nextwavefutures

[nextwavefutures]

Money and nothing

In P.G.Wodehouse’s The Girl in Blue, nothing happens very elegantly and everything turns out for the best. New post.

The Girl In Blue is late Wodehouse, published in 1970, but in truth the world it inhabits could have been constructed at any time in the previous 40 years. The post war world breaks in from time to time: the strength of a large American woman is attributed to all the time such women spend on demonstrations, for example; the love interest is an air “hostess”, as they were then called. At the…

[nextwavefutures]

Greenwich Village before Bob: Inside Llewyn Davis revisited

I’m sharing some of the Dylan-related material that I’ve published over at Salut Live as part of our Dylan series there. The film A Complete Unknown is not the first time that Hollywood has wandered into the world of the early-60s folk scene in New York’s Greenwich Village.  The Coen brothers’ film Inside Llewyn Davis, released in 2013, is a fictionalised version of that pre-Cambrian folk world…

[nextwavefutures]

Blood on the Tracks [2]: Songwriter at work

Bob Dylan and Blood on the Tracks: The songs and the writing. The second part of my article on the record on its 50th anniversary.

The second of two posts marking the 50th anniversary of the release of Blood on the Tracks. Part 1 is here.  Dylan wrote the songs for Blood on the Tracks at his farm in Minnesota in the summer of 1974. At the time, he was distanced from his wife Sara and was having an affair with Ellen Bernstein, who worked for CBS Records. Sara had stayed in California with their children. When you read the…

[nextwavefutures]

Blood on the Tracks [1]: from Studio A to Minnesota

Bob Dylan’s masterpiece Blood on the Tracks is 50 today. Part 1 of a long retrospective article is up at Around the Edges. (Part 2 on Wednesday).

It is 50 years today since Blood on the Tracks was released—perhaps Dylan’s most complete record. This is a version of a long, long, review I’ve written for the folk music site Salut! Live—where I contribute. Part 1 today, Part 2 on Wednesday.  (Photo: Andrew Curry CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) Now that Blood on the Tracks is universally recognised as one of Bob Dylan’s finest records, it is easy to forget…

[nextwavefutures]

Understanding the so-called obesity ‘wonder drugs’

Over the holiday break Exponential View republished a piece by Azeen Azhar it had run earlier in the year on GLP-1 drugs. (In other words, drugs like Ozempic.) First time around, I’d noticed the headline, but not had time to get into the detail. But seeing it during the holiday meant I was able to give it more consideration. The Exponential View headline story is this: I reckon that they will…

[nextwavefutures]

One last big score

One last big score. Out of Sight has a preposterous plot but it works as a film because George Clooney invites you in to it.

Out of Sight was the first of several collaborations between George Clooney and the director Steven Soderbergh. It’s a slightly improbable story about a bank robber who is on the run after breaking out of jail (Clooney, of course), and Karen Sisco, a Federal Marshal who got caught up in the escape (played by Jennifer Lopez). She tracks him as he plans one last job. Actually, delete the…

[nextwavefutures]

Books of 2024–some old, some new

My books of 2024–some old, some new. New post on The Next Wave.

Before we get into the swing of the new year, I’m going to write briefly about some of the books that left an impression on me in 2024. These aren’t in any particular order, and there’s a mix of non-fiction and fiction. Dan Davies: The Unaccountability Machine Although these are not in a particular order, this is the book I’ve found myself coming back to more than the others. Davies sets out to…

[nextwavefutures]

Out on a bike

Out on a bike—from Edward Thomas to Richard Long to Alfred Jarry with the writer Jon Day. New post.

