Generally speaking (perhaps universally speaking if one restricts one's sample to the "youth of today") people would rather watch a talkie to a silent movie, and will watch a colour film in preference to one in black and white. When James Cameron releases Avatar, you can pretty much bet that people will flock to it so that they can ooh and aah over the 3D, and perhaps one day we will all resolutely favour films with the illusion of depth over the flat movies of yore.
There is, however, good reason to suppose that just after entertainment technology makes its critical forward leap, some of the best work will be done in the antiquated form of the medium that has just been outdated. City Lights, one of Chaplin's most revered films, was a (more or less) silent film made in 1931: four years after The Jazz Singer had pointed the way to the future.
September 9th sees tranche of wallet-emptying releases by The Beatles and the most impoverishing part of it is The Beatles In Mono: a 13-disc boxed set that will set you back £200 (or about twenty euros at the current rate of exchange). That's right, mono ... what you bought the headphones for.
The argument runs like this. The stereo versions of early Beatles albums were only ever an afterthought designed to generate a little additional revenue from the few trailblazers who had decided to invest in the new flash-in-the-pan audio format with one extra speaker. Most of the studio time was invested in perfecting the mono mix. Moreover, the stereo mixes were not "true" stereo: what they did was basically split the mono instrument tracks between the two channels, so you get separation but no soundstage.
If you want to form an opinion on all this, it will cost you twenty euros, or slightly more if you are relying on our domestic and quantitatively-eased currency.
But here's the thing. The Beatles In Mono doesn't just cost a bit more than The Beatles In Stereo: it costs vastly more. You can't just buy Please Please Me in mono together with its stereo counterpart and give them a listen, because the mono version is only available in the boxed set. So you will need to buy the mono boxed set plus as many of the stereo releases as you will want to hear.
Which is as it should be, because elitism costs, and right here is where you start paying.
If you just want to, y'know, "listen to The Beatles", you will be fine with vanilla stereo. But - assuming that you have all this stuff already - you will likely be buying for a second, third or fourth time to take advantage of the widely-hyped remixes and their improved sound quality.
If that is your motivation, can you really afford not to have the mono mixes? Because I can tell you this right now. Very few of those who shell out for The Beatles In Mono are going to end up holding the opinion that stereo is better.
That's a luxury they really can't afford.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Monday, August 24, 2009
The Quality of Mercy
Readers with a long memory may remember the Guildford Four being released from court after their conviction for the Guildford pub bombings was quashed. The scenes outside the court were indeed jubilant, as indeed they would have been in the home of Daniel Day-Lewis had he foreseen at that moment that from this acorn the mighty oak of Academy Award nominations for himself and Pete Postlethwaite would grow.
The release was a significant one, because they came at the end of a long (seemingly interminable) campaign that many onlookers of the time had associated with a propoganda war being waged at that time by Sinn Fein, an organisation then considerably less respectable than it is today. There was a strong sentiment that the attack upon the legal process that had resulted in the convictions of the Guildford Four, the Macguire Seven and the Birmingham Six was the continuation of war by other methods. Those who favoured a successful appeal were on the Republican side, almost be definition.
History has tended to see these belated acquittals rather differently ... has tended to see those reversed evident miscarriages of justice as heroically fighting not only against the immediate obstacle of a corrupt police force, but also the more remote antagonism of the British Public.
Abdelbaset Al Megrahi will never have the sensation of walking free with his name cleared. The second appeal against his conviction for the Lockerbie bombing was repeatedly delayed by a number of ruses, both political and judicial. Despite the fact that the Scottish Criminal Cases Commission concluded in 2007 (after a four year investigation) that there was a prima facie case for the second appeal to be heard, no such appeal ever took place. Despite the fact that Al Megrahi's case is due shortly to be heard at a still higher court, no one seems to have felt that there was any urgency to hearing the case.
Nevertheless, although we do not know with any great certainty whether Al Megrahi is guilty or innocent, the pictures of his arrival in Libya are surely suggestive. No medal was pinned to his chest, no U. S. flags burnt, Colonel Gaddafi did not congratulate him on a job well done. The reception was, instead, entirely consistent with the celebrations outside the high court in 1989 when the Guildford Four walked free.
Far from honouring a killer, the Libyans acted as though they thought Al Megrahi had been the victim of a miscarriage of justice. Quite possibly they were wrong, but unfortunately we are unlikely to know if so.
Not surprisingly, in a culture where it is still widely thought that Saddam Hussein was guilty of the 9/11 bombings, there is an equally strong conviction that Al Megrahi was guilty. The U. S. has been immoderate in its condemnation of the release, not least as a consequence of its own catastrophic failure to bring subsequent terrorists to trial. Having made prosecution impossible by its enthusiastic use of torture, the U. S. has become a bystander to international law, shaking its impotent fist while other countries embrace due process.
Which leads me to a modest proposal.
With its unique approach to international law, why does the U.S. not simply fly a drone over and blow Al Megrahi up? It would after all not be the first time that the U.S. has bombed Tripoli.
Indeed, for a truly unrepentant bomber one need look no further.
The release was a significant one, because they came at the end of a long (seemingly interminable) campaign that many onlookers of the time had associated with a propoganda war being waged at that time by Sinn Fein, an organisation then considerably less respectable than it is today. There was a strong sentiment that the attack upon the legal process that had resulted in the convictions of the Guildford Four, the Macguire Seven and the Birmingham Six was the continuation of war by other methods. Those who favoured a successful appeal were on the Republican side, almost be definition.
History has tended to see these belated acquittals rather differently ... has tended to see those reversed evident miscarriages of justice as heroically fighting not only against the immediate obstacle of a corrupt police force, but also the more remote antagonism of the British Public.
