Best of 2010

My customary list of things that moved me in 2010...

Truth be told, I was mostly consumed by the World Cup last year especially since Ghana were bona fide contenders and could have/should have gone further/won it outright. Well the boys did great: Andre Ayew, Asamoah Gyan and all. I still haven't recovered from the Ghana-Uruguay match...

So, the year in numbers: I read 37 books, watched 100 movies (blame Netflix) and attended 12 concerts and 1 play.

I didn't write as much as I hoped and one reason is that I now also subscribe to about 1300 feeds; the resulting onslaught of information coming my way makes me lean towards consumption rather than production. Here's hoping for a different balance in 2011.

Books

Novels led the way in the 37 books I read (Incidentally two of these were e-books: Hilaire Belloc's essays and Charles Dickens's serial novels were great reads for the mobile phone moments, the interstices of modern life). The highlights in print were the young African writers.

• Nii Ayikwei Parkes - Tail of the Blue Bird

  Call it a case of deep empathy; it was the shock of the familiar. It's not often that I recognize myself on the book shelves. It was bracing to read a young Ghanaian writer, a modern traveler, equally at ease in London, the US, and my childhood neighbourhoods in Accra, and even someone who'll head up to the mountains near Aburi and make them the setting for his novel. Nii Parkes loves language and plain storytelling. My friend isn't afraid to take his time and tell stories and let them take us where they may, with humourous anecdotes and elliptical discursions thrown in for good measure. The genre and the form - the crime procedural, are almost unimportant even if finely detailed, it's the underlying story that matters. We are children of Ananse, lovers of social living, and the stories we can share. I have a deep and specific connection with his artistic impulse even when I disagree with him. To cap things off, The Makings of You, his poetry collection finally got its release in the US. Needless to say my man had a great year. I dig his brand of toli and recommend it to you. A head nod in your direction, brother.

• Petina Gappah - An Elegy for Easterly
  Brian Chikwava - Harare North

  "They" kept saying that I should read the new crop of Zimbabwean writers, that life in the shadow of Robert Mugabe was proving to be a fertile artistic ground, that the future of African literature lay in their palms. And there was a lot to their argument, these two wrote of dark matters and it was a tonic to read them. With a blast of furious energy, their voices asserted themselves immediately. Where Gappah was wry and humanistic, Chikwava's tone was utterly bleak, filled with irony and the darkest humour. Mugabe's victims are manifold but we can always fall back on this artistic response to his reign.

  Let me digress about book covers for a minute - as you may know I have an interest in the types and faces that represent writing about Africa. Consider the journey from the cover photo in the English edition of a London market

  
  
  

  to the following illustration in the US Edition

  
  
  

  "Fine", you say, there's a transformation from the photo of a street scene to a quite clever montage in the illustration that further manages to throw in a few more references to London: Big Ben, tube signs and all. "I get it".

  But look closer, if you will, at the bottom corners of the latter, and note the giraffe on the right and the tree in the savanna that has materialized on the left.

  Chikwava's book is a novel about Zimbabwean immigrants in London. True, there are plenty of predators in the book but they are all too human - there is no wildlife to be found in its pages. What scenes there are in Zimbabwe are all urban.

  (Incidentally, I can understand that the same tree and savanna appear on the cover of Gappah's book since at least one of her stories has that kind of backdrop.)

  Apparently it isn't enough to have Harare in the title, and the black head and anomic eyes of the main protagonist as a signifier; that would be too subtle an indicator of Africa. I wonder if that giraffe and savanna detail was part of the cover artist Yuko Kondo's initial vision or whether it was the publisher who needed to remove any doubt about provenance. I wonder, must every African novel face the world with wildlife or the savanna as its backdrop? I'm not a big fan of the safari quotient.

• James Ellroy - Blood's A Rover

  I am a big fan of Ellroy's Underworld USA trilogy and the intricate worlds of bad men (and women in this final part) that he has constructed: "a new myth from the gutter to the stars". Indeed I read this twice in a feverish haze. He didn't disappoint; the trilogy will stand as one of the most ambitious and resolutely executed works of the past 20 years.

• Geoffrey Philp - Who's Your Daddy? and other Stories

  Call it Jamaican Gothic, a collection of stories full of wit and perception. His roving eye and his sharply attuned ear for dialog make for vivid reading. I also happen to love Geoffrey Philp's poetry.

• Heinrich von Kleist - The Marquise of O and Other Stories

  Luminous stories that linger in the mind. Plots that swirl every which way, with turns at once startling and engrossing. Writing that leaves you breathless, von Kleist was peerless as an artisan of literary tectonics.

• Geoffrey Household - Rogue Male

  A story so stripped down and spartan that the reader wants to apply metaphor to gain comfort. On the surface it's a hard-boiled thriller about life at the extremes, I came to read it as a prescient warning about the relentless challenge that Hitler's fascism would pose. What is your interpretation?

• Meja Mwangi - Going Down River Road

  A deep dive into the slums of Nairobi. An exacting and brilliant novel that manages to find soul and brotherhood among the futility. Gappah is to Chikwava - and Kenya is to Zimbabwe in our millennium - as Going Down River Road is to Thomas Akare's The Slums.

• Alain Mabanckou - Black Bazar

  Reads almost like a follow-up of his 1998 tour de force, Bleu, Blanc, Rouge, wonderful writing all around.

  See also: The Ways of The Porcupine

• Emmanuel Dongala - Johnny Chient Méchant

  There's a fine translation, Johnny Mad Dog of this look at child soldiers and the damage they leave in their wake. I read also that it has been made into a film that is about to be released. I have a pending piece on the novels about child soldiers in Africa. Powerful stuff indeed.

• Sarah Ladipo Manyika - In Dependence
  The Nigerian writers are making us all of us proud. I thoroughly enjoyed this love story full of missed opportunities.

Theatre

The sole play was Marcus Gardley's ... and Jesus Moonwalks the Mississippi, a funny gumbo of a play with soul food, slavery, Greek choruses, and Michael Jackson's Billie Jean song and dance routine at its core. Homeboy's got a unique vision.

Movies

Two trilogies brought forth the heat in my film watching.

• Carlos the Jackal

  Olivier Assayas's take on that gremlin of terrorists featured a startling and dizzying performance by Edgar Ramirez as the eponymous Venezuelan revolutionary. There was no higher achievement in cinema.

• Stieg Larsson's Millenium trilogy saw Noomi Rapace embody that girl with the dragon tattoo with her singular talent. Actress of the year
• State of Play

  This BBC Miniseries was so engrossing that we had to watch all 6 hours in one sitting. Fodder for those with the journalistic impulse.