Jon Day’s book Cyclegeography is a sibling of several books about bicycles couriers that came out around the same time. I’m thinking also of Julian Sarayer’s Messengers and Emily Chappell’s What Goes Around, which both came out in 2016. Day’s book is more elegant than Sarayer’s. It is a bit more academic, and a bit less interested in the material conditions of the work, perhaps because he didn’t…

[nextwavefutures]

May you ‘fare well’ in 2025

One of the highlights of the career of the Scots dance-folk band Niteworks was being invited to do the music for the Edinburgh Hogmanay celebrations in 2020, the year of COVID-19. Niteworks, from Skye, disbanded earlier this year with a final series of concerts in London and Scotland (I reviewed them here). (Photo: Copyright Underbelly, 2020) Hogmanay, at the very end of the year, is a much…

[nextwavefutures]

The sense of home in It’s A Wonderful Life

Watching Frank Capra’s film It’s A Wonderful Life for what might be the dozenth time or so, but this time in the cinema, I noticed some things that tend to squeezed out by the high concept nature of the underlying story and the show-stealing performance by Lionel Barrymore as Potter. Repetition The first is the use of repetition. George Bailey (James Stewart) runs along the main street of…

[nextwavefutures]

12 days of winter songs

Songs of the season: 12 days of winter songs. New post at Around The Edges

Over at the folk music blog I contribute to, we have been running a series called ‘12 Days of Winter’ which celebrate folk songs about this time of the year. It mixes up religious songs, Christmas songs, and seasonal songs. The series finishes tomorrow, on Christmas Eve. You can find all the posts so far—all 12—at this link. The count down to #1. (Father Xmas in a wassail bowl, Illustrated…

[nextwavefutures]

Big Food, Big Tobacco, and ultra-processed foods

Big Food, Big Tobacco, and ultra-processed foods. New post at The Next Wave.

I try to keep track of developments in the food sector over at my Just Two Things newsletter, and Marion Nestle’s blog recently signalled a striking development in the world of ultra-processed foods. An extensive selection of the companies that make them have just been served with a lawsuit in an American court. This is the first time that this has happened. The list of defendants is quite…

[nextwavefutures]

States have a shelf life of about 200 years

States have a shelf life of about 200 years. They get worse at recovering from shocks over time. Post at The Next Wave.

I gave a talk on collapse earlier this autumn to the community of futurists that is co-ordinated by DEFRA, the British government’s Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. It was based on an article I wrote earlier this year, and discussed here in March. The presentation slides are linked at the end of this post. One of the things that popped up in the chat while I was talking…

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‘American Gigolo’ and ‘80s noir

‘American Gigolo’ and ‘80s film noir. New post at Around The Edges

I thought American Gigolo was a fantastic film when I saw it as a new release in the cinema in 1980. I knew something of director-writer Paul Schrader’s work and influences, and something of film noir, and it lived up to expectations. I hadn’t seen it since, and I wondered—when I saw that Channel 4 was showing it—how well it would have aged. The glossy look, the Armani suits, the Giorgio Moroder…

[nextwavefutures]

Creating paths for change

Jim Ewing’s book Transforming Uncertainty is a rich set of tools to help groups create paths for change. New post at The Next Wave.

I’ve been looking forward to the publication of Jim Ewing’s book Braving Uncertainty (Triarchy, 2024) ever since Graham Leicester referenced his work in a few pages of his book Transformative Innovation. Ewing was, until his death in 2014, a member of the group of practitioners convened by Graham at the International Futures Forum in Scotland. The manuscript for Braving Uncertainty was drafted…

[nextwavefutures]

The great fertility shift

Fertility rates are falling everywhere. The best explanation is that women don’t want to have so many children. But the looming economic challenges are enormous. New post

Nicholas Eberstadt had an article in Foreign Affairs on what he calls “The age of depopulation”. (It seems to be outside of their paywall). It would be more accurate, of course, to call it “the coming age of depopulation—we’re not quite there yet. But when global population does decline, it will be the first time since the Black Death, 700 years ago, that global population has fallen. Unlike the…

[nextwavefutures]

Farewell to the electro-folk band Niteworks

Farewell to the Scots electro-folk band Niteworks—going out in style. New post at Around The Edges.

I wrote this post for Salut! Live’s Facebook feature, Artist of the Week, which celebrated the work of the Scots band Niteworks, who are signing off in style in Glasgow this weekend. Niteworks’ last London gig A few months ago a friend asked me about bands that had crossed over between dance and folk music. He was a folk fan who had grown up with ‘90s dance music. It’s quite a short list. Simon…