"Would you please stop that?"

Music Polish pianist Krystian Zimerman walked out his own concert on Monday evening after noticing someone recording the thing on their iPhone.

"Krystian Zimerman, from Poland, was distracted by the concertgoer while in the middle of playing Karol Szymanowksi's Variations on a Polish Theme in B Minor at the Ruhr piano festival in Essen.

Still playing, he raised his gaze towards the audience member, who was sitting in a balcony seat above him, and said: "Would you please stop that?"

"But while Zimerman, 56, resumed playing the work he had clearly lost his concentration, and left the stage shortly afterwards, evidently agitated."

He blames the amount of clips of things there are on YouTube.  But it's not just the results.  As some of the commenters note, what is destroying music and the enjoyment of going to see live music is "the entitled little shits out there who think they can film whatever and whoever they want."

 One of the reasons I've sworn off concerts is because you do end up spending most of the night dodging camera screens rather than listening to the music.

 If somewhere like the Globe Theatre is capable of policing this -- YouTube isn't awash with "unofficial" recordings of plays -- other venues should be able to as well if they cared to.

The Master.

Books  In 1940, George Orwell wrote a very long article about boys weeklies in which he suggested that Frank Richards, who created and wrote the Billy Bunter stories for Magnet magazine had to be a cover for a great number of different writers simply because of the sheer volume of work required to produce the amount of stories in publication.

He was half right. Frank Richards was a pen name, but for a single person, Charles Hamilton, who decided to write an equally long rebuttle in which he doesn't just take Orwell to task for misunderstanding his work load, but throwing The Magnet in with what he considers lesser publications but also argues against charges of plagarism [via].

Jonathan Morris answers his critics.

Audio With my rewatch of all of tv Doctor Who up and running, I'll probably run even further behind with Big Finish's releases so I've not heard Johnny Morris's The Shadow Heart, but that hasn't stopped me enjoying the writer's reaction to some of the negative reviews. He doesn't name names, but he does explain how it's impossible to please everyone all of the time:

"So I must admit to being a little non-plussed by a review dismissing the whole story as a parody of Star Wars. Now, the customer is always right, if that’s how it came across to them then that’s entirely valid. All I can say is that wasn’t the intention. If anything, writing science-fiction, Star Wars is something you’re always trying to avoid, because it is so well-known, so iconic. But on the other hand, there’s the problem that by doing so you restrict your canvas; do you never include a scene set in an alien pub because Star Wars did that? Do you never include a snow planet because Star Wars did that? It’s an interesting problem; do you consciously avoid anything that’s been done in Star Wars, or do you pretend Star Wars never existed?"

An entertaining old interview with Tracey Emin.

Art The Guardian's G2 supplement is 20 and although its essentialness has ebbed and flowed across the years, there's always, somehow, at least one piece of excellent or thoughtful writing each day be it the main article, one of the columnists or even the radio review. As part of their selection of highlights, they've pointed to this old interview in which Emma Brocke's actually tells Tracey Emin what she thought of her film Top Spot:

"Hey, guess what, yes there is, there's fucking lots of it. Have you seen the film?"
Yes.
"Do you like the film?"
I like bits of it. And I think bits of it are really slow. I think it drags in the middle.
"Which bit did you think drags in the middle?"
When they're in the museum. And all those seagull shots.
Emin looks as if she'd like to get out a knife and stab me in the head.
"Right. When was the last time you went to the cinema?"
Yesterday.
"What did you see?"
Comme une Image (Look At Me).
"Was every bit of it enthrallingly fantastic?"
I wasn't ever bored.
"OK."
I was aware of being bored when I was watching your film, however.
She takes a big breath. "I REALLY REALLY ... "
Christ. This is horrible."

The best part in this section?  How Emin assumes the reason Brockes doesn't like her film is first because she doesn't like films in general and then because she's not an art house fan, Emma throwing the amazing Look At Me back in her face.  Emin's mellowed in recent years. I wonder what she'd make of her behavior in this interview.  As Brockes says, "what's that got to do with you having made a boring film?"

Will Gompertz vs. JK Rowling.

Books Will Gompertz is doing that metablogging thing he does, on this occasion with JK Rowling, in which he writes about the process of creating the television interview rather than simply regurgitating the content. As ever it's a wayward pleasure, especially the moment when he compares JK to Walter from Breaking Bad:

""I'm sorry," says the bemused writer, "I don't understand what you are asking". She is being generous; the twitching muscles around her mouth indicated a laugh being suppressed with the utmost difficulty.

"Have you ever seen Breaking Bad?" I ask awkwardly.

"No," she says.

"It's about a school teacher- a Mr Chips type who becomes a crystal meth dealer."

She explodes with laughter.

"I see," she says, hugging herself. 'So I'm Mr Chips who's now selling crystal meth?"

Not in the text but in the video is the admission from JK that she wished she'd had more time for write some of the Harry Potter novels, one of the early ones, one from later which she says were created "on the run". Then she makes a squirmy face about reading some of the prose. Which goes to show that even best selling authors aren't entirely happy with the work which is published in their name.

"you can tell me to my face"

Music The Short Cuts section of tomorrow's Guardian includes a typically sarcastic missive from PopJustice's (the usually good) Peter Robinson regarding one of Charlotte Church's new tracks, Mr The News, a thinly veiled attack on Mr Murdoch.

