Would Be Goods Eventyr. The last entry was over a band I didn't much care for. It isn't that they are Canadian. I have sympathies in that direction. Now I will talk about the Would Be Goods. Even though I am leery because Jessica Griffin is much more sophisticated and intelligent than me. Most people are. First track, a delight, it's jangly, it's smart, her voice is arch and uncommonly English. Now a buzz saw guitar solo. Momtchiloff? I would like ot use his name as an exclamation! Is he still in Would Be Goods? He's surely terrifically suave and interesting, having travelled from Amelia Fletcher's orbit to Jessica Griffin. Like climbing free of the Alongonquin Round Table and ending up at court with Madame De Pompadour. It's smashing, a blast. Second track, a bit more of a stroll, still very English. Is she aware of her Englishness? At moments while adrift you might consider whether she really did escape from the frames of A Room With a View. Lucy Honeychurch's well studied but unseen tennis partner. Is she proud of her Englishness? I am possibly aware that her French is very refined. But then isn't that all too English? I am reading a bit about the Spanish Civil War. I am enjoying the tale of Louis Fischer. He was from the Nation and yet he was a partisan. How much more thrilling would newsmagazines be if they didn't pretend to be objective? Especially for the more hawkish types like Mark Steyn to take up arms on the side of choice and then write of their experiences. Staff memebers of National Review lined up in opposition to staff members of the New York Times. Not as an Ernie Pyle but as a Kleber or better yet a Junger born anew and absolutely intoxicated by the murder and death and all of the accompanying excitement of armed conflict. The English come off as a bit of a gang of boobies. Eden especially. The end of empire, when a country whose actual importance in the grander scheme of things has diminished but their self opinion has grown in stature. There was still India. There were far off places of empire to have a grand adventure on. Now? There is not. Where to find the next Kipling? The next Burgess? David Mitchell is well travelled, in his large head. I have no idea if his head is oversized. My own is. Living inside of your own head is a lonely existence. Third track, back to the flighty jangly pop. All of her records on Matinee have been almost identical. A slight variation on the Monochrome Set. They did used to provide backing for her. Perhaps she has time for Bid? Over a game of badminton at Balmoral? How wonderful if it had been the Would be Goods performing at the Royal Wedding? Can't you just see the stiffs grooving to the organ propelled In Bohmeia. Again, this is not much removed from everything else she has ever done but she has a likability. Is it down to my infatuation with her intelligence? I would like a girlfriend more intelligent than I am. Perhaps I have had many. Could be. But I haven't met many with a wide range of interests and with a willingness to take a tangent into the unknown. Really I am just looking for someone to come to George Gamow's grave with me and enjoy it. This track is groovy like a Tramway track. Like a song the Bristols might cover one day. Like a track that Laetitia Sadier would not admit to enjoying but would lift the essence from in a second. Quick stop. Next track, The Girl at Number 7. She's not much of a singer is hse. A bit nasal. A bit unaffected. A bit prissy. These are some of my favorite things. I would live happily if I was described as such, any day, any hour. Today is Father's Day. I started writing this entry a week or so ago. I enjoy time travel. I have changed quite a lot since i have started this entry. I am exceedingly wealthy, I drive a fancy automobile and wear really nice clothes these days. That was a short one, a vignette, a quick tale of the girl we've always known. Chelsea's Claudia Cardinale. Next track, smaller. I suppose if you were to diagram the grammar of these tracks it would be impeccable. This is a bit louche. Or as louche as Ms Griffin is capable of being in song. Is she more daring in person? Does she travel through the unkempt portions of London and act the miscreant tourist through the depravity on site and then write gently pasteurized pop songs a few hours later after her absinthe liquor has been absorbed by the air that surrounds after transpiring from her cillia and chromataphores. Next track, a bit more gothic. Has a touch of the Terminals-castratti-lyrics about practicing scales dressing like Madame Bonnard and impotence or lack of interest. It is all very Elizabeth Inchbald. I would say Jane Austen but surely the Would Be Goods are more obscure than that? The idea of a female fronted band is intriguing to me because the stereotype is the touched male genius from Mozart to Brian Wilson to the guy from My Chemical Romance. Portrayals of women as artists then seem by contrast as wounded spirits, oppressed, certainly not feted. You get the odd stand alone such as George Sand or Mary Wollstonecraft. She kept Shelley's heart in her desk drawer after all. is Jessica Griffin a tough taskmaster? Is she filled with these tiny little tales of victorialand? is Motchiloff amazed each time he sits with her and she strums her ukulele and sings 'all you little donkeys are going down to hell'. It sounds so elegant. If Amelia Fletcher is the world's second oldest teenager then Jessica Griffin represents the archetypal opposite, the old soul encased in muslin and and uncomfortable underwear. Bleached every third sunday. I don't like the smell of bleach, I've only just discovered this when cleaning my bathroom and being very nearly overcome. i could wake in a seemingly literary stupor and have attractions to verisimilitude and find myself in tuxedo and guitars and a member of the Would Be Goods in my shower knee deep in bleach and subway tile. Next track, I really rather enjoyed the last one, I should have done a finer job of exposition. This one is slower, this one is called Baby Romaine. "When love is over you run to catch your face in a mirror". Lupe from Pipas was once in Would Be Goods. Is she still? She has a PHD. There seem to be an overabundance of doctorates in London indiepop circles. Is it this which leads to the distance, these are lovely tracks, and I am sure they incribe an arc in the center of jessica Griffin's heart but it doesn't evoke passions and colors and senses of the soul. Does it? It's immaculate, clever and perhaps desultory. We love it, we love it still. Ignore my unkind words, they burrow their way out of the fascistic, darker creases of my cortex. Next track, clever organs, clever lyrics about hothouse flowers and analogies to hearts. Oh, it has never been done before! I kid. Rarely has it ben done better. Baby Romaine seemed to be concerned only with completing the pun. All of the vocals are identical. Is this some great and rare ability? "Subtle charms...", exactly. Now we've moved fromt he hothouse to the conservatory and hollyhocks. I really enjoy this one, the chorus is playful and expressive and charming, it is always charming. That could be the twitter review. "Charming". Twitter really is beyond the abilities of most. Is it not? I visited the site where sadly unclever types are compiling the twitter versions of the classics of western literature and it is dreadful. It is uninteresting. Pithiness is a rarer gift than monotonic vocal abilities. Who would have been master of Twitter if we could bring forward anyone from history? Oscar Wilde of course. His was a dearer form of narcissism, a self-protection racket from the greater world who could not appreciate. "I have nothing to declare but my genius." The Buddha? Babur? Stalin? Imagine a twitter from Stalin. instead of taking to the pages of Mundo Obrero he could tweet his latest aphorisms straight into the pockets of useful idiots the world round. Oh, last track, it is called Professor Momtchiloff mystery, I would hazard a guess then that he is still in the band. A funky instrumental, a spy thriller on the BBC so it is muted, restrained, weakened by the weight of the sunrays creeping underneath the velvet curtains. It's pretty ok. The world is a happier place with the Would Be Goods haunting the outward edges.

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