• Prince of Broadway
  Sean Baker's vibrant take on the hustle of Ghanaians in New York is almost too realistic.
• The Death Of Mr Lazarescu
  Quietly devastating and Kafkaesque.
• The Secret of the Grain
  I want to eat some couscous with everyone associated with La graine et le mulet.
• Boardwalk Empire and Treme
  The Wife and I fell for these HBO series, what can I say.
• Bela Fleck: Throw Down Your Heart

  A great documentary on musical exploration. For me it stepped into high gear from the moment when Oumou Sangare picked him up at the airport. I saw him in concert with Toumani Diabete the previous year; it was a great collaboration, banjo met kora and all was well.

Music

I attended 13 concerts - but only blogged about one - adding to the pile of lost reviews that I keep meaning to publish.

• Amel Larrieux

  The highlight of my year was watching Amel Larrieux perform for two magical nights in August. I still have an orange glow from those sessions. Her 2006 album, Morning, has proven to be a fantastic bed of creativity, reinvented on stage. It was the album of the year in 2006 and, well, let me not beat around the bush, it is one of my two favourite albums of the decade - the other is Voodoo. The listening statistics seem to bear that out. The songs she previewed from next year's album ought to bring her to the wide acclaim she richly deserves.

• Van Hunt gave a solo performance almost exactly a year ago. He playfully alternated between acoustic guitar and grand piano and treated us to a tour of his soul songbook. It is deep and his musical vision is captivating.
• José James and Jef Neve For All We Know
  José James - Blackmagic
  
  
  

  Hands down the most romantic thing I did was to attend the concert José James and Jef Neve gave at the Gould Theater at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. The classic setting, and the music, mon dieu, the music. I stand by my immediate reaction:

  Impossibly talented, extravagantly empathetic, lushly lyrical: the golden voice meets the angular piano. Loved it.

  It was really hard to believe that they had only played together twice before stepping into the studio. I'll have more to write about these young lions - José James especially (he had a busy year) deserves considerable critical attention, for this is the future of jazz.
  
• Dwele - Wants World Women

  Dwele still has that swagger - he deserves it needless to say. This year in addition to the seductive poses he struck on stage - a Dwele concert in Oakland is an event to behold. He brought some social observation into the mix - as ever it was over an infectious beat. Consider his take on our ongoing Great Recession in How I Deal

  See, I was employed
  But not today
  See Bush came and made all that go away
  Now I'm the crib with the fakest grin
  Waiting for Obama to kick in

  The chorus starts aptly enough with "I'm losing my power, chasing the almighty dollar". With unemployment at 10 percent and underemployment pervasive, we are all "waiting for Obama to kick in".

  
• Bilal - Airtight's Revenge

  In concert he was wild and fabulous and the new album was solid. It's great to have him back. The one-two combination of Restart and All Matter was exhilarating, Bilal went into a trance and we followed

• John Legend & The Roots - Wake Up!
  These guys deserve the Grammys they will be getting in the next few weeks.
• Hindi Zahra - Handmade

  We managed to catch Hindi Zahra live at Le Bataclan in Paris and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. I guess you'd call it world music, it was worldly, grown folks music. Norah Jones watch out.

  
• Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings - I Learned The Hard Way
  How can one not love The Game Gets Old?
• Eric Roberson put the Music Fan First and continued to build his independent soul movement.
• Corinne Bailey Rae, mourning her late husband, found a way to sing again and released a set, The Sea, full of elegiac balladry.
• It was a year of returns. Massive Attack gave us Heligoland, Sade was a Soldier of Love and Gil Scott-Heron said I'm New Here - his take on Me And The Devil rocked hard.

  Erykah Badu came back to us and even went nude for the love of the music.

  Habib Koite and Bamada were mellow men as befits a band that has been together for 25 years. Like Sade, they were a seamless unit.

  

Finally two acts I caught at the end of the year who will be making waves in 2011:

• Les Nubians will be giving us a Nu Revolution in coming months. We caught them live as they readied a new stage show.
  
• I'm looking forward to Rhian Benson's Hands Clean, her first album in 7 years. Asked why she made us wait, she explained, "I had to do some living that I could then put in the album". She gave a short set at her release party in Accra - and even had a couple of wardrobe malfunctions, but it was worth it to hear her sing Say How I Feel and preview a few songs from the new album. Valentines Day is only weeks away.
  

Song of the year: Bilal - All Matter

Dearly Departed

In letters, Ferdinand Oyono, Robert Parker and gold old José Saramago passed away and are sorely missed.

In music, we lost Teddy Pendergrass - black masculinity incarnate, Gregory Isaacs - the cool ruler with the golden voice, Willie Mitchell one of the best music producers we have known, the ever versatile Lena Horne. The loss I took most personally was Abbey Lincoln; I'll forever miss her vibe.

For a playlist in memory of these greats, consider these albums: Joy, Night Nurse, Let's Stay Together and A Turtle's Dream.

File under: review, literature, appreciation, culture, observation, stereotypes, music, soul, movies, film, theatre, Africa, toli

Best of 2009

Everybody likes lists so here's a list of things that moved me in 2009. I didn't blog much (a mere 5 posts - I was quite shaken) but I did leave quite a wide digital trail by compulsively tracking my consumption of various cultural artifacts - especially as I tend to make time to write mini-reviews. A cursory summary of my year: 50 books, 120 movies (blame Netflix), 10 concerts and 1 play. I remain an omnivorous consumer of the web and additionally bookmarked or shared up to 680 articles and blogposts (blame the 1099 feeds I subscribe to Google Reader) - each of these was the occasion of some pithy commentary and tags, your basic frisson de folksonomie.

Books

I read mostly novels last year and eschewed non-fiction since I haven't yet become American in my reading preferences. There was some poetry especially near the end; mostly web-based after I got interested in how poets are using the web.

Entertainments

Entertainments tend to get short shrift, dismissed as they are as guilty pleasures, yet there is something to be said to bask in the glow of literary entertainments. With hindsight, I prefer Graham Greene's self-described 'entertainments' to his serious pieces. I've resolved to increase the quotient of entertainments in my reading.

• Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm
  A delightful entertainment and sublime take on a bygone era at Oxford. Compare to the best campus novels like those of Kingsley Amis and David Lodge or even more scabrous affairs like Porterhouse Blue. Satire and vicious cultural observation. Some of the dialog from the upper class twits reminded me of his Edwardian contemporary, Saki. For example,

  Are you fond of peasants? My tenantry are delightful creatures, and there is not one of them who remembers the bringing of the news of the battle of Waterloo.