Abdelbaset Al Megrahi will never have the sensation of walking free with his name cleared. The second appeal against his conviction for the Lockerbie bombing was repeatedly delayed by a number of ruses, both political and judicial. Despite the fact that the Scottish Criminal Cases Commission concluded in 2007 (after a four year investigation) that there was a prima facie case for the second appeal to be heard, no such appeal ever took place. Despite the fact that Al Megrahi's case is due shortly to be heard at a still higher court, no one seems to have felt that there was any urgency to hearing the case.
Nevertheless, although we do not know with any great certainty whether Al Megrahi is guilty or innocent, the pictures of his arrival in Libya are surely suggestive. No medal was pinned to his chest, no U. S. flags burnt, Colonel Gaddafi did not congratulate him on a job well done. The reception was, instead, entirely consistent with the celebrations outside the high court in 1989 when the Guildford Four walked free.
Far from honouring a killer, the Libyans acted as though they thought Al Megrahi had been the victim of a miscarriage of justice. Quite possibly they were wrong, but unfortunately we are unlikely to know if so.
Not surprisingly, in a culture where it is still widely thought that Saddam Hussein was guilty of the 9/11 bombings, there is an equally strong conviction that Al Megrahi was guilty. The U. S. has been immoderate in its condemnation of the release, not least as a consequence of its own catastrophic failure to bring subsequent terrorists to trial. Having made prosecution impossible by its enthusiastic use of torture, the U. S. has become a bystander to international law, shaking its impotent fist while other countries embrace due process.
Which leads me to a modest proposal.
With its unique approach to international law, why does the U.S. not simply fly a drone over and blow Al Megrahi up? It would after all not be the first time that the U.S. has bombed Tripoli.
Indeed, for a truly unrepentant bomber one need look no further.
Saturday, August 8, 2009
Some Idiot Went To War And All I Got Was This Lousy Tee-Shirt
Like most of Britain's citizens, Sordel is content to fight his wars on the Home Front. I am not entirely convinced, however, that our Prime Minister should be allowed to do the same.
It used to be inferred from his sullen silence on the subject that Gordon Brown was no supporter of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. War, one felt, was incompatible with a man for whom prudence had become not so much a watchword as the nervous tic of a genteel Tourette. The mongering of war sits uncomfortably alongside fiscal responsibility, which is why many voters may have assumed that Brown would draw a line under the adventuring of his predecessor and quietly withdraw our troops from theatres of war with the discretion of an impresario closing a West End flop.
How wrong we all were.
Brown, it is true, is no wartime leader. One cannot imagine Churchill, or Thatcher, or Blair, presiding over a country at war without the occasionally morale-raising speech, the shake of the flag, the salute to the forces. Brown acts, however, like someone for whom war is conducted far away by strange and distant relatives.
It is an impression that can only have been fostered by Blair's own remoteness. One imagines Tony to have been like as a small boy at boarding school writing reluctant postcards to a disciplinarian and slightly mad aunt. "UN nice, food okay, send more money." "Thank you for the seedcake, dug out a rabbit hole on Saturday, send more money." "Met the president, going to war, send more money."
Sat at home with this collection of haikuesque epistles, the dismal Gordon could only have thought of statesmanship as something that happened to other people in distant lands. Mrs. Brown's little boy - admitted to Edinburgh University by the age of sixteen when most of his peers would have been getting their prefect badges and first serious girlfriends - continued along the sad little road upon which his feet had long ago been set.
No war for Gordon. No prefect badge for Gordon. Gordon excused school sport on account of a nasty injury incurred during rugby.
The result is a man gazing uncomprehendingly at war through a window-pane. When a crisis occurs for which he feels himself prepared (if, for example, someone is needed to pass billions of pounds across the table to the banking fraternity) Brown is the man for the job.
But war is something to which he takes no principled exception and to which he can make not the least practical contribution.
Helicopters? The brass might have more luck asking for seedcake.
It used to be inferred from his sullen silence on the subject that Gordon Brown was no supporter of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. War, one felt, was incompatible with a man for whom prudence had become not so much a watchword as the nervous tic of a genteel Tourette. The mongering of war sits uncomfortably alongside fiscal responsibility, which is why many voters may have assumed that Brown would draw a line under the adventuring of his predecessor and quietly withdraw our troops from theatres of war with the discretion of an impresario closing a West End flop.
How wrong we all were.
Brown, it is true, is no wartime leader. One cannot imagine Churchill, or Thatcher, or Blair, presiding over a country at war without the occasionally morale-raising speech, the shake of the flag, the salute to the forces. Brown acts, however, like someone for whom war is conducted far away by strange and distant relatives.
It is an impression that can only have been fostered by Blair's own remoteness. One imagines Tony to have been like as a small boy at boarding school writing reluctant postcards to a disciplinarian and slightly mad aunt. "UN nice, food okay, send more money." "Thank you for the seedcake, dug out a rabbit hole on Saturday, send more money." "Met the president, going to war, send more money."
Sat at home with this collection of haikuesque epistles, the dismal Gordon could only have thought of statesmanship as something that happened to other people in distant lands. Mrs. Brown's little boy - admitted to Edinburgh University by the age of sixteen when most of his peers would have been getting their prefect badges and first serious girlfriends - continued along the sad little road upon which his feet had long ago been set.
No war for Gordon. No prefect badge for Gordon. Gordon excused school sport on account of a nasty injury incurred during rugby.
The result is a man gazing uncomprehendingly at war through a window-pane. When a crisis occurs for which he feels himself prepared (if, for example, someone is needed to pass billions of pounds across the table to the banking fraternity) Brown is the man for the job.
But war is something to which he takes no principled exception and to which he can make not the least practical contribution.
Helicopters? The brass might have more luck asking for seedcake.
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