries, concerts, parks that you can visit, and so far I’ve never had a dull moment. Whereas the older generation are a little world-weary (don’t expect a cheery ‘have a nice day’ from the cashier at the supermarket) the younger generation are very friendly, and most would jump at the opportunity to show a foreigner round their native city. They look towards the USA and Britain as cultural role-models in music, film and fashion, which can sometimes be frustrating for someone who doesn’t want to be surrounded with the same things as back home! It’s also now in vogue to send your kids abroad to study, so for a young Oxford lass like myself there’s plenty of work to be found tutoring. One parent remarked that you need to be able to speak English now to succeed in life, which explains this trend.

On the negative side, Moscow does live up to the usual clichés of alcoholism and corruption. At 10am you can see men staggering down the street clutching a bottle of beer, or sprawled across a bench on the metro sleeping off their hangover with everyone else doing their best to avoid them. As for bribery, everyone is aware it goes on, but it’s so ingrained in the system it seems impossible to eradicate. Even for something as trivial as securing a parking space, you need to ‘come to an agreement’ with whomever is in charge. Sometimes, it makes things easier as everyone knows the rules of the game, but most of the time it’s rather tiring. They say that this is a country ‘without limits’, where people can do as they please. The problem is this just causes problems for the poor guys further down the line.

Even the fact that all traffic is stopped when the President and his retinue need to drive through the city shows that life is a struggle here for ordinary people. Having spoken to a few Russians, the dream is to buy a ‘cottage’ in the suburbs, and commute into the capital. This weariness has led to tensions between Moscovites and the immigrants who have come from former Soviet Republics and who are willing to do less-than-appealing jobs for a cheap wage … or turn to crime.

But Russians are also very resilient. I was speaking to an Expat who observed that, if anything ever happened to the electricity or power sources, the Russians would be fine. Most people have a dacha, which they build on their own plots of land, where they can be pretty much self-sufficient, growing their own produce and even keeping livestock. Most Russians have the skills to wire their homes, connect to a water supply, maintain a generator and so on. If anything were to happen, then they would all just go to the dachas, and live off the land.

Like every city, there are positives and negatives. Despite this, I would encourage people to visit Moscow, a place which has been the setting of so many important historical events. It really is quite a unique experience to say the least.

Love, Kit xxx

The most identifiable element to Saved’s plot is the stoning of a baby in a pram by a group of men – one of whom is the child’s father. Macaroon Productions will be staging it in 4^th week, a week after The Death of Maria, where a woman is accused of eating her own baby, and a term after Middle England, which centred on a working class couple who are blamed by the press for the abduction of their own child.

Saved is superficially similar to plays staged recently in the BT, but it was shockingly unorthodox in the 60s. Written by Edward Bond in 1965, who bears a more than passing resemblance to Michael Caine, Wikipedia tells me the script of Saved was “instrumental in the abolition of theatre censorship in the UK”.

The script charts the lives of South London working class youths whose options have diminished thanks to a brutal economic climate. The first scene I saw showed Fred and Pam, the dead baby’s parents, in prison. Fred (Jack Flowers) gives an intensely physical performance: the pair’s accents occasionally slipped, but the scene’s power lay in the interplay between brusqueness and tenderness between the pair. Pam tells Fred she’ll wait for him: he grunts back, “Yeah yeah, God help us.”

Pam (Madeleine Walker) is softly-spoken at points and incongruously sweet to the man who helped murder her child: the psychology behind her submissiveness will presumably be examined over the show’s two hour run time.

Another scene showed Pam’s mother, Mary (Lara McIvor) and Pam’s ex-boyfriend, Len (Marcus Balmer) at home. Mary is on her way out to a film with a friend, Len is polishing his shoes. They talk like a mother and a son, albeit a mother and son who bring up sex a little too often. McIvor’s lilting, assured delivery of lines means the audience is happy to settle in to observe.

This sense of security is swiftly shattered by Bond’s script. A run in Mary’s stocking needs to be fixed. It’s on her lower thigh, on the inside, just above her knee. The audience cringes as Balmer leans in to sew it up, his awkwardness visible on his face. Then he relaxes; the audience cringes more. He talks about how soft her skin is, and asks her repeatedly to stay at home with him.

McIvor is the perfect mixture of Madonna and seductress: she knows exactly what she’s doing, but leaves him in a whirl of handbags and motherly chiding. Balmer is left alone on the sofa: he happily unzips his trousers for a wank, a knowing smile playing across his lips.

Saved’s script is not comfortable. But it’s entertaining, human and engaging, and the cast are clearly having a lot of fun.

Saved is playing at the BT Studio from Tuesday 5th to Saturday 9th November. Tickets are available here