  How to describe an effete English Lord in 2 sentences.
• Comment Cuisiner Son Mari À L'Africaine by Calixthe Beyala
  A novel in the form of a cookbook. A cookbook in the form of a novel. A fable in the form of a tasty barbecue. A romance spiced with flair. A delightful confection through and through, cooked with verve. A sensual read, it is also a thoroughly modern affair set in the milieu of low income housing in Paris. She was early in documenting immigrant life and prescient about the travails of exiled souls.
• The Charlie Mortdecai trilogy by Kyril Bonfiglioli
  The three Charlie Mordecai novels, Don't Point that Thing at Me, After You with the Pistol, and Something Nasty in the Woodshed have the highest concentration of effortless wit, zingers and cultural affectation I've encountered in a long while. Who knew that the intrigues of a disreputable coward, art snob and seasoned thief would be so entertaining? The increasingly intricate plots are almost incidental - verging at times on spoofs of James Coburn spy capers which were themselves spoofs, the towering pleasures are in the asides. I want to have cocktails with Mordecai.

  My life-long study of the art of warfare has taught me that running away is certainly the most cost-effective type of fighting. It doesn't win many battles but it saves you a lot of troops. Ask any Italian general if you can catch him out of his hairnet. Or, indeed, if you can catch him at all.
  
  — Kyril Bonfiglioli - After You with the Pistol, page 74

• The Parker novels by Richard Stark
  Donald Westlake sadly passed away late in 2008, his alter-ego's productions are the gold standard of hard-boiled noir, spare and stripped down tales of amorality and professional crime. Luckily many are being reissued these days. The Mourner, The Score and The Seventh were last year's comfort suites for me, variations on a heist with a relentless force of nature at the helm. Also revelatory was Darwin Cooke's graphic novel resurrecting Richard Stark's Parker: The Hunter. Revenge has never been better.

Masters of Storytelling

There's nothing like letting go and putting your faith in one of these craftsmen of the tale:

• Verre Cassé by Alain Mabanckou
  I read a lot of Mabanckou last year and an appreciation piece is sorely overdue. He is one of the best living African writers and yet few focus on him perhaps because he writes in French. Let's hope that the new translations that have began appearing remedy the situation - Broken Glass seems to be getting some buzz. Short of that, I'll become his shill. His latest, Mémoires De Porc-épic, was also magisterial.
• Moses Ascending by Samuel Selvon
  After discovering the many pleasures of Zee Edgell last year I resolved to read more Caribbean literature and, after plowing through Selected Poems by Derek Walcott, I went back to that other master of Caribbean letters, Samuel Selvon, catching up on his great creation in 1970s England. A novel packed with hilarious observations about immigrants, poor whites, Pakistanis, black power, sexual mores, the relationship with authority figures, and throughout the resilient hustle of the Caribbean immigrant.
• The Dragon Can't Dance by Earl Lovelace
  Call it a masquerade or rather a prose calypso. Wonderful social commentary on Trinidad, straight from the slum hills overlooking Port of Spain.
• The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins
  Beautiful writing, haunting characters and an unerring ear for the nuances of language. The film adaptation is a classic of tragic noir, Robert Mitchum was never better.
• To Each His Own by Leonardo Sciascia
  A sardonic lament on the corruption of the mafia. He cut out all the fat in the narrative and the result is so restrained as to be unbearable. It lingered in my mind the whole year and resonated as I watched Gomorrah. What is to be done when this malevolent thing can blight an entire society? The follow-up, The Day of the Owl is, if anything, more menacing.

Urban Dread

• Man Gone Down by Michael Thomas
  This one hit too close to home mainly because I know one of the barely fictionalized protagonists. Observations on race, identity and cultural anomie from the viewpoint of Boston black Americans close enough to the ivory towers to make their continuing travails and periodic falls from grace more heartrending and frustrating. An elegy for the modern strays of the world.

  Also in the same vein of urban dread, The Scholar: A West Side Story by Courttia Newland with its inner city London setting and The Turnaround by George Pelecanos who continues to mine the streets of the Washington DC area.

Heartwarming

I Do Not Come to You by Chance by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani

Young African writers are in ascendance these days. This wistful and funny study of world of the 419 scam was the best and most heartening of the lot. I never quite got to Sarah Ladipo Manyika's In Dependence or my friend Nii Ayikwei Parkes's Tail of the Blue Bird so those will have to be part of the 2010 contingent.

Theatre

The Cutting Ball's production of Ionesco's The Bald Soprano was a tonic, what with its great translation and interpretive gusto, but then you know that I love all things Ionesco.

Movies

• In The Loop
  The best film of the year. The best adaptation of the year. The most fun of the year. A satire of the build up to the Iraq war, it hit harder than all the war movies. The Alistair Campbell character is larger than life but the entire cast shines.
• Goodbye Solo
  Ramin Bahrani is fast becoming my favourite director; he manages to get so much out of his actors. I'm fairly sure I've been driven by a taxi driver with the same spirit as Solo (wonderfully played by Souleymane Sy Savane) in Boston. They caught the magic with this gripping meditation on life and family ties. The previous year's Chop Shop was gritty and heart-breaking.
• Killer of Sheep
  Talking about strays of the world, how about a portrait of working class life in 1970s Los Angeles. Charles Burnett's masterpiece only received a theatrical release after 30 years. I can still hear Dinah Washington's This Bitter Earth play in the background of a hot apartment in the summertime.
• Sin Nombre
  The most uncanny love story meets road movie meets Latin American gang life. Mesmerizing.
• Gomorrah
  No wonder the writer, Roberto Saviano, now needs police protection; Matteo Garrone's adaptation brings stark visuals to a relentless milieu of social corruption and violence.
• District 9
  I hope Neill Blomkamp never gets budgets ala James Cameron, his scrappy aesthetic and expedient innovations are fine by me.
• Nuts in May, Abigail's Party
  Happy-Go-Lucky also was my top film of 2008 hence I went on a Mike Leigh spree and revisited many of his early television pieces. Fun all around.
• Life and Nothing But
  The aftermath of the first world war is a great backdrop for a meditation on loss and love. Another Tavernier-Noiret collaboration.
• Mapp & Lucia (series one)
  I have long loved E.F. Benson's Mapp & Lucia series, its celebration of beastly manners are economical marvels of observation. The television series didn't disappoint.

Music

I have a series called The Lost Reviews in the works so I'll simply note the high points.

• Dwele was naughty and nice, touring in support of 2008's Sketches of a Man. The addition of the horns in the live show made all the difference especially on Travelin' Girl. The swagger was well deserved, he's an artisan of soul.
• Alice Russell caught the spirit during her Pot of Gold tour. She has impeccable taste and a golden voice. Let us be loving her.
• Meshell NdegeOcello had the baddest band since The Revolution.
• Amel Larrieux was in flight, my favourite musical brave bird continued to tour as she worked on her next album. Frankly I can't wait.
• Charlie Hunter was a bad man, a genius of the soulful guitar. Run to see him live or at least catch his latest album, Gentlemen, I Neglected To Inform You You Will Not Be Getting Paid.

