Slippery Trollopes on Blue Monday

Hi everybody. Ignore all that 'Blue Monday' rubbish: it's just an abuse of science in the name of PR. Instead, have some music. Starting, appropriately, with New Order's 'Blue Monday'.



As it happens, I collect cover versions of New Order and Joy Division songs. One of my favourites is this 'Blue Monday', by the Côr Meibion Brythoniaid to promote the rather wonderful Festival No. 6, held in the weird and wonderful fantasy world of Portmeirion. Much to his shame, my experimentalist drone-rock friend Alan's dad is one of the singers.



I went to a very different musical event on Saturday. Wearied by making hollandaise, marking and teaching preparation, I headed to Birmingham's Symphony Hall for some virtuoso violin action. I'm not normally a fan of the classical western canon, preferring the medieval and the twentieth-century's dissonance and experimentation, but I couldn't resist Joshua Bell whatever he played. The highlight for me was Brahm's Violin Concerto: I didn't know he could be so exciting. The first movement's cadenza (improvised by the violinist) was just stunning, and deserved the applause it earned. After the interval Bell and the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields played Beethoven's Eroica: familiar and beautifully performed, but not as acrobatic as the Brahms. It all made up for Stoke losing to Crystal Palace earlier…almost.





Teaching started today. For me, it was straight in with the final-year students and the first of two weeks on Trollope's The Way We Live Now. It's a great big brick of a novel and resoundingly unfashionable. This baffles me: how can a novel obsessed with dodgy businessmen, élitist politicians, snobbery, public displays of wealth and racist attitudes towards incomers not strike a chord today? I don't know why the BBC doesn't repeat its 2001 adaptation.

I wasn't expecting any of the students to have finished it by this point, but I was pleased that so many of them were a good way in, and more of them than usual were ready to talk about it. I also discovered that they have a Carry On sense of humour: much giggling when I said 'Trollope is a bit slippery'! I was talking about his narratorial technique, kids!

Blue Monday?

Yesterday was far from being a Blue Monday, unless we're talking about the azure-coloured sky. I went to a wonderful place (the Weaver Hills and their environs), walked, saw countless larks and watched an enormous hare coolly leap a high wall topped with barbed wire.

But buying Hannah Peel's music-box covers of various songs including Blue Monday reminds me of a little hobby of mine: collecting Joy Division and New Order cover versions. So here are a few of my favourite Blue Mondays and a couple of others.

Here's the original:



Here's Hannah Peel's. The EP version is actually better: layered and lovely. But this is pretty good too.



I'll never tire of the Brythoniaid Cor Meibion's version, promoting last year's Festival Number 6. It's just magisterial.



As you probably deduced, I tend towards the melancholic: under the Detroit-influenced beats, much of New Order's work is downbeat and lost - the dichotomy is what makes them work. That said, here's Nouvelle Vague's Blue Monday, which I find insultingly clodhopping. This isn't a band in love with the material. Far too ironic.



Orgy, on the other hand, are heavy but perhaps too respectful:



Kylie Minogue's mashed up Can't Get Blue Monday Out Of My Head is a slice of cheeky genius though:



Also-rans: The Enemy should be ashamed. Chancers. Thankfully not online. I'm not sure how I feel yet about the Jolly Boys' calypso version either. And although I like elements, especially the viola, the Vitamin String Quartet's cover feels a bit like attention-seeking slumming. The Gregorian Chant version is execrable. Way too mannered (and this is from somebody who rejected everything about Catholicism except for the music) and frankly beneath them. The Brian Jonestown Massacre and Country Teasers versions are jolly thrashes, but not distinctive enough to detain us. You've got to do something different for a decent cover. Otherwise, what's the point?

Which is why I have a soft spot for these other New Order covers. First up, Boo Radleys' early shoegaze/thrash attempt at True Faith:



Then there's Frente's achingly beautiful 'Bizarre Love Triangle': the original buries the lyrics deep in the mix. Nouvelle Vague do a passable version too.



Then there's Rheinallt H Rowlands' gorgeous 'Gwawr Newydd yn Cilio', his  cover of Joy Division's 'New Dawn Fades'. I'm a huge fan of RHR. He covered several JD tracks: get them (legally) here, but don't believe a word of the biography.

Gwawr newydd yn cilio

Finally, some more stately misery. Firstly, June Tabor and Oysterband's rendition. I adore Tabor, but I'm not entirely convinced by this one. After that, Susanna and the Magical Orchestra's sparse, echoing version: good with the lights off.