It's the sort of thing which unless it's written by Marina Hyde or Hadley Freeman tends to end badly and sure enough some immensity materialises in the comments underneath when a new commenter claiming to be Charlotte Church arrives to correct instrument inaccuracies and lay waste to the sarcasm:

"I'd like to invite you to one of my gigs and then, if you still believe it to be true, you can tell me to my face that I sound like Matt fucking Cardle. By the way, It's a yukele that you can see in the background"

She returns later to correct the spelling of ukulele.  If I was The Guardian I'd ask Charlotte to write a longer rebuke or have full length pictures of her and Peter pointing at each other and scowling in the Saturday edition with a lengthy debate about what the point was.

Updated 14/06/2012  It is Charlotte.  She and PopJustice had a conversation about this on Twitter last night.  Difficult to link to it all, but PopJustice has agreed to go a gig.

"If I let some sentences be short that's a formal decision."

TV At the Illuminations blog, John Wyver reviews Matthew Collings's latest arts series Renaissance Revolution. I like it. It's a good review, especially since it opens like one of my Behind The Sofa things by writing in a faux-Collings voice:

"Hi. That's Matthew Collings. Hi Matt. Matthew makes films about -- art. He knows a lot about -- art. He's pretty good. I like watching him. He's just been on BBC Two talking about -- the Renaissance. He talked in three films called -- Renaissance Revolution. The films are pretty good. I like them. I'm happy that the BBC commissioned them. I like the BBC. A lot."

I've not had a chance to see the shows yet (this is the week that Doctor Who series fnarg has been released on optical disc) but John's post puts it right at the top of the list. What John probably wasn't expecting was for Collings himself to leave a rebuttle in the comments in which he takes umbridge at the notion that the films are too polished:

"I constantly agonise about the relationship between images and words. If I let some sentences be short that's a formal decision. They were longer at an earlier stage of the script. The musical ideas in the series are my own, based not on whimsical perversity but personal association, which I could indulge, because the BBC has a blanket rights agreement on a very wide range of material. Again the tie-up of music, words and pictures involves endless experiment and change."

Until I see the films, I can't really say who I agree with. What I will say is that Collings's comments are well worth reading in and of themselves in offering an insight into the difficult production process of presenter led arts documentaries.

monkeys fall out

Books Brian Edwards, New Zealand author, believes that libraries, that's public libraries (and academic libraries I suppose) are promoting the left of copyrighted material with authors losing due payment for their work because one copy could be read by hundreds and hundreds of people. In other words, Sefton Park Library is like a real world Pirate Bay for books:

"But there’s a principle here: when one person buys a book and lends it to another person to read, they effectively become an accessory to theft. Their generous act amounts to little more than stealing the author’s work. When a public library buys a book and lends it to thousands of other people to read, it’s grand theft copyright and really no different from illegally downloading music or movies or copying CDs or DVDs on your computer."

Of course his argument breaks down because he studiously fails to mention academia as though there's any real difference. You can't say public libraries are evil without properly addressing all of the other varieties. Perhaps its because Edwards is a journalist who throughout his career will have needed to use some kind of library for research. Would he be pleased if every time he needed to look at a document he had to pay for the privilege? No. Which is clearly why he's trying to make the distinction.

You can enjoy a couple of dozen other people picking holes in his argument and Edwards's resulting righteous indignation in the comments to his post and where I found it at The Inquisitor. Don't get me wrong, I love it when writers rattle cages to see if the monkeys fall out and to an extent he isn't wrong. People do borrow books from libraries and read them for free rather than pick them up in libraries. Authors will lose some revenue as a result. But do we want to live in a world were people are deterred from reading because sometimes they can't afford to do it?

saying hi to Ms. Princess

Film Three crew members from the Transformers films talk about working with Megan Fox:

"And who is the real Megan Fox? She is very different than the academy nominee and winning actors we’ve all worked around. She’s as about ungracious a person as you can ever fathom. She shows little interest in the crew members around her. We work to make her look good in every way, but she's absolutely never appreciative of anyone’s hard work. Never a thank you. All the crewmembers have stopped saying hi to Ms. Princess because she never says hello back. It gets tiring. Many think she just really hates the process of being an actress."

That was originally posted at Bay's own website but has since been removed. Someone in the comments at the link says that they're one of the crew members and based on a thorough textual analysis (!) that the director must have written it himself. I think it's done with a certain level of irony and probably should be read in this voice. Actors and directors can be such cards. Ahaaha.

when musicians attack

Music Chris De Burgh takes a dislike to a critic from the Irish Times:

"Being a theatre critic and not a music critic, you must have strayed into the Gaiety by mistake last Monday night, possibly looking for the rear entrance to Neary’s pub, but you certainly arrived with the word “prejudice” burned into your furrowed brow. How it must have galled you to hear the rapturous welcome I received at the start of the show; how you must have writhed at every standing ovation; how you must have cringed at every call of “Chris, we love you”

The paper is already calling it Chrisgate and in this blog entry suggest musician and critic may meet. Someone should record that meeting, the wearing handshake, the forced politeness, oh yes, that will be something to see.

when authors attack

Books Here are the ingredients. Lazlo from The Dreamin's Demon blog reviews The Victoria Vanishes, a new book by Christopher Fowler. He says it's "juvenile and amateurish – more the stuff of a cheap late night thriller than bona-fide mystery novel. I recommend it as a time waster to be turned to only in the absence of more worthwhile activities, like doing dishes or washing socks."

Then, in the comments section of the post, the author, offers some feed back to the blogger, essentially saying that Lazlo has missed the point, which is that it was supposed to be a pastiche, and lists all the people who've liked the book including Harlan Ellison, and essentially becomes a bit unstuck.

I'll let you enjoy the resulting fu-yung. It isn't pretty and neither party comes out of it that well. [via, via]