And then there were the passings. Michael Jackson's death left a hole in my heart. The concert film was no consolation and the tributes barely salved the soul; the thrill is gone. Add to that the recent passings of Willie Mitchell and Teddy Pendergrass and what is a soul lover to do. Rest in peace.

Late Pass:

Kutiman's Thru You was the most creative album of the year, all the more impressive since Youtube was his orchestra and jam band. Dig it.

On to 2010. My mantra: focus and produce.

File under: review, literature, appreciation, culture, observation, music, soul, movies, film, theatre, toli

The France IBM Connection

An allegorical foray wherein I suggest that one of the better analogies for IBM, and particularly its Software Group, is to consider it akin to France. Sacré bleu: a touch of whimsy on Bastille Day. As they say

Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité

• The French Connection
• Why We Are Rebelling Against The Old Guard
• Le Cinema
• La Bibliothèque
• Le Cabaret

The French Connection

I've been getting a little reflective as my 10 year anniversary at Lotus/IBM comes up next week. I'm not normally one for anniversaries but lots of things have been coming together (or falling apart) that make this a good time for some musing.

As I've written previously, this is an interesting moment in the technology world. After a quite severe retrenchment and some stagnation, all of a sudden there is a glimmer of light. Many companies are lighting a fire of innovation and building useful things on the web based on very simple primitives. We have absorbed the lessons of 10 years of Moore's Law in the data center, and as Joe Kraus has noted, it is a great time to be an entrepreneur (Mark Fletcher has piped in too). Still, lots of companies have lemons to sell and are falling back onto the hard sell of tone-deaf marketing to compensate for a lack of substance.

As an amateur historian of technology, I've been trying to consider where my company falls within this continuum. I like arguments by analogy and hence have been searching for a metaphor to describe the tribes of IBM.

The Governor of Redmonk characterized IBM as a broad church, a bazaar and melting pot

All views are present (and correct). All views are tolerated.

Others would have it be a cathedral, full of dogma and staid and obsolete blue-shirted mandates. In the 1990s, as that self-congratulatory pablum from Lou Gerstner went, it was about "trying to make an elephant dance", slashing and burning jobs, focusing on services and huge outsourcing deals rather than products and technology (the reviews in the previous link are quite revelatory). All of these characterizations are unsatisfactory, yet each have a grain of truth as with all coinages. Big Blue is all of these things and much more.

In conversations with colleagues and in reading the internal forums and blogs at IBM, there is an undercurrent of introspection and lot of soul searching. Sometimes this is even more critical and severe than from the outside. A sample:

Caring only about making the work numbers add up rather than actually improving the product doesn't seem to be real great way to a) run a business or b) get your developers to be passionate about their work.

Hopefully all of you will win your own innovation vs. mediocrity skirmishes in the future, and help that stock price edge higher :)

When I meet new people and tell them what I do for a living and who I work for, they are universally impressed yet each will have some story about how we could do better.

Cringely recently commented on dropping an applet developed by IBM and had this to say

"There was nothing wrong with IBM. Far from it - IBM Research was a terrific partner. But big companies have big licensing issues and smaller organizations sometimes give more personal support."

Might this be a trend, who knows? One must admit however that there is a perception of complexity, unnecesary layers or of bureaucratic overhead.

My only comment about a strategy that focuses on services is that

• There is a straight line from complexity to consultants
• No one really wants consultants

Per contra, as someone hired by Lotus, I have always wanted to work on things that people inherently want to use and buy rather than something they grudgingly accept. Aside from the effect in the market, there's that little matter of motivation for the day job in what is ultimately a creative endeavor.

In observing IBM Software Group's dealing with the Lotus portfolio over the years, I can say that it hasn't always been pretty and that the things that seem to be rewarded are very different from the aesthetic that actually seems to be "getting things done". In an era of mass layoffs and belt-tightening (raises anyone?), this is a little puzzling. Still it is a work in progress and we should simply strive to be more effective advocates and lead with running code as we play The Great Game. Thus I come to the France-IBM connection...

During my recent trip to London, I came across an article that I believe best expresses some of what I've been thinking about IBM, I reproduce it below. It is actually also one of the most illuminating pieces about France in the current moment. In reading it with my French cousins, we remarked that it was ironic that we had to read something so perceptive about France in English, and in London rather than in France. 5 very crucial years of my life were spent in France thus I empathize with the sentiment of the piece.

I'm suggesting then, that the correct analogy for IBM is to consider it akin to France.

Like all analogies, the France-IBM connection has its problems and I should say at the outset that it more precisely fits the IBM Software Group which is only a sliver of IBM. There are many parts of IBM that are completely alien to me. Handwaving a little, one can start by saying that France, like IBM in the technology world, is a Great Power with much clout. The grass typically pays close attention to what elephants are doing. Still, it is also the case that as a Great Power, it has seen better days and it can't fall back on the gravy trains of yore from its colonies and the dwindling list of post-colonial proxies. Its dirigiste economy might be like the "mandates from on high" and "Roadmaps ™" that I hear about but never actually read, or indeed follow. A colleague recently quipped that it was typical of IBM that a "roadmap would be put in place for radical simplification".

In my whimsical story, PITTs: Naming an Aesthetic where I struggled to label my own outlook on technology, I mentioned that William Pitt The Elder's ingenuity in The Seven Year War

"destroyed the military prestige which repeated experience has shown to be in France as in no other country the very life of monarchy, and thus was not the least considerable of the many influences that slowly brought about the French Revolution."

The analogue of England and Pitt for France, might be the rise of Microsoft, Intel and Sun in the past and all of those snappy web companies in the present for IBM. This has meant that the "No one ever got fired for buying IBM" line is no longer quite so true. In times of retrenchment, we are all picky about what we choose and will build it ourselves if possible.

I don't know much about the hardware side of IBM, but one could perhaps also handwave a little and compare IBM's losing out to Intel on supplying Apple to be reminiscent of Paris losing the bid for the Olympics to London. In this analogy, like France we were ever confident that we had the better facilities and roadmap, we were all about the enterprise and the high end. Perhaps with a touch of noblesse oblige, we ignored The Low End Theory. Was IBM simply Marie-Antoinette saying "Let them eat cake"?

In any case, this is just an allegory, let's see how well it works.

"Aux armes citoyens."

Why we are rebelling against the old guard

As France prepares to turn its back on the latest vision of Europe, a French writer vents his fury with his country's 'arrogant' elite.

by Renaud Fessaguet
The Observer, Sunday May 29, 2005

I travelled recently to London with a French television crew to try to discover what makes Britain such a success story. Sounds unlikely? Thirty years ago, British journalists used to cross the Channel in search of inspiration from the French. Does it mean that we are in urgent need of inspiration and of new models? Perhaps.

I've been thinking about the various approaches to software development inside IBM and comparing them to what our competitors and especially our users actually do when they put technology to work for them. Many others have been advocating pragmatism internally and that IBM should do business much like the rest of the world is doing.

More certainly, it signifies that the republican model is experiencing a profound crisis. Oddly enough, France remains one of the wealthiest countries in the world, one that everyone lauds for the quality of its workforce and infrastructures.

IBM is the largest technology company in the world. Annual revenues tend to be around $100 billion.

But it is also true that l'esprit France doesn't work any more. The passion and energy have gone. The Gauls are tired, depressed and entrenched in their 'village'. Above all, the French are afraid of everything: the summer heat, the outside world ... and the stirring rhetoric that has guided us for so long.

See also: overheard. 13,000 employees laid off. Beating inflation these days?

Liberalism, pragmatism, flexibility ... all have become tainted and entered into the already chunky dictionary of taboos. For so many things are taboo in modern France. For instance, it is taboo to point out that our political elite is ageing, arrogant and cynical. Like most French people, it takes no interest in new technology, in sharing power or knowledge - remember President Chirac, puzzled by a computer mouse?

What's the web? What's a feed? What's RSS/Atom? What are blogs? What are wikis?

It is taboo to claim the French elite has recklessly seized all the levers of power and is running the country in an inefficient, if not inept, way.

"What feature is it you might ask? there was no way to bookmark anything in WebSphere Portal?"

Hundreds of French leaders, including diplomats and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, don't speak English, an ignorance which makes them unable to understand the buzz of the global world, forcing them to depend on secondhand information.

What does it mean to be on the web?

It is taboo to say the French elite has found shelter in comfortable niches high up within the administration or on big company boards, both private and public. Isn't it amazing, for instance, that none of the leaders of the left-wing parties campaigned against the increase in food prices after the euro launch in 2002, which has resulted in increases as high as 6.5 per cent.

Buzzwords, buses, frameworks.

The dictatorship of diplomas, the system which demands a formal qualification for any job, which ignores raw talent, however extraordinary it might be, has produced a terrible paradox, empowering mediocrity and irresponsibility, a whole mentality overshadowing the schools, judiciary, media and, ultimately, our national life.

For diplomas, substitute patents and a concern for good products.

This last, the tyranny of patents is worth dwelling on. If one looks at software as a fungible thing and just as a springboard for career advancement, then you will have the notion of viewing the development organization as merely a technology incubator and treat it accordingly. There appear to be perverse incentives in what is rewarded by the organization. These incentives leads to a lack of balance between innovation as expressed in amassing a portfolio of defensive software patents, and innovation that comes from developing lightweight solutions and products that solve problems. The result is technology for technology's sake in other words, and a plethora of frameworks and buzzwords that ignores the effects of said technology on those who are simply trying to get on with things and have problems to solve. A little too often and, as the indoctrination of new hires attests, what is loudly trumpeted is that the way to advance, the way to grab the Fistful of Dollars at IBM, is by filing patents. Those slow pokes contemplating solid products and services are so passé.

See also: Why You Need a Degree to Work For BigCo

It is taboo to point out that the media establishment is timid and has surrendered to the politicians for economic reasons, since it lives mainly on public subsidies and junkets.

It is taboo to discuss the sacred retirement age of 55 or 60, when growing life expectancy will create a tremendous disruption in the pensions system.

We have inherited the most stubborn unions - does that sound familiar to you? - together with the stingiest of employers. In an obscene complicity, they are fossilising the whole social system and perpetuating one of the most rigid labour markets. But mentioning this is again taboo.

Just a paycheck, non?

It is considered unacceptable to argue for easier procedures for company start-ups, and unheard of to complain about the heavy, complicated and inefficient tax system.

File under bureaucracy. See also: "Make sure to call the legal department before you ______." Breathe?

It is vulgar to say that technical skills might be useful for new generations. French families will prefer to call on the famous Polish plumber - or his Ukrainian colleague - obviously paid for in the black economy.

Busloads of consultants or software that enables Glue Layer People? I volunteer a few of these good folks and various others as the Polish plumbers of IBM (some even look the part).

Will they get turned away from Bordeaux like those Romanians who come to help with the wine crop are? To give some context, the French have erected internal border posts at the gates of Bordeaux to triage "Eastern European foreigners coming to work". Unlike the Brits who are welcoming new ideas and labour, the French are navel-gazing.

But one of the biggest indignities is inflicted upon French youth, viewed by the elite with contempt. Youngsters are the usual and permanent suspects to the establishment, which prefers parking them at extremely high social and financial cost in crammed and impoverished universities - mentally and structurally. The list of taboos is endless.

"We seem to only be hiring interns these days" - [redacted]
"The word is is that they can be more easily 'molded'." - [redacted]

The interns and the new hires (mostly computer scientists these days) are being treated as cannon fodder, made to work insane hours and to forget about the big picture... Any glory that comes will be on the manager who found them who can bask in the glow of being the only grown up around. You then hear talk about "One of so-and-so's 'finds'". As a colleague put it in another poetic analogy,

"At the end-of-summer country fair, managers will get to show off their prize vegetables. He who has the best manured fields claims the prize."

I asked, "do those people actually eat those vegetables or is it just for show?". The reply

Usually the larger they get the less flavor they have. All looks, no substance. Like California strawberries in February, great color on the outside, not flavor on the inside.

With tongue in cheek I would submit that it's a case of "The man from Del Monte, he said 'Yes'".

I belong to a generation impatiently fidgeting at the gates of innovation, modernity and creation. No wonder that more and more courageous and talented French people don't waste time with the unreal political scene. Don't expect them to vote on the referendum. They will most probably enjoy today meeting new challenges all over the planet.

Tessa reluctantly wrote about pragmatism, and I'll quote her again, if she doesn't mind, she is ever-quotable.

"I do whatever works. I strive to fail faster. It's the results that matter, and simplicity (stripping layers) is celebrated because time is precious. We don't have time to waste on complexity and buzzwords; we're already behind on inventing the future."

I have met remarkable French men and women in China, South Africa, America and now in London, where 250,000 of them live and work. This is a very new rift among the French: between those risking to take their chances on the global front and those clinging to a fossilised society at home.

Kubi, Bowstreet...

This crisis suggests that France is just waking up from a long dream and facing the fact that the old myths of the postwar era and of the Resistance - social security, public jobs, a certain idea of fraternity and solidarity - are no longer enough.

I just hit 45 and I am not ready to live without dreams or expectations in a stuffy France. This is why I will voice a frank and staunch yes to the European constitution.

We urgently need fresh air, the winds of modernity and pragmatism blowing on the banks of the Seine. But who will dare open the window?

I repeat my challenge:

"Are we prepared to change our corporate structure and have profits come more from well-designed and usable software as opposed to consultantware? Are we prepared to eat our babies and make products that have much lower operational costs?"

Renaud Fessaguet is a television journalist and producer.

Postscript

Even though the French said non on the inconsequential EU treaty, there's a great chance they will continue to reward Chirac and his cronies in the next elections. As a quote, put it,

Danielle shrugs: 'Les Français, ils sont un peu con. Ils sont jamais contents.' Roughly translated: 'They're awkward sods, the French. They're never happy.'

I am happy however. I was raised by a village called Lotus. As a native son, I make my own call to arms to that village and hopefully I will find fertile soil. The rest of France, well that is for others.

Le Cinema

The French will never let us forget that it was Les frères Lumière who invented le cinema. Still on this Bastille day, I'll rather celebrate France not with Truffaut, Melville or Godard but rather with a list of films by foreigners.

• Paths of Glory
  
  
  
  Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece and one of the best war films. It also happens to be one of the most-powerful anti-war films I've seen. Quite relevant apropos central command, cannon fodder, the career advancement imperative, sacrifice, and idées fixes. The story of the French elite during the First World War is much the same today, this time however it is sclerotism and unemployment rather than those muddy trenches and mustard gas.
• A View to a Kill
  
  
  
  This great B-movie, the prototypical James Bond flick isn't all about France even if the Tour Eiffel is among the scenic locations where Roger Moore fights it out with Christopher Walken & Grace Jones. Still the good and bad guys pass France by. Instead of being the name of the game it is just an occasional backdrop. Also note Duran Duran's excellent theme song of hubris.
• L'Afrance
  
  
  
  
  
  L'Afrance is Alain Gomin's wonderful 2001 film about France, Africa, immigration and ultimately alienation. It is simply the best African film of the past 5 years and perhaps even the past decade. A no-frills parable about identity, culture and belonging, it continues to resonate strongly with me. Perhaps because it's the African immigrant who through bureaucratic ineptitude finds himself "out of status" and becomes an illegal alien. A great view of the frayed ends in French and African societies much like Dirty Pretty Things illuminated the underbelly of London. You can order the French dvd if you can handle dvd region coding.
• The French Connection & The French Connection II
  
  
  
  
  
  In each of these classic films, France is the subtext. In the first, the French villains are aloof, methodical and malevolent but the action takes place in the US. Director, William Friedkin, serves us the best and most manic car chase of all time. In the sequel, Gene Hackman's driven cop is lured over to France as bait in pursuit of those who got away, but gets caught by the bad guys and loaded up with drugs. The scenes of him trying to kick the heroin habit are among the most harrowing ones the silver screen has seen. Ironically, the chase that ends it all is of him on foot chasing cars and boats. John Frankenheimer is a genius.

La Bibliotheque

Some further reading on the France IBM connection:

• The Soul of a Company
• Act your age

  The key is to find a Pragmatist who is desperate, or as Moore says, a "Pragmatist in Pain". They have a problem, and they need it solved very badly. In fact, they are so desperate for a solution that they are willing to break ranks with their Pragmatist peers and be the first of their kind to try your product.

  I'm wishing that IBM were a pragmatist in pain, instead I've been seeing only pain from my lowly vantage point.
• The Organization Man by William H. Whyte
  Thanks Tessa for the pointer to this book and that chapter about "The Fight Against Genius". Very illuminating.
  
  
  
• Office Politics by Wilfred Sheed
  
  I came across this novel through a delightful appreciation piece in the Washington Post and it seemed like a parable of sorts. I had to order immediately even though it has gone out of print. I don't know why reading this synopsis hit home, it couldn't possibly have wider applicability. It's just a novel after all and anyway it's not about France so I hope you'll pardon this juxtaposition.

  "...George is no longer sure there's much at the Outsider worth believing in. Its charismatic editor, a transplanted Brit named Gilbert Twining, has loads of facile charm and wields a keen editorial pen, but whether there's anything behind the charm is open to question. The rest of the magazine's tiny staff is a conglomeration of oddballs and misfits "hand-picked" by Twining, apparently "on some principle of interlocking incompatibility." One editor, Brian Fine, is "chubby and small" and, beneath a veneer of amiability, seethes with bitterness and frustrated ambition. Another, Fritz Tyler, is thin, supercilious and cynical. The accountant, Olga Marplate, longs to be a tyrannical efficiency expert, while the advertising man, Philo Sonnabend, wanders around in a fog of dotty incompetence.
  
  Individually and collectively they are spineless -- if Twining raised an eyebrow in his direction, "Brian Fine would topple over like a doll with a round base" - yet the office positively crackles with rivalry and intrigue. Brian invites George to lunch one day and lays out the alignment of forces - the alignment, that is, as Brian chooses to see it - in the course of which he says that Twining suffers from the "weakness of great men to keep their subordinates from growing." George is nonplussed. He thinks:
  
  "Wait a minute, you're supposed to be on their side. Don't you understand the game? Olga and Philo and one editor against Twining and me and the office boy. George found that the game, as game, was getting a stronger grip on him. CBS politics had been played on too large a field, so you couldn't see the players at the far end. This stadium was just the right size."
  
  So off they all go, conniving and conspiring and back-stabbing and all the other things that make life in the office - any office - so endlessly delightful and produce such delicious streams of office gossip. George tries to explain it to his wife: "Let's take an example: the office. A, let's say, wants to get rid of B. C agrees, but not on A's terms. They both approach D --" and when she interrupts with what he regards as quibbling objections, he insists that "the equation goes on all over town." Okay, he says, "just go down to any playground, and what do you find? A, B and C again. One leader, one whiner, one mischief-maker. . . . Sometimes there's a tricycle to fight about on the playground, and sometimes there's a nickel on the ground. But the jockeying of ego is the real story."

• Why smart people defend bad ideas
• Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes
  
  
  
  

  C'est moi.

  This remains one of my favourite novels.
• The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus

  I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

• "Sharp-elbowed bureaucratic maneuvering"
• On the limitations of Lotus Notes on the web
• Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
  Well you can't exactly leave the bibliotheque without Hugo, that's like England without Dickens.

Le Cabaret

We need a cabaret soundtrack for this histoire. Évidemment.

• La Marseillaise

  Aux armes citoyens

• Edith Piaf - Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien

  Non, Rien de rien

• Serge Gainsbourg - Je t'aime... moi non plus (ft. Jane Birkin)
• Plastic Bertrand - Stop Ou Encore
  Europop defined and a concentrated encapsulation of wit, alienation and the soul searching of youth
• Charlotte Gainsbourg - Lemon Incest
  Still a shocker as befits a father-daughter duo, talk about eating babies.
• Barbara - Mon pote le gitan
  From the woman who gave the world Ne me quitte pas comes this revelatory tome about "her buddy the gypsy". Condescension, racial attitudes and idées fixes have never sounded so good.
• Albert Marcoeur - C'est raté C'est raté
  hat tip to Mr Feinberg for this great track

  C’est raté, c’est raté, quand on s’énerve on rate toujours

  If you get angry you always mess things up.
• Cameo - Rigor Mortis
  The funky sound of Technical Arteriosclerosis.
• Les Nubians - Demain
  The French are asking what tomorrow will bring.
• Teena Marie - Ooo La La La
  We have to end with Teena Marie's greatest ballad

  Sweet thing You've got me singing
  Ooo La La La

Have a bottle of Bordeaux today. A bientôt...

File under: France, IBM, whimsy, technology, history, culture, Lotus, software, satire, parable, patents, best practices, development, movies, literature, observation, Office Politics, bureaucracy, toli

Strange Days

These are strange days...

• Air Conditioner Season
• Billion Dollar Salary
• ¿Se Habla Español?
• Room 419
• Voodoo outside Bedroom
• Overheard
• Aburi Masks, Toy Story & Frosted Flakes
• Strange Fruit
• Strange Books
• Strange Days
• A Strange Playlist

Air Conditioner Season

The Girlfriend and I were looking at each other Sunday afternoon, the hottest day of the year to date. She, annoyed that I was on the computer, I, a little harried, and both of us getting a little irritated at being inside a hot apartment when it was so nice outside. Plus her family was about to make their presence felt later on the week, our respective apartments were disasters, and we were juggling that state of controlled chaos called marriage preparation. We were just at the point when sharp retorts and reciprocal disgust were about to be exchanged when we heard some insistent bangs from outside. Looking through the window, we saw that someone was trying to install an air conditioner on the window of their second floor apartment. They didn't seem to be proceeding with authority and were struggling, trying to secure it to the wood frame. There was lots of scraping and sounds of amateur handymen at work. Turning back to the computer, I muttered absent-mindedly, "I hope there's more than one person doing this".

From the Girlfriend's vantage point, it looked as if like there were 2 people at work.

I asked, "Do they have a book underneath to support it? Or a piece of wood or something?" We couldn't figure that out but assumed as much.

Anyway we thought no better of it and tried to recapture the thread of our frayed conversation: lists of guests, costs, scheduling tasting sessions, your garden-variety planning minutiae.

Anyway, we then heard a loud crash as the air-conditioner fell from that very second floor of the house under the influence of Newton's gravity. I actually caught the sight of the falling hunk of metal from the corner of my eye.

Silence in the house next door.

The Girlfriend laughed nervously and I quickly hushed her. Who knew how they would react to laughter or ridicule?

No sound in the house, not even a S**t, Damn, M**********, like D'Angelo would have expounded.

Others rushed to their windows at the commotion to inspect the fallout. We all counted our blessings that the little girl who used to live in that house, and play alongside it, had moved out, along with her mum (that last, the story of Cambridge where The Locals were being priced out by The Developers and consequently The Yuppies were moving in like those two in that apartment, but that's fodder for later toli).

Silence.

We speculated that beers were being consumed in the apartment, or the strongest of liquors.

Eventually someone walked down to inspect the damage, apparently it didn't look pretty, judging by the way The Girlfriend gasped.

But still there was not a sound as the mass of cooling metal was probed and prodded. No frustration, anger or shock.

Nada, Niet, Non, No, Nee.

That was the cue for The Girlfriend to leave my sorry apartment...

"We'll talk later."

Postscript:

A day later, she reported that her brother and his roommate had tried installing an air conditioner that same day and had dropped it too. In their case they were on the first floor and luckily it caught on something on the way down and hence there was not as great a scene as we had experienced and it could be patched together for whenever they attempted to re-install it. In that instance too, there was the almost immediate resort to drinking after they rescued the appliance - confirmation of our earlier surmise. I wonder what insurance company actuaries have to say about this time of year. Is there a statistically significant increase in injuries from falling objects? And what about alcohol consumption?

This must be prime beer drinking and air conditioner dropping season.

Billion Dollar Salary

"A US hedge fund manager was personally paid $1.02 billion last year, it was believed... Edward Lampert, founder of ESL investment..."

t is deemed un-American to say that anyone is too rich so there'll be no snarky comment about Gilded Age excess. Also I don't want to get on some list at the Department of Homeland Security (as for example anyone trying to pay cash for a plane ticket to the US, or trying to buy one-way plane tickets in these troubled days).

Still: $1,020,000,000!
In 1 year!

¿Se Habla Español?

We caught the last set of the amazing French Open final between Nadal and Puerta on NBC, one of the best matches I've seen, even better than the Safin/Federer match from a few months ago. What also piqued my interest was the coverage of the speeches afterwards. Both of the players spoke in Spanish, and get this, those Frenchies had the gall to translate their comments into French. I was quite shocked by the fact that NBC, knowing in advance that this was a final between a Spaniard and an Argentinian, couldn't find someone to translate what they said. Indeed it was only after the first speech that they managed to find someone to translate.

Still the Nothing Bad to report Corporation (NBC) surprised me in that

1. They had no spanish translators for an all hispanic match
2. The commentators were audibly shocked that these soon-to-be millionaires spoke in spanish and didn't even attempt english (although at the tail end of the ceremony there were a few phrases)
3. what translation there was was only to French

Eventually they found someone who could translate the second speech but it was clear that it was someone who understood only French thus there was a great delay before we got a sense of what was being said: a triple translation gamut (long spanish rambling, slightly hesitant French and then the briefest of English sentences "He thanks everyone".

No inglés

Room 419

When we walked out of the History of Science department at the Science Center at Harvard after The Girlfriend's dissertation defense (abstract), we were confronted with Room 419 - our Nigerian friends would have something to say about that juxtaposition of scholarship with the mark of former oil officials, sons of General Abacha and scorn of unsuspecting Texas legal secretaries and run-of-the-mill California businessmen everywhere but let's leave that alone.

Voodoo outside Bedroom

Imagine waking up one morning and seeing this Blair Witch when you look out of your bedroom window.

This "thing" is still staring at me a month later as I put on my clothes in the morning and before I go to sleep (it glows a little in the dark). It seems to change position every now and then, I suspect the passing squirrels and skunks run into it as they try to scavenge the nearby garbage bins. (Sidenote: I recently was confronted by a skunk as I was taking the garbage out. It was doing a mighty acrobatic maneuver trying to dig some food out of a slightly open garbage bin that perhaps validated Darwin's theory of evolution and notion of ingenuity born of necessity). I have decided that my voodoo doll it is meant to be a guardian angel. At least I hope so, that's the lesson of Eve's Bayou. I suspect some catholic affiliation in my neighbours thus the voodoo characterization is probably a little unfair. In any case, the "thing" is reminiscent of this scarecrow fetish piece I saw at an artist's retreat at Kokrobite beach a few years ago.

Overheard

Apropos the stories of impending layoffs (the 10,000 to 13,000 close to my Lotus/IBM home, not the 25,000 at GM), overheard at the office yesterday

"It's going to be a bloodbath."

Obviously no work is getting done as people ponder which favoured daughter will be given "opportunities" in other companies (however the undoubted forthcoming "action" is expressed). For my part, I'm basking in family and attending a Harvard graduation today, it's good to be among people who love you in uncertain times such as these.

Aburi Masks, Toy Story & Frosted Flakes

Ponder this collage if you will...

Well I did say this was a piece about odd things... And Toy Story figures collected from Frosted Flakes cereal boxes (I never got much past Corn Flakes and Weetabix), lying alongside some of my Aburi masks (from that long tradition of wood carving in my native Ghana), laid out on top of a "Babablanket', those Adrinkra-decorated patch quilts of lush cotton, make for literal Strange Bedfellows (I have filled up almost every usable inch of my walls with paintings and masks - contributing to the exasperation of The Girlfriend - so these 3 haven't found a home yet). Said Girlfriend was wondering about my sanity when she happened upon these photos. The middle mask is one of my favourites, it should scare everyone. It certainly gave the customs officer who inspected my luggage a little pause (the curse of the hyphen again). It also seemed to blend felicitously into the colours of the reverse side of the blanket.

For more see the Aburi Masks Album

Strange Fruit

Lastly could someone with green thumbs let me know what the name of this fruit is? My aunt grows it in her garden in Ghana and I remember having some of its milky content as a child. It tasted strange but was the kind of thing you need to have to rejuvenate your palate every now and then.

[Update] Various kind souls name it soursup and give playlist suggestions to boot. Bernard Devlin goes one better by providing the obligatory link to a nice page on the soursup and its close cousin, the custard apple. Thanks all. It's been a while since I've tasted that strange confection and now I know the name, I'll be on the lookout for some.

Strange Books

Alienated reading for this piece

• Albert Camus - The Stranger - The apogee of existential angst and anomie
• Robert A. Heinlein - Stranger in a Strange Land - Do you grok science fiction?

Strange Days

The obligatory cinematic reference:

• Strange Days
  
  James Camerons' 1995 exercise in Pre-Millennium Tension and hustle par-excellence (before Titanic hubris set in). Ralph Fiennes and Angela "Tough" Bassett are riveting in this twisted tale of forlorn dreams and dreamers as the Millennium turns. Juliet Lewis purrs suitably and Tom Sizemore is appropriately sleazy. This is what the last two Matrix movies aspired to (and failed to hit).
  
  
  
  
  
  The soundtrack had the ominous Overcome from Tricky's Maxinquaye (I should do a trip hop appreciation piece at some point) but the intent was better expressed in the later Pre-Millennium Tension album

A Strange Playlist

A soundtrack for this note.

• Cameo - She's Strange

  "And I like It"

• Ronnie Laws - Friends and Strangers
  Rare Groove heaven, sampled by everyone worth his salt
• The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Little Miss Strange
  Straight from the basement of Electric Ladyland
• Dave Brubeck Quartet - Strange Meadow Lark
  Paul Desmond's saxophone sounds sublime and oddly comforting
• Kruder & Dorfmeister - Strange Cargo, Million Town
  Mellow trippy madness
• Portishead - Strangers
  Ethereal theremones, zithers and industrial Bristol hip-hop break beats. The live version is wild.

  "Can anybody see the light?"

• Fried - Love is a Stranger
  Lush New Orleans soul meets Fine Young Cannibals aesthetic. Her voice stimulates so many neurons.
• Michael Jackson - Stranger in Moscow
  To my mind, his best song of the 1990s (even better than Remember the Time), that is until he got the Butterflies from Floetry
• Billie Holiday - Strange Fruit
  A few years ago there was a push to move the center of gravity of Lotus away from Cambridge, and many of us Cambridge-types were being encouraged to move, first to the anonymous strip mall that is Westford and then, when that failed, to Raleigh and the great vistas of North Carolina. Young and unattached, I strongly considered it, but as you know I like to take the bus and the Research Triangle is strictly a car affair. Thus it was interesting that I read this past weekend about burning crosses on the lawns of Durham and Klan leaflets being distributed. There is ironic comfort in Lewis Allen's lyrics and Lady Day's haunting voice

  Strange Fruit Hanging From The Poplar Trees
  Pastoral Scene Of The Gallant South

  Now of course The Dirty South has no monopoly on misguided youth or deeply rooted chauvinism, and of course the temperature and people are more congenial for me (I love visiting the South). But I know my place in America (at the intersection of Tenuous St and Hired Immigrant Worker Alley) and accordingly keep a low profile, other than my blogospheric posturing, because the undertones of race are very close to the fabric of this young country. My antecedents wouldn't take kindly to my trans-Atlantic journey ending ala Emmmet Till
• Nina Simone - Strange Fruit
  The notion that someone could add even more pathos and emotion to Lady Day's tune is quite amazing to me, but the High Priestess of Soul does it and with customary verve. It's like hearing the righteous indignation of Mississippi Goddamn. Goddamn.
• Cassandra Wilson - Strange Fruit - the current queen of jazz adds some scratchy acoustic guitar and a melancholy take on this standard and comes off with a great reinvention of the song that maintains all the familiar landmarks but reconceived anew and refreshed. I love what she does.
• Chaka Khan - Don't Talk to Strangers
  Speaking of Divas, Chaka is the best interpreter of Prince's songs in much the same way that Samuel L Jackson delivers the best rendering of Quentin Tarantino's words. There's an affinity and strange empathy between these two artists.

And finally a Prince medley, he is a strange one isn't he?

• Beautiful Strange - download the bootleg. Why oh why didn't he release this joint? It really sounds beautifully strange and is better than most of his recent commercial outings.
• Prince - Strange But True - This is the best track on Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic which was a welcome return to the strange soundscapes of Linn Drum and one-man-band heroics that characterized the Dirty Mind and 1999 album. Much like "All the Critics Love U in New York".
• Of course we should end with Sign O' The Times's Strange Relationship. At first listen, it seemed like a throwaway demo but after 4 listens you couldn't get it out of your head.

  Baby I Just Can't Stand To See You Happy
  More Than That, I Hate To See You Sad
  
  Honey If You Let My I Just Might Do Something Rash
  What's This Strange Relationship We Hold On To?
  

[Update] Some more obscure suggestions in the comments. Toli readers are indeed a strange breed. I love it.

File under: strange, whimsy, life, odd, music, movies, literature, business, irony, Aburi, Ghana, Cambridge, fruit, IBM, Lotus, work, toli